Professional Development in Progress
Being a first-year teacher in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis has definitely presented its challenges for me. Instead of preparing to instruct my students face-to-face during the summer of 2020 like I had done in preparation for my internship year, I had to adjust my lesson plans and activities to teach in a virtual format. Since the beginning of the 2020 school year I have been holding virtual math classes for 9th and 10th graders via zoom. My future goals focus on learning more useful technologies that can be implemented into my classroom for teaching mathematics, revising my current teaching practices, and gaining more knowledge about ways to increase student interest and engagement in my classroom. These are goals are currently the most relevant and useful to me at this point in my career.
Effective Math Lessons with Technology
I am very motivated to learn more about how to use technology to become more effective at engaging and teaching students. Given the fact that technology is in the forefront and is now a part of my everyday teaching I decided to learn two new tools, graphic tablet and document camera, at the same time and alternate them to prevent monotony in my lessons. I currently teach high school Algebra and Geometry virtually via zoom to students Monday thru Friday. Mathematics learning requires modeling, argumentation and reasoning, attention to precision, and many more skills that are practiced in the classroom. A lot of these practices are learned most effectively through physical activities. One example of this is a lesson on constructing geometric figures and exploring measures of their angles. In the near future I would like to take the course CEP 805 Learning Mathematics with Technology at Michigan State University. This course is geared towards analyzing cognitive and social processes of learning mathematics, through interactions of technology and school content.
2. Improving my Practice
Since teaching is an ongoing practice it is imperative that I seek to continually observe and reflect on my daily teaching methods and classroom management, and make the necessary changes to improve my overall ability to effectively teach. In addition to taking the course CEP 805 for future study, I would be interested in taking , TE 861C Action Research in K-12 Science and Mathematics Classrooms. This course as it is described on the MSU College of Education web page is designed to provide educators with methods and philosophy that support action research in their own science and mathematics classroom. They engage in analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on the study results and reflect on their findings. This course will serve the purpose of helping me to “refine” my current skill set and provide me with more insight into my own strengths and weaknesses.
3. Increasing Student Engagement
Student engagement is quite a heavy topic in the education world. Without engagement student learning cannot take place. The area that I am seeking to learn the most about is how to boost and maintain student attention in the classroom to increase learning. Dave Burgess, the New York Times Best-Selling author of , Teach Like a PIRATE, gives helpful insight into how to increase student engagement, boost creativity in the classroom, and increase professional development. I am currently in the process of reading his book and have learned some helpful strategies for building rapport with students. One of the strategies he expounds on is using informal time as a way to connect with students. Some of these include informal moments include: using the minutes between classes to speak with students, speaking as you pass by a student in the hallway, and making conversations with students during lunch. These may seem like small gestures; however, students can tell whether teachers are genuine or not if they are only available to them in the classroom. Yes, I have exercised one or two of these moments with my students, at times, but I have realized building relationships takes time and continued effort. I plan on finishing reading his book to learn more useful strategies surrounding engagement and watching his TEDtalk which summarizes heavy-hitters and take-aways from the book.