My Findings
This project created a great opportunity to develop my own teaching as well as to help students engage in meaningful mathematical tasks. This project helped me to think more critically about how I was teaching and my students were able to be introduced to new thinking routines, activities and concepts. My students benefited from this project, but I think that my teaching practice benefited the most. I learned that I still need to develop my practice, and though I have acquired some skills, they can be developed throughout all of my career. Though my time in PSIII is complete, I plan on using this model of teaching in whatever classroom I end up in.
Planning is key, but it only works if you know your students well
I challenged myself to embrace the mathematical mindset approach and to design lessons that embodied the focus of my PIP. I tried to make math as engaging as possible and this required a lot of planning of engaging lessons and content. With much trial and error, I found some different strategies that worked with my group of kids. This process of learning the types of lessons that would engage my students made me realize that I needed to know and understand them as a group to be able to create lessons that would engage them. I also realized that the lessons I developed for this group might not work with a different group. Knowing your students well is key to being able to develop truly engaging lessons that will reach all of your students.
Try as you may, there will be concepts that seem to be completely out of grasp for your students. It's never impossible to have them reach that learning goal, but it sure can feel that way. But, as the teacher, it is your job to find a new way to teach it to them. I encountered this feeling when teaching long division for the first time. I quickly realized my mistake of beginning with something too challenging for my students and found myself having to backtrack to the basics before my students would be able to have that connection.
You can't force a student's
connection to the concept.
My teacher mentor has worked with our students to develop their growth mindsets. This was put in place in the classroom long before I arrived and it is something that I continued to do as I taught. One thing I learned from this project is that if you want students to have mathematical mindsets, they need to have growth mindsets when math gets challenging. A mathematical mindset does not mean you know everything about math, but that you have the flexibility and resiliency to persevere when it gets tough and that's where the growth mindset comes in.
A growth mindset is essential to develop a mathematical mindset
To restate what Jo Boaler says, no one is unable to do math and no one is unable to learn math. Math is for everyone, regardless of the skills they have in math. Often, our students will have more skills in the subject than they think and those skills appear in creative and different ways. It was my goal to understand how to help students develop their mathematical mindsets, and I think I was able to achieve success in my short amount of time during PSIII, but this project also helped me develop and shape my own mindset around teaching mathematics. It allowed me to learn about my students interests, their likes and dislikes and the areas they needed growth in. My mindset changed from focusing on teaching everyone engaging content to learning about who my students are and how they best learn so they can access the mathematical mindset potential that they are all born with.