CUEBC Pro-D post-conference

For my provincial professional development day, I attended the Computer Using Educator of British Columbia conference at Fleetwood Park Secondary. 

The conference was exciting, and we had an emotional keynote. The keynote speaker is Carol Todd, a teacher at School District 43 and the mother of Amanda Todd. For those unaware, Amanda Todd was a teenage girl who committed suicide in 2012 due to online harassment and blackmail. Many might have seen the YouTube video Amanda posted right before her death, and it was a powerful video of her telling her side of the situation despite all the harassment everyone was directed to her. The keynote was very powerful, and I have nothing to say about it. It brought about the importance of digital tattoos and how once something is on the internet, it will forever be on there.

The first workshop I attended was on building a successful esports program in your school district. The presenter details the benefits he has seen in implementing such programs and how he did it successfully. It gave me a lot of things to think about, as I love playing video games, and the idea of esports slowly becoming more legitimized in Canada is cool.

The second workshop was on robotics for all ages. I learned much about the different robotics products on their market and their pros and cons here. While the presenter had some biases, he showed many cool creations other students made.

The last workshop I attended was about AI and how we can introduce it in a classroom setting. This one was the most enlightening as teachers all chimed in with their experience with AI and how they have tried to work with it so that students can use it but not abuse it. Some of the interesting AI that I have learned is, for Work, there is a text-to-speech function that works wonders, elevenLabs a voice AI which can use your voice and convert text to speech. We also explored the difference between ChatGPT 3.5 vs 4.0 and how to use it with BingChat.

Overall, the conference was a lot of fun, and I had a blast meeting all these teachers.

Three Curicula that all schools teach

At this point in my life, school has been the main thing I have been doing, including elementary school, secondary school, and post-secondary. At this point, I will need to spend another 15 years before I have more time spent as not a student vs as a student. It is impressive and shows how ingrained school is to me and many others, so much so that I feel weird when I have work during winter, spring and summer break. Due to how stuck I am with school, I have also realized how schools tend to ingrain specific ideologies from students. 

Of these ideas, the idea of a competitive world. I spent a lot of my time with people around me asking me what I got on my exams and having my grades compared to one another. To not be too embarrassed, I tried hard to maintain a specific grade point so I did not look like an utter fool. While this has helped me get into post-secondary with ease, I also need to realize that I also trained students in a more negative way than we believe. I have a couple of friends who went into Sauder School of Business, and very quickly, by the end of the second semester, I heard them complaining about how you can't trust your classmates and how most of them are snakes. Due to how competitive everyone is in Sauder, many tend to backstab or ruin their classmates' marks so they can look better in the eyes of employers.

With the change in the curriculum in BC, we are slowly allowing the students to learn more than just content to be competitive in post-secondary. Teachers should now focus on the soft skill that leads to understanding the content rather than teaching the content that leads to developing soft skills. This shift makes students more rounded to think for themselves, be better at communicating and also know how to learn something new best.

Group Microteaching Reflection.

Our group teaching went pretty well as we tried a different approach than having the students sit and listen to us talk the whole time. By having the students come up to the whiteboard, we were able to get the students to practice some of the skills we discussed with the class. With everyone on the board, all the students had to try a simple problem out with one of our methods or a method they felt comfortable doing. Having the students come to the whiteboard allowed us to see if any students were struggling with the content. The cons were the class ended up being a bit too chaotic with everyone on the board, which was a bit hard to control. Yet, trying new things is great as I explore new ways to teach rather than staying safe with everything.

Group Microteaching lesson plan

 

Post Microteaching #1

It was a very successful first microteaching in EDCP 342A, and I am pleased with how it went. I pulled the card trick off without anyone realizing I did a sleight of hand. But, with all my microteaching, I always choose topics that are hard to fit within the time limit. As a result, it is a very tight fit, making it hard for me to slow down with my lesson. A common issue with all my teaching so far is that I need to rush too much. This rushing is usually the case as I try to fit in with the time limit given to me, so I feel flustered and rush through my lesson in hopes I reach the end by the end of the time limit. For future micro-teaching, I suggest I do a more manageable topic that does not require the need to reach the end of the time limit. This choice of topic will allow me to slow down and better understand what is doable in a specific time frame.

