Reflection on the course

I would divide what I've learned from this course into two categories: the practical, which mostly came from preparing and presenting the microteachings, and the theoretical, which mostly came from class discussions. Of course the theoretical content is very applicable to the classroom as well, but it seemed more focused on the broad philosophies of how to teach rather than the particulars.

From the practical section, I learned how to structure a lesson and how much content to teach in a given amount of time, which are skills I value a lot and hope to keep developing. At the start of the semester I was definitely erring on the side of too much content. The experience presenting was also very helpful; I always feel like I need to get better at speaking.

The unifying theme behind what I learned from the theoretical section was to teach math as a creative endeavour, not just as a set of procedures. This hearkens back to the first blog post, on relational vs. instrumental understanding, and was developed throughout the course, and I definitely feel that I have a better understanding about the many ways in which to approach this. The ideas about the thinking classroom particularly interested me.

As to how to improve the course, I felt like the balance between practical and theoretical was a little heavy on the theoretical. I think it would have been helpful to have class discussion time about how we design our lesson plans or make decisions about unit structure. These are the things that I felt underprepared for when going into practicum, and it would have been nice to have some guidance about them beforehand.