After a couple of years of working as a math specialist, I found my tribe on Twitter [still refuse to call it X] By clicking on posts I found interesting, one leading to the next and I found my people, including Robert Kaplinsky, who I dubbed Robby K.
I must have sounded like a total fan-girl referencing my new-found math tribe, because my co-workers thought I had a crush on Kaplinsky. I joked telling them that I didn’t want to marry him [spoiler he is married already anyway] I wanted to BE him.
Thing is, I was playing a trick on myself. I didn’t think I had any business planning to be him. I still saw myself as “just a teacher.” That was the vibe I was putting out there, even though I had completed an intense elementary math specialist degree program and certification.
When my district brought Kaplinsky in for math problem solving PD workshops, I was beside myself. Not because I needed the problem solving workshop [I already knew what he’d share from interacting with him online] but to have someone else who understood my passion for quality math instruction at my district was thrilling.
Before the workshop, we met in person and chatted for a bit. The sessions were wonderful. I loved watching my co-workers experience engaging math lessons. About halfway through the first day, the craziest thing happened.
This guy that I knew from the internet. This guy who was “math famous.” This guy who was making [a lot of] money to teach my co-workers, casually came over to me while everyone was working out a problem. He asked ME how I thought the session was going. He asked ME which problem he should present to them next. He said to ME, he knew that I’d probably already known everything he was teaching them. I was not his student. I was his colleague.
POW! My brain exploded. I had been in education for over 10 years by that point. I had an entire masters degree in elementary math [that he did not have] and had already worked with hundreds of kids and teachers struggling with math- but until that moment I did not BELIEVE that I was an expert.
The mindset shift was all I needed. I guess you could say that the rest is history.
