As a recent retiree who lived in the world of mathematics for over 30 years and then ended up spending the last few years working with professional development (especially in the area of reading!), I am thrilled to find in my retirement an opportunity to reenter the world of mathematics education. I have been working as a consultant with leaders in mathematics education across the state on implementing effective teaching strategies in mathematics classrooms K - 12. It is interesting to me to look back on the work we did 20 years ago and compare it with our efforts today. I really feel that while we were doing excellent work in teaching teachers good methods and approaches, once the professional development was over, teachers went back to the tried and true methods they had always used. My work in professional development has shown me that what we were missing was the follow-through. We weren't providing enough support to the teachers when they were back in the classroom dealing with all the stresses of today's world of education. My question now is how do we provide that help this time. Where do we find the people and the time to support individual teachers in their quest for quality instruction? How do we overcome the systemic problems that fly in the face of good instruction - schedules that limit mathematics instruction to unreasonably short periods of time; environments that encourage teachers to teach rote learning so children can score well on tests instead of teaching conceptual understanding tied to procedural learning so students can do well on tests AND understand the concepts they are being tested on.
Looking back over my career in mathematics education, I can see we have made mistakes in preparing people to teach mathematics. It often appeared as though mathematics was an either/or situation - know the facts or know the concepts. The "Math Wars" that continue to rage appear to me to be a needless waste of time for all parties concerned. We need to combine forces and find ways to engage all students in critial thinking with appropriate skill-based results.
3 comments:
Neat job, and i love the photo!
Do you think the not following-through led to students not liking math as much?
We didn't follow through with the teachers, so they went back to teaching in a manner that did not emphasize understanding. So yes, in the long run I would expect that could contribute to children not liking math.
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