Mr Brian McLogan

Module D - Solving by completing the square (playlist)

2013-04-14T08:19:00.001-07:00

My Most Recent Video

2012-12-17T18:39:00.001-08:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9kL25sbnm4

Untitled

2012-12-17T14:46:00.001-08:00

Your Online Math Tutor (http://www.freemathvideos.com/)
Hello there again,

I am not a big writer. Hence my vast collection of Youtube videos and lack of an actual blog. When I have something important to say I make a video for it.

With that being said I am making some new videos on answering some of the great questions posed by students, parents and teachers. Those videos will be coming soon and I can't wait to share them with you.

In the mean time I want to share some of my most recent videos with you that give a little insight on who I am and how I feel about education.

Learning should not be finite when we test our students () . We need to create timelines for student growth and also understand the importance in how we grade student work () to make sure that we give students quality feedback to learn and grow. Grading and preparing students for assessments is why I have made changes in my own classroom policies of when should homework be due () . These ideas are all what have spawned a new vision for me as my makeover in math education () .

Not everything starts with the teacher. As parents and students we have a responsibility for our actions and learning () . It all starts with a seed in your beliefs () and perpetuates from there. Believing in yourself and maintaining a focus () on what you desire to achieve is the essence of success. In class you have to get very detailed in what you want to achieve by setting goals for yourself () . Goals that are important and give you something to strive for every day. Working hard is something that I consider being one of the great secrets of being a successful student. (

I hope that some of my videos have helped you with your math education or even inspired you to think differently about how you perceive learning in todays classrooms. I hope we can move away from the days when teachers looked down upon students () and move forward to the days of teachers helping every student being the best they can be.

I don't have all of the answers and sometimes make mistakes in my videos () that are rather funny. However I do care about education and spreading the vision that if you can do math you can do anything () . I understand math is not what life is all about and that we have to lead a balanced life. I have a lot of other interests besides math () and I strongly believe that those interests need to be pursued.

Thank you for taking the time with me to read this email and I hope you found the content useful for yourself or someone you know. Please feel free to share and if at any point you don't feel that I am providing you quality information. You may subscribe below. It will hurt my feelings but only encourage me to keep creating better and better information for all.

When should we test our students - Math education overhaul

2012-12-06T14:40:00.001-08:00

What does a makeover in math education look like?

2012-11-20T05:12:00.001-08:00

Math The secret to being a successful student

2012-11-06T05:28:00.001-08:00

Fw: We made the Inc 500!

2012-09-05T19:14:00.001-07:00

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gregg Cohen <gregg.cohen@jacksonvillewealthbuilders.com>
To: BMICKEY31@YAHOO.COM
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 11:45 AM
Subject: We made the Inc 500!

Hope you're having a fantastic Friday. As we get ready to enjoy some college football this weekend, I wanted to share some amazing news about our Team.

Jacksonville Wealth Builders was just ranked the #12 Fastest Growing Real Estate Company in the US by Inc. Magazine!

Across all industries, we were ranked the #362 Fastest Growing Company in the country in 2012!

Thank you to all of our clients, supporters, friends and families for helping our company grow. Go here for more details on our #12 ranking: http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/industry/real-estate

Have a great weekend!

Gregg

If you no longer wish to receive our emails, click the link below:
Unsubscribe

Jacksonville Wealth Builders
2406 University Blvd W
Jacksonville, Florida 32217
United States
(904) 677-6777

I just uploaded a new video

2012-09-05T18:25:00.001-07:00

I uploaded some new videos at http://www.youtube.com/mrbrianmclogan

LinkedIn Content Sharing: This Week in Social Media

2012-08-12T13:04:00.003-07:00

LinkedIn Content Sharing: This Week in Social Media

via Social Media Examiner by Cindy King on 8/11/12

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

LinkedIn Platform Further Enables Professional Content Sharing: LinkedIn has worked closely with developers to improve the signup with LinkedIn experience and make it easier to share content on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn users will see more content shared on LinkedIn through these improved signup options.

Social Media Marketing Podcast: We’re thrilled to announce Social Media Examiner’s new show: Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner. The show is designed to help busy marketers thrive with social media marketing tips and success stories.

