TetzMathPortfolio

 

Mathematics class has been, since I started school and certainly, since I started teaching, the class that most students love to hate.  It has been filled with the most traditional teaching styles, the least comprehension beyond the algorithms, and for many students continual frustration.  Early in my career, I decided that the negative relationship with mathematics class that most students had was not acceptable.  For students’ relationship with mathematics to change, something else needed to change as well.  My feelings are best summarized by Ignacio Estrada in his quote,

 

 

 

 

I felt that how I taught needed to be different, and so I started adding more games, online tools, and other hands-on activities to my daily classroom.  Unfortunately, I was met with a lot of skepticism, hostility, and was often dismissed by my colleagues.  I, however, believed that the change was needed so I stayed the course and continued.  

As I applied into the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University, I was hoping the program would help me to support my belief that games, hands-on activities, and technology were valid methods of instruction and had the potential to surpass traditional methods of teaching in student engagement and deepening understanding.  I wanted the knowledge and understanding of technology’s role in Mathematics Education so that I could better articulate how and why games, hands-on activities, and technology could improve teacher practice.  I coupled this desire to support my beliefs with my previous work on why a video game could be a great way for students to live mathematics, completed in the Mathematics for Teachers (M4T) Masters of Education program at the University of Calgary.  I felt that the MAET program with my electives being the Serious Game certificate courses would lead me towards the creation of a Massively Multiplayer Math Online Role-Playing Game (M3ORPG).

 
Now looking back at my goals from the beginning of the program, I find that my goals remain at the core unchanged, just polished, and refined in scope.  I still believe that a change is needed in mathematics education to increase student engagement and love of mathematics.  I still believe that gaming, hands-on activities, and technology play an integral role in that change.  While I still envision a M3ORPG as a long-term goal, I have shifted focus into what is possible today to move teacher practice in a direction that helps more students be successful in mathematics.  I now have the background research and confidence to focus my goal on helping other teachers to integrate games, hands-on activities, and technology into their teaching practice.  To help improve teach practice in a way that helps to encourage students to not only enjoy mathematics but to feel that they are capable of being successful.  My goal has shifted focus from solidifying my belief in my teacher practice, to helping other teachers find the integration of games, hands-on activities, and technology that facilitates them improving their teacher practice so that as a mathematics teacher profession we move from students not learning how we teach to teaching how students learn.