April 2020 “I’M STILL LEARNING.” ~MICHELANGELO _____________________________________________________________________ What to Say to Yourself in a Pandemic What we have accepted from the outside world, or fed to ourselves has initiated a natural cause-and-effect chain reaction sequence that leads us either to successful self-management, or to the unsuccessful mismanagement of ourselves, our resources, and our future. ~ShadRead On >
Coaching
Coaching to Deepen Teachers’ Content Knowledge, Part 2
“If teachers are not engaging in academic dialogue centered on the content they teach and how people learn, then it is highly unlikely that they are engaging their students in these practices either.” (West & Cameron, 2013, p. 3) Although coaches sometimes facilitate content-focused workshops, most opportunities to build teachers’ mathematics content knowledge occurRead On >
Creating a Vision of a Good Math Classroom
Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There Seeing is believing. Teachers’ mental models for mathematics teaching and learning are based in large part on their own experiences as math learners and as mathRead On >
Coaching to Help Teachers Examine their Assumptions
The following sequence of numbers was written on the board: “This string of numbers represents a rule,” I explained to the teachers. “Who would like to guess another string of numbers that might fit the rule?” “8, 10, 12,” guessed one teacher. “Yes, that string of numbers fits the rule,” I responded. “Who has anotherRead On >
Coaching for Mathematics Instructional Design
Many of us were taught mathematics in elementary and secondary school as rote memorization of mechanical procedures, period. We sat quietly and watched as our teachers demonstrated a new procedure on the chalkboard, overhead projector, whiteboard, document camera, or smart board. Then we attempted to replicate this procedure with problems copied from the board ontoRead On >