Visiting a "Combustible Classroom"

Today, I had the pleasure of visiting a colleague in a far-far-away land's classroom. And by far-far-away, I really mean it was about an hour drive. Easily chalking this up to the most worthwhile hour-long commute in a long time!

(re)Igniting passion in teaching

My principal had visited Jed Stefanowitz's third grade classroom earlier in the year through the MAPLE initiative with participating districts in Massachusetts. She was so ignited (this is a precursor to some really bad puns) by the work going on in his room, she texted me while sitting in it and told me to follow him on Twitter immediately. Luckily I heeded her advice and instantly started to see the magic he and his classroom had. His classroom was piloting being a 1-to-1 classroom as well as a really STEAM infused classroom. He is a Google certified educator and an ambassador for Osmo, Plickers, Makey-Makey, BrainPop and Prodigy to name a few. In summary, follow this guy on Twitter and definitely follow his blog!

What is a makerspace? 
This was displayed on one of Jed's Apple TVs during STEAM Block

One of Jed's many classroom makerspaces

Our visit today was to focus on the makerspaces he had set up in his room because we are thinking of adding spaces to our classrooms in our building. We saw some incredible use of makerspaces, but we also saw some incredible engagement, blended learning, and passion for third grade learning (from the students, Jed, and his principal!)

In our debrief portion of the day, Jed talked about his recent blog post on "Creating a Combustible Classroom". He explained that a classroom is like a fire; you need air, fuel and a heat. The air is the environment we give students for them to learn, grow and problem solve. The fuel is the curriculum and instruction, and the heat is that excitement that sparks students' ideas. It makes a lot of sense and the fire was burning bright in his classroom today.

My biggest takeaway from visiting his room was that this can be done, and we don't need to have all the snazzy technology that he had either. There are pieces we can adapt into our building immediately. For example, we could offer 6 stations for the week, and students would visit one station a day. One of the days we would have to do 2 rotations, but that can be done on the days when we don't have any preps. I love the idea of more choices and smaller groups, as well as longer station time so students really have a chance to dive deep into that work. Every one of his stations offered the 4 C's: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication.

We can offer a variety of tech options with the tech we have, and we can give more igniting choices during those stations. Bottom line: We don't need to be afraid and sit in a conference room to analyze everything to death, we just need to run into that burning building and see what works and what doesn't. (I do not recommend running into a burning building unless you are a trained fireman, I'm just using that analogy to stick with the combustion theme) One of the other teachers that came along for the visit was texting me all night with ideas on how to incorporate some of these elements in her class, starting tomorrow! She is running right into the building, and I'm right behind her.

I know offering these high-interest station rotations and embedded use of technology into learning is a way to ensure class-wide engagement, which consequently would reduce any behavior concerns, as we witnessed today. Just making a few tweaks to what we are doing now will re-ignite teachers' passion for teaching, and ultimately, students' passion for learning. 

Something striking on Jed's agenda today was this image:

I can safely say, after visiting his school and room, that I am fired up to teach for our students' futures! The fire has been lit inside, not only in me, but my other colleagues who visited, and I know our students are in for some exciting learning ahead!

DITLife Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sundays are the best days! (even when I lose an hour of sleep to daylight savings)

My body has not adjusted to the time change overnight, so I was wide awake and ready to go at 6am. I decided to drag my butt out of bed and go grocery shopping then since it's always packed on Sundays, and I knew this Sunday would be especially packed because we will be getting a blizzard later this week! As suspected, at 7am the grocery store was pretty tolerable and I was in and out with a week's worth of food in about a half hour!

Came home and sorted out a few work emails, including sending my weekly math notes to the principal to be emailed to all the teachers. I'm supposed to have math learning walks on Wednesday, but the blizzard is coming in on Tuesday, so I'm not sure we'll even have school.

The rest of the day was extremely lazy for me. I cuddled up on the couch with the dogs and husband and watched a marathon of Impractical Jokers on TruTV. These 4 guys are my spirit animals; I wish I could run around doing all these pranks all day long!

Also snuck in an hour playdate with the nephew/godson which always lifts my heart! He's 2 now and is such a sports fanatic that we spent most of the time jumping away from a swinging hockey stick!

I attempted to go to bed early, but with the change in time and my nervous excitement for the upcoming snowstorm, I only managed about 2 net hours of sleep. It's going to be a long Monday, but it was a wonderful Sunday!

