I had my first Math Department meeting for 2011 on 30 Dec 2010. During the meeting, as part of my plan to start a reading culture in the department and to help the Math teachers to do their reflections, I shared with all the Math teachers an extract from Judy Willis’s book on “Learning to Love Math: Teaching strategies that change student attitudes and get results”. I chose the first chapter of the book, “Reversing Math Negativity with an Attitude Makeover” in which one of the strategies suggested is “Start the Year Showing That You Care”. I feel that this is just the right topic to start the teachers off before they see their Math classes since care is one of the core values of our school. In addition, pupils need to feel the care from the teacher in order to like or even love the lessons conducted by the teacher.
As I highlighted some parts of the article, I see some of the teachers nodding their heads. Wow, I felt good as I have managed to share something useful and meaningful to them. This, I hope, can help to them be more motivated in their teaching of Mathematics, believing more in their pupils and eventually helping pupils get rid of their negative attitudes towards the learning of Mathematics.
I will be purchasing 15 of these books for the Department so that some of the Math teachers in the Department can have a copy of the book to start their readings and do their reflections based on the readings. I will continue to share extracts from the book to the teachers during departmental meetings or even get some of the teachers to share after their readings.
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2 comments:
This is really heartwarming to hear that your teachers relate to the article you have chosen. As social beings, we humans need inspirations like these stories to motivate us, redirect our focus, or to reaffirm our calling.
To enable your teachers to lead and internalise these principles from the book, you could invite them to share a particular section for each department meeting.
And beyond being motivated, teachers need the ability to set clear learning outcomes that are measurable (or assessable), assess for learning to take place, differentiate the instructions, and intervene accurately. These comes with enhanced knowledge of Maths learning, not teaching. i.e. teachers need to know fully how each (different) pupil will learn Maths well.
Press on with your work with your department as they continue to reflect (in Facebook, really cool) on their practices. Would be great if you could direct their reflections to more fruitful thoughts or ideas that can be used by all.
This is a great start to a great year.
I like your idea of getting the department members to read and share their thoughts on the read, as it is definitely a way to expand their knowledge besides being able to hear from "another voice". Normally we tend to own the knowledge we acquire from a book or article because we read it ourselves, not someone telling us. We also tend to reflect more on our past actions when we read, and change for the better, without being defensive.
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