As of one week ago, every single fellow in the first Math for America DC cohort has been placed at a job for the next year. Congratulations all!

So let’s go in order:

Katherine was first off the block and will be working at Caesar Chavez Public Charter teaching 6th grade mathematics.

I forget who came next but I think it was Krystn. After a long and grueling interview process, Krystn decided to accept a position teaching high school mathematics at Hospitality Public Charter.

Max landed his top choice at McKinley Tech where he will be teaching some AP courses in his first year. While many of us are teaching summer school to gain some classroom experience, Max will going through the AP training seminar course thing.

Lindsay, who felt super unsettled about not getting any job offers until late in the game finally got many job offers all at once. She turned down Hyde Public Charter, Columbia Heights Educational Complex (Lincoln Middle), and Anacostia High School in favor of her old stomping grounds Eliot-Hine Middle School.

I was the last to decide. Oyster-Adams, after playing footsy for a while because my Spanish isn’t up to snuff, finally offered me a job. The day before that, I  got a fantastic job offer from a school I had never even heard of before.  I took a leap of faith and have signed on to work at Youth Engagement Academy and am wildly excited  about the school because of how progressive it is even though it’s a public school. More to come later!

In other news, cohort one has completed and submitted individual teaching portfolios, has taken all the required Praxis exams, and has completed all courses required for the master’s degree.

A yardstick is how many inches long?

Take half of that.

Subtract the number of lives

Of any given cat.

Now ad the number of eggs

In a normal egg carton.

Subtract the average age

Of a kid in kindergarten.

Add the syllable at the end of

TIMBUK________.

I ended up with half a yardstick

How about you?

J. Patrick Lewis: Arithme-tickle.

Without a doubt, one of the best principal’s I’ve had the privilege of knowing is the one I’m working for now. His name is Patrick Pope,  he has been the principal of Hardy Middle School for over 10 years, and he is being removed by Michelle Rhee.

I wrote to Chancellor Rhee a couple of nights ago to add my voice to those requesting that she reconsider her decision. Here’s her response:

Dear Ms. Kaiyoorawongs,

Thank you so much for your email. I hear you, and I know it can be hard to lose a principal teachers and parents work well with and appreciate. It is actually pretty common, in thinking of the district as a whole, to give a strong principal the opportunity to expand his or her influence to more children. [edit: I love unsubstantiated claims, don't you?] So many more students can benefit from someone with Principal Pope’s expertise in building an arts education program, and this change was also something that Principal Pope enthusiastically expressed to me that he wanted to do when we discussed it.

I have always praised Hardy as a strong school and have no intentions to take away the arts program at the school or otherwise reduce the high standards Principal Pope has established that have served students well. I am also confident that while Principal Pope has the qualities you admire in your email below, Principal Nerenberg is a strong school leader. I see this as expanding expertise to more students, and would never make a decision I thought would take away good leadership of any school.

I really appreciate hearing from you, and hope this clarifies my thinking on this a bit.

Take care and have a good weekend,

MR

Events like this make me question my decision to come to DC. And as if the information about Principal Pope isn’t already heartbreaking enough, I just read this. So my question is, given Candi’s blog entry, how excited could he possibly be about “expand[ing] his influence to more children?” Ugh.

An annotated list of great mathematics books for the classroom. Oh goodness. I can’t believe I don’t have one.

Correspondence has started for me to bring salsa/merengue/bachata to my students at Hardy! I’m excited so stay tuned!

How can you not love THIS?

Today AU opened for the first time in a week after our unexpected mini-vacations. Well, I hope the time was well-spent because we’ll probably pay for it later–the semester calendar at AU remains unchanged.  No word yet on whether students of the district will have their summer vacation shortened.

One of the things I was able to do during this snowed-in period was read up on Bill Turque and Guy Brandenburg’s education blogs. Unfortunately, Bill Turque’s blog, “D.C. Schools Insider” has an editor otherwise I think we’d get much more accurate information.  Guy Brandenburg’s blog, however, does not.

