Where it Started

For the first 16 years of my teaching career, I would come home from school and tell my husband Jon stories about my day teaching. I taught at a school where the students were mostly high achieving, their parents valued education, and students generally did what I asked them to do. The stories I told could be funny, especially when I told him things I had said and how the students had reacted. Sometimes they were dramatic, like when a fight broke out or we had to go on lockdown because of a nearby bank robbery. Other times they were sad, when students shared the death of a family member. I absolutely loved my job and on some days I would come home and share how I had “killed” that day, just like a stand-up comedian. I rocked it! I was funny and engaging and the kids loved me. My stories were not so much about the learning, though my students were learning. Students definitely did some math and they got smarter.

For my 17th year of teaching, I went to a new school. My new school was the lowest performing school in my district and my students would not always do what I asked them to do. I was still funny and engaging and the kids loved me. We also did math, but the kids didn’t seem to be getting smarter. My magic wasn’t working. I had to change how I did things. More importantly, I had to change how students did things in my math classroom.