Final Reflection

Looking through my blogs, I noticed some key themes. I see that we focused on different ways of structuring our classroom and facilitating student inquiry. I think the content we explored looked at Inquiry in two ways. First of all, we looked at it from a teacher perspective - how can we think outside of the grid on our teaching. How can we incorporate social justice, art or embodied practice into Math education that has traditionally not incorporated those things. We also took on the student perspective by reflecting on our own experiences of learning and by trying out new things and reflecting on what that experience was like.

One blog that stood out to me was the one on competition. This was a very eye-opening topic for me as I had not considered the harm of having competition so central to our teaching environments. I ended up doing my project for another class on how traditional grading practices are a competitive and colonial system. I think being curious about students' experience is so key.

A main part of this course was the project which I also learned from. I enjoyed looking into mindfulness practices and collaborating with Esther.

I cannot think of anything I would change about this course - maybe looking at even more different teaching styles could be interesting.

I think a key takeaway is that good teaching means continuing to be curious because students will continue to change and I want my teaching to be relevant and interesting.

Inquiry Project Reflection

 Our project finalized differently than I thought it would at the beginning. It was interesting to see how my original idea changed when I started working with Esther and combining our ideas and then changed again when we started doing the research. I am happy that our project includes a lot of practical ideas for how to use the research in the classroom. I was surprised to see in the research that there isn't a lot of evidence for anxiety-reducing strategies being effective. Mindfulness practices was one of the only strategies we found that had multiple studies showing improvement for students. I think it is an important topic because math anxiety is so common. I think our presentation went well and people generally seemed keen to participate in our activity which hopefully means they will be interested in implementing some of these strategies in their classes. I am curious how we can continue this project further in Inquiry 2. I wonder if we could talk to more teachers who have used mindfulness practice to gauge what things worked well and what didn't. 

This is something I am very passionate about because I think students will remember how they feel in our classes more than they will remember what they did or what content they learned. Students should not be experiencing extreme levels of stress in a learning environment. I hope to continue exploration into this topic so I can implement these strategies effectively when I have my own class!

Inquiry Project Slides

 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bVGfOrsHWHuPV0HuptMJHIf-5Xvp6upxKC_Utzf26JE/edit?usp=sharing

Annotated Bibliography

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1raKO_d6DC6TJ_6T3Hqh2S8VkB7NaEOWXy5ONMhn94EI/edit?usp=sharing

Exit Slip 11/09

 It was great to get started on the research. I realized some possible directions Esther and I can go with our topic. Interestingly, there isn't a lot of research showing successful reduction of math anxiety or test anxiety. We did notice that there are numerous resources on mindfulness as a way to help students. I think this may be the direction we take our research. 

Exit slip 10/19

 Competition / Cooperation

I thought that was a very interesting idea, that I really hadn't spent time considering the negative side to competition.  Competition has always been present in my schooling experience. I spent a lot of time competing against myself and my peers to have the highest grade. I do not think that was a healthy experience for me, as I ended up putting a lot of self-worth into how well I was doing in school. This actually made my transition to University very difficult as I was expecting to continue my "success". I think it is important to consider who is benefiting in a competitive situation and who is not. While some may have a lot of fun, others may feel like they don't even have a chance, feel embarrassed or feel like they have let others down. Further, the student who wins may actually have a burden being put on them to continue a standard. This has challenged me to rethink the competition games I have previously used as a fun activity in my classes and try to find ways to make them more cooperative. 

Inquiry 1 Project

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y18pLK129KCaTPQHYSYb3_2tiDl-1EjO_-BH3jrEvc4/edit?usp=sharing