I'm Back! Again?

So two years ago I posted an "I'm back" post.  But I hadn't actually started teaching again so I had nothing to say.  Now I'm really back.  Back to teaching and hopefully, back to blogging.  I want to spend this first post reflecting on why I stopped blogging in the first place because I think it speaks to some of the issues our students struggle with.

First, I stopped following teacher blogs.  The good ideas have been so helpful and so inspiring, but every good idea I didn't have the chance to use made me feel bad, every boring lesson that I didn't spice up made me feel bad, and then all those good ideas made me feel bad about my own paltry ones.  So then I stopped posting my own blogs.

It's so silly to fall into that comparison trap.  To think that because there are so many amazing things happening out there, so many things that I could never have dreamed of, that means my ideas are worthless.  That I have nothing to contribute.  But that's also not what blogging is about.  It's not an arena where the best ideas have to pin the good or mediocre ideas down and hold them down for a count of 10.  I did feel like I was "losing" at some game and I'd never be smart enough to win.

I've felt this way about math too.  I often didn't have the insight fast enough, or wasn't able to chug the numbers competently enough to shine in class.  I always thought my contributions were worth less than other peoples'.  It took me until grad school to realize that the people speaking up in class often were wrong, or were bsing, or were questioning.  They weren't better at math than me, they were better at participating in a mathematical community than I was.  My math partner who talked a lot of jargon and had a deeper pool of knowledge than I did often missed the key insights our proofs needed and I usually saw them.  I was quieter about it, and more tentative.  But I could see them.  I fight this crippling insecurity every day.  I know where it came from- a string of sexist math teachers and an older brother incredibly gifted at math- I don't know how to conquer it other than being very aware of it and fighting against it.

So I'm fighting now by resuming this blog.  And I'm going to spend some time thinking about how to get my students to fight too because I know that a lot of them also feel like they're losing the game.  They can't collect enough points, or see the ideas fast enough, or be smart enough.  There are so many ways to help all students feel valued, but at the same time they're constantly inundated with messages about achievement that are divorced from real learning and from the real contributions they can make to their mathematical community.  It's not about winning, it's about participation and I want to figure out how to weave this message into every aspect of my classroom culture.  That's my mission for this return to teaching and this return to blogging.  Wish me luck!