One Good Thing

For the 2016 Blogging Initiative for week one I chose to blog one good thing. Here are my one good (actually a couple) thing(s) for the week January 11-15. I am going to # them in my post. On Thursday and Friday January 7th and 8th our lesson study team welcomed Judith Keeney (@JudithKeeney) from California to participate in a lesson study cycle. We were planning the lesson on Thursday afternoon and executing it on Friday morning. This is not normal as we usually have a week in between but we were trying to give Judy a picture of the whole process.

#1 It was a good thing to have someone join our team-especially someone who has experienced lesson study as much as Judy. I learned a great deal from her experiences at TMC14 in Jenks and again over the 36 hours that she visited and participated in our lesson study process. One of the perks of having to plan and execute back to back was that the classroom set up and preparations of paper, markers, numberlines (whatever would be part of the lesson) had to be done by the end of the day Thursday. Normally we would talk for an afternoon and then the person who's lesson it is would be left to their own to put it together over the next week. On this particular day the entire team went to my room and set it up for the next morning. The lesson had lots of set up that needed to be done. Many hands made light work. I personally felt great about the team environment that resulted. Due to the week delay that we normally have our group had not experienced this before.

Our lesson study group is cross curricular. This semester it consists of our principal France Thibault (@FranceThibault), two other math teachers Thach-Thao Phan and Paula Leitch-Blais (who is also our special education teacher at our school), a history teacher Anneke Jansen Van Doorn and a geography teacher Dana Dray. And of course me. This is our 4th year engaging in the lesson study process. We have had lots of different people in and out of our group. France and I have been lucky enough to be involved for the entire four years. #2 This has been a good thing.

Joining us for this particular lesson study was Robin McAteer (@robintg). Robin is a math coach at our board and I personally invited her as she planted the seed for the idea for this lesson and because she has so much to offer. I love having her in our group ( she has participated a couple of times in our lesson studies over the years). The best part of Robin being there is that I get artifacts from her . For example we did an exit card as part of the lesson- I got this sent to me on the Friday night.  #3 Having Robin in our lesson studies is a good thing.

On January 15 1991 I signed my first teaching contract with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board. This past week I have officially taught mathematics for 25 years. I have learned more in the last 7 than I did in the first 18 all because of the #MTBoS. #4 That is a good thing.