Robert Millett's Professional Portfolio
Showcasing my Transformations in
Educational Thought and Practice
I believe there is no such thing as the quintessential teacher. In a rapidly changing world each new generation of students is different from the last and will face a future much different from today. Thus the art of teaching must be an ever-expanding and ever-changing process. We bring our personal histories and beliefs to the classroom to start our careers as teachers, but through new experiences, professional development, and deep reflection we inform and improve our educational beliefs and practice. This showcase highlights some of the important transformations I have made to my educational beliefs and practice over the course of earning my Michigan State University Master of Arts in Education Degree (MAED). I have been studying and reflecting upon research based educational practices and theories throughout the MAED program and my showcase presents the ways I have started to incorporate these into my own thoughts and practices of education.
Transformations in Educational Thinking
A math teacher is often pulled in multiple directions when it comes to planning lessons in a math classroom. There are curriculum documents to follow but how we teach and assess those standards are largely up to the teacher to decide. Do we teach every topic with little depth? Do we teach some topics to a deeper level and just skirt over other topics? Do we teach students to memorize and recite or to make connections and applications of what they are taught? This reflection displays my beliefs in teaching math as an instrumental tool for students versus teaching it in order to make relational connections to what they already know (or in my case, creating a blend of these ideas).
As I began to understand the role of discussion in the development of students’ reasoning and problem solving skills, I found difficulties in facilitating productive discussions in my class of grouped low achieving math students. I conducted action research to investigate how low ability grouping may affect the quality of peer discussion in this class. My literature review and research both helped me to understand that discussing mathematics is not a natural skill for most people and it is necessary to model and instruct students on how to have a respectful and valuable discussion with peers.
With the different approaches to math being evaluated, a math teacher must also take a stance in their views on the role of homework in the math curriculum. There are many factors that influence ones beliefs about how homework should or should not be used to teach math, but in addition to this I wanted to understand why some students choose not to complete homework assignments and what might I be able to do as a teacher to improve homework compliance in my math classroom. This report details my question, results, and action plan.
Transformations in Educational Practice
There is more to teaching than just knowing the content or pedagogical strategies, one must also know their students and what motivates them to engage or disengage from learning. I believe this starts with forming a bond of trust and caring with each student and then through this bond we can learn more about influencing their desires to learn. I had the opportunity to complete an in depth motivational design project of a student using Joyce Epstein’s TARGET model as the foundation. This is a summary of the motivation plan I developed for the student “Antonio.”
This essay is a technological autobiography detailing my own path to the digital age and is also a reflection on how digital distraction is affecting students and what are the implications as a math teacher. I highlight my personal beliefs about teaching students how to use technologies but also in conjunction with problem solving skills. This assignment helped me understand the importance of integrating technology with content not just to make it more interesting but as a necessity for learning.
Given the rapid pace at which new technologies are being created and made easily available, teachers should be searching for ways to integrate technology in new and creative ways. The technology should not be the focus of the lesson but rather enhance how students interact and learn new ideas. This is why knowing how to creatively repurpose technology for learning is a skill that opens up new paths to teaching and learning. In this piece, I used a geometric shapes app as the technology and I have students using it to make discoveries and justifications about the special properties of parallelograms.
Technology gives teachers new ways to present information as well as ways to provide students with new methods of learning that information. A vodcast, or video podcast, can be used to present students with a video about a topic rather than presenting them with a lesson topic in a traditional classroom. This allows students to pause and replay information so they can learn at their own pace. My first vodcast is a video I can have my students follow at home so they can sign up for Khan Academy and enroll in my course without me having to use valuable class time to enroll my students.
An abundance of learning and teaching tools are scattered all across the Internet so I created a mathematics technology resource library with links to various tech resources for math teachers and students. There are educational evaluations of the resources as well but I did not author all of them. Though I am proud of the website I built and I believe the tools are helpful for teaching and learning math, I want to highlight that it is important to use these tools only to enhance the learning of the students and should not become the focus of the learning. I am also a fan of repurposing technology in order to help students learn a topic and this allows for a more creative touch to integrating technology.
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