In one of my classes I have to write a paper about how to improve mathematics instruction at a real school, with real people, and real time constraints. Help? I took this class precisely because I wanted to attempt to put my knowledge into practice and come up with a plan for a school, and…
read more »My awesome office mate who helped me pass statistics last semester got engaged in the Pelham Math debates and wrote a Rubenstien-esque statistical analysis of the studies used to justify removing a particular curriculum from the schools. Here are his thoughts: So I have several issues about this article that was posted by the PMC.…
read more »At the risk of writing another critical post about math education, and potentially coming off like I think I know it all(grad school just teaches you how much you don’t know), I’m going to complain about mathematicians who think they have expertise to pass judgement on elementary curriculum. They have a bit more understanding of…
read more »Who is getting attention in math education right now? Khan Academy. Mathalicious. Dy/Dan. Flipped Classrooms. There are some reasons that each of these solutions to some of the issues math education faces are good things. 1. Khan-he has a BS in math from MIT so he understands math better than most high school teachers. 2.…
read more »I went to a panel on Common Core Standards in DC this weekend led by Bill Schmidt at Michigan State University. He’s involved in Common Core assessment design and research on teacher’s implementation of Common Core. He was excited by the possibilities of collaboration around coherent standards but still the tone of the discussion he…
read more »Sometimes I curse my graduate professors for enabling me to see the issues in math education so clearly. It makes me feel a great weight of responsibility. Of course, most math educators believe that they see the issues clearly and their ideas are the solutions to the problem so I may just be deluded. But…
read more »Recently I’ve been informed that there are Kipp school opportunities to become a principal of a school and continue helping the achievement gap… however in the fine print it states that you must have 2 years experience in K-12 to be eligible. Thank you TFA for once again screwing your Pre-K corps members over. Instead…
read more »I was just browsing through videos of teachers implementing the Common Core standards and found on one proportions that I thought was worth mentioning here. Some of the Calculus students I work with still struggle with proportions. When I say struggle, I don't mean that they don't know how to cross multiply, but that they…
read more »It’s amazing how right Vicki was all those years ago. I wish she was still around to share her good advice with the world. She wrote something on my post Exhaustion that I couldn’t have possibly understood until much later. This is what I’d written: I’m sitting in my classroom. There are many things to…
read more »When I was in college perfection meant getting A’s. It meant getting the jobs I applied for. It meant continually making progress at sports and getting my body to do what I wanted it to with not too much effort. In TFA I had to redefine perfection because my old definition was so hard to…
read more »
Teach For Us thanks our national sponsor for its generous support
