Intimidation, Inspiration, & Implementation

Attending the AP Statistics Reading is an exhilarating experience. A professional development experience like no other. The friendships I have made (and continue to enjoy) at this event are increasingly precious to me.

As I left the 2015 Reading I had contradictory emotions.

I felt intimidated. 

You have all these great conversations at the Reading. Ideas, rubrics, teaching frustrations, and statistical ideas are bandied about in a never-ending torrent. And as each new idea is tossed across a lunch table or over a late night snack, someone always has an answer. A clever idea. An instructional practice. And often ideas that I've failed to work into my classroom.

There are amazing teachers at the Reading. And they work hard, teach well, and inspire their students to learn how think statistically at a very high level.

Fortunately, as I processed the ideas of the week, I was able to transform my intimidation into inspiration. I realized that it's easy to hear people share their best ideas and forget that they also have areas of struggle and frustration. More importantly (because honestly, some of these people are simply rock stars in the classroom!) I can implement some of these ideas in my own teaching. 

Here are a few of the ideas that I hope to implement this year:

  • FRAPPY's are awesome. They help students dive into the rubrics. I need to get organized and use them more often.
  • Finding ways to incorporate multiple choice practice into my classroom is essential. 
  • "Making it Stick" is a book I should read. It has some awesome ideas for making learning last longer and be more durable.

That is a fairly short list. But I generally try to only implement a couple of new things each year. I've already read "Making it Stick" and it has proved to provide ideas galore. In fact, I'm hoping to do a follow-up post focused solely on ideas from this book very soon.

Many thanks to my fellow Readers for the inspiration!