I have been searching for ways to grow my students mindset around Math for most of my teaching career. When I first started teaching we had the Exit Exam and I always taught the class of seniors needing to pass that test so they could graduate. It was a painful experience that seemed so unfair by April and May the students in my class who were left were almost always our second language learners. These students were excellent math students who struggled with the vocabulary on the test not the math. Then we added 10 units more of math as a graduation requirement . The students that I teach at Valley Oak who enter my Math 1 class are are often juniors or seniors who have earner between 0-5 units of the 30 math credits needed to graduate. Ten of those credit must be Math 1 .Some challenges I have faced as a teacher are adopted curriculum doesn't fit my students needs, pacing calendars move too fast , my students are defeated after repeatedly failing Math 1. I always have my radar out for innovative ways to teach math when one day I heard about C-Stem Math Curriculum create by Professor Harry Cheng at UC Davis. Press the button to watch When I watched this video I knew this was someone I needed to talk with and I was very fortunate to be invited by Napa Learners to be trained to teach the C-Stem curriculum to my Math 1 students at Valley Oak High School. I just completed my second year teaching wit C-Stem and I am encouraged by the results I am seeing. My students are more engaged, they are learning coding, and they are experiencing success in Math for the first time for many of them. My students are also showing growth in their MI scores they are still testing below basic but for many they have increased their scores by hundreds of points.
My masters work has inspired me to do more we must improve the way our students feel about math as well as our district math scores. My work is very relevant to an area our district must channel more resources, research, and energy into. Our students are capable of learning math at high levels and there are exciting changes happening at our lower grades so the middle and high schools need to prepare for these students and increase student success. I became a teacher to help struggling learners and I am determined to create an innovative classroom that produces strong, confident, higher scoring math learners. I have given up a couple pretty big thing I have had on my working plate for a few years now just so I would have ,more time to develop an innovative math program at Valley Oak to support our Math students. My work will continue to grow, my research will continue, and our Math Program at Valley Oak will evolve into a district model.
2 Comments
Brandon DeJesus
6/10/2019 08:59:34 am
Hey Julie,
Reply
Rafael Garcia Avila
6/11/2019 11:28:10 pm
Hi Julie,
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Julie LovieJulie Lovie Is a Math and Science teacher at Valley Oak High School with 25 years experience in teaching at a continuation high school. Julie Also teaches at Napa valley Adult School in the High School Diploma Program. She is passionate about the environment, loves gardening, and learning. Archives
June 2019
Categories |