My First Ignite Talk

I’m a fan of Ignite talks. They’re short – which makes sharing them and using them in PD very easy – and they’re to the point – which means a focused message to get others thinking and talking.

Here’s the catch. To ensure each talk is short and to the point there’s a format each one follows:

• Each talk is 5 minutes long.
• You have exactly 20 slides.
• The slides auto-advance every 15 seconds.

Sounds stressful, right? And up until a couple of months ago I was always happy someone else was in the hot seat. That is until I got an email from Suzanne Alejandre from The Math Forum inviting me to be one of 10 speakers at the NCSM 2017 Ignite event in San Antonio in April. My emotions upon reading her email were a mix of feeling honored and terrified.

The event has come and gone, so now I get to look back on it with relief and a sense of accomplishment that I took the challenge and saw it through. I’m proud of the final result. I chose to talk about doing less of 3 key things in our math classrooms, which sounds counter-intuitive, but it actually results in getting more of a few things we want. Check it out:

My Other Blog

As you may know, I’m the district curriculum coordinator for elementary mathematics in Round Rock ISD, a school district just north of Austin, Texas. I recently created an RRISD Elementary Mathematics Department blog to share posts on specific topics with teachers in my district. If you like what I write here, you might want to check out the posts over there as well. It’s only recently started, so you’ve only missed three posts so far:

You might notice a theme to all three posts. Maybe.

Here’s links to the three posts:

• The Trouble With Trapezoids
• Talking in Three Dimensions
• Building Understanding in Two Dimensions

I’ve been on a bit of a geometry kick lately. In my work, I’ve focused a lot on computation generally and number talks specifically the past couple of years. Geometry is an area I haven’t explored much recently so I’ve been making a more focused effort to do so.

The blog also has a great resources page with lots of stuff for teachers and parents. Take a peek at that if you go by for a visit.

I’ll still be writing here. I just wanted to make sure people knew I was writing there, too.