Week 2: Connections Between Work Experience and Teaching Standards

It is one thing to know the various constructed guides and standards in teaching our students such as the “Eight Standards for Mathematical Practice”. To be honest, I had to look up these eight standards again to remind myself of what they were. I read through them, and of course I nodded my head all the way down in agreement.

To be even more honest, I am tired of being outlined with what needs to be accomplished. It is another thing to be able to know HOW to create lessons and units that fulfill these standards and guides.

The “Five Characteristics of Effective Instruction”, the “Eight Standards for Mathematical Practice”, the “Iowa CORE standards are great summaries and guides of the common sense practices that any good teacher already strives to have as the base of all lesson goals. As I went through training, as I read other blogs and tweets, as I go through professional development, I feel these acronyms and summaries of what we universally need to be doing in class are always trumpeted out for the general agreement of everyone. It is the HOW. How will I, as an individual, and how will others, problem solve of HOW to achieve these standards (i.e. common sense, but oh so hard to achieve goals)? How will individuals network to build ideas that everyone can use?

I am completely done with complaining. I will only talk and share of what there is to learned from this experience from now on.

Going out and spending time working with my math skills that I teach is the best thing for me. I would say every teacher should have this experience that this “Extern Program” enables. The standards and guidelines are out there to help us help our students become career ready. In this program, we are experiencing what it takes to be career ready directly.

For example, this is not reading article that tells me how important the skill of problem solving is for my students in the working/business world. This is being given the time and experience to be in the position of problem solving for a business. I have been challenged with a problem, and I have not been given the clear route to take. I have these skills; sure, I know formulas to calculate surface area of cylinders and other shapres, and sure, I know there is an equation to calculate arc length. As I have been working at Merrill doing a project on calculating the surface area of winding flow routes, I have been challenged to apply these skills. Mostly, I have been challenged when I realize a simple old formula will not work. Then what do I do? How do I expand on what I already know? What tools are available.

I have included my two week summary document down below to show the process I have gone through in order to solve a problem of finding the surface area of a water valve. The problem solving becomes real, and I have to ask myself: “How will I create this type of experience of problem solving in my class?”

I will be designing activities that are simulations of my experiences here. I will be having my students calculate volume of one of the water valves I have. I would like to experiment with importance of flow rates, and see if I can tie this all together for them in an interactive lesson where they can see their work and calculations produce an important and relevant outcome of creating flow. I have a lot of ideas that I will be working with my employer about, such as is it feasible that my students could manufacture their own pumps? These ideas are developing, and I will create and publish the lessons I come up with on my blog and the other networks I am a part of, such as Twitter, my other blog, and a wiki.

I know I will be able to link up the lessons I create here to the Iowa CORE, or to the Five Characteristic to Effective Instruction, or to any of those great standards and guidelines out there, because this experience is providing me with the knowledge, the curiosity, the time, and the resources to learn about new ideas and applications. This experience pushes me to learn the HOW, so I can go and share with my students. How will I create a lesson that simulates the problem solving I had to do with time-production chart? HOW will I simulate the problem-solving I had to do to calculate surface area. HOW could we create a water hydrant? HOW?

Below is the Week 2 Summary of the Surface Area Project I am working on at Merrill.

Week 2 Merrill Summary