More thans....

I have been putting a lot of thought into the impact teachers have on their students,  positive and negative, especially at high school level.  We are charged with teaching young adults in math, but we are really teaching them persistence and problem solving skills.   We are looking out for their future - arming them with the skills to succeed.

So every week when I am planning lessons for my courses -- I sit back and remind myself that teachers are more than:
   Spitters of facts
   Demanders of facts
   Discipline junkies
   Responsibility demanders.

I work for the students (not the 16 year old but the 27 year old future adult) -- and what my time machine tells me is the 27 year old wants to make the 16 year old ready for the world.

That is why I talk truly about the skills the world needs.   I worked for over a decade in a STEM capacity and never did Cramer's rule, simplified gigantic exponent expressions or graphed a hyperbola.  But the skills of thinking and researching how to find an answer to a problem I did do.  The skills of thinking and finding an answer I did use to graph a hyperbola.

So the what I am doing is important, but I am careful not to end on the slippery slope of saying Algebra 2 is real life skills by itself, for most students it is simply not true.  That is why I am stuck on the "more than" thought today -- I am prepping students for more than ACT or college math with Algebra 2.  I am making students who are able to not only do the basic facts to be successful in college math but also making them work on projects to make them prepared for their future.

More than....

The more the students do...

As teachers we all seem to agree that the more the students work the more learning that occurs.  Yet we seem to be prepared to lead them step-by-step through mathematical processes, we make them sit and listen to long periods of lecture, we read solutions to homework - we make them sedentary.

So I have been reflecting, planning and working hard to keep them doing math - utilizing the entire 44 minute class period.  Class time is our time for math, I couple that with smaller homework assignments and a constant barrage of "You have to study math" versus assigning problems to grade or check.  But making the class period a power packed period of doing math has been #1!  So no homework grading, lectures are broken into segments with students doing (trying to get to 6 minutes max of me talking).    The goal is to get most of the doing (which is learning) in the class period, where as an instructor I can guide them.

It means not being too helpful though, struggle is okay when guided - when I ride in on my white donkey (budget cuts) to save a student I am most often doing a disservice.  So I constantly remind myself to "be less helpful."

In the end - students need to work more, I need to guide more, "teach" less and I expect better student outcomes. yself to "be less helpful."