Please let us know what you think about the show.

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

Pinterest Announces Open Registration: “For those of you who haven’t joined Pinterest yet, this means you can sign up without waiting for an invite. All you have to do is go to Pinterest.com to get started.”

In addition to using your Facebook or Twitter login to create your Pinterest account, registration is now possible with just your email address.

Foursquare’s Nearby Friends Feature Is Back: Foursquare is “bringing back the ability to switch between nearby check-ins and all activity” so you can choose to keep up with your friends or find out what’s going on in your city.

Update your Foursquare app to see these new features.

Tumblr Launches Reblorg: Tumblr’s Reblorg is a “new hub for original creative work.”

Reblorg is for video, animation, GIFs, glitches, music, paintings, challenge posts, contests, games, tech toys, collage, haiku, limericks, kabuki coding and other art forms.

Facebook Introduces New Mobile Ads for Apps: Facebook is beginning to test a new way for mobile app developers to grow their business with an ad unit that helps them reach and reengage their users.

This new app allows developers to "buy mobile newsfeed ads that open Android and iOS App Store purchase pages when clicked."

Google Video for Business Closes Along With Other Google Products: Google is shutting down a few more products including Google Apps for Teams, Google Listen and Google Video for Business. The videos hosted on Google Video for Business will migrate to Google Drive.

Here’s a couple of useful social media tools worth noting:

CScore: a tool to discover the performance and competitive advantage for any Facebook page.

Here's the CScore for Social Media Examiner's Facebook page.

Stitcher: A mobile app that allows you to listen to talk radio shows, podcasts and live radio on demand.

Audio publishers should check out Stitcher.

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner presents Facebook Success Summit 2012 (online conference).

Join 20 Facebook experts at Social Media Examiner’s big online conference! Go here to learn more.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

What's new in Social Media

2012-08-12T13:04:00.001-07:00

I'll try this again

LinkedIn Content Sharing: This Week in Social Media

2012-08-12T13:02:00.001-07:00

LinkedIn Content Sharing: This Week in Social Media

via Social Media Examiner by Cindy King on 8/11/12

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

LinkedIn users will see more content shared on LinkedIn through these improved signup options.

Please let us know what you think about the show.

In addition to using your Facebook or Twitter login to create your Pinterest account, registration is now possible with just your email address.

Update your Foursquare app to see these new features.

Tumblr Launches Reblorg: Tumblr’s Reblorg is a “new hub for original creative work.”

Reblorg is for video, animation, GIFs, glitches, music, paintings, challenge posts, contests, games, tech toys, collage, haiku, limericks, kabuki coding and other art forms.

This new app allows developers to "buy mobile newsfeed ads that open Android and iOS App Store purchase pages when clicked."

Here’s a couple of useful social media tools worth noting:

CScore: a tool to discover the performance and competitive advantage for any Facebook page.

Here's the CScore for Social Media Examiner's Facebook page.

Stitcher: A mobile app that allows you to listen to talk radio shows, podcasts and live radio on demand.

Audio publishers should check out Stitcher.

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner presents Facebook Success Summit 2012 (online conference).

Join 20 Facebook experts at Social Media Examiner’s big online conference! Go here to learn more.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

A new video

2012-08-12T12:05:00.001-07:00

Check out this video I created for how to find the Domain and Range and determine if a set of ordered pairs is a function.

Hello Friend!

2012-07-01T10:22:00.001-07:00

I hope your job is going good. I wanted to alert you to a fantastic job opportunity in your area.
We have had many of our members take this opportunity and I am getting lots of fantastic stories.

The blog has an article featuring one of our members, Kelly Richards. It will also you all you all the information you need to get started.
The article is at http://roosevelt.edu.ec/educatechair/Anthony_Moore69/?a=204200&s= and I believe the story will be featured on the home-page until tomorrow.

TTYL.

Sometimes we don't see we have it all wrong

2012-05-31T17:07:00.000-07:00

Teaching is not like any other profession in the world. There is not user manual that helps you deal with 30 different types of personalities on 30 different hormones that are dealing with 30 different types of life situations. This uniqueness inside the classroom allows teachers to explore constant innovation within the classroom. However with poor publicity of "schools failing students" what are we doing wrong? Better asked what am I an high school math teacher doing wrong?

