- Posted at 3:28 pm on Thu, Dec 1, 2011
@Danmagie had a neat idea for the next round of postings, he suggested that we take a moment to think about how we have changed as teachers. I need to take more than a moment to actually comprehend just how much I have grown, developed my skills and fallen even more in love with this job but I'll start with this little story.....
The basic answer lies in my title. I've slowed down. But I don't mean physically and I don't mean it at all negatively. I mean that I've become confident enough in my own ability and in the ability of my students, that I have been able to slow down my lessons so that each and every student has the opportunity to dig themselves in really deep into the core concepts and ideasof mathematics. The objectives in my units aren't for me, they aren't check boxes that I need to tick each time I deliver a lesson. The objectives are for the students and they are check boxes that I need to tick when I feel confident that the student will recall that skill or idea or concept either later in life or the very next day. Maybe it seems obvious to you? But I am recalling a time when I was 23 years old and I powered through my units. I hurled myself through the finish line beaming from ear to ear at the wonder and awesomeness of the quadratic formula while 20 kids sat with tears pooling in the corners of their eyes that were screaming silently "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN?!?"
OK, so maybe they weren't crying but perhaps they should have been!
So 8 years on and I don't really need to slow down any more because I'm not setting myself (or my students) up to fail. I no longer try and convince myself that I need to have students mastering the binomial theorem in 50 minutes. I know how long things take and I know that I need some buffer room to allow for tangents, real life organic tangents that give my students the opportunity to dig themselves in really deep into the core concepts and ideas of mathematics.
How have you changed?
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