Inquiry Project Insight

 

We decided to explore the topic of the mental health and wellbeing of teachers, because we felt that there is not enough discussion towards this matter. There is much discussion around the topic of mental health for students, but there should be an emphasis on the emotional wellbeing of teachers as well. As future educators, we want to help out the children as best we can, but we also do not want to dismiss our own emotions. To build a positive learning environment, teachers must take the time and effort to support themselves as individuals. Self-care is an extremely important aspect of our lives that people sometimes forget due to their busy schedules. Specifically, this is crucial for teachers because they are constantly interacting and accommodating other students, peers, and colleagues. As a group, we felt that the unwritten responsibilities of teachers is something that rarely gets spoken about or focused on. In difficult times such as the pandemic, teachers have an increased amount of stress. Taking a deep dive into the support systems that teachers surround themselves with will also be very intriguing to learn and study. I am quite excited to explore the resources and articles (or lack thereof) that are available in regards to our chosen topic! As a result of this project, I want to be more adequately prepared for the emotional and mental aspects of the education career.

Entrance Slip (Oct 21)

        The initial paragraphs of the article resonated with me the most, because those statements were so accurate and relatable to my own experiences. Percentage and marks can have a significantly negative impact on kids' mental health. As a result of having percentages for evaluations, educational institutions promote an environment that is not conducive to authentic learning. How can educators effectively distinguish between an 86% and an 85%? What does that look like? How are we assessing the difference of 1% learning that the student has gone through? Why is 50% a pass, but 49% a fail? There are endless examples of why percentages and letter grades are not indicative of a student’s learning. Furtherly, this shows the incompetence of the marker when they deduct points for ridiculous reasons. There are many examples of teachers deducting marks for missing their names or handing in assignments late. However, these ideas severely miss the point of education and learning. Why should a student lose marks for writing their solutions in pen when they are writing a Mathematics test? As Alfie Kohn exclaims, the teacher often does this as an act of coercion.

When we break it down, the concept of percentages and marks seems misleading and unnecessary. As the article mentions, there were many instances in my schooling experience where students would ask “is this going to be on the midterm?”. This is the wrong reason to be or not to be learning class material. As educators, we want our students to be constantly learning, and not doing it to obtain a certain percentage on the upcoming test. Additionally, sharing grades between students was a very common practice among my social circles. It produced a heavily toxic environment for me as I always tried to compare my marks with my peers and to see if I did better or worse than them. Transitioning the “new" curriculum to a rubric-based assessment system is an important first step toward a more effective educational experience for the future generation. Students will place less emphasis and focus on trying to achieve a 90% for the sole sake of getting a good mark. Teachers must move away from standardized testing methods and assignments with typical algorithmic questions with one-dimensional answers. Providing the students with the creativity and freedom to explore the subject area will encourage growth of learning. This can be done through projects, presentations, group-based discussions, and interviews. Proving students with the agency to choose their own topics for projects will initiate interest and care into their chosen subject matter. Math education can consist of much more than just writing numbers on a page in a memorized algorithmic way to ultimately obtain a simple check mark.

Exit Slip (Oct 14)

 The aspects of the lecture that resonated with me the most were the videos that we watched. I thought that Jo Boaler and Alfie Kohn did a spect3acular job at articulating their thoughts to the intended audience. I especially loved Kohn’s discussion on how the abolition of grades would be extremely beneficial to the authentic learning of students. I certainly agree that grades can have a huge negative effect on students and their mental wellbeing. In my experience, I focused a lot on grades and trying to achieve A’s on all my tests, quizzes, and assignments. Reflecting back on this, I certainly focused on getting high marks to feel good about myself, and not genuinely learning the content of the classes. I did not strive for academic greatness for the appropriate reasons. I do not think that I learned genuinely and wanted to learn for the correct reasons. As I think deeper, did I only study hard and complete assignments to fulfill a checklist? Why did I put so much effort into getting high grades? Did I really enjoy what I was learning, and did I want to learn the content? I think that the shift of the “new” curriculum to a rubric-based system for assessment is an essential beginning to a more productive education experience for the next generation.

However, the complete elimination of grades is not the most optimal solution. I love the ideas that Kohn talks about in the video: authentic teaching/learning, less stress about grades, coercion of marks as a way to control students. Unfortunately, I think that educational institutions need to have some sort of assessment for students. I like how he was saying that the best teachers try to make students forget about grades and how students can self-assess themselves. I certainly agree that rubric-based assessment, or standard-based assessment, is one of the best ways to accurately assess learners. Using this methodology, educators are able to accommodate and be flexible in their lessons and evaluations.