I hear it all the time, students need to discover mathematics, students need to be active learners, students need to relate to the material, give it meaning, students need to be challenged, students need more assistance, students need better use of technology, students need more discipline, students need more love and trust, and best of yet students need more opportunities to learn. So where does a young educator like me start?

I would like to say that I have believed, and attempted to master education by applying these principals to my teaching skills. I have experience minor exictment as I witness change and success but frown when I struggle to maintain growth and results from my students.

So are these principals all flawed? Do my students even need me? Do my students even need math education anymore? Why is everything we try in education not working for the long term? Sure people and schools have success but in the end nothing seems to be the "magic bullet".

I surveyed my students and asked them what they disliked most about, math, math class, or school. They had three choices.

A. It does not relate to what I need to know

B. It is hard or time consuming

C. It is boring, not engaging

I hoped to find a answer here, something I could pin down and begin to start working on. I asked this question to my Algebra 1 and Pre-Calculus students. Two classes that have students with very different math experiences. However their responses were earie similiar. They evenly selected every response. There was not one reason that they chose for their distaste for school or education.

This got me thinking. What is it? Why is it I am not getting the results out of my students that I so desire? I began to think about how I was motivating my students and realized that I was not meeting all of their needs. Every person has four basic needs as described by Stephen Convey. To live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. Most of my motivation to my students within the classroom was for them to live. No I did not threaten their life, but what I did do was motivate them to do the work in my class so that they would survive. So that they would get good grades and pass high school or go to college. I motivated them to meet their parents expectations for them.

This is a very traditional approach of schooling. While it works great for some students and can work well on a lot of students for a short period of time. It is not long term. I ended up loosing many of my students motivation by the first quarter with this technique. They would not resort into taking retakes, extra credit, cramming, doing whatever they needed to get by but would not take the active approach to do well in my class. Their actions quickly showed in school.

So what about the next motivation of love. Well love is used to express a relationship. While love might not be the best word to describe a teacher student relationship this need is still there. Students seek acceptance from their teachers. They seek to have a relationship based on trust. They want to like their teacher and relate to their teacher. Many great teachers do a very good job in this area as they are able to relate to all of their students. I always felt I could create good bonds with my students. I started to fall apart when I would not continue making deposits in my students accounts. When I stopped having personal conversations with students or intervening when students were not paying attention or doing what they supposed to be doing I started to loose the student. The simple motivation I had on them being concerned about how I felt about them would start to fade around the second semester. I did not do this intentionally. I wanted my students to become interdependent, so I started allowing them to make their own choices and allow the consequences to affect them negatively and positively.

Every student has the motivation to learn. Why is it they are not concerenced about mathematics. What about the students that I have met their needs to live and love but not their needs to learn. They need to be remeinded everyday why they are learning what they are learning. Why it is important and how they can use it later in their life. We do not need to include math word problems of life situations that students will never encounter, but present the thinking process behind the math process or topic. Relate thinking and learning to real life. Why are operations so important?

We do a very bad job of this as math educators. It seems to me we either sway one side or the other. We either do not show any way that a math topic relates to real life or we try to show how life is made up of math but fail to prepare the student with the practice and rigor of mathematical processes for them to continue to the next math topic. If I havn't lost students by not, here is where I usually will lose them. They do not have their needs met and this is usually the last straw. I do not even get the opportunity to motivate them with legacy.

What are they going to leave behind. Why are they here? What will people and me think about the math that they created. What is the purpose of all of the work that they have done? What is the reason? When they look back they need to be proud of what they did. I don't feel I have met this need for many of my students but then again I don't see that I have had too many students with all of their needs met lost at legacy.

I just had to write out my thoughts and put them on paper. Please visit my webpage at www.freemathvideos.com

Why are there so many views on what is wrong with math education?

