So I took the advice of Dan Meyer and started my own blog and Twitter (@bstockus) accounts today. I’m excited to join the mathtwitterblogosphere!
I should start by introducing myself. My name is Brian Stockus. I was an elementary school teacher for eight years in Texas. In the middle of that I went back to school to earn my Master’s degree in instructional technology. For the past three years I’ve been working for a digital curriculum company designing elementary math lessons and leading a team of instructional designers. I’m not here to advertise for my company so I probably won’t mention it much in my writing. If you’re dying to know more about it, send me a message and I’ll fill you in.
Floating at the Dead Sea while on a work trip. One of the coolest things I’ve ever done!
I’ve loved my current job because it’s allowed me to spend time on something I never had nearly enough time for as a teacher – designing lessons! That should have been a key part of my job as a teacher, right? Instead I felt like I was always flying by the seat of my pants as far as lesson planning went because I was always juggling so many other responsibilities. It used to be common practice for me to invent a lesson as I showered in the morning before school, but now I’m afforded the time over several days(!) to learn about a topic, discuss it with others, make lesson drafts, and have other people review them. Sadly the trade off is that I don’t get to teach my lessons to students when I’m done, but I take what I can get. Even if this isn’t something I’ll do long term, I’m learning a lot and enjoying the ride.
Outside of my job, my partner and I are becoming licensed to foster and hopeful adopt a child in the near future. I’m excited and terrified at the same time. While I still have free time, I like to spend time outdoors gardening and indoors playing video games and reading comic books. I foresee napping being a favorite past time once we have a child. Who am I kidding? I love napping now. 🙂
Gardening isn’t always easy in Texas, but I still enjoy it.
That’s all for now. Again, I’m excited to join the ranks of math bloggers.
-Brian
Teaching to the Beat of a Different Drummer 
Hey, yeah, thanks for expanding on the job title here, Brian. There are plenty of math teacher bloggers in the freshman blogger class, but not as many peripheral participants in math ed like yourself. Consider yourself encouraged to blog more about it.
Thanks for the encouragement, Dan! I’ll see what I can do. I feel like I have to walk a fine line because a) I don’t want to advertise for my specific company/product, b) I don’t want people to think I want to advertise or spread the word about my company, and c) I don’t want to say anything that will upset my employer. I considered going the anonymous route, but I feel more comfortable being open and honest about who I am.
For what it’s worth, amongst the many new maths blogs kicking off this summer thanks to Sam Shah, Julie Reulbach and co, I think yours has the coolest name. It rolls off the tongue and has tones of you being an awesome maverick teacher. Education needs mavericks right now.
And darnit, the more you don’t want to tell us about what your company is up to, the more I want to know. You make it sound like a national secret and I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff.
Share all please! (bruno@mrreddy.com)