Part III: Implications for Future Practice
In Part II, I described some of the ways that I tried to implement a new type of math pedagogy in my field placement. I felt that I gained some momentum as the year progressed, but also acquiesced to the pressure of the PSSA test prep and reverted to very procedural, teacher-led math lessons. While the lessons ran smoothly, I do not believe that they result in the type of understanding of mathematics that I would ultimately want for my students. However, this was all from my position as a student teacher. In what ways might things be the same as a full-time teacher, and in what ways might they be different?
I think this is hard to really say, since I do not yet know the exact context in which I will be teaching. As I wrote in Part I, heavy PSSA prep is, I believe, a part of this particular school culture; furthermore, there also seemed to be heightened pressure on our class this year. However, I will almost certainly be in a situation where high-stakes standardized exams are a part of life. I hope I have made it clear that the type of math teaching which may yield the greater short-term benefits on such a test are in contrast to the type of math teaching that I hope to implement in my future classroom. Yet the trend of increased teacher "accountability" tied to student standardized test scores shows no signs of going away (e.g., McGuinn, 2012). As passionately as I may resist the such a politic, and hope for better for my students, I must ask if I am willing to risk my job by refusing altogether to teach to the test.
What I found difficult this year was incorporating the desired pedagogical techniques into PSSA prep lessons. In a different situation, however -- the Daily Math Practice lessons -- I did find I was able to begin to establish new classroom norms for math instruction, evidenced by the students' increasing comfort with articulating their thinking and even, later in the year, responding to peers' reasoning. In the late winter and early spring, during the height of PSSA prep, two different kinds of math lessons were occurring each day -- one emphasizing communication aimed at relational understanding, the other meant to teach procedure. Yet the students seemed to navigate this perfectly well, adapting to the different expectations with apparent ease. Perhaps in this lies an answer. Understanding that I cannot avoid completely the necessity of test prep, can I not present it as something other than math? Rather than have test prep 'take over' my math instruction time, I can have the two stand side-by-side. In this way, I would hope to communicate to my students that what we do when we do test prep is not mathematics.
For this portfolio, I have narrowed the focus to math instruction, but I hope to make the same distinction in my future practice within the other content areas. Constructed responses are a type of writing, but not writing itself; reading from a science textbook can give us some factual knowledge, but not the skills and understanding that are necessary for the 21st-Century (National Science Teachers Association, 2011).
There was a time (not very long ago) when I questioned my decision to enter teaching due to the increasing presence of high-stakes exams. My experience this year has reinvigorated me in the sense that I do think it possible to teach best practices and deal with the necessity of test preparation, to be ideal and real simultaneously.
(References are cited here.)
I think this is hard to really say, since I do not yet know the exact context in which I will be teaching. As I wrote in Part I, heavy PSSA prep is, I believe, a part of this particular school culture; furthermore, there also seemed to be heightened pressure on our class this year. However, I will almost certainly be in a situation where high-stakes standardized exams are a part of life. I hope I have made it clear that the type of math teaching which may yield the greater short-term benefits on such a test are in contrast to the type of math teaching that I hope to implement in my future classroom. Yet the trend of increased teacher "accountability" tied to student standardized test scores shows no signs of going away (e.g., McGuinn, 2012). As passionately as I may resist the such a politic, and hope for better for my students, I must ask if I am willing to risk my job by refusing altogether to teach to the test.
What I found difficult this year was incorporating the desired pedagogical techniques into PSSA prep lessons. In a different situation, however -- the Daily Math Practice lessons -- I did find I was able to begin to establish new classroom norms for math instruction, evidenced by the students' increasing comfort with articulating their thinking and even, later in the year, responding to peers' reasoning. In the late winter and early spring, during the height of PSSA prep, two different kinds of math lessons were occurring each day -- one emphasizing communication aimed at relational understanding, the other meant to teach procedure. Yet the students seemed to navigate this perfectly well, adapting to the different expectations with apparent ease. Perhaps in this lies an answer. Understanding that I cannot avoid completely the necessity of test prep, can I not present it as something other than math? Rather than have test prep 'take over' my math instruction time, I can have the two stand side-by-side. In this way, I would hope to communicate to my students that what we do when we do test prep is not mathematics.
For this portfolio, I have narrowed the focus to math instruction, but I hope to make the same distinction in my future practice within the other content areas. Constructed responses are a type of writing, but not writing itself; reading from a science textbook can give us some factual knowledge, but not the skills and understanding that are necessary for the 21st-Century (National Science Teachers Association, 2011).
There was a time (not very long ago) when I questioned my decision to enter teaching due to the increasing presence of high-stakes exams. My experience this year has reinvigorated me in the sense that I do think it possible to teach best practices and deal with the necessity of test preparation, to be ideal and real simultaneously.
(References are cited here.)