As a graduation requirement, I had the privilege of designing a forty-hour experiential learning project. I decided the best setting for my growth as a future educator would be in the college's tutoring center. Below is a journal entry documenting what I learned from this valuable journey.
October 12, 2018
This week I read an article in an education journal about a method of teaching called “backwards teaching”. Essentially, this method is that you begin class by presenting a problem to the students that they do not necessarily know how to solve. Its best if this problem is either very engaging or very relevant to the students. You then allow them to discuss it in group and come up with a way to solve it. Then, as a teacher, you take note of who is doing what and organize who you will call on and in what order so that the whole class will slowly build up to how the problem can be approached. The article emphasised that struggling is not a bad thing. It shares that they traditional method of teaching is actually training students to only expect problems they already know how to solve, which is really unrealistic in real life. The backwards method teaches them healthy and constructive ways to struggle with math that they do not know, and how to think critically and logically about mathematics they are unfamiliar with. My instinct as a tutor is to jump in any time I notice that the student is struggling, but this really isn’t as constructive as it feels. It would be more constructive for me to be patient and wait for them to come to the answer on their own, and then offer tips and help and correct it if it is wrong. Students don’t learn when we are too trigger happy with giving them the right answer. The real growth happens when they make mistakes and struggle and then finally come to the conclusion mostly on their own. If we can lead them to the correct answer rather than show it to them, so much more growth will happen.
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