Episode 49 - Catalyzing Change

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 49.  Today we are looking at Catalyzing Change. Changing the way you teach math is hard and it can feel even harder when you think about all the other teachers in your district who aren’t changing their teaching.  You think to yourself “Does it even matter?  Next year’s teacher doesn’t teach this way so why should I take the time to adjust my teaching” or the ever popular thought of “When my students get to junior high or high school those teachers expect the kids to do____(fill in the blank)____, so I need to prepare them." Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations was a book published by NCTM in 2018 in the hopes of starting to change how mathematics is taught in high school.  In 2019 DeAnn Huinker wrote an article in Teaching Children Mathematics (also published by NCTM) about how that book has lessons in it that can help catalyze change throughout all the grades.  Get all the info here: buildmathminds.com/49

Om Podcasten

The Build Math Minds podcast is for my fellow Recovering Traditionalists out there. If you don’t know whether or not you are a Recovering Traditionalist, here’s how I define us. We are math educators who used to teach math the traditional way. Flip lesson by lesson in the textbook, directly teaching step-by-step how to solve math problems. But now, we are working to change that to a style of teaching math that is fun and meets our students where they are at, not just teaching what comes next in the textbook. We want to encourage our students to be thinkers, problem solvers, and lovers of mathematics..we are wanting to build our students math minds and not just create calculators. If that is you, then this podcast is for you.