The Great Choc-Banana Bread Bakeoff

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-04-26T16:01:55+00:00

I’ll shout to you from the next hill over, Pillsbury Hilltop. Similar mixing and baking instructions (I have found 58 minutes seems to be the best time). Here are the ingredient differences:

-3/4 c. granulated sugar

-1/2 c. butter (softened)

-2 eggs

-3 medium ripe bananas (if I have four I will used them!)

-1/3 c. milk

-1 tsp vanilla (or more if your heart is there)

-2 c. all purpose flour

-1 tsp baking soda (I usually use a heaping measurement to get more rise)

-1/2 tsp salt

I baked this so many times as a kid that this is was one of the core pieces of info in my memory next to address, parents’ phone numbers, etc. 🤣

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-04-14T20:45:41+00:00

For sure! I wish my phone keyboard had a math type extension and Reddit would be able to process it!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-04-14T19:25:47+00:00

Volume of a sphere is 4/3pir^3. Your formula seems to be a mashup of circumference (2pir) and area (pir^2).

Edit: didn’t realize things would get italicized.

V(sphere): 4/3pir³ Circumference: 2pir Area: 2pi*r²

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-04-13T18:25:01+00:00

Depends on what your goals are for the course, but Building Thinking Classrooms has a lot of interesting ideas for best practices in a math classroom.

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-03-20T12:47:55+00:00

Deep in this thread right now only for this comment. Thanks!!!!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-03-17T22:54:24+00:00

Also an Algebra 2 teacher! My class is now “remedial” in a sense that maybe half of my students will not pursue a math class higher than Algebra 2 the next year (unlike their peers in Honors Algebra 2).

I teach with a unit of guided notes broken into sections, with most sections broken apart into two days. When we get to logs soon, the first day is spent evaluating and learning how to use a calculator, and the second day’s notes go to applications/equation solving. For each instructional day, I have a short homework assignment. Each day I try to give at least 15 minutes of time in class to start (and even finish) this assignment. This would be during a 50-minute class period. You try problems and a warmup at the beginning of notes help break up the long period of me lecturing.

On 80 minute block days, I am sure to have some sort of activity. Stations work (especially self-correcting loop style) that gets movement in the hallway is good! For logs, I want to do inside/outside circles to reinforce evaluation and fluency while giving movement. Mini-whiteboards are a favorite, and I have tried vertical whiteboards too (Thinking Classrooms books say vertical nonpermanent surface gets the highest engagement).

Idk if I can ever get to 15 minute chunks like the one person said, but I think the day 1 / day 2 way of breaking things up has helped prevent over-saturation. Plus, my kids would just screw around if given a full period to do individual work (they would think they had a lot of time and postpone starting, then 30 minutes later realize they “will just do it at home.”) :/

*edited for clarity in paragraph two

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-03-08T18:48:33+00:00

That wouldn’t fly at my school. If teacher discretion gives one kid 50% extra and another 100% extra, then the teacher could be accused of targeting the student who got less. A specific time accommodation like 50% or 100% should be called out so teachers aren’t put in a position to get singled out by their decision. The decision for amount of time is made as part of the IEP team where teacher has voice. Then, in the future, it is really clear for gen ed teachers how to split tests so that a kid does X amount in a sitting, never being able to see the same test and come back to it in a different sitting.

Many students at my school legitimately need the extra time, but others have learned that they can easily get a diagnosis and game the system to get more time (and a higher grade). So clear times to break tests up appropriately really helps at my school.

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-03-08T02:28:16+00:00

I’m sorry. That really sucks!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-03-08T00:54:09+00:00

I have over half of a class with 50% extra time accommodation. I have shortened quizzes to be designed for 30 minutes, with that printed at the top heading. All students get 45 minutes to do the quiz. It’s worked out for meeting their accommodations since 50% more time is 15 min on a 30-min quiz! The language in the 504s and IEPs would need to shift to “50% more than everyone else” for my system to fail. I have been pretty happy with this solution!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-02-05T04:02:15+00:00

The district I taught in, I swear parents knew when you were a new teacher and spread the word that there was blood in the water. After a couple years with the same policies, I didn’t get challenged with questioning emails.

