Reflection

“Based on the vision you elaborated last week, what role will math instruction play in your classroom and why?  Specifically, what are the mathematical instructional techniques or methods that fit with your vision?  Be as specific as possible.  These can include assessment, planning, or interactive teaching.”

After discussing our classroom visions last week during lecture, I feel as though I should be more specific on what I hope to accomplish as a teacher. I hope that during my time student teaching next year, I develop a list of three of four 'goals' or things I hope to accomplish as a teacher. Within that list, I want to pick one specifically to work on during my first few years having my own classroom. Eventually, I hope to accomplish all the items on this list. If they seem unattainable, I plan on revising them to fit my current classroom or finding a way to make them more attainable. I cannot say what those goals are yet, because I still have a lot to learn and I think that after observing and being in the classroom with my Mentor Teacher, I will have more of an idea of what I hope for my classroom to be like.

I hope to be teaching upper elementary science, so math instruction will most likely play a big role in my classroom. Math and science almost go hand in hand when it comes to school. A lot of the science I will be teaching, will most likely be life sciences, but I still hope to have my students work with math a lot, because they will need it in the future. I hope to know what exactly I will be teaching, and learn how to do that math in a few different ways. If I can teach something from multiple viewpoints, then I think my students will benefit from that greatly. It is important, as a teacher, to understand that everyone learns differently. Something that may be easy for Susie, could be ridiculously difficult for Johnny. The ability to recognize this and come at the math problem from a different approach is key in that situation. 

I think that giving students initial assessments to solving different math problems would be interesting. After collecting them, I could sit down and decipher how each student tried to solve the problems. If I could find a pattern and categorize these students based on the way they solved problems, I could teach to those specific styles of learning. Of course, this is not ideal, and there will most likely be a multitude of different approaches, but just addressing the issue would be interesting to see the outcome.

Teaching math seems to take a lot of planning, because there is more than just putting a math problem on the white board and telling students "solve this." I hope to be understanding and helpful in all ways that I possibly can. I do not want my students to feel uncomfortable to ask me questions, whether it be in front of the entire class or after class in a one on one situation. I want to be available for my students as much as possible to help them succeed mathematically.