Part of Tampa Prep’s summer reading requirement includes ASPIRE: A Summer Program in Reading Enrichment. Through ASPIRE, faculty and staff members may choose to sponsor a book that interests them (it may or may not have anything to do with their subject area). Students sign up for a book they are interested in, and at the end of the summer the mixed grade groups gather and discuss their book before school starts. When I decided to participate in ASPIRE and sponsor Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, I was excited to stretch beyond my comfort zone.  

This blog was co-written by Laura Bridges-Pereira, Kerri Grosso and Kimmy Sanford,
all Middle School teachers who created these games.

In my 40 or so years of teaching at Tampa Prep, I have heard a lot of students say, "Math is so hard." I want to give everyone a reason (or 20) to love math again.

So here we go . . . Math is powerful. You tell me where you are all the time, and I can tell how fast you are going, what direction you are headed, whether you are accelerating and how much! Yep, math is powerful! Here are just a few of the ways off the top of my head: 

Stop by the baseball field some afternoon, and you’re likely to hear me say, “Use two hands!” Since time immemorial, baseball coaches have implored their players to use two hands when catching fly balls. If you played baseball (or softball) when you were younger, you probably heard it as well. You may have even said it to your children when first teaching them how to play catch. More recently, though, I’ve begun to recognize the relevance of this phrase to my work as a history teacher. Allow me to explain.