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I feel like there's a recurring theme with my blogs, but I'm genuinely happy I took the time to just relax and do nothing work related today. I've got so much going on at work that it's nice to unplug from all of it on the weekends.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm in a high right now. I've been getting into many more classrooms than usual and really working with students and teachers to do some pretty amazing work. I'm very proud of the relationships I'm continuing to build and the shift in focus of the whole building to put math instruction as a priority. Literacy has always been the focus, but it's so nice to see math coming up!

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I finally was able to admit my faults in not visiting one of our new teachers in the building. She is a veteran teacher but new to our school and district. I've been meaning to go in and visit her more frequently but always get pulled away in a million different directions. I finally stopped into her room 2 days in a row and absolutely loved it! I had a great time with the kids, and she was overly appreciative of me being there. That morphed into her and I chatting about starting a coaching cycle together and I couldn't be more thrilled! Sometimes all it takes is showing up!

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year.  What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

My professional learning goal at school was to help teachers make thinking visible, and it's really coming along nicely. Walking around the building today I noticed so many students explaining their math to me, their teachers and their peers. On a personal front, I said I would participate in at least one Twitter chat a month and I have totally failed that goal! Uggh, it's such a lame excuse but they really start too late in the night for me. My brain is fried and I'm in bed by the time they're starting. I'll try to end this school year with a bang!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

I passed my Google certified educator level 1 exam! I took it the first day of our February vacation and passed. Pretty proud accomplishment. I'm very eager to take the level 2 exam soon!

DITLife February 12, 2017

A snowy Sunday in New England!

This has been the longest weekend ever, as we had Thursday and Friday off due to a blizzard.  And, I just found out I also have Monday off due to another blizzard coming in.  Good grief!  I guess a 5 day weekend never hurt anyone, right?

The snow certainly helped me to do nothing.  I did my weekly grocery shopping early and then snuggled up on the couch with my dogs and tried to clean out my DVR with my husband.  We knocked off 10% of it, so I would say mission accomplished.

I did do a tiny bit of work today, but I lost motivation after a few minutes.  I started to work on my syllabi for the two courses I'm teaching this summer.  I made a few changes to the agenda for each class, but then when I looked outside and saw I was in the thick of a blizzard, I lost motivation to think about summer.

Finished the night watching the Grammys and reading People magazine.  Totally immersed in pop culture, fabulous!

Reflection Questions:

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

These reflection questions are so hard on days when I literally did nothing. So I don't have any thoughts about decisions I made. I guess I could've worked on school stuff a bit more, but I have really tried to separate myself from work on the weekends so I can be present with my husband and dogs. Looking back, would I change anything? Nope, not a thing. Today was a perfect Sunday.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm really looking forward to taking my Google for Educators certification test. I just completed a workshop which helped prepare me for the exam, and I'm planning to take the test next week when we are on school vacation. These snow days have been the biggest challenge for me. I've got so much to do with teachers at my school, but I need to be face to face to get anything done. So I'm hopeful mother nature cooperates and lets me go back to work soon! ha!

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I recently started a Math League with some 5th grade students. We met over lunch on Wednesday and we had a blast! I was so worried that they would hate having to do math while they ate lunch, but it turns out they loved it. We had some challenging problems that we all solved together. It was really fun and at the end, they all thanked me. I can't wait to meet with them again this week!

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

My goals have been a very slow work in progress. I wanted to complete a coaching cycle with a few teachers this year. So far I've only done part of one with one teacher. As I mentioned before, I'm anxious to get back in the building to finish the observation and feedback part of the cycle with that teacher. I'm hopeful that I can start doing more coaching work like this with more teachers in the coming months, but I also know that we have our standardized testing coming up soon which will put a halt to everything.

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

Nothing for me except I'm really looking forward to February vacation and going on a road trip to Pennsylvania with my husband!

DITLife January 12, 2017 (Thursday)

Another busy day in the books!

Started out the day getting math kits together for the family math night I have planned for next Thursday and emailing local community groups that are participating in the night.  Had to organize the dice and the cards and get the correct amount of materials to each kit and set aside for each game that the families will play that night.  I'm very excited about this family math night this year as I believe all families are going to walk away with a wealth of materials and ideas to incorporate math games at home!

Had to cover kindergarten morning duty this morning which is always so much fun and entertaining.  The kids wanted me to read a book, which I was happy to do, except they chose a book that had no words!  Coming up with a story on the spot was hard, but a lot of fun.

I then had a brief conversation with a vendor for an online math program that my school has been considering for a while.  Seemed good, but expensive for sure.  

