Getting it right this time?

Today is the last day I can treat myself to the luxury of sitting in a coffeeshop on a weekday morning/afternoon.  I came here to think about what I wanted to do in the early days of my 9^th grade class.  In practice, this has translated into my spending most of the time solving and thinking about the “Tinker” problems.  This has worked remarkably well to help me set priorities.

I wanted to teach 9^th grade this year because I realized that I was not doing nearly as much as I could be to teach students how to be learners.  Assigning students nonroutine problems has its drawbacks: though we have great class discussions and kids learn to see math for the open book that it is, students also have the perfect excuse to say, “I just didn’t know how to do this homework problem”, and teachers have the perfect excuse to give large hints that don’t empower kids to feel that they could have solved the problems themselves. 9^th grade seems like a good opportunity to focus on changing some of my practices.  We’re all making a fresh start.

Here are the things I most want to work on with my students this year, things that we need to establish in the earliest days.