Interview with a High School Math Teacher

1. What is the hardest thing to be a good math teacher (or teacher in general) speaking from your own experience?

Answer: I believe the most difficult part of being a math teacher is getting the students to get excited about Math. Most students I've taught are either bored with Math or just plain uninterested. What is interesting is that some students say that they were once interested in Math, but obviously, somewhere in their school life, something, or someone made them lose interest.

2. The thoughts you have about teaching, is it the same after you started teaching? What stays the same and what changed?

Answer: I used to think before I started teaching that if I try to teach any grade level in some creative way in Math, that I can get them interested again. I thought that if I use real life experiences, that I can help them relate to Math in a more realistic way. Unfortunately, I found out when I started teaching that this method, works only most of the time - still more often than not. I later found out that I wasn't accommodating other learners especially those who have learning differences. Not only was it very challenging to get these students to understand Math, but it challenging to NOT teach the way I learned the concept.

3. From your teaching experience, which is/are the most effective techniques you have used in teaching and why? Also, at which grade level is this most effective for?

Answer: I believe that one of the reasons why the students are finding Math very difficult is because they don't understand how valuable the concepts and how they can be used in real life. So whenever I teach, I try to use real life examples - applications if you will - so that the seemingly abstract concepts can be more concrete. Although, as I mentioned, this method does not work, there are still students whom I've taught who were able to understand the concept. Another method that I use all the time is simplifying a complex concept using simpler examples. For example, if a student doesn't understand how to simplify radicals, I use simpler examples such as simple fractions and use cross cancellation, etc. The steps are basically the same with the simpler examples but the numbers being used are just more complicated.

4. What teaching advice(s) or tip(s) can you give to teacher candidates? What would you do to draw back students’ attention when they become distracted?

Answer: I haven't been a teacher for that long. But I can definitely say that once I started teaching, it was easier to get disillusioned with teaching especially if the students are unmotivated. But that's exactly we should avoid. As teachers, we should aspire to continue learning so our skills don't stagnate. If we let our disillusionment get the better of us, we risk losing our drive and impetus to continue learning and continue developing professionally. When students become distracted, I usually try to refocus them by making them stop and asking the distracted student to answer the question. 5. What type of techniques do you use to teach math? Instrumental or relational?