Book Launch!

Back in September I wrote a blog post about the book that I've written. In that post explained why I wrote it and what it's all about. I submitted my manuscript at the end of the summer holidays and (naively) thought that all my work was done. In September and October I chose the design of the cover, gathered some reviews for the Amazon page and that was about it - it wasn't a huge amount of work. Then came November, and suddenly everything was really full on.

Getting the book ready for print was a much bigger job than I expected. I stayed up late into the night many times in November, working on checks and edits. My editor was brilliant and made lots of useful suggestions. The challenge came from the fact that all of my equations were retyped and therefore needed thorough checking, and all of the intricately detailed old textbook extracts were retyped too. It was an immense job to proofread every single line. If I wasn't a teacher I would have taken a few days off work to do it. But I had to fit it in around long days at work, getting my girls into bed, doing my marking and lesson planning, and everything else. In hindsight I think perhaps it was foolish of me to think I could be a full-time teacher and mum of two young children and write a book! But hey, I lived to tell the tale.

It's quite possible that an error will have made it through to the book, and I can only apologise for that. I worked harder on this than I've ever worked on anything before, and now it's being printed I feel rather emotional about it all. I feel relief, anxiety and happiness all at the same time. 

Because I never thought I'd write a book, and now I have, I really want to celebrate. Although I've organised and hosted two book launches and a number of other events in the past, I decided that I wouldn't be able to have a launch for my own book. My new job is really tough, and weekends and evenings in December are packed full of both work and family stuff, so I definitely don't have time to organise an event.

Thankfully my friend Emma McCrea (author of Making Every Maths Lesson Count) got in touch and offered to organise and host a launch party for me. I'm very grateful to her for working really quickly to get everything set up in time for the book's publication date. Tickets went on sale today, and I'm very excited about it.

The launch is on 14th December at SAMA Bankside, which is a bar near Blackfriars in London (those of you who stayed on for the Humble Pi afterparty might remember it!). The event is 3pm until 5.30pm. If anyone wants to stay out afterwards and turn it into a maths teacher Christmas night out then I'm up for that (it's optional though!). It's been a while since the last #christmaths so I think we're overdue a festive party... 

My little book launch will consist of maths activities, drinks, maths mingling, and two talks (one from me and one from the awesome speaker Zoe Griffiths). Tickets are £20 and this includes a copy of the book (hot off the press), a drink on arrival and all mathsy entertainment.

I know lots of people are going to be busy on the 14th, but I hope some people can join me to celebrate (I'm aware it's not ideal timing for a launch, but I really wanted the book to be out before Christmas).

You can book a ticket here. Feel free to bring partners and friends - this event is not exclusively for maths teachers, though the entertainment is all mathematical!

Hope to see you there. And if you can't come but still want to read my book, it's available to order here.

Why Methods?

About 6 years I happened to stumble across a blog post about matrix multiplication. I was teaching FP1 at the time. I was surprised to discover a method I'd never seen before, and I showed my class the very next day. They liked it and asked why I hadn't shown them this in the first place. I admitted that I hadn't known about it.

I later showed this matrix method to my colleague Mariana. In that same conversation she showed me another method I hadn't seen before - the Factor Method for finding a Highest Common Factor and Lowest Common Multiple. It was a method that one of our students had introduced to us, and it turned out that some of my colleagues were already teaching it. I loved it.

I pondered these two methods - new discoveries for me - and wondered whether there was a book or website that had them all in one place. Where could I go to learn new methods? How could I find out what other teachers did? How could I share the two methods I'd just discovered with other teachers? It seemed unfair to keep them to myself when they'd surely be of interest to others.

I couldn't find anything about methods online, and this is what prompted me to start a blog. I thought that gathering together alternative methods in one place would help me remember what I'd found, and if anyone else happened to read it then it might help them too.

My first blog post - when I was just about to start maternity leave with my second baby in April 2014 - was about matrix multiplication. A couple of weeks later I wrote about Highest Common Factor. At that point a friend told me that people blogging about education should join Twitter, so I did. It was eye-opening. I immediately become immersed in the wonderful world of maths EduTwitter. There I found a community of teachers to discuss maths with. I learnt so much from them. It was a game-changer.

I didn't know enough interesting methods to only write about methods, so I started blogging about resources and pedagogy too. Resources began to take over because that was what people seemed interested in, but my curiosity about methods continued.

I went to my first maths conference in September 2014. I loved it. I noticed that the workshops were mainly about pedagogy rather than subject knowledge. So I decided that at the next conference I'd do my first ever conference presentation - I'd tell everyone my cool way to find a HCF and LCM, along with a few other methods that they might not have seen before.

At the next conference I was ridiculously nervous as I delivered my session but it was wonderful to hear a room full of teachers talking about methods. However at the end a man came up and told me that he'd already known all the methods I'd spoken about. This one little comment made me lose confidence in my idea to collect and share methods. I started to wonder if I was embarrassing myself by sharing stuff that was already widely known.

So I focused on resources for the next couple of years. I blogged about methods only occasionally, but I continued to think that subject knowledge development was the most important CPD maths teachers could do.

Back in December 2017 I was at an MA meeting in Leceister and picked up a few old textbooks from the archives. I was blown away by the quality of the questions in the exercises compared to many modern exercises. I immediately began to collect old textbooks, and quickly realised that they were full of fascinating methods and subject knowledge that had long been forgotten. This is what re-ignited my interest in methods. And this is what inspired me to bring all this fascinating stuff together in a book. I'd been saying for years that I'd never write a book. But I was overwhelmed by this big idea, and I couldn't stop myself from getting it all down on paper.

I started writing the book back in February 2019. It's not just about methods - it's a whole lot more. You'll have to wait and see what I mean when it comes out (I can't wait for you to see it!). I've never worked so hard on anything before. I worked on it every day of the summer holidays, and have been busy trying to get it finished off in the last couple of weeks, which has been really tough because I teach full-time and September is crazy busy. It was worth the effort though - I'm really excited about sharing it. I learnt so much writing this book, and now feel pretty confident that I know way more about mathematical methods than most people! My subject knowledge is miles ahead of where it was when I first qualified as a teacher.

I sent all 70,000 words of the book off to my publisher on Sunday. It might be out in December, but I'm not making any promises!

I've been on a five year journey from the day I first stumbled upon that matrix multiplication method. I've created something that didn't previously exist that I feel will be of great benefit to maths teachers. I really hope my readers like it. And if they don't, at least I will finally have what I wanted, for the benefit my own teaching - a plethora of awesome mathematical methods, all in one place.