Teacher Collaboration Reflection Report

As I was reading the final chapter of the 5 Practices book, I was reminded of how important collaboration is – not only for my college studies but more importantly for my future teaching career. Reflecting on the work Sam & I put into our unit plan for this course, it was helpful to talk through ideas with one another and to see the different perspectives we each had. There are many times where I get stuck in my own thinking and it is truly helpful to be able to gain a fresh outlook when working with someone else to help put the pieces together to develop a final product that highlights each of our strengths (for example, Sam offered to make the rubric for the summative assessment whereas I probably wouldn’t have been able to develop one quite as comprehensive as his). Learning from others while integrating your own efforts is an exciting part of the learning process and is a skill I want to continue developing for my own teaching and even promote in my future classroom. To further emphasize the need for teacher collaboration versus having an individualistic mindset as a teacher, I will share a memory of my FEEP experience last semester. Most of the math teachers at the middle school I …show more content…
In observing other students trying out along with me (similar to the teachers who observed Maria in chapter 8), it has been valuable to see how they handle these misconceptions and the whole process has been eye-opening with regards to the number of things to consider in my own planning for these “mock” teaching scenarios.Turning to the article on functions by NCTM, I was reminded of my own mathematics learning experiences in middle and high school. I feel as if my understanding of functions (prior to college mathematics) was never fully developed. I’m not sure if we were even shown a “puddle” or “mapping” diagram in any of my secondary math classes; even if we were, it