Martha Miller

Teaching Technology for adults and children

My best teaching day was … a collection of moments I think. I’ve had a number of times when I’ve suddenly looked around my room and realize that good things were happening. One where it was silent - the students were so involved in what they were doing that all conversation stopped and all you could hear was typing and breathing. That silence didn’t last long as it was broken by sounds of successes and sounds of frustrations, but to have all 20+ students so absorbed was pretty cool. Another moment that comes to me was in audio terms quite the opposite, a room full of the sounds of engagement! Students excited about what they were doing, sharing their ideas, their successes and their frustrations - the sounds of students sharing positive energy to pull everyone forward.

Isabelle Moore: A Moment of Success

I teach French in a boys school. Sometimes this can be a very daunting job. My best teaching day was  in my first year of teaching when one of my boys who struggled historically in French took a risk to participate. The look on his face when he realized that he was capable of communicating in this language, that until then seemed totally inaccessible to him, was priceless. Every so often it happens again, but nothing has been quite as joyful as that first moment of clarity and success.

Sue Dunlop

@Dunlop_Sue

It’s been some time since I was in a classroom, so I will talk about a great moment that can happen anytime.  

When you’re working with a learner and the light dawns on their face, and they say, “ohhhh.”

Cynthia Nixon: Amazing Number Play

One of my most memorable teaching moments was in a 3rd grade class teaching math.  Really...math?  Yes!  I love math and I love those moments where my students catch the spark and learn to love number play.  We were discussing large number subtraction where there are 0s in the top number.  Throws kids off - every time!  It is tough for them.  I had a student come up with a strategy that amazed me - and I’ve used it ever since!  Think about a problem like 2001 -  326.  Students need some more ones to subtract from since 6 is larger than 1.  Most think - “There are no tens in 2001.”  This student thought - “I need a ten.  There are no tens in the tens place, but I have 200 tens in this number.  I’m going to take one of them away so now I have 199 tens left and I now have 11 ones to subtract the 6 from.”  I stopped the whole class and we talked about the strategy and why it works.  It was an incredible conversation!

Expanding Their Horizons: My Wilson Girls

Mickey Sullivan

It is difficult to select just one best day of teaching.  Most of the time, these experiences happen in the classroom, but sometimes the most rewarding ones fall outside of the school day, for example, running into a former student . . . However, a very memorable experience for me was taking three of my Wilson girls to a girls science event at USD one weekend several years back.  It was St. Patrick's day, knowing they may have nothing green to wear, I gave theme each a sparkly broach.  I also wanted to start the day off right, and took them all to breakfast at Coco's, which they had never even heard of before . . . during the event, we were separated, and I did not get to observe the marvelous experiences they were involved in.  At the end of the day, on the drive home they shared stories of conducting forensics experiments, and meeting other girls in science from all over!  The next week they generated hand written thank you notes to me . . . and I have since seen a few of these girls, and they are very fond of these memories.  I love that I was able to get them involved in something so memorable and relevant.  I only wish I could have taken more girls to this awesome event!  Here is a link to the Expand Your Horizons page, very much worth the effort.  Get your girls there! And, more importantly, expose your students to science!  https://www.sandiego.edu/news/cas/detail.php?_focus=54605

Brandon Maze: A painfully great Townhall Meeting

It is hard to choose, so I will stick to my best day so far this year. I teach 11th grade History at San Marcos High School (both AP and CP). We were focusing on the build up to the Revolutionary War in my AP class and I had the students choose an historical figure from the time. Some of the choices were from the Colonies, a couple from Britain, and one or two from France, some of them were Patriots, others Loyalists. On Friday, after having done their research and made some inferences, they role played a town hall meeting discussing whether the colonies could/should declare independence and why. The discussion was absolutely great. It was my favorite day, though, because the students were also absolutely hilarious; my face literally hurt as the bell rang.

Tina Roy Best Day Ever

I am a sixth grade math teacher who has been trying to teach my students how to be real world problem solvers.  What I have been doing is having them look at an exemplar problem.  I had students examine their work against the exemplar.  They first made a list in their notebook of how their work was different from the exemplar.  Then they did a pair share, then a group discussion and finally a large group discussion.  Students created a list of strategies for solving problems.  I tried to embed the work in how they approach writing to make that connection.  This group discussion is the beginning of a year long growth process.