I found my people

Yesterday I woke up early like a kid at Christmas, excited for the Leap of Faith mystery activity.  Today I woke up even earlier literally sobbing tears of joy.  I found my people.

It's been two days at my first World Domination Summit, and I am completely blown away.  When I look at you amazing people I see in you a reflection of myself - and I have never felt so beautiful.

Here is what I see:

We're inclined to say "yes" to opportunities, invitations, and possibilities. So we end up with diverse spheres of interest, passion, and accomplishment.

We want to collaboratively solve problems of all shapes and sizes.  Problems with society, personal problems, intellectual problems. You name it. We want to discuss and trade information and advice as much as possible.

We just can't get enough challenges!  This was especially radiant as I joined a bunch of you swinging on ropes, navigating wobbly bridges thirty feet in the air and falling off tress.  What?  It's hard? Really hard? Count me in!, we say.

We are courageous.  Uncertainty and fear seem to rarely get in the way for us, even when most intense.  In fact, I suspect that we often thrive off those feelings.

There are those tears again.  I feel I won't ever be lonely again.

Activity - Relative Square Areas

I ran across this activity in the homework of one of my students and decided to make my own version for future use.  You're welcome to save the image and use it.

Learning to be Productive

Over the past year I've been doing a lot of self-development in the area of productivity.  How can I best order my days so that the things I really want to do actually get done?

The most important thing I've come to embrace is the power of habits.  Once you're in the habit of doing something it is vastly easier to motivate yourself to do it.  So when I really want to get something done I get in the habit of working on it at least a little every day.  I have been attempting to share this wisdom with my students but so far I have had little success when there is not already strong habit-forming behavior in place at home.

Lately I've been refining my habit system with an awareness of when I have the most energy and which things are harder or easier for me to motivate myself to do.  I have more energy during the day before dinner than any time later in the evening.  The mornings are even better than the afternoons.  So I've been focusing on doing the hard stuff early.  The hard stuff is anything I'm not yet in a solid habit of doing or anything that I'm particularly reluctant to do.  If I do that stuff first, then I'll still have energy to do the easy stuff later.

What methods have you discovered that help you be your most productive?

Discovering the Power of Tens

As a teacher I try to never give a rule or a shortcut without explaining it or prompting the learner to discover why it works.  The best way is to provide an activity that will illuminate the pattern so they can discover it and articulate it on their own.

A few of the learners I'm working with are close to discovering how to easily multiply by 10, 100 and higher powers of 10.  I'm starting by having them color a hundred chart with the multiples of 10, and following up with this worksheet.

Then I'll let them practice with a Multiplying by Multiples of 10 worksheet from http://themathworksheetsite.com/.