Student teachers care about ALL students and are committed to their diverse ways of learning

On the first day of school, I had all of my students fill out a survey describing how they learn best, what they like and don't like about teachers, and their goals for high school and beyond. This gave me invaluable qualitative information about my students. My students are all in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, so they are old enough to know how they learn best, so I tried to incorporate their voice in to my teaching. For example, I could have assumed that some of my quietest students were not paying attention and uninterested in class, but their surveys told me that they get extreme anxiety from having to speak in class. Therefore, I provided many opportunities for students to participate using technology, through writing, and through speaking in small, less intimidating groups. However, some students expressed that they do not like group work, so I made sure to differentiate my instruction and frequently use both group and individual activities. Overall, I followed Brookfield's (2015) advice: 

"An approach that one student finds particularly useful or congenial may well be profoundly unsettling and confusing to the student sitting next to her. The only way through this situation is to get the most accurate reading you can of the exact nature and range of the diversity you face, so that you can do your best to mix and match different approaches in ways that correspond to the classroom differences you discover" (p. 17)

The survey also asked students to rank (from 1 to 10) how much they like school, how much they like math, and their confidence in their math abilities. Interestingly, the students who seemed to understand math the easiest were not always the students who liked math the most or felt most confident in their abilities. This informed how I worked with individual students. For example, one of my most motivated and mathematically-inclined students ranked her confidence fairly low and frequently asked for my reassurance to make sure she was solving a problem correctly. Therefore, my main goal when working with this student was to instill confidence in her abilities. She completes nearly every problem with perfect accuracy; she doesn't need much help in understanding the math, but she needs help believing that she understands the math. Other students, who struggled in class and stated they don't like math, were perhaps the most challenging, because I had to show these students that math can be useful and enjoyable. I think the greatest compliment I received was from a student who ranked how much she like math as a 2. She told me, "I really don't like school, but I don't mind this class at all."

While these surveys provided important information, I learned much more by getting to know my students over the course of my student teaching experience. Speaking to students outside of class, and outside of a math context helped make strong relationships. I learned which students plan to pursue a military career, who wants to go to college, who wants to be a teacher, and much more. I've often been asked, "Do you not like any of your students" and I can honestly say no. I genuinely like all of my students and while some of them may not have been the most motivated math students, learning about their thoughts and interests helped me appreciate all of my students. 

Toward the end of my student teaching experience, I also felt that I knew my students as mathematicians - not just who likes math, who works hard, who gets good grades, and whose mom is a calculus professor, but knowing what methods work for different students. For example, I was working with one student individually who was having trouble understanding transformations of equations. When she looked at the equation, she could not understand what transformations were present, but then she entered the equation in to her graphing calculator and could easily describe the transformation and eloquently explain why the given equation led to such a transformation. I was tempted to say, "okay, let's see if you can do the next one without the calculator," but I realized that there is no shame in using the calculator and this is the way she learns best. She is very visual and it helps her to see the graph. Other students struggled with word problems because they had trouble deciphering what the problem meant mathematically. With these students, we broke down problems sentence by sentence and "translated" them in to math. Yet for some students, it was easier to look at the question as a whole. 

I used to say that I like math because "there is only one answer." This may be true, but I appreciate math much more now because there are many ways to get the same answer. I never penalize a student for a mathematically valid, well-justified solution. Students can think about the same problem in countless ways, all of which should be celebrated and appreciated.

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom. John Wiley & Sons.

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