May Q 450 Blog

When I read the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, I’m   aware of how hard it could be for a woman of that time period to compete in the mathematics field. I believe that she must have overcome many challenges and prejudices against women mathematicians, especially when she is also Iranian. However, her interest led her down the road and she is never stopping. As noted, “Maryam’s work was driven by a certain pure joy”. Anyone could be a mathematician regardless of their age, gender and ethnicity. For the stereotypes, scientists are usually men, middle-aged men... with heavy glasses. They tend to be a little bit nerdy... I think it’s almost the same for mathematicians, except that mathematicians are even more unsociable and stay alone more often. Neither of these professions has many women in them. Well, stereotypes always say that some people are not good at something but it’s not the case.   When Mirzakhani was in sixth grade, in Tehran, a teacher discouraged ...

  1.      Define your question Search Topic: How to create a productive and healthy learning environment?   2.      Analyze your topic into concepts Concept A Concept B Concept C Factors that affects student’s   level of attention and efficiency in learning. Physically, emotionally,  psychologically SEL Students’ emotional responses to the class and to others How students could manage their own emotions / identify other’s emotions and deal with them correctly  (mutual relationship between students) External factors (family situations ,socioeconomic status, etc ) and whether or how we should deal with them.   I noticed in my high school that teachers are not doing a great job in engaging the students to learn or effectively transmit the knowledge. As a new teacher I’m also worried about not being able to m...

 In today's class, I learned how to make the rope with some grass. We also watched a video showing the Indigenous people making ropes out of the natural resources to build a bridge. It is amazing how people could use these materials to live better. This also makes me to think about whether we really need to use so many modern materials which are hard to decompose. I think today's lesson not only integrated Indigenous knowledge into the classroom but also makes the lesson more fun. If we use this type of learning in our own classroom it should be more effective than just asking the students to sit and take notes every time. Even if we could not use this method in the majority of the classes, we could at least use this for several classes to enhance student learning, build connections, boost their interest in doing math,  and raise their awareness of the Indigenous culture at the same time. 

 To respond to Group 4: Is doing the math without hand work or bodily learning effective? -Not always, it depends on whether the connection between the craft and math has been made clear. It is not always effective because some students may not see the point or feel like it’s not effectively using their time and lose interest. For example, factoring might be best shown on the board rather than using bodily experience because it is easiest that way and faster. I could agree that for some of the concepts it may be easier to write it on the board, but bodily learning experience should be an essential part of learning in math. Due to the lack of these experiences, the current math classrooms are almost always based on things written on the board. This makes the students think that math is unrelated to real life and is not fun at all. It also is unfair for kinesthetic learners who learn the best when manipulating /touching materials. I think doing math without bodily learning could be e...

  "The key items of these agendas are indicated with buzzwords such as “cost effectiveness,” “ learning outcomes,” “performance evaluation,” “achievement levels,” “ instructional productivity,” and “user satisfaction.” Contemporary policy perspectives tend to be results-driven and accountability based. The point is that these orientations, discourses, and perspectives do not adequately reflect the ways that teachers and students experience the pedagogical being and daily tasks of teaching."   This presents the problem that teachers have to follow these concrete learning outcomes and aim at user satisfaction while these do not represent the daily interactions between the teacher and the students. There is a difference between the two, so nothing on the curriculum guide tells the teacher what to do in an actual classroom. To be tactful, the novice teacher has to think for themselves. One has to be reflective before, after, and even on the spot, in order to improve. This rel...

  1) What are your "student bird" and "teacher bird" thoughts about assigning percentages or letter grades in the assessment of student work? What do the grades indicate? How are they arrived at? Whose purposes do they serve? What are positive and negative aspects to giving grades? to be assigned grades by an instructor? I think assigning percentages or letter grades are just a measure of how the students grasp the essential knowledge (about a math concept, or about how to solve a problem). It is more straightforward for math courses than other courses such as English, because when you can solve a problem correctly, you certainly do have an understanding of the concept/problem type. Grades indicate the level of understanding. They also indicate how quickly one can solve the problems, for the tests usually have time limits. They serve as a sign of achievement, at least partly, if not accurately. They serve as a sign of competition, for sure. Students compare thei...

In the discussion group we talked about how intuition could be involved in math/science education. We talked about how math is sometimes called art by mathematicians , and art is directly related to spirituality because it involes intuition, imagination, and God-given inspirations. We also talked about how we kind of have an intuition of how the question goes (in which direction) and we use that intuition to help us find the answer. For example, when looking at a geometry problem, with accumulated practice , we would have an intuition of how we should solve the problem and we could go into that direction to experiment with our methods. We also talked about how we do not want to instill too much spirituality into our students' mind because that seems not an appropriate thing to do. We could expose them to these different ideas and concepts but we should not "teach" them. We should let them decide for themselves as to which concepts/ ideas they want to believe. 

  I think that scientific/ mathematical terminologies are used for the purpose of common understanding in a certain community of people. As stated in the article: “the Potawatomi understanding of what it means to be animate diverges from the list of attributes of living beings we all learned in Biology 101. In Potawatomi 101, rocks are animate, as are mountains and water and fire and places. Beings that are imbued with spirit, our sacred medicines, our songs, drums, and even stories, are all animate....of apple, we must say, “ Who is that being?” And reply Mshimin yawe. Apple that being is.” Due to different understanding of objects, one may have different approaches to terminologies. Westerners learn the terminologies we have for all the “objects” and define them as “inanimate” things. However, the Indigenous people may think otherwise. Terminologies in a way determines the stance we have when dealing with nature. As stated, "The language is the heart of our culture; it hol...

Experiences with real objects are certainly helpful for relational understanding of geometry and physics (especially for physics probably, because physics is more based on real-life situations). As shown in the article, students could have intrinsic and extrinsic point of views of something as simple as a straight line. This is quite helpful for understanding complicated geometrical problems prevalent in math and physics.  Most of the times we have to use our imaginations for these problems, but our imaginations depend on our real-life experiences with the objects.  Sensory experiences and embodied ways of learning are definitely necessary in our classes.  We could bring in 3-D objects and ask them to relate these objects to hyperbolic geometry. We could ask them to create/ find something relevant to the concepts learnt in class. With the engagement of senses, it’s easier for students to remember the shapes.  For example, in the article, “The geodesics (intrinsic str...

  1) Two things that surprised you or made you stop.   2) Your own thoughts about what we can or should do as math and science teachers in the situation of the present climate crisis and mass extinction. How to address the situation, students’ and adults’ knowledge and emotions, and effective action (as much as possible)?   One thing that made me stop was this paragraph :” The efficiency with which various animals convert grain into protein varies widely. With cattle in feed-lots, it takes roughly 7 kilogrnms of grain to produce a 1-kilogram gain in live weight. For pork, the figure is over 3 kilograms of grain .... As the market shifts production to the more grain-efficient products, it raises the productivity of both land and water (Brown, 2009, p 226)” “It suggests that a diet of vegetables and herbivorous fish may provide a ready solution for eliminating over 65 % of the pollution  caused by protein production” Despite of the fact that the author has g...