My concerns

[fenn]

I taught math and physics in high school for 35 years, retired in
2009, and volunteered in kindergarten last year, so my comments are
tempered by exposure to both ends of the school spectrum. I am
wondering whether or not we want have another "quasi-administrator"
walking around and not actually teaching students, but merely
directing other teachers. My experience in recent years with
"directors of curriculum and instruction" and other newly created
positions finds them to be more of a detriment than a help. As
teachers we find ourselves doing more work just to justify those
positions which takes away from preparing for class. I also feel that
if someone has taken all those math classes listed, I would want him/
her teaching the students directly. Why not require all elementary
teacher take some of those classes and eliminate some "teaching of"
classes?
My last few years of teaching, I became concerned because I felt as
if I were "watering down" classes. I felt that many students were
coming to the high school unprepared for a rigorous math or physics
course. For example, many students have not memorized the
multiplication tables. Some administrator told me "it's no big deal",
they can just use the calculator. That means that they will have
difficulty factoring, and in turn difficulty solving quadratic
equations by factoring, more difficulty completing the square as
another means to solve those quadratics. "No big deal", someone says,
again, just use the calculator. Then when I want to introduce a neat
little derivation of the quadratic formula to prepare the students for
further derivations of various physics formulas, I am at a loss. My
beautiful derivations began falling by the wayside. I felt as if I
were doing my students a disservice. On the other hand, they were just
as happy not to do them. Problems that I used to include on tests
became extra credit in later years and then nonexistent in my final
years. Also, when I got to doing basic operations with rational
expressions, because many could not do basic operations with simple
numbers and still could not factor, then these problems became few and
far between. It is most unfortunate, I feel that the students are just
as bright as previous years, but just didn't have that drive and
curiosity to go it alone. I constantly heard, “well if you'd tell us
what to do, we'd do it". I long for those students who used to say,
"don't tell me anymore, I want to do it by myself." I blame some of
this on the all the tests preps and teaching to the test that has been
spawned by NCLB and the many other mandates. Alas, mandates will
continue to be the bane of education.
I must also include something about my kindergarten experience this
year. We are requiring so much of these little guys and most are up to
the task, but when someone makes up a kindergarten test that contains
92 pages, I question the validity of the results. No, the test was not
given all on the same day, but isn't that a bit much? We are testing
all of our students way too much, and the only ones benefitting are
the test companies. Let's do away with some of those tests as well as
the constant preparations. If we continue using the PSSA, maybe
require proficiency for graduation. My last year, many students were
still not taking them seriously.
Thank you for your indulgence.

[Judy Werner]

I agree with some of your comments. I don't agree with lengthy tests
because of the time that is taken away from good instruction. I don't
agree with using calculators for finding answers to simple questions.
I think the problem is "good instruction". The research demonstrates
that teachers do not know the content they are teaching well enough to
teach it. Many teachers tend to avoid certain math topics and other
teachers tend to lecture without engaging the students. "just do what
I tell you and don't ask questions." I understand about your students
who wanted to "discover" concepts but some teachers do not encourage
this approach because they do not have conceptual or pedagogical
understanding to use these types of techniques - where students
"discover" and "understand".
Last week in one of my grad classes, a teacher came to me after class
and thanked me for explaining a histogram/histograph! She said that
she "teaches" the concept in her classes but just skims over it
because she never knew what it represented!
I have worked with high school teachers whose teaching style is to
tell the students a procedure and follow it up with four days of
worksheets requiring the students to repeat the procedure over and
over. (the old "drill and kill" method).
We need to do something to help teachers develop their own knowledge
of content and teaching so their students can grow. The research
shows that Math Specialists have impacted student performance in low
performing schools in a number of states. I would like to think that
PA could do something similar.
I would not like to think of a math specialist as a mini
administrator, but rather someone who actually helps teachers teach.
There are some districts in PA where this is happening now and it is
paying off.