On October 16th, 2014, Tom Ward, a Secondary MAC graduate and current high school math teacher at Greenhills in Ann Arbor, visited our classroom to share some of his ideas and strategies for creating engaging lessons. As a future high school math educator, I found this presentation to be the most interesting, because it had been so math focused. Actually, the first example he presented was to help students learn about quadratic equations, which is the next chapter my placement classroom will be covering! This lesson involved watching a video of a basketball practice, where fellow peers were shooting baskets. I thought it was such a great example, where students can see the parabolic shape of the position of the basketball as it is being shot, and with the right video tools, students could spend various lessons trying to calculate the trajectory of the ball, and whether it would go into the hoop.
Although Mr. Ward shared plenty of lesson examples, such as the basketball trajectory, a Mario Jump example, and a Vine example (not directly related to mathematics), what I appreciated most, was that he didn't just present ideas, but he shared how we could find creative ideas for lessons ourselves. He shared some of his favorite teaching blogs, such as Dan Meyer, Sam Shah, Fawn Nguyen, and Kate Nowak, and also provided us with websites (now linked on CTools), which were some more resources for us to check out. I thought this information was much more useful than just giving us three bloggers to follow.
I really enjoyed this presentation, and although Mr. Ward may not have been as enthusiastic as our first guest speaker, it was really interesting seeing a Secondary MAC alum, and hear about his success as a teacher. I also appreciated that he had taught in different states and different types of schools as well, which suggested to me that he would have various perspectives on teaching. Another aspect of Mr. Ward's presentation that not all of our other guest speakers did was that he provided his information so that we could contact him, as well as a list of his favorite resources.
For me, this presentation was very encouraging. I have worried about my ability to be creative, and make each of my lessons interesting and engaging for students. It is nice to know and be reminded how great of a resource the internet can be, and how it can act as an inspiration for many lesson ideas. I thought that Mr. Ward's presentation supplemented this Teaching with Technology class very well, and it will only help us as novice teachers discover all sorts of interesting and engaging lesson ideas!
Hey Jenny, I really agreed with you when you stated that hearing from a fellow MACer was useful. I think hearing about his experiences in other states as well as unique teaching environments like boarding school was pretty interesting. I think you wrote this post before we heard from Rachael and Carrie because we definitely got their information and they are both MAC alum that are in very interesting teaching positions too. It is wonderful to be exposed to all the prospective teaching roles that are available to us from recent MAC grads. I also think you are right all of our presenters have shown us some very creative ways to present material to our students. I am very thankful to Jeff and Rory for providing us with these opportunities because lacking creativity as a novice teacher was also something I was concerned about. Thanks for sharing!
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