Once again, I am in the wonderful world of #TMC16.  These are my people.  It is an overwhelming, exhausting, but most importantly exhilarating experience even for a seasoned TMCer like me (this is my 5th TMC).  In fact, I am going to my family vacation to the beach one day last so I don’t miss the closing ceremony on Tuesday.  I only get this experience once a year and can’t miss a moment of it.

I am doing Chris and Mattie’s “Talk Less, Smile More” morning session.  It is amazing.  Right now I am working with a group of Algebra 2 teachers to develop questions around quadratics.  I will share it once we get something on it.  We are having great discussions, and much laughter, together.

I saw a request on Twitter for Periscope so I decided to video some of the action here.  I have never used Periscope so the first few videos are untitled, shaky, and turned the wrong way!  But, I am getting better and hopefully sharing some of the TMC16 goodness with all of the wonderful math teachers that wanted to come but couldn’t this year.

I loved Sam’s My Favorite today about Math Exploration Projects.  He was inspiring and I can’t wait to try this with my students.

Tracy Zager truly moved me with an inspirational keynote today.  You need to watch this. Her well prepared talk was full of humor, math, and emotion. I adore her. I could not even believe that she added a Desmos Activity builder into her talk for 200 people after just learning it two days before.  I loved everything that she had to say, and am going to be more intentional with vertical alignment.  TMC has made me acutely aware of the need to vertically align mathematics education, and that we all need to play a part in this in order to affect change.  I learned that it was important to close each class.  This is something that I rarely do, and don’t know how to do effectively.  After an SOS tweet, David Coffey sent me a link to “22 Powerful Closure Activities“.  I love this community.

I went to Jonathan’s awesome session and sill have so many questions.  We examined the standards (my group used a Wordle), watched Marble Races, were blasted with the inception button, and just absorbed Jonathan’s brilliance.

Everyday after the sessions, Sara Vanderwerf  brings her backward bike for people to try.  This is a very “feel good” way to end each day.  Instead of us just walking our own separate ways, people gather outside to sit in the sun, chat, and watch each other try out the bike.  As Sara said, it’s such an awesome community builder.  I have really enjoyed getting to know Sara these past couple of days and love working with her.  I admire her energy and passion.  I can’t wait until I have time to pour over her blog in detail. As with so many others here, I wish we lived closer so I could work with her on a more regular basis.

We ended the day with Math Trivia night hosted by Mathalicious.  My team sang between rounds, Disney songs, Madonna, Sweet Caroline,… It was a blast, and my team won!  I have never come close to winning trivia before, so it was pretty exciting.  My team even got a badge that we can wear tomorrow AND on the first day of school. Life goals.

There was so much more today.  So many great tweets, links, pictures, and moments.  But I’m exhausted.  Night all.  ❤