I am in grade 7 - math is always interesting and it does not let me realize the time that I spend in solving all these questions every day. I keep on working, sometimes I have to redo, but I never give up. I am good at memorizing tables and formulas and also using them during problem-solving. I am doing great, scoring almost 100% in every test and exam.
Now, I am a high school grade 11 student and all of a sudden, math becomes extraordinarily difficult, nothing is making sense to me. What happened? What am I doing wrong? Why am I not excelling and thrilled about math anymore? The teacher comes in the class, fills the blackboard with white chalk and goes on. Math is still my favorite subject but I don’t seem to be interested anymore. Realization -memorization is not working anymore because math concepts are deeper and complex. I need to understand math not to just solve a problem.
A huge transition, learning to teach high school math, and this is when my journey from memorizing to conceptualizing mathematics starts. There are new pedagogical strategies, for example teaching math through inquiry and three-act math etc. It’s a whole new world to me because as a student I have only seen lectures in high school math class. Assessments are not just shaped as quizzes, tests, and exams anymore but there are so many other differentiated assessment strategies for example rubrics, checklists, peer-assessment, and entrance/exit slips that can be used instead of traditional assessment methods like tests, quizzes, and exams.
My Survey results from high school math teachers: A rural high school math teacher says, “Inquiry at the high levels of math doesn’t work in my opinion and if it does, then it takes too much time. It is possible to use inquiry with Work Place & Apprenticeship because there is more time and content driven project opportunity but not with Foundations and Pre-Calculus. Also, split curricula confront practicing adaptations.” The teacher uses a mixture of tests, assignments, and differentiated assessment strategies to assess students. On a Native Reserve, the high school math teacher faces different challenges in his teaching, for example, irregular attendance, less cognitive abilities, underprivileged living to mention a few, that can affect a student’s learning.
During all of these transitions, I felt that a change is required in teaching and assessing math in high school. I agree that there are some circumstances where we do not have the choice to incorporate different pedagogical and assessment strategies and current practices are harder to challenge. But still, we can at least try to adapt them. Then critical analysis of results from these adaptations will guide us to the next plan of action. Students are diverse. The curriculum math streams are also different in nature from each other. Therefore, I think we can not generalize in regards to teaching and assessing math but as teachers, we should always be critically noticing our students’ potential and flexibility to meet the change if/when introduced. These critical observations will provide a great insight as to what practices can be successful with these students. Since we also learn from our students we must always refine our pedagogical and assessment strategies. It is a journey where we can continue to get better as we observe and learn.
In conclusion, I would like to share a great resource Reflections of a High School Math Teacher with readers of my post. Dave Sladkey is a high school math teacher who loves his job and likes to learn new things to become a better teacher. The blog devices a great learning opportunity especially for future educators.