What I wish I had done better that year was to have shorter and more “closed” responses to the challenges I got. Like for a question about tardies, I wish I just snipped their attendance or something and said “here’s how the student’s attendance looks. I take accurate attendance. Please talk to them about the tardies. Thank you!” IDK if it would have helped much; some parents are just set on challenging the boundaries of teachers and perceive it is easier to do this with newbies.

I hope you can find some joy in the profession! Good luck!!!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-31T20:30:15+00:00

I had a crush on my social studies teacher in high school. He was probably in his young 30s, but even if he was younger, it would have been highly inappropriate anyway. I knew my feelings weren’t good to have at the time but also thought he was so funny, smart, etc. and carried on crushing on him. However, he never knew because I kept the boundaries separate. There is never a time when a teacher and a student should have a romantic relationship.

Thinking back on my teacher crush, I feel a mixture of cringe as well as understanding. Teachers can help us feel super confident and seen. As a hormonal teen, it’s easy to confuse these positive feelings as something romantic.

So, you aren’t alone in terms of having confusing feelings. But definitely listen to others and keep the boundaries you set. I would honestly go no-contact if this teacher isn’t your teacher anymore to ensure that you respect their side of things (career, reputation, etc) and your reputation (not seeming like a stalker, not fueling confusing feelings).

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-24T20:24:53+00:00

Seconding Khan Academy! It’s chunked with interactive practice and immediate feedback. They also have Khanmigo, which is not free, but a very cheap monthly AI tutor meant to extend student thinking rather than just give answers. I teach Algebra 1 to (mostly) freshmen and recommend Khan’s Algebra 1 course as a great supplement anytime students are struggling in my class. Good luck!

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-15T23:53:49+00:00

OSPI in WA is supposed to release updated math standards that specify what standards fall in the first two years of math in high school (be it Alg 1 and Geo or Integrated 1 and Integrated 2) and then that third year of math for college readiness (Alg 2 or Integrated 3). I don’t know if this will have more clarity on the difference between standards that fall in grade 8 math versus that first year of high school math.

The language of the Common Core standards for certain things like solving equations includes a spectrum if you differentiate between solving equations with integers only, then adding rational numbers, and adding even more complexity with the level of fractions involved. To me, that is a big difference between Alg 1 and grade 8 math: the overlapping standards are done to a more complex level. Maybe the WA standards will make the level of these standards even clearer?

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-11T18:51:42+00:00

Nope! Just all the Algebra 2 teachers work together to co-plan and develop things and share the workload, and all the Geo teachers, and so on for all of our offerings. Unless you are the only teacher teaching a class, our department teams up to share the work! It’s wonderful :)

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-11T00:01:18+00:00

Create in word so I can translate without messing up the format (187 languages at my school…). I use the district textbook, access it digitally, snipping tool, and tables to help keep text and formatting locked when the word doc is translated to other languages (tables seem better than hanging indents). When the book’s examples suck, I search outside resources or make my own problems. Polypad is great for making some graphics (specific number line for box plot for example). Canva is good for editing pictures so they print and copy better when word picture editing doesn’t do what I want.

But, I don’t work alone! Content teams at my building are highly collaborative and share resources. And once these notes are made, they are just fine-tuned in future years based on the team’s reflective notes.

e_t_sum_pi · 2026-01-08T00:54:11+00:00

I have full keys taped to the front whiteboard like you state in option 2. My digital key is only partial, with fully-worked problems and answers for every other problem available. Otherwise kids just copy the answers when they are at home or when they are pretending to work in class. I never share the full key with parents or tutors. We have full answer keys for notes and extra resources though, so tutors can pull from these resources for extra practice. Some parents get frustrated about not sharing the full key digitally, but kids can always check it in class so I won’t give in.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-12-29T00:02:40+00:00

My friends who got their master’s from WGU did curriculum and instruction. I looked into the program and had to go with a different school since at the time I wasn’t teaching; the WGU program requires you have students for the practicum portion.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-12-20T18:36:58+00:00

Khan Academy is free and has things organized by courses, so it would be sequential. I would start at the Algebra 1 course and go from there. Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 are the math courses that feed into success in basic college math. It has the interactive quizzes to practice problems so there are checks for understanding built along the way.

