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This notion that you only need to know as much math as you're going to teach is ridiculous. The more your students struggle in math, the deeper your understandi
by japhyr 12y ago
This notion that you only need to know as much math as you're going to teach is ridiculous. The more your students struggle in math, the deeper your understanding of the subject needs to be. It takes a fair bit of skill and understanding to accurately diagnose and address misunderstandings.
Knowing higher level math also lets you help younger students learn things in a way that sets them up for success later on. Students can learn "advanced" concepts at a young age if presented at the right time, in the right way. But you can't introduce those concepts if you don't know them, and recognize when it's appropriate to introduce them.
- omegaham 12y agoThis is an excellent couple of points. A math teacher doesn't just have to be able to know how to do the problem himself; he also has to be able to figure out where the student's misunderstanding is and how to correct it. Not only that, he needs to be able to do this for dozens of different students, all of whom have their own difficulties and misunderstandings. I'm sure that there are people with only high school math understanding who can do this... but it just seems to me that the kind of personality traits that would make someone learn how to teach math like this would also make that person extremely passionate about learning it to the best of his ability and potential. I can't imagine a passionate history teacher who isn't also passionate about learning more history. Same thing with an English teacher who only reads John Grisham books (not that there's anything wrong with John Grisham).