{"id":27,"date":"2015-02-17T13:32:30","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adultnumeracyatterc.wordpress.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2015-02-17T13:32:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:32:30","slug":"the-journey-of-teaching-math-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/the-journey-of-teaching-math-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Journey of Teaching Math – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Pam Meader<\/p>\n

Today the snow is falling outside and we are all hunkered down for a big storm. For me, it is a time to be reflective of where I have been on this journey called math education. A few weeks ago, Marilyn Burns, a well-known math educator in the K-12 world, started a blog and her first entry was about her experience as a math teacher. I couldn\u2019t help but connect to her story, as I felt like she was describing my journey as well.<\/p>\n

I started college in 1970 with the intent of becoming an elementary school teacher. However, when course registrations for freshmen began, I was closed out of most of my required courses \u2014 even courses for a minor in math. I was beside myself, but a nice professor came to my rescue and offered to take me into his Foundations in Functions class even though I had not had calculus and (at that time) was not a math major. He even made special tests for me that excluded the calculus component. While taking the course, I discovered my deepening love for mathematics. When second semester rolled around, I changed my major to secondary math and my math journey began.<\/p>\n

In her blog, Marilyn Burns reflected on how college mathematics courses were tough for her, just as they were for me. Nothing connected for me in the courses, but fortunately I was a good memorizer and would spend hours memorizing procedures for various exams. I passed all my required courses but really carried very little understanding or knowledge with me when I graduated. To make matters worse, our Teaching Methods class was just teaching a lesson to our peers; there was no discussion of pedagogy that I can remember and very little connection to the reality of teaching.<\/p>\n

I was hired as a high school teacher right out of college. I was barely older than some of my senior students and the reality of teaching hit me head on. Like Marilyn, I started teaching like I had been taught: in a very procedural way. But, I did walk around and check on students\u2019 work and was always available for extra help. Then came the first quiz I gave to my freshman class and \u2014 they all failed. That was my wake up call. I knew there had to be a better way to reach my students. I had discovered one problem was that the students didn\u2019t even know how to read a math text or use it to help prepare for tests, and so that summer I took a course called Teaching Reading in the Content Area. The course was helpful, but it never addressed how to teach reading in a math<\/em> classroom. And so my journey in reforming my math teaching began\u2026<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG\"<\/a>Pam is currently co-director of the SABES Center for Mathematics and Adult Numeracy professional development initiative for Massachusetts. Pam is a former high school math teacher and has taught math in adult education for over 25 years. She helped co-develop Adults Reaching Algebra Readiness (AR)2 <\/sup>with Donna Curry. She is a national trainer for LINCS and ANI (Adult Numeracy Instruction). Pam enjoys sharing techniques for teaching math conceptually from Basic Math through Algebra and has co-authored the Hands On Math<\/a> series for Walch Publishing in Portland, Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n

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by Pam Meader
\nToday the snow is falling outside and we are all hunkered down for a big storm. For me, it is a time to be reflective of where I have been on this journey called math education. A few weeks ago, Marilyn Burns, a well-known math educator in the K-12 world, started a blog and her first entry was about her experience as a math teacher. I couldn\u2019t help but connect to her story,  » Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"cp_meta_data":{"_wpas_skip_facebook":["1"],"_wpas_skip_google_plus":["1"],"_wpas_skip_twitter":["1"],"_wpas_skip_linkedin":["1"],"_wpas_skip_tumblr":["1"],"_wpas_skip_path":["1"],"_publicize_pending":["1"],"_rest_api_published":["1"],"_rest_api_client_id":["-1"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}