Ten Weeks of Summer: The AP Stat Reading (Week 1)

During the school year, I did a teach 180 blog and I will be spending some time next week reviewing my successes and failures of the previous school year.  If you are a new teacher and you are reading this, you may be thinking, "Wait. You have taught since 1992. You still fail in your teaching?" Fail, fall short, learn and succeed.  If I want to continue to be the best teacher I can be for my students, I will need to try new things to keep them engaged and help them learn.  I think I may have even said in a previous blog post that once I stop learning and growing as a teacher it will be time for me to leave teaching.  But I am nowhere near ready for that yet.

This summer I will be blogging once each week to reflect on things I am doing over the summer relative to teaching.  I might blog about something I learned from a participant at a workshop.  Or I might blog about one of my summer goals, learning the computational layer in Desmos.  Or I might blog about a book I am reading related to teaching.

Let's begin.  Week 1: The AP Statistics Reading.  Today is Day 7 - a.k.a. the last day of the AP Statistics Reading.  It is one of the best professional development experiences of the year and this is my 9th year as an AP Reader.  Each year I learn more about how to help my students become better statistical communicators and better statistical thinkers.  I pick up teaching ideas, book recommendations and share stories with old friends and new friends.  This year I was able to escape from my third Escape Room in Kansas City and a bunch of us tried ax throwing. (It's ok to throw axes in statistics, but you don't forget to label them.)

This year at Best Practices night I presented about a teaching technique called "Stand and Talk".  It was based off of Sara VanDerWerf's blog and talk that I saw at NCTM.  (My blog posts about this technique can be found at Day 150 and Day 151 in my blog from the 2017-2018 school year.)  I also picked up some ideas from other teachers at that session.  Specifically, I want to try Kelly M. Spoon's (@kellymspoon) Desmos card sort activities.  (As I was writing this blog, I tried to search for it and could not find it online.)  So, I sent her a tweet and will modify my blog with the link once she sends it to me.

Stay tuned for week 2 - prepping for some workshops and looking ahead to teaching at my new school.