I am going to concentrate on the virtual community of practice that has been created by the makers of our textbook. It includes resources from the company and from other teachers of the curriculum.

Today, I noticed there is a whole section on pacing the curriculum, which is something I have been having trouble with. Everything seems to take us twice as long as the pacing guide suggests it will take. As far as I can tell, their main tip is to pick and choose what questions of the lesson are most important for your students and then really focus on those instead of doing every single investigation in the lesson. I have been doing this more in Algebra 2 lately and it definitely helps the pace.

My friend Maureen runs the Safe School Safe Streets grant for Greenfield High School.  As part of this coalition, I learn a lot about the board of health and the goings on of drug and substance abuse prevention in Greenfield. For example, Greenfield recently raised the legal tobacco age to 21 instead of 18. This reduces the contact of all high school students with people who can legally buy cigarettes.  Boston recently followed suit and raised their tobacco age also.

Maureen is a super loving person who loves to spread positivity so at the beginning of this school year, she started giving out an award at each meeting called the “Be the Change Award” based on the quote “Be the change you wish to see in the word” by Gandhi.  Meaning she gives an award to the person who is working to make a change in the community. I was astounded that this January she gave this award to me!!! At first I was embarrassed because I felt like I didn’t deserve this award: I don’t do anything other than attend the meetings!! But Maureen pointed out that I had gone to every single meeting since she started the grant, and I realized that Maureen just gives this award out because she wants to show her love for people and then I appreciated that she just wanted to tell everyone publicly that she loves me and is rooting for me as a teacher and as a person.