Blog #10 - The Discourse Community of e3 High in the Math Department

So it's safe to say that a great deal of people have a problem with math problems. Math in itself is a whole other language and what learning really boils down to is the experiences you had when you were taught math. 

Teachers....GOOD teachers...are far and few in between, so you better hope you get lucky in one of your high school math classes and gets someone who 

1. Knows what they're doing

2. Can explain what they're doing in plain English

3. Makes you feel like you know what you're doing

The discourse community I am choosing to follow and write about is the Math Department at a school I work at tutoring. There are about 5-6 teachers in this department, 4 tutors, and countless students. 

The school they work at is a charter school smack dab in the middle of Downtown San Diego. I know very little about charter schools. I tried watching a video on them but it just served to confuse me even more - maybe because they have relatively few rules and aren't governed by the state. This part of my project is crucial to understand so I, and my audience, can better understand what pressures charter school teachers face and how their jobs differ from the typical high school teacher. 

What is intriguing to me about this school, though, is that they are trying to implement heavy reliance on technology in the classroom and they are actively working to transition into a new wave of schooling that is project-based and student-to-student interaction- focused.

I plan on interviewing 2 Math teachers, 

one is the head of the Math department, has years of experience at this school and others,and  teaches various math classes. Let's call him teacher A.

The other is a freshly anointed teacher, straight out of grad school. This is his first "real" teaching job and he teaches only one class. He'll be teacher B.

I plan on examining the differences in their teaching styles and learning how teacher B is accumulating this knowledge and how he is making it work for his students and his classroom. 

I'll also be looking at how teacher A had to adapt his previous knowledge from his teaching experience and how he is building the culture within the Math Department that he leads now. 

For this project, I'll also be observing each in their natural habitats - the classroom. 

Throughout these interviews, observations, and research, I plan to learn a lot more about what it means to eat, breath, sleep Math and how teaching Math in a charter school molds people.