I spent an hour in first grade trying to get some of her high-flyers up and running on the online math program we have at our school.  It's a pretty neat program that has no words and scaffolds the work based on the kids levels.  These four kids needed something challenging and I'm hopeful this program will do the trick.  Check it out here if you want more information.  

After my time in first grade, I went to second grade to help out with a skip counting lesson.  This turned into me taking a few of the students to help them finish the mid year benchmark assessment.  I had a lot of fun with these kids because they have very unique personalities and I thoroughly enjoy listening to them think about math and talk about how much they love math!

I spent the rest of my day preparing materials for the online benchmark testing I would be administering the following week.  We just started giving our benchmarks online for grades 3, 4, and 5 this year and it hasn't been the smoothest transition.  There are lots of kinks in the software and it's quite a process to even get logged in, so I needed to prepare some instruction sheets for every grade level.  This time of the year is always a struggle for me personally and professionally because I am so anti-benchmark testing, and especially the way these tests are designed, however, it's a requirement and I have to do it.  Even though I have a pretty direct role in creating these assessments, I know and fully admit that they are subpar and the data from them aren't used for the intended purposes.  It's a constant struggle all teachers have to deal with: delivering instruction or assessments that they don't agree with but are mandated by their districts and/or states. 

I spend the afternoon doing a few Uber rides.  Yes, I started driving for Uber to try to make a little bit of money on the side.  It's proving to be a ton of fun and pretty good money too!  Another joy of being a teacher, never having enough money!  

I participated in a Twitter chat at 7pm EST.  I think this is  one of the only Twitter chats that actually starts at a reasonable hour so I could participate and then go to bed.  Normally they start at 9pm, and I'm usually sound asleep by then. 

The topic of this chat was blended learning and using the ST Math learning platform which I mentioned above.  It was a great 7 question conversation and I found lots of new educators to follow. 

So there it is...a day in the life of me.  Let's see what February holds for me.

And now the questions....

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I'm so glad I walked into the second grade classroom. It turns out she needed some help with a lot of different things and also needed a break to use the bathroom. I think my timing was perfect and I'm glad I could help out. I'm wondering if my decision to let the kids in first grade onto the math program. I know the teacher and parents had requested it, but I'm nervous that since it was only for four of them, that the rest of the class is going to get jealous and want in too. I also don't know if it's truly going to be challenging enough for them. Only time will tell.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm really looking forward to getting back to instructional coaching. I had been out for 2 months post-surgery and now I'm finally back and getting into the groove. I have benchmark testing to get through next week, but then my schedule opens up again and I can start coaching again. However, a massive struggle lately has been getting teachers to want to work with me. There are a few who have "drunk the koolaid" so to speak and find me as an invaluable resource. I adore these teachers, but as I mentioned, they are a FEW. There's still a majority of the school who wants nothing to do with me and when I walk into their rooms they say, "What do you want". I struggle every day with whether or not I'm valuable or useful to this school, and whether people even want me there. Am I making any impact? Are teachers responsive to what my vision is for math instruction? It's so hard, and extremely isolating at the same time. I've definitely been struggling with my worth lately.

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I've got some emails thanking me for the work I've put into Family Math Night that remind me how awesome the people are that I get to work with. They took time out of their day to acknowledge my work and it really meant a lot. I made sure to personally thank those teachers for thanking me.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

I've wanted to do more coaching this year, and I'm working on it. It was very hard to be out for those 2 months as I feel like just as I was getting into the swing of it, I had to hit pause. I just put together a mini-PD for my teachers around one of my professional goals and I'm very excited to start sharing that work and see if it will go anywhere.

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

I came back from my 2 month recovery right after the winter break and had pneumonia!! So then after being out for 2 months, I had to miss 2 more days (should've been more to be honest) to recover from pneumonia. I'm finally starting to feel better now, thank goodness!!

DITLife December 12, 20015

Skipping a blog post?  Guilty as charged!

Last month I had a major surgery just 4 days before I was supposed to write my DITLife blogpost.  Since I could hardly get out of bed, and was definitely hopped up on *prescribed* pain kills, I thought it would be okay for me to skip that month.  Pretty sure I made the right call because I think anything I posted would've been non-coherent anyway.

So I'm a month out of my surgery, and still home recovering.  I'm blessed to work in an amazing district that is allowing me the opportunity to work from home, when I can, until I am fully recovered.  I think it also helps that I'm a coach, so there isn't a substitute teacher taking over for me back at school.  If this happened while I was a classroom teacher, I think I would be propping myself up behind my desk trying to muddle through the Percocet haze, pain, and frequent nausea because it would be better than stressing at home about how my class was going.  For the record, teachers are the hardest working people in the world. FACT.  Also, everyone needs to know that for a teacher, it is MUCH easier to go into work sick than it is to take the day off.   

