Musings from Mrs. Galvan

Today I am thankful for long two year old naps, my husband, kids programming on Netflix (new Daniel Tiger!) and a seamless, early bedtime. Why? Because I had time and made a lot of headway on my To Do List... I updated one syllabus and adjusted my lesson calendar for Algebra. I made a more attractive front page for my Canvas site with colorful links, as well as do a bit of boring file maintenance on canvas, the most interesting of which was creating a Create & Reflect (Blog) module to group all the prompts, tips and assignments. BTW these buttons were NOT easy to make. I used word art in publisher and saved each as a photo. Anyways, the more relevant progress I made was Standards Based Grading related. I am already committed to Active Grade . I watched most of the videos on their helpful Youtube channel . Still though, this decision did not prevent multiple sleepless nights spent with mind racing, consumed by crazy spreadsheets. Tonight I am hopeful that I can go to bed an...

Thank you @Stavenski for posting. :)

Last week I obsessed about my tasks. This week I am releasing myself from an item that I didn't have the courage to include: I'm mostly a consumer in MTBoS land.  I won't be participating in most of the interesting chats. I won't be able to reach out to many teachers in need. I probably won't blog every day or every week for that matter. My blog readership isn't going to take off - I write to clarify my thoughts. I'm not great at designing innovative lessons, so I'm not contributing much for others to use (though I'll test a lesson and give feedback; maybe that's a wee contribution?). I can't make it to all the PD that I'd like or even watch all the interesting webinars. I've never submitted a picture to John's http://WouldYouRatherMath.com   or submitted a thoughtful question to Dan's  http://www.101qs.com/ .  Why not? Well I'm not  uniquely busy. I'm not moonlighting as a super hero (yet). At work, the usual tasks ta...

So every summer I make a grand, dream to do list... ...then every summer reality sets in with this dilemma: I want to spend time with my kids and take care of my home (where regularly during the school year, mystery sticky spots on the counter remain for weeks). So the annual question becomes how do I balance my ambition to increase innovation in the classroom and spend quality time with my little ones in a (sorta) clean house (I read Lean In ; I know I can't really "have it all"). Arg. I am (again) running out of time. What should I focus on? Here is the list: 1. Study for and retake the GRE s (my scores have long expired) and start applying to grad school. 2. Plan more PrBL tasks and games for Algebra and Geometry, even more, I want to get better at encouraging students to own the process and ask the questions and discover the concepts (less lecture... oh but what about all those videos I made to flip my classroom a few years ago. Blended learning environme...