Skip to main content

Final thoughts...

As someone who has spent years tutoring mathematics, but not having taught math in the public school setting/formal school classroom, I found this term studying secondary math instruction methods engaging. I was excited to have learnt about the various methods of engaging students, particularly through interdisciplinary investigations, such as math and art projects.

Over the course of this term, I spent time rediscovering my past and current identity as a mathematical person, as I have not pursued mathematics in several years. Many of my assumptions about the learning of mathematics stems from my experiences as a math learner in high school and university. I recognize the journey ahead to broaden my experiences in the teaching and learning of mathematics.  I was also able to draw parallels and differences between the New Zealand Mathematics Curriculum, which I studied under, and the previous, current, and incoming BC curriculum.

This course, along with attending the BCAMT conference and observations at Kitsilano Secondary School and Windsor Secondary School, re-invigorated my passion for doing, learning, and teaching mathematics. I hope that my future work continues to contribute to the community of mathematic teachers and learners!

Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky18 December 2017 at 15:41

    Thanks for your thoughtful reflections, Arthur, and glad that your experiences this semester have been helpful in revisiting your mathematical identity!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Elliot W. Eisner's "Three Curricula that Schools Teach"

Eisner sets out to explain the three curricula taught by schools, including the 1. Explicit curriculum - what is made public through course announcements 2. Implicit curriculum - the socialization through physical and behavioural structures of the school and classroom 3. Null curriculum - what is left out from our explicit curriculum Through his theory of implicit education, Eisner makes his case that is it usually more important for a student to study the teacher, rather than the course content, in an attempt to achieve a good grade. The students reads the environment created by the teacher to establish to determine how much effort they should put into a class, particularly in systems that use behaviour modification techniques. How is it that we should go about cultivating student initiative and to develop intrinsic motivation so that students find the joy of learning for themselves, rather than to please their community - teachers, parents, and peers - through their achievements...
1 comment
Read more

Math Art: Knot Mosaics

Peter Gustainis and I worked together to recreate Felicia Tabing's Knotical . We created the 4 tiles digitally to represent her artwork presented at Bridges Math Art 2017, then arranged the tiles in the same fashion as her original block print.To extend this artwork, we incorporated colours associated with Andy Warhol's work with pop art, giving each tile a different gradient. This allowed for a clearer representation of the transformations (symmetry, rotation, translation) present in this artwork. As you can see in the color schemes below, the work almost has a complete rotational symmetry. As a challenge, we provided an activity where students were given a set of tiles and asked to represent 2 common knots - Solomon, and Trefoil - mosaically. Here is the link to our Google Slides presentation This project was a fun inquiry to the ways that we can teach mathematical concepts alongside concepts in aesthetics - the ways that mathematicians create art through vis...
Post a Comment
Read more