The future of our students

-

From our students’ schooling, I hope they become critical thinkers and members of society that question the norms set out by institutions and governments. I hope they develop skills and learn to gather valid and researched evidence to challenge controversial ideas to change society to be inclusive and fair for all members. Schools should prepare students to make a difference in society rather than “blindly” obeying authority and following the daily mundane routine. Our assessments and grading of students should be a two-way conversation, where students can question their marks and challenge what was given to them by the teacher. Students and teachers should be able to come to an agreement as to where their assessment stands.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marks, grades, and their effects in schooling

-
Image
From a “teacher bird” perspective, grades can be seen as an indicator of a student’s ability to demonstrate they meet learning objectives. Assigning percentages are usually a measure of “how well” a student performs in achieving learning objectives. Traditionally in mathematics, this percentage refers to “how correct” their solutions/problem solving ability is. Teachers use these percentages as a measurement to determine how students will progress throughout their learning career. There is a double-edged sword to giving grades; grades motivate students to complete assignments and study for tests, but students are not learning effectively when performing these tasks. From a “student bird” perspective, grades are a “reward or punishment they receive for an assignment or test” (Sarte & Hughes, 2010). Students use grades as a motivator to perform well, but motivation to learn decreases. This is because students have plenty of stressors to perform well: comparing grades with peers can c...
Read more

Inquiry project part 1: Choosing a topic area

-
Image
 For this topic, I will work with Ivan and Tyler thinking about making connections between climate change and mathematics.  I wanted to conduct my inquiry project surrounding the topic of environmental education in mathematics because I am very interested in sustainability and environmental economics. This interest began in high school when I took on lead in the school composting program and was involved in building our school orchard from the group up. Problem-solving and critical thinking skills from mathematics were essential to my success on these projects, however, I wished there were lessons in math class that explicitly touched on these topics. During my undergrad I took courses in urban studies, environmental psychology, forestry economics and economics of non-renewable resources, which I think have some interesting ideas to incorporate in a math classroom.
Read more

The next steps for the Inquiry Project

-
Today, our group pieced together more literature papers, videos, and resources to total our 16 sources for the bibliography. We also found a few interesting ideas to use for the interactive activity portion of our project.  The next steps for our project was to distribute the papers so we each had some to read and summarize for the annotated bibliography but also have information we could include in our mini-lit review and findings for our project. We each agreed to find a person to speak to, for making connections of our project to real world teaching and learning. My contact person would probably be my SA or a connection I have who is currently a math/science teacher who is involved in school gardening and other environmental initiatives.
Read more