Hey Mr.Tse,
I appreciate your attempts to make math more fun and accessible for all students in class, but sometimes, we don't take math to enjoy it. Instead, some of us take it as a graduation requirement. I did not feel engaged in any of your classes, and in the end, I felt more lost than anything else. I preferred if you taught like all the other teachers, how we can solve the questions and that's it. All the extra fluff caused me not to understand the concepts next year, which caused me to fall behind in math. Thanks for ruining my chances of getting into university.
Student X
One of my biggest fears is that because I wish to teach math more relationally than instrumental, I would end up with students not caring about my lesson as they treat math as a mandatory class to enter university. Also, as I want to vary up my class and not heavily rely on pure classroom lessons and on some outdoor teaching or vertical class time to teach lessons, many students might not be ready for a shift, especially if all they have experienced in math is the idea of copy notes, doing homework, and doing exams.
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Hey Mr.Tse,
I want to let you know that your class has really changed my views on math. While most teachers still teach in the traditional ways, I really appreciate your varied teaching methods to encourage more learning from us. This made me always want to show up to class as I am no longer always sitting in a stuffy classroom listening to the teacher go and go about things. You made math to be more than just memorizing numbers. While I did not score the highest marks in your class, I appreciated the use of math/logic puzzles in your class. I never got many of them on the first try but I did try my hardest and it helped me develop a more logical thinking method which I thought only smart people did.
I hope you keep up the good work best wishes,
Student X
As I change how we approach math in classrooms, one of the biggest things I want to accomplish is encouraging more students to explore different ways to solve problems. I also want to help students foster a growth mindset in my class and never feel too down when they struggle with something. While I understand that most people take higher levels of math in high school for university, I also want students to be willing to try and fail yet finish the course like they have learned something regardless of the mark they finish the class with.
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As I look at my strengths and weaknesses, my worries stem from a sense of imposter syndrome about whether I should be qualified to teach in a classroom. After I start my teaching career and build confidence, my response to this activity would be very different as I would better understand how students react to certain things. As of now, a lot of what I imagine is what I have experienced as a student in high school and post-secondary. Yet, my idea of changing the way students are taught math will be a tough challenge to reach, so I hope that I am prepared to start slow with the changes. As I have been told, year 1 is for survival, year 2 is for change, and year 3 should be smooth sailing.
Thanks for this honest and in-depth thinking and writing, Jacky. I really appreciate the struggle to move to new ways of doing things, while keeping the best of familiar ways. My suggestion: try changes in manageable, small increments at first (for example, add one low-stakes math project and one outdoor math experience for most of your classes in your first and second year). Once you feel confident that these are working well, add a second of each in each of your classes the next year. By year 5, you might have one project per semester and a few extra-cool new activities for each of your classes -- and these will add to your confidence in bringing in more Thinking Classroom work too. Take it bit by bit, and don't throw away the familiar 'telling' and practicing, but gradually balance it out with more participatory work.
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