Annie Forest

When you want people to read something, should you send an email? Maybe. I know some people are good at reading their emails. But, if you really want a captive audience, meet them where they are... how about the bathroom?! When people are sitting down to take a little *ahem* rest, they probably would enjoy a little reading material. That's where "MATH in the BATH(room)" comes in. I've heard of people posting newsletters and "Learning in the Loo" in staff restrooms and thought I would borrow that idea to bring fun/interesting math to teachers. This way I can highlight a few of my favorite go-to resources for finding interesting math problems and also just get math on teachers' minds. So, I made my first three editions of "MATH in the BATH(room)" and took them around to all 8 of the schools in my district. In case you are wondering, there are 28 staff bathrooms in my district, that is including the district building. And, yes, I've been i...

Teaching is challenging and personal and important work. Every teacher I work with is doing their best, want to do their best, and do all of this with a kind teacher heart. I love teachers, in fact I still identify as a teacher myself. When people ask what I do, I say I'm a teacher. Because even if I'm a coach or a math coordinator, at the center of my work is teaching. I was in the classroom for 12 years. I know the difficulties of having a diverse group of learners in one class. The range of understanding on any given topic can be overwhelming to navigate. Am I challenging everyone enough? Is this too challenging? Are kids bored? Are kids checked-out? Are they learning? These are real questions and fears we all have. And sometimes, being in this work means we develop some short-cut ways of describing the complexity of what we see in front of us. It's normal and natural as humans to look for patterns in our experience and categorize things. If we didn't our br...