Math Identity Blog - Entry 2

Mathematics Identity Blog Entry 2 – Stepping into Teaching

Please post to your blog by 9AM. Thursday 9/16/10

Your blog is your voice as a teacher. It should show your journey as you create your own mathematics teacher identity, and will be something you can always pull from later on in your career so you can see what you were learning and reflecting on as you were just beginning to think about teaching.
Try to make your entries as visual as possible. This means taking photographs of your classroom and the things you observe, and then writing about why you posted that photograph and what it represents.
And remember, because of FERPA regulations, please do NOT take photographs that identify students or student work. That means don’t take pictures of their faces, or anything that has their name written prominently. And of course, make sure your CT and your students are completely okay with you taking pictures first.
Please take photographs liberally to answer these. You do not have to answer the questions exactly, but use them to guide the photos you take and then to write about what’s going on in the photographs and why you thought to present it on your blog.


1. Take pictures of your school, your classroom, and some of the things that you notice. What is your initial impression of the school? What’s on the walls? What’s going on in the hallways? What’s the culture like? 

2. What’s going on in the classroom during math? What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? What topics are being covered? How are the students engaged? What are you doing?

3. What do you know about your teacher’s beliefs regarding mathematics learning? Do you agree with them? How do you know? What are artifacts that help you understand what your teacher believes? What do you disagree on? How if your own mathematics identity emerging?

4. What are you wondering about in terms of your own mathematical teacher identity? What are you worried about in your teaching? What would you like your peers (or whoever else reads your blog) to notice? What do you think you need advice/help on?

Responses to the readings - Week 2

Please post your responses to this week's readings on your blog. Please use your books and the articles as references. Use the terminology and the ideas from the readings in your answers. Point to specific examples in the reading by providing page numbers.

1. How does taking a problem-solving approach to teaching math differ from first teaching children the skills they need to solve problems and then showing children how to use those skills to solve problems?

2. How do you think your experiences, feelings, and beliefs about math will impact the kind of teacher of math that you will be or the kind of teacher of math that you want to be?

3. Not everyone believes in the constructivist-oriented approach to teaching mathematics. Some of their reasons include the following: There is not enough time to let kids discover everything. Basic facts and ideas are better taught through quality explanations. Students should not have to "reinvent the wheel." How would you respond to these arguments?

4. We sometimes want to jump in and help strugglng students by saying things like, "It's easy! Let me help you!" Is this good idea? What is a better way of helping a student who is having difficulty solving a problem?

5. Reflecting on how tasks were defined in the Van de Walle chapters, how did the tasks presented in the Behrand article to Learning-Disabled students help in their mathematical development? Please give specific examples.

Blog Roll looking good

So, as students are putting together their first entries, their Math Stories, this blog roll on the right is looking pretty nice! Check out all the great math stories by clicking and reading!

Welcome

Hello. How's it going?
My name is Teddy Chao. I'm a mathematics educator.

Welcome to my new blog all about mathematics teaching. I'm going to call it Teaching Is It Yo.

I started my teaching career at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, New York. I taught 7th and 8th-grade math, as well as ran after-school digital filmmaking and web design classes. That was back in 2003, and I had my middle school students using Xanga to write about their lives.

Through this blog, I hope to share and explore my own ideas about what it means to be a math teacher. I also hope to get deep into my own teacher and teacher educator identity. What does it mean to me personally to work with math teachers? Why do I do it? Why is it important? And why math?

This blog also serves as a sort-of "hub" for my students in the Elementary Mathematics Methods course at The University of Texas at Austin. We will be working on a project together to explore our own mathematics identities. I have to laugh at the fact that I'm essentially doing the same project with undergraduate students that I did with my middle school students 8 years ago.

Stay tuned.

Teddy