Blake Nelson

To establish goals, I must ask what skills I currently have. I would say that my current skills are that I'm patient, can explain math concepts well, and can win over a classroom easily (based on prior experience with HEP and tutoring). These are obviously good skils for a teacher, but basic nonetheless. In contrast, I need to work on gaining an understanding for the apathy towards math and work with that instead of against it. I often try to get a student to like math instead of working on explaining why  they don't like math. Thus, my attempt at making math palatable often plays into their dislike of math.

 

In two years, I would like to be starting to get established into a school and be confident enough to say that I know how the administration and the culture works around that school. Obviously, to get there, I need to create a great impression with the people evaluating my teaching (student teaching, etc), understand Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy, and understand how a school's administration is set up internally.

 

In eight years however, I hope to be able to say that I have settled down in a school and have become an active member of the community. I also want to be able to say that I developed as a teacher and understand how to explain math in a way that allows for growth and understanding rather than rote memorization. Obviously this requires a lot of studying on different ways to represent math concepts and different pedagogies revolving around high school mathematics and just pure experience in the field.