2012-04-30T11:19:00.001-07:00

So many years and so many studies and still math education has been manly unchanged. Why is this so? There have been multiple efforts to remove rote memorization and introduce creative investigation. Mathalicious and others argue that if math is not relevant then students have no desire to learn the information. Others argue that math education needs to get with the times and use more technology. Some argue that we need to go back to the way we used to teach math. Students do not carry the basic skills to excel in higher mathematics. Students should be using more technology when learning concepts.

So who has the best point with this? What do we really need enact to improve math education? The answer: All of it. Pretty cop out answer right? Well each and every point has it's place and it is important for us to be able to bring these topics up for discussion. However we cannot rely on one single method to save us from the perils of troubling math scores and a decrease in the amount of US students who score higher on standardized tests than their foreign counterparts. I would really appreciate your input as I gather together my thoughts on this issue

Apr 24, Geometry Help (with worked solutions & videos)

2012-04-29T13:38:00.001-07:00

Apr 24, Geometry Help (with worked solutions & videos)

via OnlineMathLearning.com Updates on 4/24/12

GEOMETRY, Geometry Help - Definitions, lessons, examples, practice questions and other resources in geometry for learning and teaching geometry.

Superglue

2012-04-29T11:31:00.001-07:00

What

Superglue

via haha.nu by hahanu on 4/27/12

@ haha.nu

No related posts.

Try Crocodoc for Collaboratively Annotating PDFs

2012-04-29T10:59:00.001-07:00

This application could be very helpful for those looking to teach others how to solve math problems when given a PDF

Try Crocodoc for Collaboratively Annotating PDFs

via Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) on 4/29/12

Yesterday, I received an email from a reader who was looking for a free tool that she and her students could use to collaboratively annotate PDFs. While you can comment on PDFs in Google Drive, you can't yet anchor those comments to a specific part of a PDF (at least I haven't figured out how to do that yet). The tool that I recommended instead is Crocodoc.
Crocodoc is a simple service that allows users to quickly share and edit PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint files.To use Crocodoc just upload your file, select your marking tool, and get to work. Crocodoc provides a unique url for every file you upload. Share that url with the people you want to have comment on your PDF, Word file, or PowerPoint slides. You can also embed your file into a blog post or webpage and allow people to comment on it there.

Applications for Education
Crocodoc could be very useful for online peer editing of documents. You could also embed a document into your class blog and ask students to comment on what they're reading. You might also use an embedded document with annotations to model proper peer editing practices.
This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. Follow on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.

18.702 Algebra II (MIT)

2012-04-28T15:25:00.001-07:00

I will try it again

18.702 Algebra II (MIT)

via MIT OpenCourseWare: New Courses in Mathematics by Artin, Michael on 10/28/11

This undergraduate level course follows Algebra I. Topics include group representations, rings, ideals, fields, polynomial rings, modules, factorization, integers in quadratic number fields, field extensions, and Galois theory.

Learn How to Simplify an Expression by Using the Law of Exponents

2012-04-28T14:45:00.001-07:00

The Three Biggest Secrets Every Struggling Math Student Need To Know!

Hi!

My name is Mr. Brian McLogan, I run a math help website that features videos on how to solve various math problems. I never dreamed I would be an online tutor growing up but I used my passion for math to become a teacher. In the process I learned a lot about math, myself and education. The information in this ebook is extremely important and a lot of students, parents do not even know about it. I feel it is my duty to spread this knowledge because of the tremendous impact it has had on my life and education, and I know it can affect others as well. Please take these three secrets to heart. Instill them in your brain, as they will lead you to a better math experience. I am a testament of the following three secrets.

Your Mindset

The biggest problem that plagues most struggling math students is that they believe they are not good at math and will do poorly in the course they are taking because of their previous experiences: failing a previous course, not understanding their teacher, issues with homework problems, or were chosen for the lower math class. Many students allow their previous experiences to effect their current thinking and that thinking alters how they do for the rest of the year. They perceive everything happened for a reason and they’re not smart enough for the class and that there is no way for them to change or improve.

