Math Is Fun Forum

Hello from Houston! I am very blessed to have married my hs sweetheart, best friend, and soul mate 32 yrs ago. We have two girls and boy…all adults now. Hubby and I are very devout Christians. Faith and prayer have helped us through some very difficult times.

I’ve taught for 25 yrs and love it! For the last several years until this school year, I’ve  been teaching Science in grades 5-8 after 18 years in elementary (grades 2-4). I thought I would enjoy teaching all math in 3rd gr, but I ended up teaching 2nd gr - all subjects, self-contained. I absolutely HATED it. There is just waaaaay too much piled on teachers in my district. I had done self-contained for a few years in a 2nd-3rd loop at a brand new school my best friend and I moved to. We had been team teachers before moving and were like peanut butter and jelly. Anyway, at the new school we actually ended up enjoying teaching everything to our homeroom, because our principal allowed to teach the way we wanted which had always produced successful students. Imagine that! Now the entire curriculum has changed, and you have to do everything the way they wrote it out. Like, there are entire scripts and all these different elements in addition to the regular topics, practice, and assessments…time-consuming elements that use up too much of a single subject, especially for math and science. Sci and Soc Stud are nearly non-existent in the elementary grades. It’s not considered important. My principal was awful, but I won’t go off on that tangent. That’s for a different post LOL. I LOVE MATH!!