Flow

Flow is an exciting concept. I have felt it before, but I cannot say with absolute certainty as the idea is so abstract yet familiar that I am unsure. I am familiar with flow because when I am doing maths that challenges my abilities enough, I am very focused and enjoy doing it. On the other hand, I have been bored with doing repetitive math or frustrated with problems that I find too challenging.

Similarly, I have also felt flow when I am doing team sports. When my team and I were up against an equally skilled team, we had a lot of fun as there was a back-and-forth between us and the opposing team. Like with my math example, when we are more skilled than the opposing team, we do not have much interest in playing, or when the opposing team is much more capable than us, we give up as it is clear there is a skill gap and winning is impossible.

Bringing out the flow in a math class will be tricky as the student's skill level would vary greatly. The big difference in math abilities makes it difficult for a math teacher to ensure everyone is in flow. One way is to offer a variety of difficulty to the entire class that will hit everyone's sweet spot so everyone can do it. Yet, it is also important not to give everyone the most difficulty as the students who struggle with the fundamental problems would feel discouraged if they can't solve the harder ones, but their peers can. In the end, it also depends on the grade of the class. In Math 8, our goal will be to build math confidence rather than ensure proper knowledge of all the fundamentals. Whereas precalculus 11 will likely be more of the latter with some of the former. As a teacher, we need to know our students, identify the students who are struggling and the exceptional ones, and work around them. When we do, we should capture the flow of most students and give them the best math experience possible.