Teaching, Training, and Advising for the Harvard Mathematics Department. Oh, and some computer stuff.
I had nothing to do with the production of this video, but Robin in my group helped that Stats department with the pre-service training, and they made a summary of what they had learned. Fun stuff.
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Tags: statistics, microteaching, training
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Today I’ll be attending the Fall Teaching Conference sponsored by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. The math department, especially the preceptors, collaborate a lot with the Bok Center in the training of graduate student teaching fellows. I’ve given several talks in these conferences, but I’m free this year.
There are sessions on teaching and learning in the conference. Erin Driver-Linn will speak on “The Confused Problem-Solver in Math and Science,” presenting research on student learning Ryan Hickox will speak on “Successful Science Sections”, a nuts-and-bolts session. There will be panel discussions, case studies, all kinds of great stuff.
One of my favorite Bok Center talks was given by a colleague of mine, talking about the importance of the first day. He decided to create the worst example of first-day teaching and model it without telling the audience. He showed up late, he mumbled, he looked disheveled, he forgot his handouts. Someone asked a question and he said, “What a stupid question!” Fortunately, most of the attendants either figured it out or waited long enough for Andy to reveal the ruse. That’s something I wouldn’t be able to pull off!
The conference runs every Fall and Spring (two days in the Fall, one in the Spring), and features one of the more famous free lunches on campus.
Links for today:
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I’m fond of saying that “Sepetember is a the cruelest month” for a preceptor (apologies to T.S. Eliot). Next week is the first week of classes, but now that the freshmen are here we are in the “Opening Days” period that ramp up to the academic year.
Today we have our annual teaching fellow orientation. We’ve developed a set of activities that we hope will get our graduate students and postdocs excited and prepared for teaching calculus, including:
Should be a good time.
technorati tags:teacher, training
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I’m really looking forward to the Critical Issues in Education: Teaching Teachers Mathematics 
conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute coming up at the end of the month.
This workshop will focus concretely on courses, programs and materials that aim to increase teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. Both courses and programs that lead to initial certification and professional development of current teachers will be examined at the workshop. In addition, the workshop will examine efforts by colleges, universities, school districts, professional organizations and funding agencies to support people who teach these courses or lead these workshops.
I work with the Harvard Extension School’s Master of Liberal Arts in Mathematics for Teaching program, which aims to acquaint schoolteachers with higher mathematics. The goal is not so much to give them material that will be directly applicable to the classroom, but to stretch their minds mathematically so they will be able to stretch their students’ minds.
This past semester I’ve taught a probability course in this program using the Moore method. It’s been a real challenge for my students and me because I’ve never done that before. But I found it enjoyable and the students seem to have received it well, too. My colleague Bret Benesh and I will be presenting at this conference on our experiences with Inquiry-based courses in the ALM program.
technorati tags:msri, teaching, conference, harvard, extension, school
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I just got back from the Legacy of R.L. Moore conference in Austin, Texas. It was really nice. The conference is not only about sharing ideas for the Moore method but any Inquiry-Based Learning techniques.
We saw some great talks, especially from the executive director of Project Kaleidoscope. Bret and I gave a talk about our work in the extension school and it was well received.
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It’s time once again for the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s annual Fall Teaching Conference. It’s a great opportunity for graduate student teachers to learn and discuss their teaching development before the academic year begins. And the catered lunches are legendary.
(Derek Bok is former and interim president of Harvard. The center was started to continue his mission of training new university teachers. Derek Bok’s book, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More, was part of the impetus for the recent teaching initiative here.)
This year I will be again presenting one of the BC case studies in mathematics called “The Quicksand of Problem Four“. Like most good case studies, it’s a classic story which many experienced teachers have encountered. How can it be handled? That’s the study part.
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There’s an interesting article in USA Today on 2006-01-12 called “Elementary teacher does her homework — lots of it“. It’s about a teacher who makes a special effort to get to know her students so she can tailor lesson plans to them.
This isn’t a lesson for K-12 teachers only. At the college level our students have even more diverse and interesting backgrounds. Especially here, where it seems that everybody is very good at something.
For a college teacher, getting to know the students breaks down the misconception that teachers and students are fundamentally different people and shouldn’t converse. That’s one reason why I recommend to teaching fellows they meet one-on-one with their students early in the term.
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Derek Bok, former president of Harvard and eponymous for the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning here, had an editorial called “Are colleges failing? Higher ed needs new lesson plans” in the Boston Globe on December 18. I can’t link to it any more because it’s moved to their paid-for archives, but you have LexisNexis you can find it. He writes:
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities. Surveys show that most faculty members prefer teaching to research and spend much more time at it. The problem is not that faculty are uninterested in their students but that they do too little to explore new and possibly more effective ways of teaching and learning.
He goes on to say that university faculty don’t research teaching methods and education because they aren’t trained to do so as graduate students. I think this explains the need for a center like the Bok Center. When students think early about the issues of teaching and learning, not only do they become better teaching assistants or teaching fellows, they are equipped to guide their own improvements throughout their academic career.
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A colleague showed me a paper by Bellido, Walker, and Wayland from the University of Puerto Rico called “The Art of Asking Thought Provoking Questions in the Mathematics Classroom.” It’s an interesting read and has a lot of practical advice.
They write:
Textbook exercises are quite useful, but no text can provide a universal series of questions that provoke every student or even every class to think through a new concept. Questions that lead students to understand must start at their current understanding and provoke them to think forward to the mathematics at hand. Questions of this type are valuable instructional tools, but textbooks are not designed to provide them. Good, make-them-think questions take practice to design and use effectively.
Before deciding that this is for somebody else’s students or somebody who has more time, ask yourself when was the last time you heard “these students don’t even know the basics” or “they can’t even read the easy problems much less solve them” or “they act like they are bored, but they really don’t get it” or “there is no way my students can do those problems!” While such statements, made in private of course, may seem like harmless venting of frustration, they are formidable obstacles to students really understanding the
mathematics we purport to teach. … Substituting in a formula or mechanically executing some procedure is not mathematics, as Mark Twain would say, it is French. In order to learn and understand mathematics, students must think about mathematics. Our job is to provoke that thinking.
The article gives several ways to modify common problem that test only the memorization of a fact or formula to those that provoke learning beyond the formula. Although the examples are taken from algebra and geometry, the techniques are universally applicable.
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I’m glad to be leading the inaugural discussion today in the new Teaching Undergraduate Mathematics Seminar (TUMS II), which meets alternate Thursdays.
To quote from the seminar’s web site:
Teaching is a significant component of most mathematicians’ careers. Just as future lawyers and doctors must study and train to become more proficient in the skills needed for their professional careers, future mathematicians must study and train to improve their teaching skills. The goal of the Teaching Undergraduate Mathematics Seminar is to provide opportunities during the semester to discuss and reflect on teaching philosophies and practices in order to become better teachers now and to prepare for the teaching activities which will be part of future professional careers.
The seminar presentations and discussions are designed primarily for mathematics graduate students, but anyone interested in mathematics teaching is welcome to attend. We will be examining teaching by reading and discussing case studies developed at Boston College.
And here is the teaser for the case today:
Hugh Brightman, a second year graduate student, is teaching his own Calculus II class under faculty supervision after a successful year as a TA for a recitation section in a large class taught by a professor. Although not many students have been coming to his office hours, Hugh is confident that they are well prepared for his first hour exam. He is shocked when he discovers that they don’t seem to have learned even the most basic techniques and concepts.
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