Welcome to my new blog. It’s possible that, like my old blogs, this will peter out and die relatively quickly. Try not to get too emotionally invested.
Why am I starting a blog about my students? Well, I’m struggling with some philosophical disconnects in teaching right now. See, I’m a constructivist. I want my students to construct mathematics for themselves. A lot of my activities in class are tied to that. I believe that my students get a lot out of such things, and that they become better people for having engaged in these types of activities.
I can point to things my students say and how they discuss the ideas developed in those activities as evidence that they are learning. “See, none of the Calculus students in other classes can use derivatives to argue about fuel efficiency vs vehicle size!” I’ll exclaim. Clearly, such uses of the material we cover are desirable, right? Why do we teach these things if not so students can use them?
These ‘deeper’ understandings do not translate into test grades, though. No amount of understanding ideas can prepare students to solve 20 calculus problems in 60 minutes or less. And it’s hard, looking at the test scores of my class being comparable to (not higher, not lower than) everyone elses’ classes to not wonder if this approach is doing a disservice to my students. Would they prefer to make A’s and not understand these topics so well? Certainly, if I polled my class at the beginning of a semester, they would say “To hell with understanding! Improve my GPA!”
These concerns have motivated me to throw out anecdotes from my classrooms to be inspected by the harshest critics: The Inter-Webs. I welcome your feedback, mean spirited or otherwise, as I further shape my pedagogical philosophy going forward.
