About Me

Name: Tina Cardone

Title: Public High School Mathematics Teacher

Current Courses (2017-2018):
Learning Skills (co-taught, small class of students in grades 9-12 who all have learning disabilities and are working on pre-Algebra content)
Algebra 2 (inclusion classes with 20-25 students, mixed regular-ed, ELL and students with disabilities)
Honors Precalculus (class of 15 students, mix of juniors and seniors)

Past Courses: Pretty much everything high school (Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Caclulus/Calculus combo, AP Calculus) with lots of special ed mixed in.

I student taught in Holyoke, MA, spent 3 years in Lawrence, MA and am in my eigth year in Salem, MA. If you know anything about Massachusetts then you've figured out that I like teaching in urban, high needs districts. Salem is a diverse community (truly diverse, as opposed to Lawrence which is homogenous but not the same as the surrounding middle-class, white communities). We have immigrants from all over (though they are predominantly hispanic), keep nearly all of our special education students in district (which puts us at around 30% of the population on an IEP or 504 - did you know that living in poverty can cause slow processing speeds and decrease working memory? It doesn't matter whether the learning disabilities were nature or nurture, they are still a major fixture of our classrooms), many students are bilingual, around 10% are in the ELL program and over 50% receive free or reduced lunch. As someone who grew up in suburbia I value the many perspectives that my students share and am truly impressed with how well students learn to get along with their peers. I miss being across from the life skills classroom where I could teach my students how to interact with these differently abled students, but I still have plenty of opportunities to teach students to get along now that I'm teaching ninth grade.

My favorite forms of professional development are twitter (@crstn85) and reading blogs. The #matheme page is a great place to see what big ideas we've been talking about. At last count I followed 131 math teacher blogs. If anyone knows how to share a Digg Reader category let me know, although you'd have to be a bit insane to want to comb through that list! A more approachable way to begin your exploration of twitter and blogs would be to browse the Explore MTBoS site or search for people with common interests using the MTBoS Directory.

For more information about me or projects I've worked on visit tinacardone.com