My journey through Graduate School to earn a Masters of Art in Education. I was on track to become a teacher, but now everything has changed, and I'm on the job hunt with a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts and a Master's in Education with no teaching certificate.

 
I just lost an entire day's entry. I'm a little pissed at technology right now. I should have seen it coming because I was writing with fluidity and I was really into what I was saying. I knew I'd lose it before I could save it. Anyway, yesterday's frustrations have been addressed to some degree in class. I was satisfied with the changes in the way classes were done.

The second cohort led lesson was about Romeo and Juliet. I really didn't expect to learn anything from these mini lessons. Perhaps I am that egotistical but I really didn't expect to get anything out of them except samples of how teaching works. The lesson was about the balcony scene and one of the prelesson questions was 'How would you feel if someone asked you to change your name?' Now I did change my name in high school but changed it back. I only changed my first name. I did create an alter ego with a new last name but I never took the last name on permanently. My last name was important. Of course in the balcony scene it became clear that Romeo was so much in love that he was willing to give up his name and identity (and possibly his family) for Juliet. That must be a pretty powerful love. We then got some more concrete ideas about an assignment that was vague before and the cause of some complaint. I felt better knowing I had something solid to work with.

The tutoring was amazing. I knew that 'A' disliked percentages. She avoided them. When she found out we were going to focus on them she groaned. We had a frequency table of data in a statistics lesson and we were going to make a relative frequency table, which meant percantages. After a good exploration of what the word means and how percentages, fractions, and decimals are all related she was enthusiastic and said she was going to go home and ask her Dad if he needed any help. From a pedagogical point of view I have no idea what I did to get the lesson across. I hope I discover what happened soon.

For lunch I met with the placement officer about our student teaching. He gave us lots of practical advice and explained our responibilities. He will be going on a month long vacation and so I don't expect to hear anything more about my placement until August. I am supposed to be in the classroom around August 25th or 26th. I won't worry about it. I'll let the placement officer worry about it. That's his job.

Correction. I will worry about it on August 20th.

The last class was tiring. Not for it's subject matter but because it was the end of a long week of classes. We looked at the achievement gap between groups of students. The gap exists either because of race or of socioeconomic status. I don't know which. I don't care either. There is no 'black' way to do math. There is no 'white' way to do math. I see my students as 'Math Lovers,' 'Math Ambivalents,' or 'Math Haters.' I have plans for dealing with all three types.

I'm not saying that the field of Mathematics isn't multicultural. Its history is from all over the world and the story of Math has lots of global roots. I do plan on covering some of that so the students will see math as a bit more personal. I remember wondering 'How does the teacher know that? Who made this stuff up?' as a student. I plan on teaching my kids the answers to those questions. I also plan on using that information to grade them. We discussed ways that as teachers we could help close the acheivement gap. One way is to have a diverse curriculum. Of course, how diverse can the mechanics of math get? I will touch on it's history and the contributors to add diversity and if students need to earn points by writing biographies I'll certainly let them do it. I know that there are benchmarks set by the State, but if a kid hates math and can't relate, I'm not going to get them to a benchmark anytime soon. If I can hook them into the subject, I can teach them.
posted by Josh English at 7/04/2003 07:56:00 AM