Today was a Monday, so I should have done some work, but in all honesty, today was a bad day for me and I spent most of the day asleep trying to feel better. 

In the few hours I was awake, I replied to a few emails and followed up with some teachers about issues that they had asked me about last week.  Nothing very exciting.  I'm in my jammies still, fighting the urge to throw up the chicken noodle soup I had for lunch, and getting excited to watch the Patriots play the Ravens tonight.

Since this post is so boring, and my "day in the life" was pretty uneventful, I will use this post to talk about some things that I've been thinking about lately.  Recently, someone put my twitter handle on a list of 70 Must Follow Math Educators.  I was extremely flattered, but also very humbled.  I've been thinking fretting about how little I contribute to the twitter world, and MTBoS in general.  I check my timeline frequently and true confession:  I'm flat out intimidated.  The amount of brilliance shared by my fellow math educators across the country is overwhelming.  Often I read their tweets and think, '"I know nothing, what am I even doing here?!"  

It's scary.

I'm not afraid to admit that either.  I suspect that because I have the title of "Math Coach" many people feel I must know a lot, but truth is I feel like a first year teacher all over again.  I'm just opening my eyes to this new world of really energized, thought-provoking, and wonderful math instruction.  I always loved teaching my math classes, and my students were truly engaged mathematicians, but there's so many great ideas and amazing things that I'm eager to try, all because of what I learned on twitter.  

Twitter is the BEST professional development.  

So maybe this makes me a bad math coach, but the way I see it, maybe it makes me a good one.  I never claimed to know everything, and I'm so thankful to have this PLN to help me learn and grow as an educator.  My resolution is to contribute more to twitter, the MTBoS, and really earn my spot on that list of the 70 Math Educators to Follow.

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

This is such a silly answer, but I think the smartest decision I made was to NOT rush back to work.  I really really wanted to go back to work after 2 weeks post-op.  My husband said that was stupid, my principal said that was stupid, my colleagues said that was stupid.  Guess what, they were all right.  It was stupid to think I could go back to the stress of work, plus all the physical activity I would've been doing.  Today was a perfect example of why I'm thankful I'm still able to stay home and rest and recover; I need it!

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm so looking forward to going back to work and getting back into the swing of things.  I'm very busy planning our family math night for January 19th right now, and I'm excited to see how that goes.  It's been a challenge to coach from home though, but I'm trying my best.  I've been emailing back and forth with a few teachers, but it's hard to not be there and be in the classrooms.  I'm making the most of the situation though and and working with the situation.

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I just love every single person I work with.  Being home for the last month has showed me their compassion and concern for my well being.  They set up a sign up system and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, someone has made me a meal and delivered it to me.  I mean, who does that?!  People who care, that's who.  T'is the season of being humbled I suppose. 

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

Well I did have a goal to participate in at least one twitter chat a month.  I've totally failed in that goal.  I did one in September, but none since.  The best way to contribute more to this community is to join in on these chats, so I'm going to start putting them into my calendars and making it a priority to participate in more.  

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

Not this month.  This month can be summed up in a few words:  books, Hallmark movies, the Crown, Good Girls Revolt, Price is Right.

ATMNE 16 Conference Recap

I had the fortunate opportunity to attend the ATMNE (Association of Teachers of Mathematics - New England) conference again this year.  Last year was my first time attending any math-related conference, and I really had a great time and walked away with so much knowledge, tons of ideas, and a renewed passion to make math instruction better.  I was very hopeful going into this year's conference, which was hosted in Manchester, NH, my old college-days stomping grounds.

The keynote speakers lined up for this year were not as compelling as last year's, but the lineup for the workshops looked fantastic, so I was excited to be surrounded by like-minded educators talking about math for 2 days straight!

The opening keynote was by Dr. Larson, president of the NCTM.  His talk was passionate and invigorating.  He spoke about the book Principles to Actions which I've heard so much about but hadn't invested in yet.  After his talk, I purchased that book immediately and added it to my reading list.  The one big idea I took away from his keynote was that while we want student to know many different strategies, they mustn't be taught and practiced in isolation.  Students should always have the flexibility to choose to use whichever strategy they feel is most efficient for the problem at hand; whether that be a word problem in class or a real-world problem once they hit the work force.  I find that so often in the elementary classes I see, teachers are expecting students to use only the strategy they taught them that day, rather than giving them the flexibility to choose what makes the most sense to them.  This is something I am eager to read more about in the book and hopefully bring to my school in the near future.

