The Next 5 Years
The three goals I have for the near and far future are: (1) equity in teacher commitments, wherein responsibilities for non-teaching duties are shared equally, (2) in terms of special education in math, solidify what each accommodation specifically means and what it looks like so that there is consistency amongst instructors and vertically or horizontally in the math department and (3) continue my work on getting students to persevere in problem solving.
I am anticipating change in a variety of ways. First, I’m sure for that for (1), there will be teacher resistance, especially for the teachers who are set in their ways and don’t feel they need to do anything aside from teaching. I also see in (2), the possibility of not being able to come up with a consensus of what accommodations actually are and alienating special education teachers that don’t share my views, beliefs or standards. In (3), I can see students not buying in or the process taking more time than expected and drawing resources away from the existing curriculum.
The term “diversity measure” is a vague, seemingly non-quantifiable variable. In terms of how diverse my network is, I think it could stand to be more diverse. By that, I mean most of the people in it are wholly supportive and don’t usually push back with different ideas. I do have a few newer people in my network who do challenge me, and I need to find some more. The main type of people I need in my network are people who are both more innovative and less innovative (meaning more “old school”). This may seem dissonant, but I need the more innovative people to push my thinking forward, and the less innovative people to tell me if my pie in the sky ideas are possible and what obstacles might be in place that I don’t see.
In terms of abandoning the past, I know I had successful practices in the past, but looking back now, they don’t really seem all that successful. Maybe I had subconsciously lower expectations in years past, and my benchmarks of success were, at the time, successes, but in retrospect, they weren’t. That said, I have abandoned many of the past practices that I thought were successful and moved on to more innovative ones, and I plan on doing so in the future. Even though I currently flip my classroom and will do so next year, I need to come up with some better practices to ensure that it works even better. One thing I do want to do is implement it with my non-AP classes to see how much it could help the magnet-level (non-honors) students to better understand and persevere through problem solving.
I am anticipating change in a variety of ways. First, I’m sure for that for (1), there will be teacher resistance, especially for the teachers who are set in their ways and don’t feel they need to do anything aside from teaching. I also see in (2), the possibility of not being able to come up with a consensus of what accommodations actually are and alienating special education teachers that don’t share my views, beliefs or standards. In (3), I can see students not buying in or the process taking more time than expected and drawing resources away from the existing curriculum.
The term “diversity measure” is a vague, seemingly non-quantifiable variable. In terms of how diverse my network is, I think it could stand to be more diverse. By that, I mean most of the people in it are wholly supportive and don’t usually push back with different ideas. I do have a few newer people in my network who do challenge me, and I need to find some more. The main type of people I need in my network are people who are both more innovative and less innovative (meaning more “old school”). This may seem dissonant, but I need the more innovative people to push my thinking forward, and the less innovative people to tell me if my pie in the sky ideas are possible and what obstacles might be in place that I don’t see.
In terms of abandoning the past, I know I had successful practices in the past, but looking back now, they don’t really seem all that successful. Maybe I had subconsciously lower expectations in years past, and my benchmarks of success were, at the time, successes, but in retrospect, they weren’t. That said, I have abandoned many of the past practices that I thought were successful and moved on to more innovative ones, and I plan on doing so in the future. Even though I currently flip my classroom and will do so next year, I need to come up with some better practices to ensure that it works even better. One thing I do want to do is implement it with my non-AP classes to see how much it could help the magnet-level (non-honors) students to better understand and persevere through problem solving.