Area of Concentration: Math

Mathematics is an essential life skill. To that end, it is my aim to be an effective teacher of the subject. I believe successful teaching of mathematics starts with teachers having their own knowledge of mathematics and a knowledge of how children learn mathematics. Using this knowledge:

• I structure my lessons in a way that encourages students to become independent math thinkers instead of passive learners, dependent on the teacher.
• I seek to promote productive struggle with new material in a way that is challenging yet achievable.
• I model excitement for the subject and nurture a passion for exploring mathematical relationships.
• I establish expectations and utilize teaching practices that encourage risk-taking, reasoning, and the generation and sharing of ideas.
• I pose problems that lend themselves to solution via a variety of strategies and ask students to approach them in a way that makes the most sense to them.
• I ask probing questions to promote student engagement and remove myself as the determiner of "right" and "wrong."
• I thoughtfully structure discussions, so students discover the connections between strategies and topics. These experiences move students from simply acquiring isolated ideas to developing an increasingly complex network of mathematical understanding.
• I constantly assess student learning, formally and informally, and use the outcomes of the assessments to guide and refine my instruction.
• I continually make accommodations that enable each student to reach the learning objectives.

Through these efforts, I create an environment where each student can see themselves as an effective learner and doer of mathematics.

As you can imagine, effective teaching of mathematics is a complex task. In the words of John A. Van de Walle, "Highly effective teachers never "finish" learning nor exhaust the number of new mental connections that they make and, as a result, they never see teaching as stale or stagnant." Over the last few years, I have grown my own math knowledge and my knowledge of how children learn mathematics. I am consistently reading about current best practices in the mathematics classroom and working to incorporate those practices into my instruction. I read articles and books, follow mathematicians and researchers on social media, and have ongoing conversations with colleagues. Through these efforts, I have grown in several areas.

• First, I have further developed my use of precise language in my instruction. A few examples of this includes addressing the equal sign as "is the same as" instead of allowing students to see it as an operational sign, addressing multiplication as "groups of" instead of just an operational sign, and using the term "simplifying" instead of "reducing" when working with fractions.
• I have also expanded the ways I notate student thinking during discussions, incorporating more algebraic representations and encouraging students to record intermediate steps of a solution on new lines of a page, instead of stringing the same information horizontally across a single line. These methods help children record their strategies more accurately and give them a foundation for future explorations.
• I encourage students to explore the use of negatives when solving problems, adding another tool to their problem-solving repertoire.
• I incorporate opportunities for students to direct their own learning by providing differentiated choices within the objectives.
• Finally, and most recently, I have developed a more effective system of ongoing and informal assessments of student learning to better inform my instruction. I utilize checkpoints to assess students' evolving understanding of the topic, which allows me to set challenging yet achievable goals for the class.

As I look ahead to the next few years, I connect back to the John A. Van de Walle quote mentioned above and know I will never exhaust the new mental connections I can make regarding mathematics. Currently I have two big learning opportunities on the horizon.

• First, I will be participating in piloting professional development for math teachers being designed by the Learning Research & Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. The goal of this professional development is to help teachers think more conceptually about mathematics instruction and I look forward to incorporating what I learn through this experience.
• Second, this fall I was asked to become an adjunct professor for the University of Pittsburgh. Starting in the Spring of 2020, I will be teaching a course for the School of Education entitled Math/Science Instruction in Young Learners 1. My section of the course will be focused on mathematics. Teaching this course is a wonderful opportunity for me to share what I have learned about teaching math with future educators. I look forward to learning and growing alongside my students and challenging them to create learning environments for children that emphasize thinking, reasoning, problem solving and the communication of mathematical ideas.

---

Quotes

"Thank you so much for a very fun two years with you. They were my best two years at Falk ever. You had a huge impact on my math, especially coming into fourth grade, I had no math confidence, but after my two years with you, I feel like a math expert. You helped me in so many other ways that could fill twenty pages (literally). You may not believe this, but you are the reason I think to call myself a social studies genius. I largely thank you for that because social studies is one of my potential careers, doing something like map making."
-5th grade student, June 2016

"It is amazing to see how far you have brought me. From not knowing how to multiply by 10 to being able to divide, multiply, add, and subtract fractions, which I never thought I would be able to do."
-5th grade student, June 2016

"You are an amazing math teacher and you are full of joy! I have so much fun with you!"
-4th grade student, December 2016

"We have been talking a lot in class about math and the professor asked who was confident and comfortable teaching math. I was the only person who was able to say that and it's 100% because of you. Not only are you great at instructing the students, but you are able to do that while instructing me how to do the same. You go above and beyond everyday and I want you to know that it's appreciated and respected. You are a math specialist and should be appreciated as such."
-Intern, Fall 2014

---

A small group of students work together to create a map of a river trail. This activity provided students an opportunity to explore equivalent fractions and representing those fractions accurately on a number line.

A pair of students work collaboratively on a "Whitzzle" puzzle. For this puzzle, students have to use the numbers 1 through 9 placed in a 3x3 grid to form expressions that equal the numbers 1 to 36. While working on this challenge students are practicing basic facts, accurate notation, order of operations, and more.

A pair of students work collaboratively to solve larger multiplication equations. Here, the equation lends itself to using an over strategy. These students used the over strategy first and are beginning to use an area model as a way of confirming their solution.

An example of student work from an in-class exploration of fractions, money, and ratios. For this exploration, students were challenged to figure out which option was the better buy, 8 granola bars for $10 or 20 granola bars for $23.

Students worked collaboratively to create factor and multiple trains using the numbers from 1 to 100 one time each. Each number in the train has to be a factor or multiple of the number preceding it. Students were challenged to work thoughtfully so they could get the longest trains possible.

Back to top