First Post

I think it's finally time for me to take the plunge into the daunting sea of the online world. I'm not comfortable. Every word I type makes me cringe with the memories of my middle school livejournal. I know I will look back on this and instantly blush. However, I want a place to record my thoughts, ideas, and adventures in teaching. A blog seems like a good medium so here we go!

Some background about my teaching life. I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. When I was young, on rainy days, I would force my little sister to "go to school" and I would give her math problems to do. I would even grade them and put stickers on the top of her paper! Teaching is also in my blood. My mom has been a New York City School Teacher for more than 20 years! Education was held is the highest priority in my house growing up, and I firmly believe that I am who I am today because of this fact.

Of course I didn't know that I knew that teaching was my calling. I toyed with the idea of being a paleontologist, a chemist, an economist, and a mathematician. I ended up majoring in math and econ as an undergrad and that took me all the way to a PhD program at Dartmouth. After three years or tearful research and one semester of instructing undergrads I finally discovered that teaching is my true passion. I moved out to Utah in 2014 to teach at an international boarding school and I've been here ever since.

The best part about teaching is that you get to keep learning!

My journey

Since coming to Wasatch Academy I have grown so much as an educator and a mathematician. I have sucked in every PD opportunity that I could and embraced it fully. I employed a flipped classroom and that evolved into an even more flexible model. Now I teach a competency based classroom where my students are self-paced and graded based on mastery of standards. I'll eventually write blog posts about all of these stages in my journey.

Next up

My headmaster has recently asked me to step up into a more adminsrative role next year. I will be the "curriculum coordinator" for my school and my main task will be to help train teachers to use authentic assessments, standards referenced grading, and competency-based strategies in their own classrooms. I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to work with teachers.

I'm also beginning to get my hands dirty with some research. I have paired up with our learning differences(LD) expert at school to plan a project which will explore dyslexia and how it affects students in a math classroom. We hope to present at a few conferences next year.

I'm looking forward to the changes in my career and I am eager to document my thoughts along the way.