When I started this blog last summer (2019) I made so many plans to keep up with grading and planning and all of the nuts and bolts that go into a teacher’s day. I wanted to make sure that I had time to work on this blog and share my teacher voice with whomever I could get to read it. I have kept with most of my plans for better organization and productivity. I am getting more of the nuts and bolts done during certain days, but I am still working quite a bit at home. It is frustrating sometimes, but the life of a teacher is unlike that of others. We work with students – young adults that have needs beyond the academic material we teach. No matter the plans I make to keep things running smoothly on my end, the fact that my job circles around my students means that every year is completely unique.
Every year I may teach my new students the same content as last year’s students, but the experience is completely different due to the new insights, observations and needs of my current students. I adjust what occurs within the class routine to match the students I have – not the ones who have moved on to other courses. I may start with the same outline of plans, but things have to be changed to match the young people sitting in my classroom this year. What happened this year is the same that seems to happen every year; by the time the end of August came I was knee deep in grading and spending my lunches running copies for the afternoon classes or putting together last-minute plans.
As I wanted to spend time on my new project – Musings of a Motivated Math Teacher, I lamented teaching 6 out of 7 periods a day with not enough plan time. I lamented always being so busy with a never ending to do list. I was worried I was letting my new ‘passion’ project go. After all, I had goals to be sharing lessons and activities within this blog and I wanted to see where this led me. I kept thinking that surely by my 18th year of teaching I would be better able to keep up with the day to day life of teaching. I was frustrated that I didn’t have more time for my writing and wondered where all my time was going.
One night as I was falling asleep I had a lightbulb moment. (Some of my best thinking happens in the shower or right as I fall asleep or wake up.) I thought I was letting my new project down, but then I realized that I have really been pursuing my passion project this entire time. My passion project is my teaching and creating those meaningful learning experiences that help my students grow in their math skills and life skills. The planning, creating and grading that goes into my job is where my time goes – and it is really worth the effort (most of the time).
I love to find new activities; create problem sets and even find or create content related decorations for my classroom all in an effort to help of my students learn. Teaching my students is what fires me up and drives me to be better each and every day. Designing lessons and creating activities is what I live for as a teacher – it’s the fun stuff of my job. The lessons and activities are what allows the real interactions with my students – when I can talk to each of them and help them learn the concepts as well as they can.
Now that we are all faced with staying home for at least the next few weeks if not longer due to COVID-19, I am already missing the ‘passion project’ work that I was going to be doing. I had just started to explore Quizlet and was hoping to use it as a tool in my classroom for practice the details of parallel line relationships and congruent triangles. I have revamped how I teach geometric proofs and was looking forward to working to help my students build their critical thinking skills while doing their proofs. My College Algebra Trig students were actually looking forward to our next unit – Logs and Exponentials, because it wasn’t trigonometry. I have puzzles and games galore that I want to do with them, and the data surrounding COVID-19 is a (sadly) perfect example of an exponential graph.
I am going to miss my students and all the joy and even grief they bring me on a daily basis. I am going to miss teaching, even though I spend too many hours a week on it sometimes. I am 100% a professional teacher at heart and have been for the last 18 years. I thought I needed a “passion project” to help balance my life out, instead I just needed to see my calling for what it really is – my lifelong project to serve my community and help my students grow. We will be back in school at some point, it is out of our hands for now. Until I am able to see them again, I will send healthy thoughts to the 147 students I am entrusted with this school year, and plan for the next step in a time of social distancing and sheltering in place. I don’t know what that next step is, but I will pour my heart into it as if I was with my students in person. I do know, that moving forward, I hope to better appreciate my true ‘passion project” – teaching my students.
Musing of a Motivated Math Teacher 