After his keynote, the workshops began.  Here are the sessions I attended with my one sentence "take away" from each.

Family Math Night To Go!

• There are amazing games that can be adapted to all sorts of grade levels and make family math night fun and engaging!  

Making Fact Fluency Assessments Meaningful

• Ditch the mad-minutes, use the strategies we want the kids to know for all four operations during a one-on-one interview to really assess what kids know.

Desmos for elementary school

• Now I get what all the hype on Twitter is about!  This is a great website that can be used in the elementary classroom quite well once I've played around and figured it out some more!  Thanks Denis Sheeran (check out his book Instant Relevance and follow him on Twitter)

Promoting Mathematical Modeling, Problem Solving and Perseverance

• The types of problems we give our students will promote modeling and rich problem solving.  Ask WHY something makes sense!

The World is Messy: Enabling Every Student to USE math to address REAL problems

• This was more of a high-school geared talk, but I did get a better understanding of how to use real-life situations to make math tasks (rather than crazy word problems involving apples and ribbon!)

Overcoming Math Anxiety

• Math anxiety is a very real problem, it is preventable, and it is manageable.  This was probably one of my favorite sessions of the whole conference.  Cristina Post is an Educational Therapist out of Maine.  Check out her website and follow her on Twitter

Feedback is a Four-Way Street

• Effective feedback is more than a grade; it is specific, timely, personal, and offers constructive criticism.  

There were a few more keynotes sprinkled in with all these sessions.  The Thursday lunch keynote was completely irrelevant to me as it was all about high school math.  The Friday lunch keynote was by Peg Smith and she also spoke deeply about Principles to Actions.

Overall, it was a very productive conference.  In all honesty, I enjoyed last year's conference in Portland, ME a lot more than this one, but I still found this year's to be quite valuable.  I felt like last year's was a little bit more organized, the space they held it was a lot nicer, and the workshops and sessions they offered were much more beneficial than this year's.   I definitely learned a lot and am eager to share with my colleagues in the coming weeks. 

Yom Kippur #DITLife 10-12-16

Today was a very boring day in the life of this teacher!  I had the day off in observance of Yom Kippur.  

I stayed in bed until 9am; a pure luxury!  Brought the dogs for a run around a field, went to visit my husband at his work, went grocery shopping, took a nap, tutored my tutoree for an hour, made dinner, sat in the hot tub and then went to bed.  Pretty interesting day, huh?

I purposefully didn't bring my laptop home with me on Tuesday because I had a day off, and I truly wanted to enjoy the day off and not think about work.  I did pretty well with that mission until about 8:30 pm when a colleague asked for some scores for a kid from a previous year.  This wasn't a huge inconvenience for me since I have the Google Drive app installed on my phone so I just took a few minutes to look that info up and sent it over to her.  Other than than, work was the furthest thing from my mind all day, and I'm going to be honest, I loved it!

And now for the questions....

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I didn't really make any decisions at all today!  I guess the biggest, and best, one I made was to not bring my work home with me and just enjoy my day off.  It was nice to have those days of calm and relaxation.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I am really looking forward to working with teachers more closely this year.  The literacy coach and I did a brief presentation on what a coach is and how we can help, and I'm hopeful that lots of people got something out of it and will start utilizing me more.  A challenge has been spreading myself out across the whole building.  I have a core group of teachers who love having me in their room, and I tend to always be in those rooms.  I need to branch out more and visit every room. 

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

Recently I received some pretty bad news, (see question #5) and the amount of support, caring, and concern I received from my fellow teachers was amazing. I really felt loved and part of the community.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

I think I've fallen off the train of working towards my goal.  I wanted to participate in a twitter chat at least once a month, but I'm finding that I can't stay up late enough to do that.  I'm in bed by 9pm every night.  I also wanted to make sure I was more visible in every room this year, but as I mentioned above, I'm really struggling with that.  I made myself a schedule for the week of when math was being taught in my building so I could use it as a checklist and make sure I get into every room at least once a week.  Now I just need to start utilizing it!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

My surgery that was scheduled for October 4th got cancelled because my insurance decided they didn't want to pay for it.  I was completely devastated and had to take 2 days off to fight with the insurance company and doctors and play that back-and-forth game.  I am so happy to report that I just got word it has been approved now and I have rescheduled it for November 8th!!