Miss Arguello's Classroom

Remember when I posted about how nervous I was about teacher assisting? How about when I truly learned how difficult teaching is when I was in my first few weeks with my students? Now, I'm in the lat week of my teacher assisting placement, and I think I've learned more about teaching than ever before. While I learned everything about content from my classes, no amount of classes could have prepared me for what I experienced this semester with these wonderful kids. They have taught me more than I ever thought I could learn, and truly have helped me to become a more effective teacher. If I put everything I learned in one blog post, I would end up writing a novel, so let me condense me scope of knowledge to three main ideas that I have learned from my students: (1) students need to belong, (2) students need to know why they are learning what they are learning, and (3) students must be free to act independently. While these are inspired by my observations of my students, they are...

In my content seminar, we have been talking a lot about mathematical competency. This was inspired by Ilana Seidel Horn's book, Motivated, where she talks about various ways to make math class fun and engaging for every student. We started talking about this by asking: What competencies are valued in your math classroom? This led to my guiding question: When you look at your class roster, can you identify at least one way that makes each of your students mathematically smart?  Teachers Value Correctness Over Critical Thinking  In my own educational experience, both as a student and in observation, teachers have cared much more about if students obtain the "right" answer than if they ask good questions relating to the topic at hand. A question that could yield a "wrong answer" or something other than what the teacher has planned for the lesson is often met with "No....." or "Well, I don't think....". Why are we so quick to redirect st...