Is There Really Treasure in the Treasure Chest?

      So, to make a long story short... I became a teacher, I found a job, and two years later I got an AMAZING co-teacher... and the two of us set out on a mission. The mission - How do we find a way to teach math in a tangible way for our students with a wide variety of learning disabilities and a complete lack of interest in math? Well, we are young and stupid (kidding, were very smart!), so naturally we came to the conclusion of "Let's change EVERYTHING we are doing".

My partner in crime!

     After lengthy discussions with my co-teacher, we thought we had a plan. It was the plan, I mean, we were going to change everything. We were going to go back to teaching the way we were taught to teach. Good bye Accelerated Math, your time has come to an end. It was time go to back and make lesson plans, present material, give homework, and have exams. It was literally EVERYTHING THEY TAUGHT US IN COLLEGE! It was perfect. We found text books, we found worksheets, I even downloaded $30 worth of worksheets from TeachersPayTeachers... We were ready for this adventure.

NO. STOP. PUT ON THE BRAKES RIGHT NOW. 

     With strong support from our wonderful principal and our amazing digital arts teacher, our whole idea changed. I mean seriously, IT ALL CHANGED. Why should we not embrace technology (our school is going 1-to-1 next year) and why should we not embrace common core as it should be embraced? We looked at each other and thought... Why not? Why not us? Why not now? Before I got home after that faithful meeting (I only live 12 minutes from work), I had an email in my inbox saying that there were 33 ChromeBooks on their way to my classroom so that we could begin this adventure... OMG, IT WAS HAPPENING. We were going to change everything.

    Now, by change everything, I mean change everything. We are getting ready for our students to learn and embrace the world. We are taking away a traditional grading scale, we are going to grade on effort and work completion... #GASP! We will teach our students to inquire learning in a new way. They will fend for themselves in a sense, they will run the classroom, make the rules (obvi, with some guidance from us), make the assignments, and make their own deadlines. The hope, with this odd sense of PBL, is that the kids will invest more of their time since they are the ones who have the control. Will it work... I HAVE NO IDEA! But like I said... Why not? Why not us? Why not now?

      So after all that... today we had an excellent meeting with fellow teaching rebels (we are pretty much District 13 or the teacher's version of Dumbledore's Army, if that helps explain this group of individuals) and to be honest (as I always am) I was VERY inspired. I would start today! Well, with only one class... baby steps, am I right? So I did what I thought would be simple. I made a WebQuest where my students would research sports stats and then graph them.... Simple, right? WRONG. Let's remember it's technology we are working with here. So naturally, none of the brand new computers I had would open ANYTHING I created on google for the kiddos. Then the kids discovered the messaging feature when they were all on the same page. That was a disaster! Then nothing opened once we figured out how to get around the google issue... It was 43 minutes of pure teaching torture. Noting went right. Nothing went as planned. My kiddos literally could not even open one page that I had set for them for research. Remember, mermaids DO NOT CRY, so I was trying to hold it together... MERMAIDS DON'T CRY. Finally, the bell rang. THANK TRITON! We got nothing done. NOTHING. Well, that's a lie. We figured out how to open the google doc I made with the instructions if the kids changed "drive" to "docs" in the URL, but then nothing opened after that. So... yahhhhh.... we pretty much got nothing done. On the verge of tears (again, MERMAIDS DON'T CRY) the kiddos left and I sat in my thoughts.

      Back track to my yearbook kids at the start of the year trying to figure out this new way of yearbook-ing we going to try. It was hard. It was new. The copy was a freaking pain the butt. The layouts were different and covered so much more. The kids FREAKED OUT. We had a huge discussion about failure and how failure aides our success. And in my deep thoughts (still remembering that mermaids don't cry) I suddenly remembered the quote that I had shared with them on the day they thought they were all going to cry...

So what if I failed on the first day? Every single one of my brilliant yearbook kids failed the first time they wrote their copy and did their new layout. If that group of kids can figure out failure and how to overcome it, I knew that I could too! I always knew failure would be a possibility in this mad math world, but failure does not mean that it is over. It means that there is a start. A start to change everything for the better... this mermaid is going to find a way to make it work. This mermaid is on a mission to see if there is any treasure in this vast and complex math/technology treasure chest. 

      Today, there is no treasure in that chest, but now the map to lead to treasure is starting to form...