What Have I Learned?

What can I say………..

The school year has begun and I am so excited to implement ideas and projects from my mentor to my kids at school. As my mentor Phaedra gave me a tour of IBM, I was amazed at the atmosphere of the “office space”. Many people were working while standing up at an adjustable leveled desk with their laptops, others were conversing in a reserved room while writing on walls made for dry erase markers (a teachers dream).  I was taking pictures of everything, I know the IBM office people were like, “What is she doing?”.

Before school started I bothered/badgered school custodian for adjustable tables, AND he found some!! I have 4 grouped tables in my room that seat 6 students and one of the groups is a stand-up table which we call “The High Rollers Table”.  The students are asking, “Can our group work stand at the High Rollers Table today?”. I was totally geeked out, and calmly said, “Yes”.

In my Math II class we were discussing how rotations, reflections, and translations relate to real-life jobs and income (they honestly could not see how). One of my students aspires to be a clothing designer, as a class discussion we discovered how the symmetry of a piece of fabric reflects to form the opposite side in a pattern. When that particular student was able to correlate the connection I seriously got chills.

As a woman teaching at an all male academy, I realize that I am here to foster ideas and influence a plan to give vision to their future.