Since moving to D.C., a big lesson I’ve learned is that people are really good at giving non-answers to direct questions. It happened at AU when I wanted to know why History of Mathematics isn’t a course I’m allowed to take as part of my master’s; it happened when I e-mailed Michelle Rhee to tell her that I don’t support an increase in standardized testing (which she does); and it happened when I asked the lady at the Godiva store if , when the store closed, she’d be willing to give me the chocolate strawberries she just throws away (Oh! Don’t even get me started).  People make up lies that appease whoever is listening,  they speak in half-truths, or they just ignore your questions completely. So stumbling upon blogs where people aren’t afraid of using clear voices to speak the truth–even if it’s contentious; even if not everyone agrees–is a breath of fresh air.

It’s so ironic to me that when Michelle Rhee took office, people commended her for being straightforward. Well, that may have been the case when she first got to office (what do I know? I was in Vermont) but 3 years in DC is all the schooling anyone ever needs at becoming a professional question dodger.

All I know is that we live in a democracy. That democracy is defined by public discourse.  And, of all the U.S. cities I’ve lived in, our capital is in need of it the most. There’s another dose of irony for your Friday afternoon.

Have a nice weekend!

A couple of weeks ago, the fellows finally got to meet their Math for America mentors. These mentors will be visiting our classrooms periodically to provide professional and emotional support during our  first years teaching.

The mentors are: Guy Brandenburg, Blanche Brownely, and Joan Reinthaler. All of these mentors have had super extensive and successful careers as mathematics educators in Washington DC and I look forward  to working with them.

Some exciting things have been happening lately!

First and foremost, applications for next year’s cohort were due about 5 hours ago and I am anxious to hear back from Bianca about who our prospective fellows are! Even though our master’s program could improve a lot, I am still a huge huge fan of the organization Math for America and think that whoever gets into the program here in DC is so fortunate. Good luck to any applicants who are reading this. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch via the comments section below.

Secondly, it’s unfortunate, but 3 of the spring student teacher placements have not worked out. Lindsay, Katherine and Krystn were all working at a school which will not be named but the situation was much less than ideal. They will be starting anew somewhere else.

Lastly, I was reading my own writing from right about when this program started and wow, have we come a long way. It feels like forever ago that I didn’t know what backwards planning was. It feels like forever ago since I first realized how much teachers have to plan outside of class, how much they say about students that students never find out. It feels like forever and  a DAY ago that I was nervously stammering to an 8th grader because I wasn’t sure how to explain fraction multiplication to him. So what? So even though I don’t feel like I’m brand spanking new to schools anymore, I’m still just as excited about my career now than when I was young and naive. And excitement, my dear friend, is a wonderful feeling to have when referring to one’s career.

I happened upon our blog today and realized that it is full of MOLLEY! And, while I love Molley (dearly), I think it’s time for the rest of us to step up our online presence. WA^Squared is definitely suffering these days, too.

As much as I loved being home for winter break, it has been really hard to get back into the swing of things. We all started at new schools about 3 weeks ago, and let me tell you, 8th graders have a lot of energy! (And sass, but I kinda like that about them) We have new classes, and the fellows are split up over various mathematical topics. I’m taking Intro to Math Stat with both Lindsay and Molley, and then solo-ing it with Complex Analysis. Speaking of, I spent a lot of yesterday working on an optional (!) assignment involving the extended complex plane (complex numbers + infinity) modeled using Riemann’s sphere. SO COOL. My undergraduate capstone (like a research thesis) was on spherical geometry, so I can appreciate a good sphere. ; )

This semester promises to be even crazier than the last since we are going to be looking for gainful employment as well. Sigh. I reworked my resume this weekend, making it pretty and highlighting my teaching and math accomplishments (and noting the glaringly obvious that I am a beginning teacher with not too much experience…) We’ve started thinking about where we might like to teach, and I think we’re going to be touring some schools soon.

Other exciting things: training for the National Half Marathon at the end of March, a list of 30 things to do in 2010, a motivation chart that seems to be working, and a really great guy who’s in my life.

There’s a brief catch up!!

Exhaustion, it’s the new name of the game. Some other fellows might scoff since, heck, we’ve been exhausted all along. But there is a difference this semester from last semester: many of us are now spending all day in school. Last semester we mostly did half-days.

So it’s 4:07PM, I just got back from school and am getting ready for university classes. But as my droopy eyes gaze longingly at my huge comfortable warm supportive bed, I’m reminded of what an education professor from college told me. He said it takes about the first 5 years for teachers to stop being exhausted by the school day. Please say it isn’t so.