A Love Letter to MTBoS (a.k.a. my #TMC15 keynote)

Thank you to Lisa Henry for asking me to talk at TMC and for believing that I could pull it off. Thank you to Baylor for the letter below that kicked me in the gut and said, “Stop whining and finish the slides.”

I looked out to the audience and began with this ad lib.

And off I went. Here are the slides for my keynote.

Thank you for being the kindest and most gracious audience.

Much love,
Fawn

Heavy Heart

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope. (Thessalonians 4:13).

The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45

DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49

Cynthia Hurd, 54

Susie Jackson, 87

Ethel Lance, 70

The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41

Tywanza Sanders, 26

The Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74

Myra Thompson, 59

The math task can wait. The lesson on polynomials can be postponed.  I want to talk about racism in America. Now. I think about the many interactions I have each day with my students. Each of my colleagues has as many. There are 600 students here. There are over 2,000 at the high school a few miles away. We teachers see many students all across cities and suburbs. I want today's conversation to be about love and humanity.

I want tomorrow's conversation to be about kindness and tolerance.

Eventually these conversations don't need to happen every day because love, humanity, kindness, and tolerance have become part of our breathing -- they are in our blood, in our black, white, yellow, purple skin. This is my prayer.

Busy Summer and Beyond

Another two weeks and I will have completed 22 years of full-time teaching. Time flies when you're grading papers and having fun. Says no one.

I have a handful of commitments that I'd like to share -- maybe you'll be in attendance or in town and we can say hello!

Now: I'm working with Max Ray-Riek, Rafranz Davis, and Elizabeth Statmore on a writing project that if-I-told-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you-so-please-just-eat-a-cracker. I'm just honored to collaborate with these three amazing people.

June 5-6: I'll be at NCTM Headquarters -- in Reston, Virginia -- to attend my first meeting as a new member of the Professional Development Services Committee (PDSC). We'll meet again in August and November of this year.

June 25-26: Ashli Black has invited me to speak at the Oregon Math Network conference. I wonder why. :) I'm grateful that Ashli thought of me. Elizabeth will be there too! I'm planning to stay in Oregon for an extra week to visit with family. Actually that's a lie because I really just want to hang out in all 56 breweries in Portland.

July 23-26: Twitter Math Camp! On Friday, 4:00 to 5:00, I'll be co-presenting with Matt Vaudrey on Barbie Bungee and Desmos. (Matt is the presenter. I pass out the rubber bands.) On Saturday, 1:30 to 2:30, I'll be giving a keynote. Lisa Henry rejected my request to have the talk at the local karaoke bar. #killjoy

July 27-29: The day after #TMC15, I will be one of the presenters at NCTM Interactive Institute in Anaheim, CA. My 3 sessions (over 3 days with the same attendees) will focus specifically on ratios and proportions. Andrew Stadel is the other presenter on the same topic, but he'll have his own attendees in a different room. Guess the demand is higher for this topic thus they're offering two concurrent workshops. [Update, July 10: Due to lower than expected enrollment numbers, I'd volunteered to cancel my part in this. Andrew will rock this!]

August: I need to carve out some time to fulfill my role as one of the judges for the Item Writers project.

August 6: I'll be doing a full-day workshop in Santa Barbara. It's the 3rd Summer Institute of Teaching Beyond Textbooks.

August 12-14: The UCSB Math Project is my favorite probably because I've been at it the longest (5 years?) and it's local and the people whom I work with know how cranky I get when I don't eat. We are putting on a leadership retreat at the beautiful La Casa de Maria.

August 21-23: I'll be back in Virginia for the NCTM PDSC meeting.

October 22-25: Chris Hunter had invited me to present at the Northwest Math Conference in Whistler, Canada. I'm honored and excited to hang out with these familiar faces and meet new people! With any luck, I might finally get to meet Timon Piccini.

November 6-8: I had a wonderful breakfast with Brian Shay on the last day of NCTM Boston. Told him how busy life had become and that I needed to say "no" more. A week went by and I got an email from Bruce Grip asking me to speak at CMC-South. Guess who told Bruce to contact me. (I said yes only because this presentation will be a repeat from the Whistler one above.)

Anyway, have a wonderful summer if you're already there. Hope to see you at the next gathering! xox

What song was it?

I miss having time to read and write. I miss my kids. Nicolai is graduating from college in two weeks. Gabriel has decided, after freshman year, that college is not for him. He thought about being a truck driver because he likes to drive. I once wanted to be a truck driver too. Contemplating the life of open road and truck-stop diners — and realizing that only one of these is appealing. Sabrina finished her sophomore year and went right into doing research this summer, I won’t see her until late August.

—–

A few weeks ago my students took the SBAC Performance Task (PT). We had to do a classroom activity prior to them taking the computer-based PT.

