Mid-Year Thoughts

After a long Spring Festival break, second semester begins on Monday. Thus far, it has been quite an adventure, both teaching in China and teaching in a Harkness/discussion-based format. Time to reflect:

1) I've definitely become quite a fan of the Harkness Method of teaching. It is student-centered, problem-centered, and understanding-centered which I absolutely love. In addition, it really brings forth the different ways math problems can be solved, which deepens learning.

My experience immediately prior to coming to China was as an SAT (and ACT) math tutor and what I found was that students didn't really know how to problem solve and didn't have a good grasp on the concepts they were working with. This leads me to my second thought...

2) The Exeter materials are pretty amazing. I've written previously that they were 8 years in the making and you can tell. The problems are so rich, the spiraling is impressive, and the concept development is really well thought out. I'm humbled that they've done all this work and made it available for free.

3) The teacher's role as facilitator/guide is quite different from that of "sage on the stage," and mastering it will take some time. As I've mentioned, I need to get better at asking questions: questions to clarity, questions to draw out, questions to expand upon. No doubt, this is part of the art of teaching.

4) Allowing for different ways of solving problems means you, as the teacher, really need to know your stuff and be paying attention. Things are definitely easier when "there's only one way, the way I taught you;" however, this is, to me, incredibly anti-student and anti-learning. Suffice it to say that I've learned A LOT thus far this year and I have relished all of it.

5) It's difficult having an extended discussion in a second language. I applaud what my students are doing (taking classes in English), but I've come to realize that I need to temper my expectations as to  discussions. They are presenting in English and asking questions of me in English; however, sometimes, when other students have questions, I let them switch to Chinese. There's no shortage of discussion, questions or answers, when they speak in their native language.

Decided to make a few changes for this semester, principally dividing the students (precalculus) into a "faster" group and a "normal" group. One thing Exeter does is have their incoming students take placement tests, and I can see why - some students can simply fly, while others need more time. Curious to see how this is going to work.