Being that I have asked all of my students to choose their top 5 for math 10, I felt it was only fair for me to do the same thing! It was a bit difficult to choose only 5 by here it goes:
- Students helping each other – a true highlight for me was seeing the willingness of my math 10s to help each other out this year. In the small groups and when we mixed on skills check days, hearing you using math language to help others really made my day! Plus throwing around “coefficient” and “inverse tangent” sound soooo good coming out of your mouths 🙂 I really feel that as a class we all did better because of your willingness to take on the dual role of teacher and student.
2. Students asking questions – before class, during class, with Krystina or John, via email, within your groups. All these questions helped me decide where we were going next, what needed to be reviewed and how I could help. Without you taking the time to do this, I would have had to take a guess as to what was challenging for the class. I failed the whole ESP thing, so through your questions you make the experience better for all of us. As an added bonus, I felt that you made better connections with your classmates through your interactions.
3. Reading your blog posts – once a week I had 2 hours in a Starbucks to read you blogs. I will admit at the beginning I had a hard time figuring out how to best give you feedback, but I know I felt better about my part in this near the end of the semester. Did I say I am still learning? I looked forward to these two hours because I got to be invited into a private conversation with you, hearing your voice as you talked about what you learned this week and what you struggled with. It helped me get better. On top of this when I did provide feedback to you, seeing the “Week # – updated” made me love you more, as you took my feedback to heart to make your post even better. As an added bonus, from your feedback yesterday, you realizing how useful these were for your learning (even if you didn’t love putting them together) made my day!
4. Having great attendance – I will say that our class attendance for this semester was the best I have had in a while. Knowing that you were coming on a regular basis really gave me the impression you cared and wanted to be here (even if math wasn’t your first love). Thank you. You made my job that much easier by being here on a daily basis and easier for you too! A big shout out to all of you who made that extra effort to email me when you were going to be away … your thoughtfulness was very much appreciated.
5. White board fun – if those darn whiteboard pens didn’t dry out so quickly I think I’d do even more of this. I loved seeing you working together as a team to figure out a question, following my “person with the pen doesn’t do the thinking” rule. I know I didn’t always give you as much time in class to work on homework as you might have liked but I felt that these times were more valuable than just working individually on textbook work. It gave me a look into what you were thinking and gave us an opportunity to talk, question and work together to make our team even better.
Bonus:
6. LateX coding – teaching you how to add this to your blogs and then see you using it was a complete thrill! It was clear that some of you had gone and done some research on your own to be able to add even more “good looking” math to your blog! It made you look soooooo good!
I can honestly say that this semester has been the MOST fun I have had teaching math 10. Thank you for being a part of it and I wish you all the very best in grade 11!