Pro D reflection

I participated in the Introduction to SOGI in the K-12 Context workshop, Building Resilience, which I felt was important to me through my previous internship experience. My previous SA discussed this with me during my practicum. In the course of our daily work, we teachers have to face many students with 100% energy, care for them, and help them solve their problems. It is possible that this process will also face a lack of understanding from family members, friends, students, or their parents. All of these things can drain the energy of our teachers. In the long run, it is easy to lose our passion for our careers and our life. It is therefore important to learn how to de-stress and build resilience. The facilitator Michelle Lim introduced the sources of stress, what stress is, and how to deal with it. What struck me the most was that to build resilience we need to complete a stress circle. This requires physical activity, breathing, positive social interaction, laughter, affection, creative expression, and a big cry to complete. Especially for me, I am a very emotionally exposed person and many times my emotions need to be released with tears. Crying is a good process to release emotions, we can let go of our restraints and have a big cry to complete this last part of the circle.

Group teaching reflection

During the preparation of the lesson, because it was a lecture done together as a group, we had a lot of disagreements and discussions about what we chose to present and how we would present it. In the end, we finally discussed a common solution by combining the ideas of all three of us. We used demos in our classroom to generate interest and introduce the software to the group, which will help future students learn maths. Through everyone's feedback, I realized that I need to incorporate body language and eye contact more in future classes, it is easy to just look at the board or stare at the projector when explaining maths problems. Lastly, I also need to improve my ability to deal with when things happen in the classroom that are not at the time or situation I planned. For example, if our class is going faster than expected, how to add new and useful things or summarise the gaps in time better is something I need to prepare for. Overall, this group teaching experience not only allowed us to experience the ability to collaborate with our "colleagues" in the classroom but also to experience how to use the classroom's resources to enrich our own classroom.

Elliot Eisner, Three curricula all schools teach (updated version)

The first 'stop' that stopped me from thinking for a while is the sentence from the first paragraph "But schools teach much more---and much less---than they intend to teach."(p.87). I began to think about what it means to teach more and what it means to teach less. I think this is because there is a gradual increase in the number of courses involved in schools today, with school professors developing more and more courses, and a lot of social skills, time management, and life issues. And the ability to communicate with elders and peers. But what is less taught in schools is that, as mentioned in the article we read last week, the overly formal and rigid way of teaching can lead to a gradual loss of interest (especially for maths). There are also problems that students will encounter in life or later in life when they go out into the community, etc. that schools cannot cover completely.

Another stop for me came from the bit in the article about schools fostering submissive behavior. Before reading the article, the examples the author gave in the article, the so-called incentives, etc., had not occurred to me as a way of being a way of fostering submissive behavior. Suggestions or rules and regulations made by the school when implemented in this way become a way of fostering submissive behaviours. This kind of reward system is likely to make students lose interest in what they are doing and become overly concerned with rewards. In the long run, this may lead to a sense of "routine" in their future work. I think it is difficult to avoid using rewards while achieving the goal of regulating students' behavior and cultivating their interests, and schools can't avoid "asking" students to do something. The way I can think of to avoid this at the moment is to allow students to reward themselves, i.e. instead of setting a common "reward" each student writes down how they think they should be rewarded. They can then reward themselves when they have done it.

Due to the significant amount of time students spend in school, the habits developed during this period may continue to affect their future lives. In the past school education, I agree with the article that schools emphasized more interdisciplinary knowledge and proposed many aspects of "implicit curriculum". The reward system may weaken students' interest in learning, cultivate their increasing competitive awareness, and the arrangement of art classes may make students believe that subjects such as mathematics and science are more important. But nowadays, classrooms in BC schools are increasingly giving students the right to choose. The new British Columbia curriculum also places greater emphasis on communication, innovation, and other aspects.

October 20 - Pro-D day Conference

I will attend 

UBC Faculty of Education

Introduction to SOGI in the K-12 Context

Group teaching lesson plan

The lesson plan

The whole lesson plan

The handout

handout

Reflection from class of micro teaching

 Never thought I'd be teaching the whole class this time! But I think my theme is perfect for leading the class together. My time planning during my lecture was not particularly perfect. I was worried that there would be more people and it would take longer to explain the movements in the back and I was unconsciously speeding up the first half of the introductory section. I felt that my voice was too low to be heard by the students at the back of the class. The introduction of the musical was quicker. I think I could have been a little more detailed when I started to teach them the steps, for example, telling the students when to start the beat, and whether the first step is to the left or to the right, so that the class wouldn't be confused. I really enjoyed the teaching experience! Very happy to see everyone getting involved!

