Week Two

Today!

We had two classes today. Our classes were flexible last week (Week One), with one online, others face-to-face, and one class just simply gave us the day off.

Today, we had Language Arts Instruction and Mathematics & Technology: Curriculum and Instruction. Language Arts was fascinating: we did a lot of practical phonological and phonemic awareness activities that we will one day be able to do with our own students. (I am having this reaffirmed everyday: I am a pragmatic learner and learn best when lectures had real-world application.) We also read and discussed our first "book club" book. This week's theme was the alphabet and we were all to bring in a children's alphabet book. We had everything from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to Star Wars ABC (and my offering, Alphabet Under Construction, about a mouse building the alphabet, one letter at a time).

Our professor was awesome and let us out early and our mathematics professor was awesome and e-mailed us all to tell us to come to class a little later, giving us an hour and fifteen for lunch. Some of my blockmates and I walked around the CSU Fullerton quad area, for the event known as "DiscoverFest" when every group, fraternity, sorority, etc. is out in full display and force. Here's a pic I snapped:

I was amused that this was considered part of DiscoverFest, and that people were actually contributing money. It reminded me of

Mathematics & Technology: we used Google Docs, projected onto a Prometheus Smart Board, to collaborate as a class on a real-world issue: when setting up a carpool, how does one determine how much gas money should be paid?

In Mathematics & Technology, we went online and explored the California Core Standards and Content Standards. We discussed the standards in groups of five, each group member reading the standards in ascending order. My partner and I started reading the first grade standards aloud, the next person responded with second grade, then third, then fourth, then fifth. It was interesting to note the progression of the "spinal curriculum"--"Curriculum in which students repeat the study of a subject at different grade levels, each time at a higher level of difficulty and in greater depth."

An example of this would be the Content Standards, which list first graders as being able to compute simple math up to 100. Second grade, up to 1000...and so on. Each grade builds upon the foundation of the last, but, as our professor asked us, what happens if in one grade the foundation is improperly laid?

She had given us the assignment, due today, of writing our own personal math histories. This assignment tied in nicely to this question, as poor instruction had resulted in mislaid foundations for myself and many of my blockmates. There was a moment, as we shared our experiences in a class discussion, that one could hear the pain from so many years' struggle. I know the tears were in my own voice, though I wouldn't show a single one. Math has been one long struggle, from start to now (I won't even say, to finish, because I know math isn't finished with me yet), but it was somewhat comforting to hear that I wasn't alone. I volunteered to type our responses in real time into our class lecture PowerPoint. The slide I was typing into held positive and negative math experiences. It was sad to see that the negatives far outweighed the positives, just like in my personal math history assignment.

Teacher attitude, instruction, missing out on an important ring in the spiral curriculum--these were all major themes in my blockmates' histories. Is it any wonder that the US is far behind in math and science? This was a diverse and random sampling of Southern California college students--and most admitted and agreed to those major themes.

The question I continue to ask myself is how will I, as an educator, address this? I do not want to pass on my personal math anxiety and others' anxiety was passed onto me.
I want to be stronger than my fears and weaknesses.