In 2020, I wrote No One Way, a blog post which I used to explain my website’s motto (“There is no one way.”) I argued that it is the math itself that demands that we approach important topics in multiple ways. As it turns out, this is a favorite topic of mine: in 2016, I… Continue reading No Best Way
Tag: Algebra
Lab Gear, the Great Connector
I had the good fortune of mentoring Liz Caffrey for five years, at the very beginning of her teaching career, when she worked at the high school where I chaired the math department. She is now a veteran and talented middle school teacher in the Boston area, but we’ve stayed in touch. In this guest… Continue reading Lab Gear, the Great Connector
Virtual Manipulatives: Part 1
Learning Tools In 1981, after ten years in K-5, I switched to teaching high school math. In some ways, this felt like starting a whole new career: the math was more involved, the relationship with students less like parenting, and tradition weighed a lot more heavily on the profession. Still, in other ways, teaching is… Continue reading Virtual Manipulatives: Part 1
Sum and Difference of Cubes
Teaching the factoring of the sum of cubes and difference of cubes was not a priority for me in my teaching, and the topic does not seem to be part of the Common Core Standards. However, some people do have to include it in their classes, and as a result the subject occasionally comes up… Continue reading Sum and Difference of Cubes
Asilomar Report: Conic Sections
As my retirement starts to kick in, I no longer attend conferences — except for one: the annual meeting of the California Math Council (Northern Section.) Once again, I had a great day at Asilomar, a beautiful spot near Monterey, right on the Pacific Ocean. Here is my annual report. Conic Sections Figuring out an approach to… Continue reading Asilomar Report: Conic Sections
Teaching the Distributive Property
A guest post by Rachel Chou I have been a classroom mathematics teacher for 20 years. I have heard students use the phrase “the distributive property” more times than I can count. Many of them misunderstand what “the distributive property” even is. But maybe I think that because I don’t really know what “the distributive property”… Continue reading Teaching the Distributive Property
Freakonomics Radio on Math Curriculum
Every now and then, an academic decides they’re qualified to fundamentally rethink math education, and to share their brilliant solution with the world. That is already problematic when the academic is a mathematician or a math education researcher, but it is even worse when it is someone whose only connection to K-12 math education is that… Continue reading Freakonomics Radio on Math Curriculum
Remembering Lew Douglas
(Post updated on 19 Jan 2020.) The Bay Area Math Project and the Alameda Contra Costa County Math Educators presented Lessons from Lew, a professional development session in memory of Lew Douglas, a leading Bay Area math educator who passed away in April. Lew delighted in math and developed lessons to allow others to share in that wonder. We… Continue reading Remembering Lew Douglas
Learning from Teaching (cont.)
For the second time this summer, I taught a version of my Visual Algebra workshop, this time as part of a summer institute at the Atrium School near Boston. (Earlier in the summer, I did this at Synapse School, in Silicon Valley, and wrote about it here.) Once again, I walked away from the workshop… Continue reading Learning from Teaching (cont.)
Learning from Teaching
Now that I’m retired from the classroom, summer tends to be my busy time. I just taught the grades 6-9 version of my Visual Algebra workshop. There were quite a few familiar faces among the participants. Some had seen me present at the Asilomar (California Math Council) conference, others at NCTM, yet others at a… Continue reading Learning from Teaching
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