The Family Collective
Every once in a while I peruse past blog posts. Honestly, I think that the Lori of 2020 was probably smarter and had more to say than the Lori of 2025. Here’s the setting for you: I am at my desk after a great Algebra class trying to think about polynomials and what I can
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Post Graduation Cycle
I have been reminded recently that life is full of cycles. It’s cyclical, which from a mathematician’s standpoint, means it’s repetitive and predictable. I find myself less than thrilled to be embarking on college admissions and all of the expectations that come with graduation again. Just as I spend large portions of the summer reminding
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The Cycle of Seniors
Large families do everything together. They visit museums, go to parks, bike, hike, ski, everything. At some point though you find that the older children maybe don’t want to visit the same museum again, for they go every year. Like those dreaded Christmas movies that we watch in December out of some unspoken sense of
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Optimization
Ahhh! Optimization! The wonderful world of gathering a plethora of information, variables, realities, and patterns and using it to determine the best possible decision. In Algebra, students dip their toes in the beginnings of optimization with linear equations, but do they know that? Nope. Neither do they know the power they could yield. The reality
Setting Math Goals
Every January we are inundated with the need to set goals. Our intentions are good. We setup a spot to sit by the wood stove, complete with tea and chocolate. Maybe you start some inspiring instrumental music like Vivaldi or Dvorak. All of the variables are set. If you are able to successfully complete the
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Beauty from Boredom
When students are faced with memorizing math facts the struggle is usually boredom. I don’t know if flashcards are more boring for the student or the parent. Death by flashcards is slow and painful. I admit to using flashcards for less than 15 minutes of my parenting career. I realize that my parenting years are
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Moral Work
How do we get our kids to develop a good work ethic when we don’t live on a farm? This is a question have repeatedly asked myself for years. Honestly I bring it up a lot in the hopes that my dream for a small farm will get pushed into reality, but I digress. I
Mathematical Reasoning with Life again
If I’m focused on justifying what I’m learning by the necessity of my need to use it, then I’ll naturally seek to learn the things that I need in order to do the things that I want. We may argue that we do not seek to only teach our children that which they seem to
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Mathematical Reasoning with Life
When I first started teaching mathematics, the elephant in the room was always the mantra, ‘when am I ever going to use this in life?’ Now that we’ve been exploring the language of mathematics together for years, I don’t hear this question very much at all. However, the worldview or hidden assumption behind this question
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Lust of the Eyes
I get buyer’s remorse, but in reverse. I pat myself on the back for a job well done of leaving a store without buying any unnecessary items, and then halfway home, I get that familiar pang of regret that I have left something behind that, seemingly, would have fulfilled me. This month, it was black