I wanted to create a space where my students could make mistakes and be okay, where they actually liked coming to my class, where they felt “smart” in their own way wherever they were in their learning, where they would push themselves to do better than yesterday, where they could struggle with something and still be alive to tell about it.
Math
If you’ve ever sat in on a professional development session with me, you’ve heard my spiel, “From here on out, you’re a math person. Even if you feel you have no connection to mathematics, you need to channel your inner actor or actress and become a math person.
“When are we ever going to use this?” The dreaded, yet inevitable, question that arises every year for math educators. With the abstract nature of many standards in the high school math curriculum, I can certainly empathize with the sentiment of this question.