I was told by Chris Johnson that a person's vocation is found where the heart's greatest desire and the world's greatest needs meet. It was after considering this that I determined that what I want to do his to promote collaborative problem solving and that math education was the best place to do this.
Now, for the fun (and challenging) part, how to do more of that:
- Find problems worth solving
- This is an ongoing challenge. The MTBoS has been a huge help. I need to identify areas where I do not have problems worth solving in my class and then focus filling in those spaces.
- Utilize team roles.
- I have created these and will be setting them up this week! I learned this summer about the difference between roles that make people responsible for the operations of the team vs responsible for the content. I think I have found roles that push people to contribute to the collaboration without making individuals responsible for the content.
- Identify what is preventing me from doing that
- Tests (which brings me to the next bullet point).
- Determine a way to incorporate that in assessments
- I really want to look at assessments differently this year. After researching on the MTBoS, I developed this one pager for alternative assessments.
- Force a wrap-up at the end of collaborative problem solving classes
- I believe that collaborative problem solving helps students understand the content, but a wrap-up is essential for a closure to the lesson. I have not been making space for this in my class as much as I need to. This is a goal of mine for next year.
