My Reflection on Assignment #1

I was slightly caught off guard by the fact that our student seems to have a positive view on math. I was honestly expecting a student at such a young age to be somewhat against math. However, our student enjoyed math and understood that the subject can be applied outside the four walls of the classroom. The student is an extremely focused student making it easy for her to shut out distractions in the class. It is important to remember that the student we interviewed is only entering her second year of secondary school math, so thus far she has only be exposed to one high school level math teacher.

I was extremely impressed with our student’s enthusiasm about math, and she seems like a student that you would enjoy teaching. She enjoys learning through the traditional lecture style of teaching as she can take home her notes to reflect on. As teachers we need to realize that not all students will learn best like this, and it is important to work with students in a way where all can be successful. Our student is able to see the connection with math in everyday life, and told us that she uses math outside the class for example when shopping or cooking. I think that this interview showed us that students do not necessarily come into your class with a dislike for math but may develop it through poor experiences in the class.

We ended up interviewing two teachers but there were some distinct similarities and differences in the answers provided by both. I found it interesting that both teachers told us that they primarily lecture, but do attempt to use other collaborative methods for the students. However, you could tell that one of the teachers felt slightly limited at times due to provincial testing but noted that this is changing because the provincial exam is now optional. I would have seem myself in a similar position in that I would have felt as though I had to teach to the test and did not want to jeopardize a student’s future. I think it is important to be inclusive to all students and both teachers understood the questions in different ways but both answers in my opinion need to be included. We must include the students with special needs and also include all students in general.

When assessing students both teachers mentioned tests and homework, but one left it at that while the other mentioned group work and other assessment tools. I think it is important that we use a wide variety of teaching styles, as not everyone will excel on a test where u get one chance. Furthermore, one teacher mentioned that at teams we as teachers need to be the student, I think this is important in that it will make students more comfortable and help us grow as teachers. When looking at the difficulties in teaching math we need to realize that at times it might be difficult to teach math and also at times it’s going to be hard on the students to relate concepts. It is important that we engage the class with fresh teaching methods; we don’t want students getting bored in class because all they do is expect the same thing to happen in every class. We also need to realize that students will have questions and I was told that a typical on is “when are we going to use this?", and that the way we answer this question will tell the students a lot about what we think of the material. So I think it is important that we have a passion for the subject and more so a passion for teaching all of our students.