The most common response I get from people when I tell them I am a math teacher is “Oh I am horrible in math” or “That I was never good at that”. Well guess what? They are all right! If you believe you are bad at math then there is very little chance you will ever become good at math. This thinking stems from what the mind believes the body will achieve. If you are thinking you are bad at math, then stop it. Stop it right now! All you are doing is telling yourself what to be and what patterns follow. By telling yourself all of this, what do you think your brain wants to follow?

Let us look at a non math example to clarify my point. Two weight lifters are in a power lifting competition. They are the last two competitors left. You are interviewing them before they are about to compete for who can lift the next weight above their head. They have both previously failed to lift this weight in other competitions and to win the completion but today, one of them will succeed. Both of the athletes are exhausted and of equal size and muscle mass. The first athlete tells you that he can lift the weight over his head with utter confidence. He keeps saying to himself:” I can do it, I can do it,” and he is so positive he makes you feel like he has already lifted the weight above his head. You are barely able to get an interview with the guy because he is so pumped to lift the weight. So you turn your attention to the other competitor and ask him how he feels. He is scared and does not think he can lift the weight because he has never done it before. He has had a long day and is not at his best right now. The weight is heavy and his arms are tired. He wants to do it though because he wants to win but he knows how hard it will be. You go back to your seat in the audience and someone behind you asks who do you think will lift the weight above their head.

Naturally the person with the confidence in themselves is the person you are going to put your own confidence in. Hopefully you understand what handicap you are placing upon yourself when you say you are bad at math or can’t do something. Those words and phrases are diseases preventing you from what you really want to achieve. We really don’t know who could or will actually lift the weight over their head but we can definitely decide who has the best chance at it, just by knowing their mindset. If you want to become rich, tell yourself that. If you want to finish a marathon tell yourself you will finish the marathon. Having that mindset will not guarantee you will get your desired result but it is very hard to achieve what you want without having the correct thinking in place.

If you want to be better at math you need to get yourself in that mindset. Tell yourself you can do it, there is nothing you can’t understand and that you can solve any problem given to you. No matter what challenges you have had before you are going to have to have more and more of them of them in your life so get used to it. Your mindset is what is going to pave the way for you to overcome your obstacles in math and especially in life. When you fail a test, don’t understand what your teacher has just taught, even if you failed a course. Make sure you stay positive, believe that you can do it, rise above any struggle thrown your way. In my own life I have seen an F on a quiz. I have failed a course. I have gone home and wondered what happened that hour I was in math class. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to solve ONE math problem. I didn’t let those failures get the best of me. I went at it with a mindset that I can overcome the obstacles. You have to look at each failure as an opportunity to improve yourself and get stronger. Lift your head up, be positive and tackle this math giant you have in front of you.

Make Goals for Math Class

Before we approach anything new you should always ask yourself a very important question: What is my goal? Or: What is my desired end result? You have probably heard about creating goals with almost everything you do. The formula is simple: First, make multiple short term goals; second, make a long term goal; third, work hard to achieve them. Everything should be done with a purpose. Why do so many people follow this basic rule? Because it works! Study after study has shown that the people, who make specific goals, revisit their goals, write down their goals, tell others about their goals, dream about their goals, and are obsessed about achieving their goals, are the most successful in whatever they choose to be successful in.

How do you make your own goals? It starts with having the end in mind. If you know what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it, half of the work is already done for you. You don’t have to think about achieving your goal every second of the day. Your body and mind are programmed to work toward what you envision as your goal. We need to do this with everything in our life, so why should we leave your math class out of it?

I usually like to have a goal that I can revisit every week and see if I’ve accomplished it or not. Then I would make another goal that goes 4-16 weeks into the future. Lastly, I would make a long term goal. This goal is essential for your long term success and should entail what you want to achieve at the end of a certain time period or the end of a course. These goals are made between the time frames for a short and long-term goal. In high school, this could be a goal for progress reports or the end of a grading quarter.

Once you have created your goals you will want to write them down along with the steps required to accomplish each goal. Ask yourself: What steps are in order to achieve each goal? List the steps or requirements on a sheet of paper or under each goal and make sure you are specific. Don’t say, “I want to do better at math.” or “I want to improve my grade.” What does better mean? Improve your grade to what? Tell yourself, and write it down, “I want to get a B in my math class,” or, “I want to complete every homework problem on my own,” . “I want to do 5 extra practice problems a week” tells you and I exactly what you want to achieve where there is no confusion. Once you have written your goals and the steps required to accomplish them, you have completed the easy part.

