My First Blog Post

I've never written a blog before, so here it goes. I saw on Twitter a challenge from te@chthought to blog everyday in September using their prompts. I have wanted to blog for a while now, and I thought this would be an easy way to get started. The 1st prompt they gave for September is to "write your goals for the school year."

I guess I should start by giving a brief description of myself. I am a math teacher in a high-needs school in New Jersey. I have taught pretty much every math class the school offers in my 12-year career, but for the last 5 years I have been the AP Calculus teacher. I have been "flipping" my class for the past 3.5 years and have had great experiences and results.

As of right now, I have 4 major goals for the upcoming school year. My first goal is a short-term goal of getting my personal website up and running using Wix. I think it is an excellent way to communicate with students and parents and other educators. I am going to "publish" the current version of the website tonight, but it still very much a work-in-progress. I will continue to update it daily and hope to have it complete by the end of the month.

My next 2 goals are ones I hope to accomplish this school year. I would like to implement a "flipped mastery" model for my AP Calculus class. This model is where students still learn basic content at home and practice and expand in class, but they do so at their own pace. Up until this point, I have had all students take tests at the same time and be on the same topic each day. I have reached a level of comfort with the flipped classroom where I feel I am ready to let the students learn at their own pace. I will have to develop suggested pacing guides, benchmarks, multiple assessments, and much more to accommodate different students, but it's a small price to pay for increased student success.

My next goal is an annual goal that I have yet to achieve. I would like everyone of my AP students to score a five on the AP test. My results have gotten better each year, but still not close to the 100% that I shoot for. Maybe this year!

My final goal is part of an ongoing collaboration with other teachers in the district. I am as big of a proponent of the flipped classroom as you can be and would love to spread the strategy to all teachers. I have began to work with other high school teachers as well as a small group of elementary school teachers in our district to increase the use of the flipped classroom. By the end of the year, I would like to have a process in place for producing and sharing instructional videos for all grade levels. Videos are not the only part of a flipped classroom, but for most teachers ,they are the part that takes up the most time. Finding engaging activities for students to do when they come into class with background knowledge is the fun part. Preparing at-home lessons, video or other is the part that is difficult. I would like to work with both other teachers and students to produce a library of videos for use throughout the district. This library will be able to be expanded and edited for years to come!

Well, that is my first blog. I hope it's not too long, too short, or too boring. I'll try again tomorrow.

Bobby Barber

#calculus #flippedclass #myfirstblog