I am Patty Croskrey and I have been teaching math since 2001. I am currently a math specialist in Fort Bend ISD in Sugar Land, Texas (just outside of Houston). I have completed the Master Mathematics Teacher’s Certification Program (MMT) and the Master of Education program in Math Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston.
To say I am passionate about math education and the direction we need to take our students would be an understatement. Whether you follow common core or your own state’s standards, MathPLC applies to you, best teaching practices, and your classroom.
There will be many topics about math instruction that we will be talking about in the coming weeks and months (and hopefully years!). The order in which we explore these topics does not indicate their importance or priority, just how they seem to fit together or come about. For each topic and for every blog post I will attempt to tell you what the research says (in everyday terms) about whatever ideas or philosophies we will be discussing. I think it is so important for us to look at what the research says and then we can go about figuring out how to incorporate these best teaching/educational practices into our classrooms so that they work and are meaningful to us and our students.
These blog posts, for the most part, will be about bringing our math teaching practices into the 21st century. They will be about teaching our students mathematics in the way that is most meaningful and tangible to them. That doesn’t necessarily translate into what is easiest for us. For many of you these ideas and philosophies are not new, but for some this will be a paradigm shift in the way you approach math education. Either way, it’s all good!
Teachers are incredibly hard-working, passionate, and dedicated to making a difference in students’ educational careers. Many of you are natural born teachers and others of us had to learn to be good teachers. No matter how you got into teaching, we all have a responsibility to teach children math in a way that is relevant, engaging and meaningful to them!
Enjoy!