Chapter 22: A Story of Teacher Growth: Teacher as Learner

That was me about 8 years ago. Many teachers face similar turning points in their careers. Some of them quit teaching and some of them keep plodding along doing the same old thing. I decided to try to do a better job. This is the story of my efforts to do better and the resulting changes in me, my students, and my colleagues.

My first approach to getting better at teaching was to seek out new ideas. While at a conference for science teachers, I learned that achievement is higher when science is taught in real-world contexts. I wondered if this was true with math, too. Would teaching mathematics through real-life contexts help my students learn better? I tried to search the internet for lessons that embedded mathematics in contexts. This task proved to be both time consuming and of limited value, as many of the projects I found were of low quality or more appropriate for elementary classrooms. Next, I tried to create my own materials, but I soon recognized how challenging that was. However, when I tried the few lessons I did find or create, I was encouraged. I realized that when my students worked on a mathematics concept that was applied to a real-world context, they seemed more interested and better able to understand the mathematics embedded in the context. This result energized me and so I kept looking for more materials.