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This Summer Learn and Enjoy New Experiences

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Time sure does seem to move faster and faster as we age. Scientists have said this is due in part to the fact that we have fewer novel experiences as we get older. When we are young, we experience so many new things. First ride on an airplane, first time learning about a particular idea in school, first time out on your own with friends, etc. As we get older, our brain autopilots a lot of the things that are more routine and so time just seems to pass us by unless we gain new experiences. So, if you want summer to go a bit slower this summer, maybe it is time to learn and try something new.

As a teacher, one of the best things about summer is time to indulge ourselves in enjoying hobbies, interests, and experiences that may not get as much attention as we’d like during the school year. I highly recommend using your time to read books, enjoy friends and family, veg out on the couch, and enjoy life. However, it is also a nice time to keep learning.

Summers typically bring a wealth of professional learning opportunities. Here in Florida, the Florida Council of Teachers of Mathematics (FCTM) will have their annual conference next week in Jacksonville. I am sad I won’t be attending this year, but I am happy that the reason is because I get to travel to Fort Worth to present at the CAMT Conference. Aside from DFW, Fort Worth is a new place for me to visit! I have found CAMT to be a welcoming community with high quality content, so I am very glad I get to participate.

If you don’t have a conference near you and want to learn from home, I recently did a series of webinars through my work at the UF Lastinger Center. They are all recorded and free to access. I have linked them below.

UnTeach Project

It’s always fun to start a new project. This one has been on my mind for a while. The idea is how do we teach in a new way? Sometimes when we want to upend a way of thinking, we can think of it as unlearning the old to make way for the new. When I came up with (un)teach, I was thinking about how it is so very hard to rethink how we teach. Many of us were taught in a particular way and came into systems that continued along that way. If we want to truly try something new, we probably have to first unteach ourselves. This project is going to have me listening to educators and digging into research, standards, how we typically think of schooling, and curriculum in my journey to unteach. I hope you join me on this journey, it should be fun. I won’t be bound by the confines of what has to be, it’s kind of a thought experiment for now. Feel free to share your thoughts and push my ideas or just lurk and see where I land. Fair warning, I’ll probably continue to update my thinking and change my mind along the way, after all, I’m just playing with ideas.

Upcoming Events

As I mentioned above, I’ll be presenting at CAMT June 22-24 in Fort Worth, Texas. The three sessions I’ll present are:

  • Instructional Nudges to Spark Students’ Discourse
    • Tuesday, June 23, 2026
    • 10-11AM
    • CC Ballroom B
  • Instructional Nudges to Spark Elementary Mathematical Reasoning
    • Wednesday, June 24, 2026
    • 11:30AM-12:30PM
    • CC Ballroom A
  • Instructional Nudges to Spark Middle School Students’ Engagement
    • Wednesday, June 24, 2026
    • 1-2PM
    • CC Ballroom A

After that, I’ll be headed to Orono, Maine to participate in the Leadership for Professional Learning (LfPL) Symposium. Dr. Thomasenia Adams and I will be facilitating a dialogue around the recent NAEP mathematics results. Hopefully I will get to see some of you soon!

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