Interview with Math teachers and students

We interviewed 2 teachers and 3 students and asked them 5 questions. I've summarized the points we got from their answers. To give a brief background, Teacher A is an older teacher who's been teaching Math for at least 20 years and is more of the instrumental type of teacher. Teacher B on the other hand is a much younger teacher. He's been teaching for about 8 years and is starting to move towards relational way of teaching. So here's the interview:

1) How important do you think high school Math is in getting a good job? Which topic is more important than others?

-Teacher A says for the most part, not that important. Outside of engineering and commerce, basic arithmetic or grade 7 is good enough. He is hoping that high school math be more geared towards using math in everyday settings and life skills, like paying bills, balancing cheques, taxes and so on.

-Teacher B says it’s important to about grade 10 math. Being able to do fraction work, being able to read graphs is important in the work place. He mentions accounting specifically as the major motivator to continue taking high school math since it does require more math than other jobs. He also mentioned that it’s the process of learning and doing things step by step in high school math that’s significant rather than the math itself. Just the way of figuring out problem solving and translating it to the workplace is what counts.

The students on the other hand think that in general you’ll need high school math in getting a good job. They mentioned that we use math in our everyday lives but mostly mentioned pre-high school math in their examples. But still they believe that high school math will be extremely beneficial in getting good jobs

2) Are there any tips you can provide so that we can engage students into wanting to learn Math?

-Teacher A just said to try to make the questions into real life situations. Other than that he suggested to just be relatable to the students and have a good working relationship with them. In that way, if they like you and respect you, they’ll be more attentive and will be more willing to listen and something is more likely to stick with them.

-Teacher B suggested to always keep it positive. He wants to get rid of the “tough math” talk within the classroom and just give the students encouragement. He also suggested to move away from lecture type class and more into a class where the students teach themselves and build off each other and the teacher as just a “guider”.

What do you expect from your teacher so that you can keep engaged and wanting to learn Math?

-From the students we talked to, the things we got from them is to just be energetic and upbeat so that the students do stay engaged and be more attentive. At the same time the students said that no matter how enthusiastic the teacher is if the students don’t get the material, they would not be engaged. So breaking down the ideas into an understandable material is crucial for the students.

3) Should students have Math homework everyday? How much homework?

-Teacher A goes by a rule of 10 mins per grade increment and then dividing it according to how many subjects the students are taking. He gives students time at school though to work on those problems as well. In the following class he takes up some questions and sometimes some of the questions lead in to the next lesson for class.

-Teacher B too gives time to do work in class. He assigns 5 questions and they work on it in groups in class. That way they get to work in their groups and they’re actually keener on doing the work and also the teacher can check the work right away.

For the most part the students agreed that homework should be assigned in order to make sure that they’re caught up with what’s being taught. But one students said it should be up to the students so that the more responsible students won’t have to do as much work since they’re already caught up.

4) Do you emphasize more on computational or more analytical mathematics?

-Both teachers said that because of the provincials they have to teach computational heavily. They both ideally would like to be more analytical but since it’s a private school, the parents just want the grade results. So they actually feel like they’re just “training” the students rather than teaching them.

-Likewise the students all preferred the computational part of math. Since they are concerned about tests they just want to learn the equations and don’t care much of what theories are behind the equations

5) What is the most creative lesson plan you’ve had?

-Teacher A emphasized the importance of how the teacher’s energy has a lot to do with how the students learn and react. He doesn’t believe in “gimmicks” or special activities in order to make the students learn.

-Teacher B mentioned a few things such as making brides and slides using quadratic and cubic functions. But the one he liked the most was giving students a protractor and a ruler and making them measure the height of a flagpole. This was prior to teaching trigonometry, so the students actually got creative and some of them actually came close to using trig without knowing it.

-The students however reinforced teacher A’s thoughts. They actually don’t have anything that standout to them, they just said that they just learned it because they had a good teacher that they liked to learn from.