The Humanizing Pedagogy

When I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, I was in seventh grade. I had one of the best math teachers I've ever had, and it was evident to me that she wanted to make time to be personable with her students. She wanted her students to know that she had a life outside of just being a teacher and that she cared about us so much that she wanted to share those moments of her life with us as well. I still remember her telling us one day about playing Rock Band in her basement with her husband and how she had accomplished 'expert' level on the drums. Although this memory is seemingly unimportant, it's those small personal stories and gestures that made me realize that she wasn't there just to be an authority figure at school; this teacher really cared about forming relationships with her students, and I know for a fact that she's still going on strong with her new students every year.


This idea of humanizing oneself as a teacher is one that we've not talked about much in this class, but we have talked about the idea of humanizing our students. Just as we, as teachers, want our students to feel comfortable around us and to be able to recognize us as real people, we too need to recognize that our students have lives outside of school. In the final chapter of the book, Motivated: Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In, the author talks about the importance of acknowledging the humanity of both students and teachers. A friend of mine put it this way; students are not going to care about how much you know until you show that you care about them.


Relationships are such a big part of being a teacher and one of the biggest reasons I chose to pursue this career, and it amazes me how many teachers seem to forget this aspect. In my current placement I have worked hard to engage my students in non-academic conversation and joke around with them to make them feel comfortable. I have tried to form lesson ideas around things that I discovered they enjoy, and I have asked them for feedback about the types of activities I am implementing in class. The responses I have gotten have been positive and I can only imagine how the dynamic of these classrooms might be different if the focus was on this relational aspect all the time. In the Motivated book mentioned above the author writes, "Teachers are problem solvers who monitor the classroom climate, attend to the relationships and interactions among participants as activities unfold, identify what is working and diagnose what is not, and then draw on a rich repertoire of practices to tinker and adjust". What a better community we could create if this was the role teachers took.

Finding Meaningfulness in Mathematics

In the book Motivated: Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In, the author describes meaningfulness as being attained when students are able to connect their personal experiences and interests to topics and ideas, thus creating an appreciation for mathematical content. Stereotypically however, and often times truly, mathematics classes are filled with copying down seemingly unimportant formulas and equations, memorizing rules and properties, and spitting it all out of mind onto a test, forgetting everything that was just 'learned'. This is definitely the process by which the 8th and 9th grade students at my current teacher assisting placement move through mathematics class. Today I was even approached with the question, "Why do we even have to learn?". Fortunately I was saved from having to answer this question, because this student was interrupting the teacher and was called out, but hearing him ask this really made me wonder what might be changed to allow these students to feel engaged and excited to learn mathematics.

Meaningfulness is a foreign concept to these students; one that is lacking so much that students often times sleep in class or talk over the teacher, not caring that their behavior is preventing the entire class from learning. Watching this happen is rough, partly because it makes me want to step in and add things to what is being taught, but also because I myself am unsure of what could captivate these students at this point as well. Being placed at this school and reading through the above mentioned book in this class has helped me remember the importance of meaningfulness in a mathematics classroom, and it has become a constant thought on my mind while planning lessons and activities for this group. I strive to be a teacher that encourages students in their learning, not only about what's required for me to teach, but in the ways that students can apply and connect their learning to other aspects of their life. As we continue through this semester, and as I prepare for student teaching in the fall, this idea of meaningfulness is definitely one that I will keep at the top of my priority list, working to engage my students in ways that help them want to learn, rather than in ways that require them to learn. Without meaningfulness, the classroom remains a scary and unwelcome place, and I hope my students never experience that feeling.