The next important step is to visit your goals every day or week to see if you are taking the right steps to achieve them or if you’ve already achieved them. If you miss any of your goals, write down why you did so. What steps did you not do that you said you would? What obstacles got in your way? What choices did you make to prevent your goal from happening? Then come up with ideas that you can do to help prevent yourself from having this “stuff” get in your way again. We like to call this “stuff” life. Remember that goals are going to come and go and that there are going to be times where friends, family, and meetings are going to get in your way. How successful you are in achieving your goals will depend on how good you are at not allowing these obstacles to get in your way of achieving them. It is hard to stay focused on your goals and it’s even more so if they are not your driving force in life.

If you need help with creating meaning with your goals, try this: attach rewards and consequences to your goals. However, this will only increase the likelihood that you will achieve your goals, and it will only last as long as you are consistent and disciplined enough to reward and discipline yourself. Chances are we can all think of lofty goals we would like to achieve, but when the going gets tough, we lose our focus. By attaching consequences and rewards to your goals, it will help keep you focused. For an easy example, if you love ice cream, take it away from yourself if you don’t meet your goal, or reward yourself with ice cream if you meet a goal.

The main ingredient for achieving your goals will always be how consistent you are, your obsession along with being disciplined enough to FOCUS on achieving your goals. We all have had great ideas we have wanted to do, create, build, or find, but there always seemed to be that moment when life got in the way and prevented us from FOCUSING on them. Here is your opportunity to start on the right path. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life. Start writing down your goals right now! Use the following guide on the next page. Remember that your goals must be measurable; at the end of the week you need to know if you achieved your goal or not. Be very specific with your goals, and you can accomplish anything!

	Short-Term Goal – These goals should be between everyday or weekly	Mid-Term Goal – These goals should be between a couple of weeks and months	Long-Term Goal – These goals should be set for a couple of months to a year or longer
Steps – Be very specific with your steps. Include essential parts needed for you to achieve each goal. What needs to happen? What do you have to do to achieve each goal?	1 2 3 4 5	1 2 3 4 5	1 2 3 4 5
Who are you going to tell? Where will you post your goals? How will you revisit them daily, weekly?
Rewards – How will you reward yourself? What do you enjoy doing, buying, traveling, eating?
Consequences- What do you avoid doing in your life, avoid buying, avoid going?

Organize everything!

I have to admit it; my biggest downfall to not succeeding in math class was organization. I was never organized in high school and really not much better in college, even though the best attempts were made by my parents and teachers. I was a rebel and determined to survive without being organized. Some might even argue that I am not the most organized person now. I really have to focus on being organized but I do acknowledge it because I have seen the dramatic difference it has made in my life, so I still work every day to improve o it. When I was in high school if you asked me how organized I was. I would tell I was not very organized but I was surviving. I even survived tests and papers without even writing any important dates down in an organized manner. Notice how I used the word survive instead of thrive. I was far from producing the best I could in order to be successful.

My lack of organization finally hit me when I tried to run my own real estate company during one of my summer breaks from being a teacher. My inability to be organized was my largest obstacle in running my business, not my lack of knowledge, or time restrictions, or my mindset or goals. Everything was dependant on how well run and organized the company was that solely was based on me. I could not make that overnight transition from an unorganized human being to an organization machine. I had to quickly revert to all of the organizational skills I learned through my life and start to actually apply them. It was a little too late as my company never took off like I thought it would. I finally realized that my organization plagued me and my business.

The first step I had to make and advise anyone to do is remove clutter. The more clutter you have in your house, car, apartment, locker, dorm, or desk, the more cluttered your brain will be. Get rid of knickknacks and stuff that cannot be put away in an organized away. Most people like the feeling of how everything looks and feels after you clean up. Do your best to keep a schedule to keep your life working in this manner. For those of you that are not the most organized like me it takes time. Time set aside in your life for you to purely focus on removing clutter. Pick an hour a week or day to just focus on removing and organizing clutter.