The main purpose of the classroom activity is to ensure that all students have a common understanding, at a minimal level, of the contextual elements of a PT topic so they are not disadvantaged in demonstrating the skills the task intends to assess.

One of my 6th graders sounded rhetorical, “Don’t we all know what a video game is.”

I heard the unspoken agreement among her classmates. This was unfettered privilege, I thought. Then I remembered something and told them this quick story.

I was already two years out of college and teaching middle school science. Our large district offered a 3-day science workshop — retreat style at the breathtaking Silver Falls Lodge. Two deer came out as if to greet me when I pulled into a parking space. Our first meeting was an evening of social gathering in the cozy Smith Creek Meeting Hall. I knew fewer than a handful of people. The program director took the mic and welcomed us. He said we should sing a song together to begin our fun-filled days of science workshopping. As a way to bond, he added. Everyone agreed and almost immediately broke into chorus. Everyone but me. I just didn’t know the words to the song. Nor have I ever heard of the song. The singing seemed to have gone on for much too long while I stood small and insignificant. I felt like a foreigner. All over again.

One student asked, “What song was it?” I replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t know it then, so…” I ended by telling my students that the director had assumed everyone knew the song. Who we are and what we know are our privileges. Everyone in here may know what a video game is, but we shouldn’t always assume that.

Gabriel — my possible future truck driver — reminded me once that not all his friends lived in homes and apartments. His friend was living in someone’s garage.

Let's Not

I knew I was in trouble when the principal needed to talk with me regarding a parent complaint. The parent said I used the word crap in class often. The parent also said that I told students to memorize PEMDAS as Please Excuse My Dumb Ass Sister.

I admitted to my principal that I said crap enough times. And the PEMDAS thing… Well, it was really a ha-ha joke that my high school students from the previous year taught me, and I never actually wrote out the word Ass, I just wrote down A__, so technically my clever middle schoolers deciphered that on their own.

The parent found me in my classroom after school shortly after. She brought up the aforementioned, and I apologized. Profusely. I was genuinely sorry that she found the word crap offensive. I told her that I then realized it was unprofessional and would not utter the word again in class. I promised I would apologize to all my students the next day.

But then she had more to say, Mrs. Nguyen, we’re a Christian family, and we raise our children to be… 

The rest of her words — I don’t recall exactly — were condemning. She could have just punched me in the face. The effect felt the same. I looked over to the other side of my classroom where my own three children — then ages 8, 9, and 12 — were doing their homework. Our eyes met. My kids attended the same school.

I apologized to my students the next day.

Then after school I went to my principal’s office because what the parent had said to me in front of my children continued to anger me. She had projected her Christianity on me in front of my kids as if I were amoral and indecent for saying crap. I told my principal what happened and concluded with — and I remember my words verbatim because I was really upset — “If she ever comes back and speaks to me like that again, I will tell her exactly what I think, and then you’d have to fucking fire me.”

*****

Maybe it was the very ugly custody battle I went through that has made me crazy protective of my three kids and my role as a parent. You don’t get to judge me from a distance. You don’t get to judge me based on what 4-letter words I say. You certainly don’t get to judge me through a religious lens.

I’m pretty much this crazy protective when it comes to my students and my role as a teacher.

We talk about the bad policies crafted by people in thick-carpet land, so let’s not have those policies trickle down into our classroom and adversely affect our students’ learning or their love of learning. Let’s not follow that textbook that we hate — so what if the school had adopted it. Just because we inadvertently bought spoiled food does not mean we should consume it. We talk about spending too much time reviewing for tests, so let’s stop reviewing for the goddamn tests.

Let’s not believe for one second that we don’t have a voice.

Let’s smile and nod and gather up all the handouts in our next meaningless PD, then throw them out when we get back into our classroom and do a Math Munch or 3-Act lesson.

I go batshit crazy when I hear of teachers doing things that they know are not good for their students. Why are we doing it then?

I’m afraid I know the answer to this already: We don’t want to lose our job.

But. But. Did we not get into teaching because we love teaching and our subject matter and most of all we love our students? How can we justify implementing poor pedagogy and delivering contrived content to the young people whom we promised to give our best and be their advocates? Why are we wasting their time?

We — classroom teachers — make a direct impact on our students’ learning. This impact is not unlike that of a parent-child relationship. And for some students, we are the missing guardian in their life. They depend on us to make the right decisions when administrators and policy makers do not. They depend on us to be the voice that they don’t always have. They trust us to work toward fixing a broken system instead of being a part of it. We would do all this and more as a parent. We should do all this and more as a teacher.

I’ve always needed a job, an income. I don’t have the luxury of shooting my mouth off and doing whatever I fancy in the classroom. I shared the opening story because it happened in my first year of teaching at Mesa and I was well aware of my probationary status. But when a parent crosses the line, or when an administrator/mandate goes too far or does too little, I need to speak up. It’s not bravery or arrogance, it’s duty.