My weekly report & reflection 1

          Hello everyone, I'd like to welcome and thank you all for taking the time to read this first blog post about the pre-service mathematics course in year 2 of the consecutive education program at Brock University. Sadly, the purpose of this post and those to follow will not be to grind and inundate you with a plethora of new mathematical concepts or to even help you finally solve those pesky Diophantine equations. I know, now that you've heard the bad news please take a moment to compose yourself before you continue reading. In all seriousness, the purpose of these posts will be about helping myself and hopefully the reader to successfully find the power in the art of self-reflection. The process of self-reflection is an important one. It allows not only pre-service educators but educators in all stages of their career to improve their teaching practice and to reflect on the strategies they use to foster wonderment and discovery in their students. In our first class, 'wonder' and 'discovery' were two buzz words that came up repeatedly.

          The first in class activity that really had me exploring these two ideas (more so wondering than discovering) was a sorting activity that had our table groups looking through a series of printed squares containing the math curriculum expectations of grades one to eight in a single strand. Our strand was geometry and spatial sense. From the very beginning I was honestly overwhelmed by the amount of information that we had to discern. Doctor Khan made sure to give us just enough information in that particular moment to leave us wondering about what we were doing with our lives. He told us to sort these squares in which ever way we saw fit. Well this just went against everything that I had ever been taught in math. There is only one way to solve any math problem and I did not have the key to solving this equation. I was left wondering whether or not the information needed to be sorted by the similar words in bold or by the content that each presented. I expressed my displeasure to Doctor Khan and he simply said "well good, write down what you are wondering". At that moment I kind of went "oh, that's the whole purpose of this, I'm suppose to wonder and struggle with the problem". Our group's final product looked very ordered and chronological.

(Dekker, 2016)

          After sorting our information we had a chance to do a gallery walk of the other group's work and I still had difficulty seeing the solution to my problem. We discussed what each group did and by reflecting I noticed that some of the content we placed at the end in grade eight could have gone before grade two. Such information like demonstrating the applications of geometric properties in the real world as described in GSS 022. In grade two students need to sort and classify quadrilaterals based on the geometric properties. At the very least an educator could have their students sort and classify real world geometric shapes. Throughout my investigation of our group's final product I found many other instances where the orders could have been changed based on the curriculum's suggested tools of engagement. I then realized that educational practitioners need to know the space that they are working in and to look across the curriculum to use sensibilities found in later grades to help encourage students in earlier grades. The guidelines given are not as cut and dry as I once thought.

          During the week that followed we needed to watch a series of videos discussing the commonly propagated attitudes towards math that unfortunately create stereotypes and form math myths. You might be 'wondering' what this is all about so let me shed some light on the situation. In today's classrooms some of the common attitudes towards math are that it's only for those who are math people, that it's a difficult subject because a question can only be answered one way, and that because of these reasons it has no useful application in the majority of people's lives. To make things worse the media commonly propagates these attitudes throughout all forms of entertainment. It has become such a problem that one of the common stereotypes to arise from all of this is that boys are good at math and girls are not. This stereotype is one that I heard while growing up but was difficult for me to believe in (despite being helped by my Grandfather in the subject while my Grandmother helped with English). Many of the female students in my elementary and secondary classes have actually been quite good at math and on quite a few occasions have surpassed my ability completely.

          One math myth that I did believe in while growing up was that people are either left brained or right brained and that people who fell into one category or the other had difficulty performing tasks associated with the opposite side. I was actually reminded about this myth by a fellow classmate of mine while responding to one of their forum posts. As a musician I believed that I fell into the right sided category that relates to creativity and artistic sense. I believed that being in this category meant that I could never be a mathematician or form a career involving mathematics because that belonged to the left brained people. By watching the required videos this week I learned that every individual can have a math brain.

          Much like any muscle in the body, the brain can grow and be strengthened by repetitive problem solving. The key is that educators create lessons that fuel student interest and inquiry. Students need to have the opportunity to 'wonder' about an equation and then take the time to struggle with that problem so that they can 'discover' the solution on their own. Just like the sorting activity that I first struggled with and later understood its purpose. I learned that it's good for students to sometimes feel uncomfortable while inquiring about a problem and then experience the sense of relief and accomplishment that follows when discovering the solution. In doing so it helps strengthen the brain by forming new synapses to aid in the transfer of information through an electrical impulse between neurons. Hopefully during my teaching block I can encourage my students to have all of their synapses firing through lesson that promote 'wonder' and  cultivate 'discovery'. At the end of the day I just hope that I'm able to see through all of the smoke that those synapses create.