Transform. Advocate. Grow.

A little over a month ago I received this message in my inbox. Tears of joy, laughs of disbelief, and an inordinate amount of screaming into Voxer ensued. I knew that acceptance into the Google Innovator Program would be a life-changing experience for me, but most importantly I knew that it would enable me to truly make a difference for the teachers and students I serve.


I am a first year Math & Technology Coach in the first year that my position has existed in my district. Alongside my #CUSDrockstar math teachers and with a supportive IS/Tech team, I have been able to define my role and begin on a path that, unbeknownst to me, paralleled the tenets which are the foundation of the Google Innovator Program: Transform, Advocate, and Grow. As part of the application process, I pulled together a Vision Deck which identified a problem in education and my ideas for the beginnings of an innovative solution by asking "What if?"...


The academy provided the opportunity to dig deeper with potential solutions to the questions I asked in my initial proposal. In fact, many or my fellow Innovators dug so deep that they ended up switching projects! While I was tempted to hop on a team that was exploring the potential of creating a new style of school where learning is 100% individualized, I decided to stick with my math project, as I feel very fortunate to be in the position where I am working with a group of teachers who are willing to do whatever it takes to help meet their students needs as learners of mathematics with positive mathematical identities.

So the brainstorm process began. Believe it or not, there was method to my madness in the layers of graphic organizer you see to your right (please, don't judge me by my handwriting, I prefer to call it doctor-scribble). Blue is the problem and possible solutions, green is the solutions that currently feel impossible, and purple is the juxtaposition of the two that I will incorporate into the initial stages of prototype development. We examined a variety of ideation techniques, but the one that stuck with me the most is wishing, and examining what we can do to make these wishes possible. This tied into the concept of Moonshot Thinking, where we aim at a 10X improvement to what actually exists.

This was when I realized that I wasn't looking to just build a platform for my teachers to share resources and experiences with lesson design/implementation, I was looking to build a wide-scale tool that could benefit all math teachers and expand their expertise in going beyond the textbook, providing authentic learning experiences for their students; I want to give all students an opportunity to love math.

The scribbles above morphed into this:

In essence, I will build a collaborative platform where middle school math teachers can not only easily share lessons, but also share their experiences in implementation of authentic learning tasks, problem-based learning, and technology integration in mathematics, engage in collaborative and constructive dialogue, establish a professional learning network, and eventually receive flipped professional development. This would integrate with the already excellent existing resources from groups like MTBoS (the Math Twitter Blogosphere). The website would be a wiki of sorts, allowing for multiple contributors and crowdsourced creation.

As a Google Certified Innovator, I will receive the support of a fabulous coach (Sandra Chow), a mentor (TBD in the coming week) and the entire Google community. I know that for the next 12 months and beyond I will be truly supported to impact change in education.





And so it begins...