"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery." - Mark Van Doren

Teaching Philosophy

When I was in school, math always came easily for me. I didn't always understand what I was doing or why it was done a certain way but I breezed through regardless. In fact, it wasn't until a math methods course in college that I understood that there was a reason why things were done the way they were. We were using the geoboards to make rectangles and triangles when it suddenly came to me that a triangle is half of a rectangle. It was so startling that I believe I loudly exclaimed "oh!" in the class. In all of my years in school, nobody ever explained that the formula for the area of a triangle came from the fact that a rectangle can be split into two triangles. I am not a memorizer and this would have made a huge difference for me in school. As a result of that experience, I try to "assist discovery" whenever possible to explain or show why we do the things we do in the math classroom to make it more meaningful for them.

I can relate to my students since I was not the most motivated student myself. If a teacher lectured for more than five minutes, I was off in what I call "La-La Land". Although I was never a behavior problem, I was often not focused on what was happening. I understand this and try to keep my students' focus by offering times for movement such as having students come up to the board to do math problems (which also allows me to assess if the topic is actually being mastered or if remediation is needed), doing some hands-on lab experiences, and doing some group work.

Weekly cumulative reviews, I believe, are essential whether done in flashcard form in science or as an online assessment on Quia or as a Friday worksheet in math. To me, learning math is like learning a foreign language in that if you don't practice it every day to keep it fresh in your mind it is too easily forgotten.

I am always looking forward to learning something new and am unafraid of failure. Whatever I do learn, I try to incorporate into the classroom environment. Some have worked well and some have not. I try to instill in my students this love of learning for the sake of learning and to not be afraid of failure but to learn from it. A prime example of this was when I had the fourth graders work with balloon-powered cars. After initially working with all the same model, I had them redesign them to get them to move faster and/or further. My goodness! There were tears-a-plenty as students' cars were not doing what they thought they were going to do or did before. I spent a lot of time drying tears and trying to get them to not focus on the cars not working properly but on what may have caused it to not work and address the problem.

Resume

Available upon request. (I just don't want my personal information floating around in cyberspace.)

Professional Memberships

• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
• National Science Teachers Association
• Virginia Association of Science Teachers
• Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics
• Virginia Society for Technology in Education
• International Society for Technology in Education