2012 was the best year I have ever had professionally.  I started my third year teaching middle school, and do not have a new prep or new book for the first time ever in my entire teaching career. This (and some bonus planning time in our new schedule) has freed me up to improve my existing lessons and actives, as well as create some fabulous new ones.  I feel more inspired (and effective) as an educator that I ever have, and I look forward to getting better each year!  This year would not have been as fabulous without the support from so many amazing math educators that I connect with on blogs and through Twitter.

My Favorites of 2012

Favorite Professional Development:

• Twitter Math Camp (TMC) tops my list of my very favorite thing of 2012 (if not of all times!).  Professional development for us, by us.  Thanks Lisa and Shelli!
• Global Math – Continuing in the TMC theme, this internet conference keeps me in touch with real teachers and helps me learn multiple new things every week.  Thanks Megan  for all of  your hard work on this!
• MathTwitterBlogosphere – I love this incredible site created by @samjshah that introduces newbies to tweeting and blogging with fellow math teachers. 
• Math Blogging Initiative –  Dreamed up by @samjshah, 140 new baby bloggers were born!  
• A Day in the Life – I love that this series exposed how much teachers do in a day!  Thanks Tina (@crstn85)!

Personal Favorites:

• Having Dan Meyer include my blog in a post on “Great Classroom Action”.  Dan was one of the very first math bloggers I found when I went back to teaching.  He helped me immensely and taught me what it means to share my ideas with other teachers freely!  I feel so honored to be mentioned on his blog.
• MS Sunday Funday – I had no idea how amazing it would be to connect with other middle school teachers.  We teach the same topics at the same time, so having them in my GReader is pure gold.
• One of my students Graphing Stories made “front page news” on Dan Meyers blog!  It also is in the top 10 for graphing stories most frequently downloaded!  Great job Arianna, Emily, Matt, and John!
• Starting interactive notebooks – I can’t tell you enough how much this (along with Foldables) has changed my teaching practice.  Thank you Megan!
• Foldables, foldables, foldables.  Enough said.
• Barbie Bungee Activity – STARTING with a project and then teaching students the math as they need it is the way to go.  They actually care because their answer matters – if they don’t want to kill Barbie that is!  Plus, they just get it when they experience it first.  Seriously, it does not get any better than this!
• Getting over 3,000 hits on my blog in one day.  For so long I barely got three hits a day.  I don’t live for the stats, but I love helping other teachers and this shows me that I am doing that!