Battleground School and Change

I have always known that politics is significant in determining schools' curriculum. However, I have yet to realize the extent to which global issues pushed specific reform in mathematics education. Given many of these issues' distance, it is hard to feel their effects thoroughly. Despite only experiencing schooling in the mid-2010s, I have seen a drastic change in education. One of the most significant changes I have felt is the reduction in standardized testing. My year was the last batch of students to write the pre-calculus 10 provincial exams and the social studies 11 provincial exams. Since I have been graded on all sorts of things, I never really thought much about it, as up until then, my teacher made us write the final exam. However, I recently discovered that teachers no longer administer final exams to grades 8 and 9 students. Writing these high-pressure final exams has prepared me well for post-secondary as they helped me develop good study habits to ensure I can finish my exams successfully. With this shift, we are not assisting students to prepare for a high-stakes exam, as they will not be used to it. As a teacher candidate with only experience as a student, I sometimes need help understanding the purpose of changes. Until I have more experience as a teacher, my bias with a lack of experience will push me to prefer the old style more than the new. However, change is sometimes good as culture changes, and everyone, even the educational system, must adapt.

---------- Nov. 6, 2023 (Add-on) ----------

As a recent student, I understand the stress of balancing a load of homework and the need to relax. Rather than hammer my classes with homework, I allocate enough class time for students to finish all their homework in class. It will allow the students to spend in-class time asking questions if they need help with the topic. Homework is only helpful for students who know how to approach the questions. If we assign homework and the student already has issues doing them, then what's the point in giving them if they need help solving them? Thus, if students spend class time working on these questions, then it will be apparent to them if they have any questions, and they can ask right away.

While rereading the "Battleground School," the point of math phobia steaming from elementary never really crossed my mind during my initial read. However, after discussing with my SA about why many students coming from elementary have such below-average maths ability, it clicked. Of the points brought up, one of the main reasons why many students struggle with math phobia is their elementary teacher's inability to engage the students in math properly. They either avoid teaching maths altogether or hand out drills, which lowers the student's math confidence. As a result, most of Math 8 should not be used to assess student's knowledge of curricular content but instead should help build their math confidence.

Another exciting point brought up in the reading was related to the need for specialist math teachers at the secondary level. So far, I have yet to see this issue affecting any of the schools that I have seen, but I can assume that for more rural parts of the country, there will be a lack of math specialists. However, I can also say the same with topics like computer science and specific sciences, as many do not want to move to rural parts of the country to teach.

TPI reflection

After finishing my TPI, apprenticeship takes the lead with the most dominant trait as a teacher. The reason apprenticeship is such a dominant trait is due to how I want to teach computer science. I aim to introduce my students to coding and get them interested so the new generation is more aware of the technologies they use. As a computer science teacher, this ideal will likely influence my ideas as a math teacher, where I want the students to apply what they have learned to some real-world application. My two traits, developing and nurturing, are close to apprenticeship, but looking at the BIA, some apparent gaps need to be addressed. Unlike an apprenticeship where the BIA is within 2, here, the BIA is greater than 3. This gap indicates that these traits are likely to fluctuate over time since actions, in most cases, are low compared to belief or intention. On the other hand, looking at my recessive trait, social reform, I notice how the BIA are all very close together. The tightly packed BIA tells me it will be hard to change my perspective on that trait.

Social reform, being my recessive trait, is surprising, yet at the same time, not. When I think logically as a mathematics teacher, not much social reform will come out of maths. Most of the content in the classroom is meant to help students build more skills for more advanced mathematics classes. Yet, I want to change how my classroom is run from a traditional classroom. This change includes changing the questions being asked on exams, how students are assessed for their knowledge, how lessons are taught, and classroom activities to help reinforce learning (not only through homework). These changes entail some form of social reform, as the primary goal here is to change how classrooms are run and the end goal of specific math classes. However, social reform can be more easily seen in other subjects such as english, humanities, and sciences, as many of the discussions in class can be more related to global issues that teachers can bring up and start a conversation with the class.

On the other hand, most math classes need to complete a packed curriculum so that students can proceed to more advanced maths. This makes it harder to go off-topic to discuss global issues if there is a way to tie that social content with math content. I would love to discuss more in-depth how a teacher can better implement social reforms in a math classroom setting.

Microteaching #1

 For my microteaching I will teach my group how to do a card trick.

Lesson Plan for MicroTeaching 1

Updated lesson plan