Explore the MTBoS!

Last summer (2012) I moved, took a new job, returning to the classroom after 12 years in administration.  I was nervous to say the least.  I started to scour the Internet for teaching tips, ideas, lesson plans, advice.  In my journey, I discovered a world of teacher bloggers.  Specifically I discovered a band of middle and high school math teachers who loosely formed an alliance they call the Math Twitter Blog O Sphere!  I added those teachers to my blogging feed and began following their work.

In the fall of 2012, they sent out an "all-call" for math teachers to join in the tweeting and blogging.  They published topics, offered to comment, and highlighted our blogging attempts on their own blogs.  The response was huge.  I participated ... enjoyed the challenge ... and my math blog took on a life of its own.  I don't have a huge following ... but I don't write for followers.  I write to satisfy a personal need, and more than that to reflect on my teaching.  As I write I find strengths to celebrate and areas (many of them) to strengthen!

This year this MTBoS has sent out another "all-call!"  Check it out here!  Here is a snippet from their introduction:

So we know that this name, mathtwitterblogosphere, is a bit of a mouthful. And even worse, when abbreviated to MTBoS (prounounced: mitt-boss), it sounds like edutechjargonspeech. We despise jargon. So apologies in advance! What the mathtwitterblogosphere is, ultimately, is a gaggle of math teachers who are unnaturally obsessed with teaching math. And over time, they’ve banded together on the interwebs and have unintentionally become a cohesive gaggle of obsessed math teachers who take pride in freely sharing the best math teaching ideas. If you want a sense of who the people are or what these people do, check out this website they created together.

The 8-week challenge begins soon!  I invite you to try the challenge, and share your ideas - great or small!  It's simple to participate ... just go to this webpage:  http://exploremtbos.wordpress.com/ and leave your information in the comments!

Beth

PS ... check out my 180 blog