Unit 1 – First Impressions

[Morgan Weber]

As a student just coming into a lot of teacher education courses, I wasn’t really sure what my stance was on teaching mathematics, other than I wanted to be a better math teacher than some of the one’s I was exposed to. I wanted to help my students understand math, and not be afraid of it like I was. Working through the five principles has really opened my mind already to how I can make this topic easier for my students. Principle 3 was a shifting point for me because I remember getting overwhelmed in math classes, especially because math is difficult for me. The fact that we recognize that working memory is short term and that we cannot really rely on that to help students remember math skills beyond a day, we can now work on strengthening and improving working memory with students, therefore helping them more than just pushing the information on them. I think this introduction to math also changed the way that I thought about teaching math: teaching math is a lot more than just numbers and equations; it is also developing and improving working memory, and shifting the way we teach everything as we learn more about how to curate math to the student. I am excited to see how this course progresses.

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