My passion for teaching stems from my passion for learning. From a very young age I enjoyed the process of learning in all aspects of life. I have a fascination with how and why things work. As a teacher, my goal is to help students find their inner motivation to learn. Students should be given opportunities to find success in their areas of strength. As a middle school math teacher, teaching to me means so much more than students mastering mathematical concepts. Teaching means guiding students through facing adversity and problem solving. Teaching means coaching students to work cooperatively together to accomplish a goal. Teaching means igniting a passion for lifelong learning. During my student teaching, I wrote the following five sentences about my philosophy of teaching mathematics. While these five statements still hold true to me, I have elaborated with each one as I have gained experience in the classroom.

1. Mistakes are a powerful learning tool

        There is a bulletin board hanging in my classroom with a sign stating ‘mistakes are proof of learning’. On this board we hang mistakes with an explanation. In my classroom it is very important for me to celebrate mistakes as part of the learning process. Math is often a subject students dread most, I lost count of how many students have told me they ‘can’t do math’ or parents that have told me ‘I’m not good at math, so I know my child will always struggle.’ Because of this, students often come to my class filled with fear of the subject and feeling like a failure. Instead of focusing on what is wrong, we focus on why we originally thought that and how it helped us get to a correct understanding.

2. Students should be exposed to the history of a process in order to explain reasoning

        This statement reminds me of inquiry based learning. I provide students opportunities to investigate and explore a concept rather than to give them a simple procedure. A student’s ability to memorize a procedure does not prove an understanding of a concept. The ability to explain why something is the way it is gives students a much deeper understanding of the concept, and provides them with opportunities to persevere in problem solving.

3. Student strengths can be used to guide other classmates’ challenges

        Together with my classes, we have developed a community of learners. In this community we talk with one another, we share ideas, we collaborate, we praise effort, and we celebrate success (no matter how small). I have demonstrated and helped students practice the idea of ‘coaching’ other students. Through coaching students use a tip-tip-teach approach. Instead of simply sharing the correct answer they use their own strengths and understanding to coach others to understand.

4. Students should be given ample opportunity to explore operations through real world experiences

        Real world experiences provide students opportunity to connect a concept to their life, adding meaning. Our district uses the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP3) researched and published through Michigan State University. The investigations within each unit provide students with real world examples of when a concept would be used in order to explore a concept. For example, students look at revolutions of two different-sized ferris wheels to explore when the next time they would both reach the bottom at the same time as a way to introduce finding the least common multiple. This activity proved to be so much more meaningful than explaining the process of listing multiples.

5. Integrating literacy into Mathematics learning allows students to deepen understanding

        It is very important to guide students through speaking mathematically. Students must be able to explain their understanding through justification in words. We have a word wall located within our room. Once we have completed a concept a student gets the opportunity to define and explain one of our math words. Having the words posted helps students to continue to think about these words and use them while writing/speaking even after we have completed a unit.

        As I mentioned before, my passion for teaching stems from my passion for learning. I strive to find strengths within my students in order to ignite their passion for growing as learners to be successful citizens.