Chuck the Book

Throwing away the book isn't always the worst thing in the world...unless it isn't yours.  Then your district might be a little upset.

This year I took a leap of faith. It wasn't so much a "leap" as it was more of a "being launched out of a canon" type feeling. I saw the disservice that I was doing to the students by teaching so much out of my book and so little out of my educational philosophy.

I believe that math is fun, functional, incredible important and interesting.  I also believe that to make students believe this as well, you have to be a pretty accomplished salesperson.

My educational philosophy is based on the simple fact that humans are explorers. People like to go into the unknown and find a way out (hopefully). This also means that people want to discover things that they don't already know. This is the main reason I flipped my classroom 180 degrees this school year.

I saw that teaching out of the book was undercutting my most basic and genuine belief of learning through exploration. After thinking about this for a long time I decided that my philosophy was not wrong, but my methods were. Research backs me up on this point. (Read more about that here.) So I decided to line up my extrinsic actions with my intrinsic beliefs.

This year is much more centered around discovery-based learning. What I have found so far is that students are more willing to ask questions. They are more willing to try things and be ok with failing.  Also, they are more interested in the problem because they get to choose their own method of going about it.

I can't speak for the rest of my year, but for now this leap of faith has paid off.

Today I Wanted To Quit

Being a teacher is hard.

Really hard.

Today was the first day that I honestly wanted to quit teaching. Today the bad points outweighed the good ones. I couldn't stop thinking things such as "Why didn't I become a singer, actor, banker, garbage man, postal worker, etc.?" Why didn't I find a career that was a regular 8-5 job and didn't follow you home? Why didn't I go on a path that led to simple tasks, little growth and free weekends?

Why?

Today wasn't the first difficult day of my professional career, but it might have been the most difficult up to this point. I can't shake the feeling that I am doing this wrong. There has to be an easier way. This can't be what I do for the next 35 years, right?

I want to change the world. I want to influence students to see the importance of math and  use it. I want students to be smarter when they leave my classroom than when they entered it. I want them to wonder and question. I want them to not hate coming to math class even if they hate math. I want them to try and fail, then try again and succeed. I want them to understand questions are natural and meaningful, mistakes are normal and success is praiseworthy. I want them to question why stuff works and then have the drive to go figure it out. I want a lot of things for my students. The problem is:

They don't.

They want an easy A. They don't want to think, but rather they want a cookie cutter answer. They want so little and lack work ethic so much.

I'm at a loss tonight. Right as I thought I understood students and their wants, it flies back in my face to prove that I still have a lot of learning to do.