TPI Reflection

 

Based on my charts, reflecting on the totals: my scores for apprenticeships and development are the highest, and social reform is the lowest. I was pleasantly surprised by the results because the icon was such a visual reflection of what I really think. In teaching, although I think that education can influence social reform in a maths classroom I would be more interested in focusing on the development of each individual and their learning outcomes. I was also pleasantly surprised that the results for all 3 domains showed that the action values were higher than my beliefs and intentions. As well as the fact that they were all within 2 points of each other. My beliefs, intentions, and actions were almost all in agreement. And I am a "doer". I want to be a person whose knowledge and action are one, so I'm happy to show that. But I think I can incorporate social change in the maths classroom. In my previous experience of my practicum, my SA was a teacher who did this, using the first five minutes of his maths class to share some social phenomenon or news to talk to his students about what he knew. I feel like I can incorporate this in my future classrooms to the extent that I am able.

The TPI results gave the new teachers an opportunity to analyze and visualize themselves and to learn about themselves from various aspects, allowing them to reflect on their own ideas which I think was a novel experience for me.

Battle Ground School "stops"

 One of my stops came from a description of a phenomenon: many adults in North America are seriously terrified of maths, and most people think that the ones who like maths are the male nerds, or the ones who have no social skills. This is a form of discrimination, not only sexist and racist but also, I think, "intellectual". The idea that not being able to do this difficult subject is normal and encouraged is also, I think, an implicit quest for laziness. In the long run, people will slowly lose the ability to study and explore "difficult" fields. All inaction is normal.

another stop is that there is a paragraph on page 394 that gave me new insight into the fact that the conservatism of maths education in North American public schools is due to a combination of people at multiple levels. My previous understanding was just that it was because of the lack of attention from the education system, but it was actually under the combined result of multiple levels of influence: administrators, parents, professional teachers, maths teachers, and so on. (p. 394) Then to influence or even change such conservative thinking one has to work on multiple levels individually.

The last stop comes from the article "A deeper conceptual understanding of mathematics is the key to success in international rankings" (p.400). This reminds me of our previous discussion in class about instructional teaching and relational teaching, from the point of view of the article it seems that conceptual understanding is also part of learning maths and we can think about introducing conceptual teaching in our teaching as well.

Microteaching Lesson Plan

 

individual microteaching topic

 Broadway musical jazz steps

Reflection of Math arts projects

 In our group project, we embarked on an intriguing collaboration to expand upon a mathematical artwork inspired by the works of Carlo H. Séquin, which is closely related to knot theory. Our choice of this artwork stemmed from a desire to introduce young learners to the notion that mathematics extends far beyond mere numbers and arithmetic; it encompasses a rich world of graphics and intricate patterns that can evolve into advanced applications in our daily lives. Séquin's artistic focus centered on the mesmerizing figure 8 knot and the enigmatic 5_2 knot, which served as the foundational elements of our creative exploration. By introducing these knots, we discovered an effective way to illustrate complex 3D structures through 2D projections, offering an engaging educational tool for students intrigued by the captivating realm of mathematics. Drawing inspiration from Séquin's approach, we concentrated on utilizing four strands of different materials to create repetitive knot patterns, resulting not only in captivating artwork but also in edible creations. This multifaceted endeavor highlighted the idea that artistic representation knows no bounds, transcending traditional formats. Through our collaborative efforts, we learned how the profound concepts of mathematics can be translated into visually captivating expressions.

I think one experience I would really like to share from this project is the Finding Activities project. When we determined that our activity was for people to do something hands-on about knots, the part I was responsible for was finding an appropriate instructional video to teach the group. At first, I was thinking of using a projector and taking people step by step as I learned how to do it myself. However, I found that the process of making up my own knots was easily obscured and unclear, and gave up. I then decided to use YouTube instructional videos directly, and I followed about ten videos to make the "prettier" knots taught in the videos, but the answer was that they were too time-consuming and too difficult. In the end, I had to settle for the simple button knot. I was a little frustrated that there were so many nice knots that I couldn't get people to make on their own during the project. I hope this project gave everyone some interest in making knots!

I think what I learned from this project is that for harder-to-understand maths, in order not to make it difficult for the students, it can be combined in a very artistic way to show the students, as well as give them a tangible example of how maths knowledge works in our lives (e.g. the figure 8 knot is a very hard mountaineering knot) to pique their interest in maths. Maths is not just about doing problems and solving them, it can be beautiful and practical.