Giving assessments and feedback is always a challenging part of interacting with students, and we're tasked in our feedback with giving an amount of help that's appropriate but that also still lets the student struggle productively. It's also important to consider the context of…
Feedback is always a unique challenge - how much do we give? What do we prioritize? I'm always stuck at a crossroads when it's time to give feedback because I never know how much is the right amount. If I give too little, the student won&…
It's true: practice and time really do help. Every day I feel like I improve my lesson planning and teaching skills, and it's always enlightening to go back and see my previous work and compare it to the work I feel like I can do now.…
It turns out that unit planning is, to me at least, kind of fun. I didn't really anticipate unit planning with any sort of excitement, but as an activity it allows you to ask bigger, more interesting questions about your curricular development and what it is that you…
My dream unit plan [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mdvz2Oelo3aqV3dK-63xyTQR4bm6Fyo_-EiOygQnK64/edit?usp=sharing] , which explores networking and the bigger pictures involved in cybersecurity and the ethics of technology, challenges students to do much more than just learn about HTTP and ARP spoofing. Instead, I've intentionally built…
It's a secret everybody seems to know: STEM can be a very, very lucrative field, with a touch of luck and a handful of job applications. Another secret everybody seems to know is that being a teacher is far from a lucrative career, even with a ton of…
When I think about the type of math class environment I want to foster, I can't help but think about the absolute necessity for students to relate with mathematical content on a deeper level than a simply algorithmic one. Valuable math lessons challenge the brain and interest it,…
When I was probably 10 or 11 years old, I remember taking piano lessons after school with my elementary school's music teacher. Often, during these lessons, I would find myself yawning in the middle of learning new music. I wasn't tired, nor was I bored. So…
Learning about tasks as they relate to teaching, at this point in my life, feels a little bit like drawing back the curtain of good teaching to reveal the inner workings of what's actually going on. I remember plenty of good activities from my time as a student…
In looking forward at my plans to become a mathematics teacher, the importance of questions in class seems almost painfully obvious. At some point, every student has had teachers on either end of the good-questioning spectrum: teachers who have lectured without asking questions of their students or allowing their students…