Responding to Edubloggers

This semester, I took some time to get acquainted with some of the Edubloggers (Education Bloggers) out on the web. One of the blogs I came across, through the suggestion of a friend, is Chuck Baker's blog, which can be found here. Mr. Baker is a high school teacher, and one of his classes is AP Statistics, so he does a lot of great posts on that subject. He also does posts on other things math and otherwise school related as well. One of his blog posts that really struck me was called "The Next Step: Re-wrapping Within Your Instructional Context." In this blog, Mr. Baker talks about the struggle between teaching students the conceptual meanings of different math topics vs. teaching them the traditional procedures and leaving the conceptual knowledge up to next year's teacher. He also poses the question of whether or not we always need to situate our lessons in regards to our students' prior knowledge and the school environment.

This question really hit home with me, because it is something I have thought about in my placement. In our education classes at school, our teachers constantly harp on the fact that we need to relate topics back to students' prior knowledge. They grade us on whether or not we explicitly talk about students' prior knowledge in our teaching videos in math methods. While I often believe that this is beneficial to the students, and makes a "new topic" seem less daunting to them when it involves things they have already learned, Mr. Baker makes me question whether this is the best way to go about our teaching. If my students' prior knowledge indicates that I should be teaching them step-by-step procedures instead of allowing them to participate in inquiry-based learning experiences, should I listen to that prior knowledge? Unfortunately, I have to say no. While we should play off of students' prior knowledge whenever possible, I feel like sometimes we are doing so at the expense of our students. All students deserve to be taught the conceptual nature of math instead of just the procedural knowledge. Students may never need to understand how to factor a polynomial in their future job, but I guarantee they will benefit from the inquiry and problem solving skills gained when we approach the topic from a conceptual level instead.

Another blog I came across, thanks to my classmate Vi, is Jose Vilson's blog which you can find here. Jose writes a lot of thought provoking blog posts, especially about race and equality in the classroom. One post that I found particularly interesting was titled "I'm the M.E.T.H.O.D. Man (Classroom Questioning Tiger Style. In this post, Jose talks about the fact that asking questions just because they start with "how" or "why" doesn't necessarily mean we are asking meaningful and beneficial questions. He also gives some of his tips and tricks about how to get students to think for themselves instead of allowing them to frustrate you into giving them the answer. One of his pieces of advice is to take a breath and keep calm when you see students not thinking. At my placement, I have experienced numerous occasions where students simply aren't doing the work. They wait for you to give them the answer, or they don't even care to write down any answer at all. This frustrates me to no end, because my mentor teacher, the other student teacher in the classroom, and I are all willing to help them, and they simply aren't interested in receiving that help. I believe that Jose's advice will give me space to clear my head when this occurs, and hopefully put me in a better place to encourage the students to do the work and come to a solution on their own. Also, Jose responded to my comment almost immediately, and offered to answer any questions I might have in the future, so I think he is a good resource to keep on your list.

I am looking forward to reading future blog posts by both of these Edubloggers, and I encourage you to do the same!