Mr. Ho's Teaching Philosophy

To help his students take on the challenges of tomorrow's world, Mr. Ho believes that students need to possess a growth mindset.  They need to be willing to take on challenges and not be afraid of making mistakes.  To achieve this in the classroom, students need to be actively engaged in their learning, embrace struggles and challenges, keep trying to figure out a solution, and develop their own understanding of the subject through prior experiences, social interaction, and collaboration.

As the teacher, Mr. Ho's role is to facilitate this learning process by planning and designing lessons or activities that are student-centred and allow students to construct and interpret knowledge, rather than just recording information given by the teacher.  When his students run into difficulty, he praises their efforts and learning process and then asks them appropriate scaffolding or probing questions, rather than telling them what to do.  Thus, he helps his students foster a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and ideas and move away from being the knowledge receivers.

In addition, Mr. Ho stresses the importance of thinking in math, rather than doing math, in his classroom.  He has high expectations in instruction, as he believes that this would help his students enhance their learning experience in the classroom.  He teaches in a way that focuses on problem-solving, rather than knowledge and rote learning.  His lessons always have meaningful learning goals that link to the big ideas of the courses stated in the curriculum document.  Furthermore, his assessment of learning is always closely linked to his instruction, and he always provides timely and descriptive feedback to his students that would help improve their performance in the assessment.  

Finally, Mr. Ho values his students' interests and pays close attention to and accommodates their learning needs, preferences, and styles whenever possible.  He also lets his students take full ownership of their learning, as he is confident that they are capable of thinking and coming up with their own ideas by learning from each other.