Some people like “organized chaos”. We like our living spaces with clutter all around us because it makes everything more “homie.” I used to use that as excuse too because I did feel that way in my heart. I had to train my brain to think the opposite way once I saw the tremendous effect it had on my life. Please note that we are all different and we all deal with clutter in different ways, but I am here to tell you that you need to organize your life first if you want to be more organized for your classes. Once you do this you have a great foundation to get going.

Here are some tips for getting rid of your clutter. Keep your material objects organized and don’t have things lying around. Throw them away or put them away. After every day work through all of your papers, make a pile of papers you need to do something with that day. This will remind you to work on those papers so that they are finished and out of your way. My teacher’s desk used to have papers all over it. I used to say I knew where everything was but really I would lose things all the time as papers would get accidently shuffled together. Now my desk is clean”ER” and clear”ER” with only a little room designated for manila folders to organize my papers.

Once you have your life in a better organized manner it is time to focus on why we want to be organized. To do better in this math class, right? Let me throw you a couple of tips. How many you have started a homework folder and then a couple of weeks later just decided to put papers between the pages in your book? How many of you have notebooks having notes from different classes, homework, notes, personal information, the “everything notebook.” Stop it! Designate one folder and one notebook to a class. Put in big letters, “Your math class” Not literally “Your Math Class” but the name of your class. You want to make sure you know your folder and don’t go to class with the wrong ones. I like to have my students use a two pocket folder because they are cheap and easy to transport. I have my students keep all of their assessments on the left side and their homework and class work on the right side. I then have them keep all of their homework in their notebooks. You don’t need to follow what I do but you do need to have a system and do not stray from that system. Knowing where all of your work is and keeping an organized system is crucial for you to be able to find papers, notes and other materials when you need them.

If someone was to ask where something is you should know exactly where it is. After every chapter I buy a new notebook and folder and start like it is a brand new year. We like things that are new. Treat every chapter as something new. You don’t need the 5 subject notebook. Just buy a cheap one and rip out the pages once you are done, or buy a new one like I suggested. I don’t want anything from the previous chapter in my bag anymore. Why is this? It is clutter. You will not need this information with you every day, so stop carrying it around with you. Obviously I am speaking in generalities, if you know you need information with you from a previous chapter. Then keep it with you. Keep this information somewhere else like a folder at your house or classroom. In my classroom I have hanging folders I have for my students to put extra work in. They may access them whenever they need to, but besides that I am keeping them from being lost or mixed in with their current work.

Lastly, keep a planner for all of your important dates, times and etc. I am hoping some of you remembered me saying that I never kept one, so why do I have to be a hypocrite and tell you to keep one. Well I do keep a planner now and it is on google docs. Despite my best efforts I still cannot conform to the written planner. You have to be disciplined to write down important dates and to-do lists. Even better planner is one that lists your weekly and daily goals and has them written down in terms of importance. Then you should focus on accomplishing those goals first before you get distracted with your to-do list like going to the store. If an online planer works better for you than a written one then use it. You need to have some system to track when things are due, important dates, and to know how you will accomplish things. How many of my students walk in for a test and ask, “We have a test today?” Wow, I am scared. Not only are you unprepared for my test, but you are unprepared for life. Try to run your own business like this, and you won’t last long. Trust me, I didn’t. Learn to write everything down in advance.

I hope that these three secrets opened your eyes to a new way of thinking. It is very common for students to blame teachers, the subject, their type of thinking, learning style, or personality in why they don’t do well in math. Trust me those all have places in an honest discussion about improving math education. I have learned that even with difficulties listed above a student can overcome these problems simply by having the right mindset, having goals, and being organized. These secrets are not exclusive to math class. Apply them to everything you do in your life and you will see a tremendous impact.

Brian McLogan is a high school math teacher who has taught various courses ranging from Algebra 1 – Pre-Calculus. He runs an online math website http://www.freemathvideos.com where he shows how to solve math problems in his class. He has starting making new videos outside of the classroom to provide more resources for students around the world. You can reach Brian at brianmclogan@yahoo.com.

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