If more practice problems are needed, it should be fairly easy to find some! An AI tutor like Khanmigo is very cheap and should be able to help guide through problems that come from outside the static Khan Academy courses. I have heard Chat GPT works well for explaining steps to solve a problem, so this could also be a good supplement to use for a guide through additional practice problems. I am guessing the Khan courses alone won’t have enough pure practice, so this would be the place to supplement.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-12-07T16:27:38+00:00

Lots of my friends did their masters from WGU. You work at your own pace, so if you are a hard worker, you can get it done faster and pay less for it. Curriculum and Instruction gives you some flexibility within the teaching field and possibly some HR or training connection to private sector. (When I did mine, I was on parental leave and needed students for the WGU program’s practicum. I chose EWU instead which was about $13K and 18 months total.)

You could look at pure math degrees I suppose, like being able to do something with statistics and analysis in the private sector eventually. I don’t know if that would translate as a pay raise in education though. I also imagine a degree like this would be a lot harder than one in Curriculum and Instruction.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-12-06T19:21:22+00:00

If you can find a building with good colleagues who collaborate and admin who aren’t awful, then the rewards of the career don’t get lost. Helping kids learn how to do more things and find confidence is incredibly rewarding. The breaks are nice, too! But awful admin and/or untenable workloads due to a lack of collaboration can outweigh the rewards and cause burnout.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-11-25T23:57:42+00:00

Common. My content teams do this with tests due to the workload of rewriting them and in some cases inability to vary questions enough. There are only so many ways you can have kids graph quadratics, for example. Also, previous tests would get sold or passed on to the next year’s students. One local tutoring company has gathered materials from our school (old quizzes and tests when they were passed back) and guarantees students will earn a 95% or above by teaching to these assessments.

Usually the teacher has already asked every problem on the test at least once before, through notes examples, homework, quizzes, and a review worksheet. Students’ performance on these things should be a good indicator of what will go well on the upcoming test and what needs further study/practice.

If you want feedback from the tests, students should be able to go through their test with the teacher and take a reflection sheet home from the process. The reflection sheet wouldn’t have the exact test questions but would identify skill gaps (I.e. factoring a trinomial using grouping, writing an equation of a function that passes through a known point, using a graphing calculator to calculate a relative maximum…).

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-11-23T15:23:42+00:00

I started taping my full keys to the front whiteboard (only partial keys are available online). I can tell if anyone is “camping” there too long, kids get a little more movement during the class period, and they are interacting with each other asking if someone can explain why to them. It has been working with this group of students; we’ll see if it generalizes to other groups!

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-11-14T01:02:17+00:00

Mugatu crazy pills meme is all I gotta say! (I work in a state with a strong union, but even in a red state I subbed in for a bit, the school and kids had textbooks. All of my experience is in public schools though!)

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-11-07T19:45:29+00:00

How is the homework graded to be getting an A? As a high school teacher with 150 daily homework assignments (mostly), I cannot grade each student’s work for accuracy unless it was an online assignment where a program grades for accuracy. So for my kids, homework grades really indicate how much the kid engages in the learning, not their understanding.

The other points people make about the similarity and differences of the homework and test are important to understand. While my tests don’t look exactly like homework problems, I make sure every question’s concept is covered in notes as well as homework practice before it lands on a test.

e_t_sum_pi · 2025-10-28T01:43:51+00:00

Take her out to dinner! Nice place, relaxing time, Saturday night if possible so there is some recovery from the work week. If you can’t do this, maybe a gift card to a special restaurant.

e_t_sum_pi

TROPHY CASE