House Cleaning and Lesson Planning
I posted this on Facebook:
There is something else that I do way better than teaching mathematics, even though teaching has been a 25-year plus career. That something is house cleaning.
Then, a friend asked for advice on this, adding, "Will desperately be awaiting your response." I responded with:
Thought no one would ever ask. :) Here comes the list, the order is important.
Throw everything out.
When done with step 1, repeat step 1 again bc we both know you really didn't throw everything out.
With remaining [ideally just 3] items, ask, "Is it really really pretty?" If so, it should be displayed in your home in a pretty spot. Ask, "Is it useful, like a wine-bottle-opener type of necessity?" If so, keep it in a drawer.
Unless it's a piece of furniture, a houseplant, or a 4-legged friend, forbid it from touching your floor.
Counter space is only for items that do not fit inside a drawer/cupboard and are used almost daily -- e.g., toaster, Nutribullet, knife block.
Swiffer products should be regarded as essentials like toothpaste and TP.
The person who did not put the TV remote control away in a designated spot shall be banished from the home (or get punched in the face).
Make your bed every morning.
Never go to bed unless the kitchen is clean. (If you dread this, then don't cook.)
If you find the above 9 steps difficult to implement, then try step 1 again.
About throwing things out
Friends and family have seen me in action and tossed out this comment, "You like to clean, don't you." I always want to respond with, "Hell, no. I'd like to be on the beach drinking a margarita right about now." I have to clean because I want to live in a clean place. Pretty sure it's not an OCD thing, my classroom and my home have harbored enough episodes of disarray and germful cultivation.It turns out that the above ten steps mirror -- in a stretchy kinda way -- how I do lesson planning. Something very cathartic about removing stuff.
If you're at all familiar with my teaching practice, it's what I try to do all the time, like here, here, here, and for the last two months now, I've been removing the visual pattern steps and leave kids with just one step to build on.
We remove the question when we do notice-and-wonder. We remove the correct answer when we do Which One Doesn't Belong, we remove anxiety when we do Estimation 180. We invite great discussions when we do #smudgedmath.
About making things pretty
I have a hard time letting students use class time to make things pretty.
Conjecture: The "prettier" your students' individual works are (posters and such), the more class time you've wasted. #makeitprettyathome
— Fawn Nguyen (@fawnpnguyen) November 22, 2016
What's beautiful to me is a paper full of mathematical thinking -- a big mess of it -- with scratch-outs and start-overs and AHAs! And I get what pretty is, like anything and everything created in Desmos is pretty. (My students use GeoGebra and Geometer's Sketchpad too.)
About furniture and space
Steps 4 and 5 make me think of the furniture in my classroom. I'm seriously connecting with some folks to get my walls covered with whiteboards. (Earlier this month, I finally got to hear Peter Liljedahl talk about Building Thinking Classrooms at #OAME2018. Alex Overwijk walks the talk.) I've already asked my superintendent/principal if I may get tables next year instead of the same clunky student desks that I've had for the last 15 years.
About essential items
Essentials, like equity and access. I've become weary of the true deployment of these two words. There are broad guidelines, but looking at my own practice and those around me, I'd be lying if I thought for a moment that we have access and equity all squared away and project nothing-to-see-here-move-along. I'm convinced that every teacher move speaks to how much we care about equity and access. So, the more intentional we can be in our lesson planning -- from the questions that we ask, to the groups that we form, to the wait time that we give, to our body language -- the more we can make strides in this endeavor.
About putting things back
This one is about respect. Literally, it's about putting things back where they belong. It reminds me to always give credit to the source, to share the lesson, to pay it forward. The teacher species Herohomo supersapien has been known to beg, borrow, and steal, and now, put it back.
About fresh starts
And do-overs. We all have bad-no-good-horrible-vomit lessons. We tell our students to pick themselves up and try again, and again. We need to practice forgiving our bad lessons with grace and gratitude. The #MTBoS community gets this. Jonathan's tweet was part of this thread.
remember that for every mind blowing idea, there 10 crap ones that aren’t necessarily said out loud
— Jonathan (@rawrdimus) May 24, 2018
Like house cleaning, lesson planning can also be an asshole, especially on the weekends. On that note, I'm gonna hit the beach in an hour, the laundry and the lesson planning will just have to wait.