Monday, April 1, 2013
Weekly Blog Post
This week, due to spring break for most districts, I was unable to go to my placement and obtain a sample of student work. For that reason, I will use this post to reflect on my development as a mathematics instructor thus far. To be honest, I was terrified when I would think about having to teach a math lesson to my placement classroom this semester. Math has never been my strongest subject, and I always thought, "If I don't understand what I'm doing, how am I going to be able to teach it to 1st grade students?" Though this is true, I feel that 402 has made me more comfortable with the subject of math in general. Completing the daily tasks in class helps me to understand the content of the task, as well as how students may respond to the task. This helps my teaching because I can either choose to give all responsibility to the students to solve the task, then talk about how they came up with the answers they did, or I can steer them towards the method I want them to use to solve the task to try to avoid confusion. I think that this is a large part of teaching, especially math, and this class has helped me realize that teaching math is not something to be afraid of and that once the techniques are learned, it is very possible, and even fun to do so!
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I think the biggest misconception about teaching in general, but especially math teaching, is that the teacher knows everything. This is bad because a) students don't learn by the teacher "telling" them how to do or understand something, and b) this puts a lot of pressure on the teacher to be right all of the time. In reality, the most effective instruction comes from encouraging the students to the think and explore the content in their own ways.
ReplyDeleteIn this design, the role of the teacher is still incredibly important, but not so much as the sage with all of the answers, but rather as the adult who helps to support and encourage students' explorations. Of course, the teacher still needs to know what she is doing, but there is less pressure to be all-knowing and flawless because the focus is less on what the teacher knows and more on what the students are thinking.