First Week

I started observing teachers teaching math and found a few interesting things. The first thing I found was that there are teacher trying to teach math who have no idea where the students are heading with math. I always taught math knowing where the student we going and tried to apply what i taught to what they were going to learn. Some teachers have little understanding about math so they can't help them understand what they will need to know they only teacher them what they have to know now. I know this doesn't make sense so let me explain. Let's say i was a beef farmer. When a calf was born on my farm and I don't understand what that calf will be doing I might just let it run wild building up it's muscles and getting really strong because I don't want a fat bull. Really I should be looking to the future of my investment and not let the bull, soon to be steer, get too tough. A bull with all it's parts and active turns into bad meat. I need to know that the future of my investment holds to get the most out of it. Many teachers do a great job of teaching out of a book but books don't do a great job of teaching for the future. What we need more of is teachers that understand math teaching math. I hate when teachers say "but our math book is no good" If you really understand your content you have a world wide web you can pull resources from.