Shannon

I believe that teaching is more than just lecturing students on what they need to know. It is more than giving student facts they need to memorize and take in as true without question. But rather teaching math in particular is about showing students how they can engage with the content. It is about taking risks, making mistakes, and exploring with the math to find the answers. My classroom is a risk taking, mistake-making classroom where students are encouraged to try everything and to not be afraid of being incorrect. In my own experiences through math class, I felt there was too much emphasis on being correct therefore causing many students to shut down when they did not understand the material at hand. This hindered their ability to grow as learners and made them feel they “were not a math person”. If instead the focus of a math class were on the process and the exploration rather than always on producing the correct answer, many more students would find success. Most importantly, you must get to know your students, know their strengths, know their weaknesses, and not dwell on the negative, but instead work with the positive. Quite often, students become discouraged and lose hope when all they receive is negative feedback after negative feedback. Because of this, I believe in balancing your feedback and remembering to point out the good things too. In my class I always give both positive feedback as well as constructive feedback. For example, on a student’s paper I will start by writing what they did well and what is working and then transition into what they still need to work on. This way I stick to my personal goal of having a classroom where mistakes are normal. I make sure to let my students know that I value their effort as well as offer them ways they can further improve without stressing that they got the answer incorrect. Overall, my philosophy comes down to the idea that every student can learn and it is important to take the stress off being correct or incorrect but instead put the stress on hard work and perseverance.