Eisner and Curriculum

I found it interesting that this article talks about null curriculum and how schools only focus on math, science, social studies, and English. It makes me wonder, are we teaching practical skills in our curriculum courses? Students are learning how to learn and critical thinking skills plus problem solving skills but is it unjust to our students to not have mandatory classes on cooking, cleaning, basic concepts about automotives, plumbing, and electrical work? While some might say those are skills that should be taught to children by parents, I really do believe we should be having mandatory classes in schools on these skills. These skills are critical for students to know and understand once they are adults and I feel it is the job of high school teachers to not only teach the curriculum but to prepare students for non-academic challenges they may face once high school is over.

Along with my opinion on null curriculum, I enjoyed what the article had to say about implicit curriculum, schools teach students soft skills. I would define soft skills as people skills such as how to converse, punctuality, respect, authority, learning to work with others and people who might be difficult to work with, prioritization, etc. We as teachers should be teaching our students to be good and productive members of society. It is important we model behaviour for our students because they look up to us.

This article expanded my views on curriculum because I have never stopped to think about what curriculum should be other than the explicit curriculum. After reading this article, I realized that it is so important to focus on soft skills and life skills in schools. This ties into the BC curriculum through the core competencies. The core competencies focus more on life skills and soft skills rather than just strictly curriculum. While I think we should have a class that explicitly teaches core competencies, they are taught implicitly in our classrooms. This article raised the question of how I can incorporate soft skills and life skills into my own classroom, this is something that I am still trying to figure out and answer. Part of the reason this question is so difficult for me to answer is because our focus in our classrooms is primarily on curriculum which makes it difficult to find the time to incorporate these crucial skills.  

Pro-D Day Reflection

 I attended the BCAMT conference in person. I had an amazing time at the conference and I feel like I learned so much about math education. The three sessions I attended were Helping Students Enjoy Pre-Calculus 11, 12 and Calculus Courses, Standard Based Assessment: Proficiency Levels and Exemplars in Practice, and Curricular Competencies in Secondary Mathematics. I chose these specific sessions (particularly the last two) because my goal is to have a firm grasp on standard based assessment. The idea of using standard based assessment is so new to me and I wanted the opportunity to learn more about it and see how other teachers are approaching standard based assessment. I was surprised to see that veteran teachers are also having a hard time using standard based assessment, which made me realize this is new for all teachers right now and we will all learn together! 

Group Microteaching Reflection

 

Overall, I feel that the group microteaching was successful. I really enjoyed lesson planning for the lesson and coming with my own resources to use while we were teaching. Lesson planning really helped me prepare for how I wanted the lesson to go. I felt like the lesson ended up coming off as a bit of review since we were asking the students for definitions, rather than teaching them the definitions. In the future I want to work on incorporating more interactive activities that are not just practice problems. I also want to work on my confidence in the classroom, because I doubted myself during the lesson when I was teaching how to calculate the median when there are two numbers in the middle, and because I doubted myself I messed up the instruction and taught something that was incorrect. 

Letters from Future Students

Dear Ms. Vaid,

I was in your class 5 years ago and I want to let you know how much I appreciated your teaching method! I liked how in class we focused on why mathematics works the way it does rather than just learning how to plug and chug. It made me view math in a different light and it help me have a deeper understanding of mathematics which helped me so much when I got to university! I also appreciated how encouraging you were to everyone in class, you really made me feel like I could succeed in math class even when I was struggling or doubting myself.

Thank you for everything!

 

Dear Ms. Vaid,

I am emailing you to tell you your class was a waste of time for me. I learned absolutely nothing about math from your class. You kept focusing on why this works and never showed us how to do the problems! I still struggle with math to this day, and I wish you would have focused more on how to solve the problems rather than making us appreciate the “beauty of math”. It was because of your class that I decided to not take any math in university and maybe if you had focused more on showing us how to get the answer as easily as possible, I would have taken math in university.

 

From writing these letters I can say that my biggest worry about becoming a math teacher is students who fall through the cracks. I worry that there will be a student in one of my classes who I cannot support the way I want to, or a student whose needs I cannot understand.  At the same time, I have hope that I can teach students to love and understand that mathematics is not just a set of algorithms and that everyone can succeed at mathematics if they try!

Microteaching Workplace 10 Lesson Plan

 Here is a link to our lesson plan: 

Lesson plan

Microteaching Reflection

 

My microteaching lesson did not go as I planned. I had chosen to teach everyone how to crochet a chain which looking back was too hard of a concept to cover in 10 minutes. I also had a hard time explaining to everyone how to hold and maneuver the hook, which I wasn't expecting to happen. I should have spent more time preparing for the lesson and looking up different ways to hold a hook so I could have scaffolded better. 

Battleground Schools

 The idea of "Math Wars" was interesting to me. It is interesting to see how politics influenced mathematics education. It never occurred to me that politics and mathematics could go hand in hand. It makes me wonder if teachers are involved in the decision of what curriculum should be, or is it just decided by politicians who might not have spent any time in classrooms. 

It was also interesting to see the difference between "conservative" mathematics and "progressive" mathematics. To me, it seems like conservative mathematics focuses more on algorithms and teaching students computation based mathematics rather than teaching why mathematical concepts actually work. Progressive mathematics focuses more on exploratory thinking, it helps students understand mathematics for themselves and actually understand why mathematical concepts work. Additionally, it also helps teachers understand students skills past simple computation. 

Finally, I found the switches between mathematics education interesting. For me it is hard to pinpoint where we are currently in mathematics education, I feel that I was taught with a conservative lens in mathematics even though I graduated in 2018 from high school, which is relatively recent. But from my classes it feels we are moving towards a more progressive lens in mathematics. It is interesting to see this change happening right in front of me, and it makes me think about what mathematics is going to look like even 10 years from now!   

TPI Blog Post

 

From my TPI results I can see that my two strongest categories are Nurturing and Transmission. I am happy with the results I received. Nurturing means that I can understand the struggles that my students experience, and I can encourage them to work past difficulties they might face, additionally it also means that I challenge the students to do their very best. Transmission means I can deliver my content in a way that is concise and easy for the students to understand.

I was surprised that my development score was not higher. I feel that I am working towards understanding the student’s point of view and trying to approach my teaching in a way that is best suited for all my students.

How can I best support my students in their development and understanding of the content? How can I be more of a social reformative teacher?

Microteaching Topic

 I will be teaching the group how to crochet. Specifically the basics of how to hold a hook, create a slip knot, how to hold the yarn, how to yarn over and how to make a starting chain. 

Crochet Lesson Plan

Reflection on Assignment 1

 Our group presented on Serpinski Triangles. We focused on two aspects their design, Cellular Automoton and the use of different cells. Cellular Automoton was taught by showing the class the different rules that generate different triangles, while the concept of creating fractal shapes one level up was taught by having the class play around with physical cells that we cut out.

I really enjoyed this project because I got to see mathematics through a creative light, as someone who is a little terrified of art this project was really a chance for me learn and apply mathematics "outside of the box". I think the most challenging part of the project for me was understand how Cellular Automaton worked, the rules and how the new row is based on the previous row took a long time for me to get the hang of! When I finally understood the concept it was rewarding for me because I was able to translate my mathematical understanding into art which is not something I have experienced before. 

From this project, I learned to embrace the unknown! Sometimes, you might have to teach a concept that is really out of your element, and the best way to do that is to be willing to learn. Additionally I also learned that a lesson may not go the way you planned it to. Moving forward I am hoping to bring literature (specifically picture books) into my classroom, as well as trying to plan lessons that draw connections to topics such as art and science.