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I began my teaching career four years ago and will soon be entering my 5th year in education. When I started down my educational path, I never thought I would end up in a middle school math classroom being trained in elementary. In fact, I had actively avoided middle school positions for over a year. In my search for a teaching position, I interviewed for, and accepted, a position as a math teacher at a middle school in the Napa Valley. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I would fall so in love with both my subject and the age I was assigned to teach; 7th grade.
I met this new challenge head-on and dove deep into pedagogy, standards, and devoured every bit of knowledge I could find about how to teach this subject that seemed so daunting. My school was also an International Baccalaureate (IB) school and had a multitude of its own standards and grading methods that I suddenly needed to become an expert on. I credit the IB requirements for sculpting my entire view on good teaching practices, especially when it comes to teaching math. Any other school and I likely would have ended up going page by page through a textbook in hopes of just surviving my first year.
Through learning and implementing the IB requirements, my pedagogy was heavily influenced. I came to believe deeply in hands-on mathematics that both explored the application and the calculation aspects of the subject. I have a very deep-rooted belief that every student is capable of being successful in mathematics, even though it might take some students a little bit longer. All students have that potential and will absolutely rise up to your expectations when they are clear and scaffolded and given the support that they need to succeed. I believe in a mix of different types of assessments with projects and alternative methods of showing growth and knowledge at the end of a unit.
It wasn’t until my third year that I really started finding ways of teaching and exploring math that seemed to be working. In my fourth year, I entered the Innovative Learning master’s program and decided to put to test some of the methods I had felt had made a difference in the short time I had been teaching. I decided to completely change everything I had been teaching to really test out some of the theories I had surrounding math education and the focus on technology was a contributing factor to my choice in this program.
I met this new challenge head-on and dove deep into pedagogy, standards, and devoured every bit of knowledge I could find about how to teach this subject that seemed so daunting. My school was also an International Baccalaureate (IB) school and had a multitude of its own standards and grading methods that I suddenly needed to become an expert on. I credit the IB requirements for sculpting my entire view on good teaching practices, especially when it comes to teaching math. Any other school and I likely would have ended up going page by page through a textbook in hopes of just surviving my first year.
Through learning and implementing the IB requirements, my pedagogy was heavily influenced. I came to believe deeply in hands-on mathematics that both explored the application and the calculation aspects of the subject. I have a very deep-rooted belief that every student is capable of being successful in mathematics, even though it might take some students a little bit longer. All students have that potential and will absolutely rise up to your expectations when they are clear and scaffolded and given the support that they need to succeed. I believe in a mix of different types of assessments with projects and alternative methods of showing growth and knowledge at the end of a unit.
It wasn’t until my third year that I really started finding ways of teaching and exploring math that seemed to be working. In my fourth year, I entered the Innovative Learning master’s program and decided to put to test some of the methods I had felt had made a difference in the short time I had been teaching. I decided to completely change everything I had been teaching to really test out some of the theories I had surrounding math education and the focus on technology was a contributing factor to my choice in this program.
Reflections on your Journey
My journey was a rocky one. After second (and third and fourth) guessing myself on my focus for my research for this program, I finally landed on the thing I was most passionate about: engagement in Mathematics. While I was aware of a lot of the technology presented in the classes of this program, it really gave me the opportunity and the excuse to spend time to dig deep into it. It also gave me an excuse to work my way towards a mostly paper free classroom.
This past spring semester was one of the most difficult in my career. We had a tragedy at our school followed by week after week of bombshells from our district including a massive layoff of teachers. And then the unthinkable happened...COVID19 asserted itself into our lives. All schools in the state were suddenly closed everything screeched to a halt. Due to restrictions about how and what we were to teach for math, all of my research had to stop. Thankfully, partially due to this program, the transition to online instruction was incredibly smooth as I already had in place a multitude of technology based procedures and new tools I could implement from this program.
If I am able to teach math again in the future, I will continue to implement the research and methods I used in this research program and I would begin my routines and procedures with the methods I was exploring right before school closed down, having students complete worksheets in an online format in order to work with small groups on deeper level cognitive tasks and reteaching skills for students who needed the extra help.
This past spring semester was one of the most difficult in my career. We had a tragedy at our school followed by week after week of bombshells from our district including a massive layoff of teachers. And then the unthinkable happened...COVID19 asserted itself into our lives. All schools in the state were suddenly closed everything screeched to a halt. Due to restrictions about how and what we were to teach for math, all of my research had to stop. Thankfully, partially due to this program, the transition to online instruction was incredibly smooth as I already had in place a multitude of technology based procedures and new tools I could implement from this program.
If I am able to teach math again in the future, I will continue to implement the research and methods I used in this research program and I would begin my routines and procedures with the methods I was exploring right before school closed down, having students complete worksheets in an online format in order to work with small groups on deeper level cognitive tasks and reteaching skills for students who needed the extra help.
TPACK Reflection
TPAK is in everything I do as a teacher. I understand how important technology is in this ever-changing world. Though it may seems as though students have a grasp on technological skills because they have grown up with it (whereas ours and previous generations had access during middle school age at best), they really do not. We cannot let our own preconceptions leave students in ignorance of some of the most basic critical technology skills. Students may be able to do things with technology you couldn't even fathom was possible, but when it comes to the basic skills such as typing, formatting a document, using a spread sheet, they are often clueless and need our guidance.
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning program
While next year I will not be teaching math, when I do eventually get to teach it again, many of the methods I explored during this program will be implemented in my practice. These methods cemented my pedagogy much further and will continue to be utilized in every subject I teach.
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