As the school year ends, we are often relieved that we have a chance to reflect, plan, revitalize our minds, and renew our commitment to teaching. We view summer, short as it is, as a chance to get ourselves ready for another school year, working on the curriculum and organizing our plans. But we also need to rest, to clear our minds, to refuel our patience, and most of all to rekindle our enthusiasm.
Teaching is an exhausting, demanding job.
I asked what she meant. The materials her school had selected were designed to reach the goals of the NCTM Standards and provided her with stimulating lessons for her students. She saw the new series as very challenging, both for her students and for herself. The materials engaged students in multistep problems that required reasoning, inventing, generalizing, abstracting, and applying mathematics. The lessons were carefully sequenced so that the mathematical ideas developed over time in a connected way.