In my 4 years teaching math, I felt I had to rush in order to check

         all of the boxes. My students were not making connections and

  grasping the big ideas due to the quick pace. Without the gaps filled

in, new content has nothing to connect to and becomes learned in isolation.

Students lacked number sense. The reason: number sense is not a state standard. STAAR was dictating how I taught and what I taught.

Textbooks were designed for "I do, We do, You do" and end of unit assessments were multiple choice (which quite frankly did not tell me if students had mastered the content). I knew this was not best practice, but I felt that my hands were tied. 

With graduation coming up, I was constantly asked what about my plans for next year. I couldn't pin point what direction I wanted to go. It seemed that every week it changed from interventionist to curriculum writer to starting a doctoral program. The only thing I knew for certain was I wanted to teach math with resources and instruction I believed to be best practice. Unfortunately, I knew that was not going to be in a public school classroom, so I thought bigger. I took a big leap of faith and realized I could do what I am passionate about without compromising my pedagogical beliefs.

And then it came to me. I could teach homeschool learning pods. I am eager and excited to see my vision come to life.