Exit Slip (Oct 7)

The Sit In Spot activity was a major takeaway from this class; paying attention to all of the senses and how they interact with the immediate, surrounding world was a key takeaway. It felt good to identify and consider the five senses and how they were being stimulated in the garden. Every day, as humans, we do so much, with so many items and organisms all around us. We were able to nearly stop time and focus on the minute aspects of our surroundings. This is an important part of education that I intend to incorporate into my future lessons so that students can think on and love life. Additionally, we did drawings of leaves using shapes, such as circles and triangles to approximate our chosen leaf. This was a great activity to show how angles and lines are major aspects of everyday objects that we see. It felt amazing to pause time and focus on my senses, which provided me with a feeling of serenity and peace. I want to implement these kinds of activities into my future classroom to connect properly with the surrounding environment. It is so important to connect with all the elements of our lives and try to appreciate them to a deeper level.

Entrance Slip (Oct 14) - Dancing Teachers Into Being With a Garden

 Teachers can often get caught up with the overwhelming amount of tasks that they need to finish. This includes (but is not limited to): finishing up with evaluations, marking assignments/quizzes/tests, arranging meetings with parents, planning out future lessons, checking up on struggling students, making accommodations for those that need it, creating activities, constructing fair assessments, and developing relationships with their students. It is extremely easy to get caught up in all of the aforementioned things, while failing to provide ourselves time to reflect and absorb our surroundings. A key takeaway from this class has been the Sit In spot activity; paying attention to all of the senses and how they interact with the immediate, surrounding environment. It was pleasing to genuinely acknowledge and think about the five senses and how they were being stimulated in the garden. As humans, every day consists of \ doing so much, with so many objects and organisms surrounding us. We were able to almost freeze time and pay attention to the acute details of our environment. This is a significant aspect of education that I hope to bring into my future classes, in which the students have the opportunities to reflect and embrace life. This is such an underrated aspect of life that people mistakenly ignore, because of their busy schedules. I certainly need to do a better job of this and by implementing it into my classes, I will hopefully encourage students to do the same as well.

The concept of the “grid” and how it is incorporated within many structures of our lives is fascinating. In society, we see examples of grids all the time. The arrangement of houses, classroom seating layouts, the sorting of mobile device apps, graphs, the layout of YouTube, images on Google Search. I think that as a future educator, it will be nice to have such a regimented system in order to transition easier into the teaching profession. Having a “sorting of curriculum, students, resources, timetables and grades into charts and tables” helps to organize and prepare new teachers for their classes. For teaching secondary grade levels, the teacher will have so many students every year that having a rigid system will help immensely. In contrast, this article allowed me to explore how I can “parkour” the grid system. I wonder how I will be able to implement myself into a grid-like system of the school that I will be teaching at and how I can break out of that. Will I have the flexibility to swing out of the grid of schooling? I definitely need to put lots of thought and preparation as to how I will exactly accomplish this. 

Exit Slip (Sept 23)

 

I heavily enjoyed the activities that we did today. It was extremely relaxing to take time to activate my creative brain and write a poem. Giving the students time to think about all of our 5 senses was very unique, because I do not provide myself time to reflect on all of my senses. It makes me think of all the small details that we do not pay attention to and take for granted. Life is truly beautiful and I often walk around without realizing all the great things around us. One sense that I do not actively think about is my sense of smell. Thus, it was extremely eye-opening to pay attention to my sense of smell. Doing a yoga exercise of breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, minding the scents that enter my nostrils, was very relaxing. I found myself smelling the outdoor smell that I usually do not recognize immediately when I go outside. 

My poem was:

The soft woodchips scattered under my feet

Growth of plants and veggies I can see

Tennis balls bouncing and car engines sputtering

Aroma of freshly grown plants fluttering

I can taste sweet nectar from watermelon stuttering

Moshe Renert on Math and Climate Change

 

This article surprised me as I have never correlated mathematics with topics of being sustainable. This connects with the quote: “Mathematics is popularly conceived of as a pure body of knowledge, independent of its environment”. I definitely agree with the sentiment that math has largely existed as an academic subject that is separate from our environment. It is not completely apparent to teachers as to how to connect the two topics together in a way that will significantly impact the students. Therefore, it is not an easy task to connect sustainability with mathematics. In order to do this, it requires a lot of creativity and preparation to execute the connection adequately. This means that teachers would have to put more effort into their job than they would like to, which often is perceived as a negative thing. This shows me that in order to make any significant change in perception or perspectives, one must put in real effort to have the slightest of an impact.

A concept that was very thought-provoking in the article involved the contrast between number sense and quantity sense. The author brings up the fact about order of magnitude and the feeling of large numbers. The emotional aspect of numbers has not really been a significant factor in my educational thinking in regards to math. The example of throwing the trash onto the freeway while driving is a very eye-opening case of carbon pollution, which I will implement in my classroom to show students. The question of “How would you feel?” is a great inquiry into the feelings and emotions behind the pollution that our population contributes to. This has definitely made me think about how I am going to implement sustainability in my future math classes! Another