Interview - Notes

These are my own (unedited, unrevised) notes I made on the tapes of the interview with three high school math teachers.  I thought it might give me some context for the reflection I wrote to go along with this assignment.  All three of the teachers' thoughts are jumbled together but I think knowing who said what isn't important for this interview.  The ideas themselves were important - not who said them.



1. What do you wish someone told you when you were starting?
-you can always take advice
-ask for help
-in first 3 years can get overwhelmed by superficial details; focus on content and being enthusiastic about content, don't worry about making lessons fun and interesting

2. How do you use technology in the classroom?
-know when and when not to use technology
-can be bad to use technology before they understand the concepts (i.e. calculators)
-sometimes makes more clear, sometimes makes less clear
-sometimes making something too concrete makes them reliant on the concrete method and doesn't allow them to gain abstraction skills
-sometimes "fun" learning isn't really learning. They like it but they are not actually learning the concepts.
-technology should be used as help, but not as the main component
-if you use pictures, you might direct their own visuals to something that isn't natural for them and hinder their own creativity and understanding

3. How do you feel about shrinking curriculum?
-shrinking and also weakening (less depth, fewer learning outcomes)
-curriculum made thinking 15% essentials, 15% principles, 70% applications
-so math 8/9 curriculum is too weak if you want students to succeed in principles math, you need to enrich math 8/9 if you want them to succeed
-should view curriculum as not a laundry list of learning outcomes but interconnected topics
-build up missing background in 2 weeks of afterschool workshops available to students
-shrinking curriculum is a response to government wanting everyone to graduate from high school and not caring if they go to univeristy
-we need to innovate, and remake curriculum as we go forward, not stay stagnant
-as a teacher it is easier on the students to have less curriculum that needs to be covered

4. What methods of evaluation do you find work best?
-ongoing feedback, then a test at the end of the unit
-give bonus marks for contribution in class (a good question, a good response, good work in general)
-not participation points, don't give marks if it's not correct or isn't thoughtful
-eg. put problem on board, give bonus marks for first 5 correct solutions from students
-give feedback on right/wrong answers, students learn from right answers AND from wrong answers
-give positive feedback for self-improvement (an improvement on test etc.)
-homework shouldn't be relied on for marks because they are still in the learning phase so why should it be all correct?
-assign homework, check if it's done but don't mark
-if you really want to know how much someone knows, give oral exams
-give students a chance to show what they know without the confines of a specific question
-instead of quiz, you could ask them to write down what they know and what they don't understand so you can teach to it

5. Do you add depth to the course material?
-students do projects on famous mathematicians and touch on other topics in that way
-talk about the history of mathematics
-mention other topics but don't confuse them by going into too much depth; keep focus
-give them ideas to think outside of the box, promote thinking