Interview with the Student

So I interviewed a student from high school, "J." We spend some time together and I taped his answers. I transcribed the interview.



How would you answer the question "why learn math?"



To make you think. There are some jobs that do not really need math, but math just really makes you think. It makes you see a problem in many different ways. They train you to not be closed minded.



How do you best learn math?



Practice. Not just reading. You have to do it.



Do you enjoy learning math? Do you find it interesting? Do you think it is being taught well?



I can't say I always enjoy learning math, I think it is taught pretty well. Math is a hard subject. I don't enjoy it always. It has nothing to do with the way it is being taught that I don't like it; it is a pretty hard subject. Sometimes I don't like it. Sometimes I find it interesting. Sometimes I find it pretty boring.



Which assessment methods are you best at?



I would say on presentations. I just don't have stage freight. I don't really have a problem talking to people.



How would you define mathematics?



Numbers. Lots of numbers. I don't know. . . adding, subtracting, multiplying.

Today we talked about practice. With practice one can achieve two different things. If the repetition of exercises are not linked the whole desire to learn math can be lost and can be counterproductive. If practice is used in a good sense, then the teacher should pont out the connection between all the set of exercises and then maybe students will acquire fluency and then they will be able to understand higer concepts.

Today we talked about Procedure and Concept. We watched a video of two teachers, one representing "procedure" and the other one "concept." Concept was the cool guy; the one who did not have to put a lot of effort because he understood better the problem and took less time to solve the given problems - much like Justin Long in those recently-irritating Apple TV ads. And Procedure, you guessed it, it was pretty much like John Hodges (Sp?) taking the long route and getting nowhere.

We also rated ourselves as far as how intro/extraverted we were: 1 being extremely introverted and 10 extremely extraverted. I rated myself a 4 because I think I was very introverted when I was young, but have slowly been moving towards more extraversion.

The teacher talked to us about Fluency and Understanding. Fluency: the ability to do something quickly and accurately, not paying much attention to this procedure. Understanding: sense-making, reality check, relationship between many representatives, "depth."A delicate shift of attention: you may want to go from one to the other and make it the focus of your attention.

Wednesday

Today we talked about the different books that one can use to find lesson plans. Textbooks will most likely be obsolete in a few years because they will be replaced by electronic versions of books such as kinlder. This student talked a lot about kindler.

John Yamamoto came to class to introduce the TI-Nspire system. This system helps you to manipulate graphs and data in ways never before seen. He said we can borrow equipment for our practicums. He will be imparting a seminar on this system on a date TBD. I want to assist.

We set up our blogs and have to email the web address of our blogs to our teacher.

We have to have a 10 microteaching class for Friday. I have chosen to do Texas Hold'em.