Yesterday Tracy Zager shared a heartbreaking post that every teacher should take a few minutes to read.
The gist of it is that teachers need to be mindful about the messages they send students and parents about learning and doing mathematics. Sometimes damaging messages come across in the form of words – “You may not talk to anyone as you work.” – but they also come across in our choices of lessons and activities we do in our classrooms – such as a long pre-assessment that most students will “fail” because they unsurprisingly don’t yet know the content from their new grade level.
But there’s hope! This Tweet sums it up nicely:
https://twitter.com/toniwalery/status/772157992837844992
I’ve been especially encouraged while reading the latest blog posts from the members of my Math Rocks cohort. Back in July we watched Tracy’s Shadow Con talk. Afterward everyone took Tracy’s call to action to choose a word to guide their math planning at the start of the year.
Flash forward a month and the school year is finally getting underway. Our latest Math Rocks mission was to re-watch Tracy’s talk and to watch my own Shadow Con talk since the two are very much related. Then they had to choose one of our calls to action to follow and write a blog post reflecting on their experiences as they kicked off the school year.
The results have been so inspiring! I’ve collected all of their posts in this document. Take a look. Just reading the titles of their posts makes me happy, and if you go on to read them, I hope you’ll finish with as big of a smile on your face as I have.
Teaching to the Beat of a Different Drummer 
Brian, I just read through your cohort’s blogs and they are AMAZING! Thank you so much for sharing them and for sharing your work with them. It’s a privilege to watch from here.
Tracy
Brian–have a bunch of work to do today–and was procrastinating by reading through your group’s posts. Am inspired. Thank you for collecting them all in one place. Judy
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