What does it mean to be a Math Teacher: Getting into the Profession

I have not always been the biggest fan of math. One of my first negative experiences was in my first-grade classroom. We had been instructed to complete 100 multiplication problems and if we could not do it in the 50-minute timeframe, we would forfeit recess and PE class that day. That made me and quite a few peers feel awful about math. It got better in second grade though! We had been using Rocket Math, and that competition really amped me up to get better at my quick math facts. However, heading into third grade we had to learn how to use a calculator. I was not a fan. I spent so much time mastering my math facts that the idea of using a calculator seemed ridiculous. I moved past this quickly though as we started working with some numbers that were much larger or more complex. Finally, in the fourth grade, I finally met my match, long division. I was sent home with an assignment of 1-50 odds, all of them being long division practice problems. The next day, I showed up and turned in my assignment. The teacher immediately noticed a lack of work on my paper. I insisted I did it in my head and was shortly assigned a new seat in the classroom for a short period of time. I was tasked with solving one long division problem, and I had to show my work. Not only had I used a calculator for the entire assignment the night before, but I had not even attempted to do it as instructed. I was quickly humiliated in front of the class. I did not feel angry at the teacher or any sort of ill intent; I was simply embarrassed because I lied in front of the entire class. I ended up doing just fine with that topic and every topic moving forward, but I learned a valuable lesson from a man who simply wanted me to show my work.

Essential lessons like these make the need for great teachers so important. At any point during grade school, I could have ended up hating math due to experiences like this, but thankfully, I did not. It takes extreme levels of patience and a deep understanding of why students dislike what they are being asked to do. After all, math is not a simple concept to just understand, though it is a linear process for the most part. I have had many lessons after the ones described above that have shaped who I am, and who I want to be. Now, I am completing difficult courses and going through a lot of hard lessons to achieve the goal of becoming a math educator. I get to be surrounded by like-minded individuals who want nothing more than to encourage the youth to become strong problem solvers. There is nothing more invigorating than listening to someone you admire and respect describe struggling in a similar context that you might be in that exact moment. So where can we put ourselves to have the highest change to experience these moments? Last weekend, it was in Huron, SD, at the SD STEM Ed conference.

I have never felt so welcomed and at home than I did the moment we stepped into the event center. I saw some familiar faces that I had not seen in years. One of my favorite math teachers ever was greeting everyone as they got their name tags. I was lucky enough to get to speak with him for a moment, and he shared that he alongside a few others would soon be retiring. As excited as he seemed, all I could think was, who can possibly replace someone like him? The answer to that question was easily found in the same halls where the question came up. It is us. Those who are eager to learn, interested in soaking up as much knowledge we can, and willing to simply listen. Plenty of teachers are passionate about their topic, some are more focused on their students, others are sticking with it because it is what their degree is in. However, the special ones could be found all in one place this weekend. Seasoned veterans speaking from the heart, sharing stories, successes, and much more. Purely with the intention of preparing those next up to transform classrooms from what some students see as a prison, to a place where minds can just learn, without the pressure of performance. 

The very first session I went to spoke about chasing Einstein, an awesome gamification project being shared with educators all over. Gamification is a term that has been around for a while, but is now being used in the classroom as it should be. Kids have been given handhelds since they were in diapers as quoted by an older educator seated near me at another session. So how could there possibly be a better strategy than making math a game to get them interested and excited to learn? Simply awesome. This educator, like all others, began his session by speaking about his past; and how he got to where he is now. Telling stories of failure, and lessons that he learned from those failures. 

Failures create peaks. You can either slip back down from where you chose to start climbing, or you can get over that peak and descend to a place a little bit farther ahead than before. Math is filled with these failures. However, not every failure resembles your efforts as a whole. Another great lesson at the conference was one that showcased how grading can be altered to benefit students. Target Based Grading is a system that scores each different learning target separately. For example, if you are taking a test and you understand all but one topic, you could easily end up with an 80 or 70 on that final grade, depending on what the test looked like. That does not really showcase your efforts and understanding though. However, this lovely system would take less of a toll on your overall grade and let you know exactly what you need to work on. This educator shared stories and comments directly from his students about how much they appreciated being commended for their great work and the opportunity to improve where they struggled. So even though they did not receive the score they wanted, their hopes also weren't shot down by struggling with one learning goal. It is an empathetic approach that genuinely stems from wanting students to be their most successful selves. 

I could keep sharing stories from this conference but I hope I have gotten my point across. There are an infinite number of lessons one can learn, but they all come from mistakes. Just like math! Without mistakes, we never learn the importance of showing our work as we never have to redo an entire problem. Without generations of math educators keeping track of what does and does not work in our classrooms, we would never have gotten to where we are today. That is, they have raised a generation of future educators who want to see the classroom be a place of enjoyment and genuine learning. Not just some silly memorization tools being employed to inflate standardized test scores. So to them, I say thank you! So I will take these lessons and growing knowledge of what a technology-infused classroom can really be, and try to be the best educator I can.