Blogtoberfest, Day 7: Sherril Brice
How have connections with other professionals improved your practice? Today's entry is from Sherril Brice, ISOL and Math Teacher at La Costa Canyon School:
It’s the start of new school year, I’ve got my teaching assignment, my syllabus is prepared and ready to be dispersed to students, the bell rings and we’re off and running. But wait, it’s now Friday and I think I see an AP approaching me, he wants to talk briefly about my schedule…
They are reallocating a section at our site, which means I will now be teaching a Sheltered Algebra 1 course starting at the end of the next week. With no teacher prep days for syllabus writing, web page design, or lesson planning I would have drowned except for being “saved” by professional connections at my site and a neighboring site. A teacher at SDA shared a wonderful book, Making Mathematics Accessible to English Learners, which essentially helped remove some “cobwebs” (see how I worked in October-ish stuff) and reminded me of some basics we had learned a few years back in SDAIE workshops. All three of the algebra teachers at my site rallied and offered up copies of lesson plans, resource books, and have continued to share, via email, both sites and activities they find useful and interesting. While it’s not perfect, someone even suggested checking out Google Translate, which has certainly been helpful, since it’s been over 35 years since I studied high school Spanish and had I tried to translate my syllabus alone it may have said something really crazy.
No, I have not yet reached nirvana with this experience, nevertheless I have access to Algebra 1 lesson plans for the year, thanks Erin. I do have a word wall, we have made cool flip books for working with integers, there’s an M&M activity for modeling the distributive property in my tool box, and I am using Frayer model notes to help scaffold the lessons, thanks Paul, Julie and Jill. This definitely is not a Cinderella story, unless you think of the scene where everything changes back to pumpkins (did it again) and mice, because I am still re-inventing some wheels, ditching plans in the middle of the period as students get call slips for CELDT testing, trying every day to start with a positive fresh attitude, but the comforting knowledge is that when things go bump in the classroom, I have other helpful colleagues willing to lend support.
Ghoulishly submitted,
Sherril Brice
