I teach both middle school "technology" (think shop class mixed with Computer Science) and I later teach the same students in geometry and calculus in high school. This means when I first work with students there are no grades, just an opportunity to be creative and learn how to use tools and programming to make things.
This creates an amazing foundation for our work in academics later.
I wonder if it could be a model for improving math education we could expand?
When I only work with students in a context where I'm giving a grade, and that grade is "high stakes" because colleges care about math grades the students are less likely to bring their full creative potential to the subject of math. Grade grubbing happens.
But when they know me from working on a project first, where the feedback is narrative, where they help set the goals they are just more open to really learning the material, not just "getting through it"
@futurebird That's actually really cool!
Most of my education experience was from teaching math at the college level while a graduate student. (I taught a smattering of courses from remedial algebra to multi-variable calculus.) By then, most students have either succeeded at or learned to hate math. I'm not going to say "failed" because I honestly don't think it's their failure a lot of the time.
The thing I observed the most there was that most students success came down far more to them feeling like they could, rather than any poorly defined definition of how smart they were or their aptitude. And a lot of that came down to having a teacher or an environment in the past that a) took time to help them understand and b) encouraged them for getting it, not just for grades. Even one good math teacher in highshool was often enough to make the difference.
So many of the students I saw who struggled at the college level just didn't believe they could do math. They might have confidence and bravado in other areas of life but someone had convinced them that they were dumb at math and it was so hard to break through that barrier once it's set in stone like that.
So anything we (or you) can do to help provide them with an environment where they can believe in themselves a bit and learn is amazing.
myrmepropagandist
Faith, Purple haired feminist 🧋 
