Who am I?
Joey Kelly, High School math teacher since 2012. I spent 4 years teaching at Chelsea High School, and I was the lead math teacher for my last two years there. I now teach at Dearborn STEM Academy in the Boston Public Schools, where I teach 11th and 12th grade and am a CT for the Boston Teacher Residency. I used to run a philosophy club. You can find me on twitter too, but I’m not very active.
Why am I blogging?
During my first year teaching, my primary resource was the textbook. I discovered the MTBoS over the summer, clicked on every link I could find, and improved everything I did during year two. Math-ed bloggers inspire me and reading their blogs has made me a better teacher. I hope I can learn by following their lead.
Why Mister, is this right?
I choose this title because it has two interpretations, and both set the tone for what I want to blog about.
On one hand, this is the question I hear everyday as a math teacher. This question motivates me, because I don’t want my students asking it. This question is emblematic of the culture of answer-getting and the anxiety over not knowing how to find it. I don’t want my students motivated by extrinsic factors like grades and teacher-approval. I want to my students to do mathematics because they find it fun and interesting – because they know the intrinsic satisfaction of a problem understood and resolved.
On the other hand, I need to ask myself this question all the time. I don’t have the solution to every math problem and I definitely don’t have the solution to every teaching problem. I need to keep experimenting and investigating, and I hope that by writing a blog — and by seeing Mister, is this right? at the top of every page — I keep looking for ways to improve my teaching.
Mister, is this right? 