It’s Been a Minute…

It’s been nearly two years since I created a blog post; enough time that I had to click around for a bit to remind myself how to fully create a post with photos embedded and links - yikes!

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! One of my former students brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers this morning which was so unexpected and sweet.

My school did something this year during lunches where admin set up tables in cafeteria and students could go over and write letters of appreciation to teachers. These cards were then delivered or put in our mailboxes. I just checked my mailbox for the first time this week and absolutely loved reading these cards! As a teacher, there’s nothing like getting heartfelt and/or humorous handwritten cards from your students.

I was behind on looking up deals and freebies for teachers this week, and it was truly my loss, because I missed out on a free chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A on Tuesday. I wasn’t evening craving Chick-fil-A until my nurse friend asked me Wednesday if I went. Alas - now I know for next year to start searching the week before! At my school, we got donuts and coffee on Tuesday morning and a full salad bar for lunch on Thursday.

Here is a compilation of freebies and deals for teachers to take advantage of during this week:

Here are some freebies from Desmos Amplify classroom for this week:

And, not necessarily Teacher Appreciation week related, but here are some fun and free resources from TI-84 that are Spring related:

Things are gradually getting less hectic over here: I only have ONE MORE class period with my AP Calculus BC students before the AP exam, math team is over, my annual teacher evidence is completed and submitted, and students have been out of class for their AP exams and soon MCAS exams, meaning my Algebra II classes have been more relaxed this week. More significantly, though, is the fact that I have had NOTHING to take home to grade for an entire week. This is truly life-changing. Normally I always bring home my expandable file full of quizzes, tests, classwork, and make-up work to grade and then spend anywhere from half an hour to two hours grading each night after my kids are in bed.

I really thought that this school year would be less busy than previous years because my youngest child is in Kindergarten now and my oldest child is in high school now. This means that I no longer had to rush from school after my extra-help hour to pick up my daughter from daycare/preschool/pre-K and instead just meet her at home for the bus drop off. This also means that I no longer had to pick my son up from his elementary school/middle school every day, which was 35 minutes from my school. I basically spent an hour and a half after school every day driving around to get my kids - it was a lot!

Other things took over my time instead. I did more field hockey reffing than prior years and also signed up for a graduate level Financial Math class at Boston University. This was a class I had been wanting to take for a couple years but never could due to BU being an hour from my house. However, BU just started offering their Actuarial Math graduate courses online and also decreased the cost per credit a bit, both of which allowed me to finally take the course. I learned a lot, but it was very challenging. I forgot how stressful it was to take timed assessments each week on the new content, and how time consuming weekly homework can be! It was a great reminder for me as a teacher that testing can be scary and helped me empathize with my students more when they did their own testing in my class.

I also participated in a curriculum review through Amplify Desmos classroom, which required me to spend hours each month reviewing their new Algebra II Desmos curriculum and write up a detailed review and suggestions for improvements (more to follow on that later).

As always, senior college letters of recommendation kept me very busy in my little free time as I worked to meet the early decision and regular decision deadlines. I don’t use AI to write my letters and still spend time on each one to make sure they’re, but that sure is a labor of love.

We are approaching one of my favorite lessons in Algebra II in a week or so: Financial math, compounding interest formulas, and investing money! (HERE is my previous blog post on these lessons).

Cheers to all the teachers out there! It’s almost summer!