Teaching is not like any other profession in the world. There is not user manual that helps you deal with 30 different types of personalities on 30 different hormones that are dealing with 30 different types of life situations. This uniqueness inside the classroom allows teachers to explore constant innovation within the classroom. However with poor publicity of "schools failing students" what are we doing wrong? Better asked what am I an high school math teacher doing wrong?
I hear it all the time, students need to discover mathematics, students need to be active learners, students need to relate to the material, give it meaning, students need to be challenged, students need more assistance, students need better use of technology, students need more discipline, students need more love and trust, and best of yet students need more opportunities to learn. So where does a young educator like me start?
I would like to say that I have believed, and attempted to master education by applying these principals to my teaching skills. I have experience minor exictment as I witness change and success but frown when I struggle to maintain growth and results from my students.
So are these principals all flawed? Do my students even need me? Do my students even need math education anymore? Why is everything we try in education not working for the long term? Sure people and schools have success but in the end nothing seems to be the "magic bullet".
I surveyed my students and asked them what they disliked most about, math, math class, or school. They had three choices.
A. It does not relate to what I need to know
B. It is hard or time consuming
C. It is boring, not engaging
I hoped to find a answer here, something I could pin down and begin to start working on. I asked this question to my Algebra 1 and Pre-Calculus students. Two classes that have students with very different math experiences. However their responses were earie similiar. They evenly selected every response. There was not one reason that they chose for their distaste for school or education.
This got me thinking. What is it? Why is it I am not getting the results out of my students that I so desire? I began to think about how I was motivating my students and realized that I was not meeting all of their needs. Every person has four basic needs as described by Stephen Convey. To live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. Most of my motivation to my students within the classroom was for them to live. No I did not threaten their life, but what I did do was motivate them to do the work in my class so that they would survive. So that they would get good grades and pass high school or go to college. I motivated them to meet their parents expectations for them.
This is a very traditional approach of schooling. While it works great for some students and can work well on a lot of students for a short period of time. It is not long term. I ended up loosing many of my students motivation by the first quarter with this technique. They would not resort into taking retakes, extra credit, cramming, doing whatever they needed to get by but would not take the active approach to do well in my class. Their actions quickly showed in school.
So what about the next motivation of love. Well love is used to express a relationship. While love might not be the best word to describe a teacher student relationship this need is still there. Students seek acceptance from their teachers. They seek to have a relationship based on trust. They want to like their teacher and relate to their teacher. Many great teachers do a very good job in this area as they are able to relate to all of their students. I always felt I could create good bonds with my students. I started to fall apart when I would not continue making deposits in my students accounts. When I stopped having personal conversations with students or intervening when students were not paying attention or doing what they supposed to be doing I started to loose the student. The simple motivation I had on them being concerned about how I felt about them would start to fade around the second semester. I did not do this intentionally. I wanted my students to become interdependent, so I started allowing them to make their own choices and allow the consequences to affect them negatively and positively.
Every student has the motivation to learn. Why is it they are not concerenced about mathematics. What about the students that I have met their needs to live and love but not their needs to learn. They need to be remeinded everyday why they are learning what they are learning. Why it is important and how they can use it later in their life. We do not need to include math word problems of life situations that students will never encounter, but present the thinking process behind the math process or topic. Relate thinking and learning to real life. Why are operations so important?
We do a very bad job of this as math educators. It seems to me we either sway one side or the other. We either do not show any way that a math topic relates to real life or we try to show how life is made up of math but fail to prepare the student with the practice and rigor of mathematical processes for them to continue to the next math topic. If I havn't lost students by not, here is where I usually will lose them. They do not have their needs met and this is usually the last straw. I do not even get the opportunity to motivate them with legacy.
What are they going to leave behind. Why are they here? What will people and me think about the math that they created. What is the purpose of all of the work that they have done? What is the reason? When they look back they need to be proud of what they did. I don't feel I have met this need for many of my students but then again I don't see that I have had too many students with all of their needs met lost at legacy.
I just had to write out my thoughts and put them on paper. Please visit my webpage at www.freemathvideos.com