Reflection 2

So far, this math course has been really great for learning about how to act as a teacher. Last year we focused more on instructional strategies and engaging activities, which was beneficial in our first year. I think focusing on our attitudes and actions this year is a good extension. Many people believe that teaching is just telling students how to do things, but it is so much more than that. It starts with our attitude, which I touched on last week.

This week we talked more in depth about having a growth mindset, which basically means being open-minded and overcoming challenges that occur. It is important to have a growth mindset when doing math because there are many challenges that make the subject frustrating. Both teachers and students need to be open-minded about the problems and be okay with making mistakes. With a growth mindset, making mistakes is a good thing, because we learn from these mistakes and become better. As teachers we need to help our students to have a growth mindset by having one ourselves. We need to model a positive attitude towards the subject, which will hopefully rub off onto our students. 

This video from this week's sessions describes the importance of having a positive attitude about our student's performances. 

 

I will take this important message to heart in my teaching practice. I will encourage my students to succeed. Not only do I have to have a positive attitude about math itself, but towards my students. If I tell them that they won't do well in math class, then they will become discouraged and fail. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is not good in this context. Instead, I need to be encouraging and believe in my students, even when they seem to have given up on themselves. If a student becomes discouraged about a math problem because they found an incorrect answer, I need to change this negative perspective by asking myself and my students how we can take whats right in an incorrect answer. Using a growth mindset I can use the incorrect answer to explain the problem. As a teacher I will accept all answers to further the lesson to make students successful. This will show my students how mistakes are a good lesson for learning and show them how having a positive attitude is beneficial. Hopefully if I believe in them and continue to encourage them to succeed, they will do well. 

For example, in class we were posed with this math problem:

We had to find the which finger we would land on if we counted on our fingers to 1000. It was a challenging question for a few of us, but others figured it out right away. We started by counting to 10 on our hands.

 

Woolley, E. © 2015

I had trouble figuring out how to find out the solution without actually counting to 1000. I did not find the correct solution, I thought it would be the same finger as when you count to 10, but my peers found a different answer. Instead of giving up, I asked for help from my peers. As a team, we were able to figure out the solution and I was able to understand how we solved the problem. I hope to do this in class with my students, so that they are able to be challenged, won't give up, and be able to work together to find the correct solution.