Many Teachers Can't Do Math, Let Alone Teach It

The title of this newspaper article definitely drew in my interested when I first read it. I first thought it was a stab at all math teachers in general, but after reading the article I understood its purpose. Teachers are getting very little preparation to teach the subjects they are required to teach and math is one of the main ones. Not everyone can do math easily. At least with social studies or English (not to bash either of those subjects) you can almost pick it up as you go. And these courses do not lead in to one another. If a child does not understand social studies in grade 7, it will not affect their understanding for grade 8. However, since math builds upon previous concepts, a child needs to have a grasp on previous years in order to move on. Since spiraling is taken out of the new junior high math curriculum, the course goes on to assume that all children remember how to do the items from the previous year without any reviewing. Maybe in an ideal world. I seem to have gone off on a tangent. With that being said, teachers who are uncomfortable with math may not be preparing students to move on to the next level. And it is not their fault, they were not adequately prepared in university. I honestly cannot pick one course that I did in university that I can say prepared me to be a math teacher. My math  methods course was half decent, but we only spent a short amount of time preparing lessons and ``teaching`` to our peers. It was okay, however, because I was strong in math. I picked up the pieces where I had to. I often have primary/elementary teachers come up to me and ask me how to do certain problems and concepts. Children can pick up on it when teachers are uncomfortable. The first year I tried to teach dividing decimals with base ten blocks was a nightmare because I did not understand the base ten method. I was not taught that way and I was not prepared in university to teach it that way. I did however take the time to learn how to do it and the following year it went flawlessly, but I knew I had to teach it again to the students from the year before. Had they have gone on to another teacher, unless I had told them, there would have been an assumption that they knew how to divide decimals with base ten block. The article also blames the curriculum for being too much about discovery and less about practice. In order to include both, we need to have less topics to cover in a year span. There is just not enough time to allow for the discovery of every topic while still giving children time to practice with them. The math curriculum that is currently being taken out of the high school program is the one that I did in grade 10. That was the first year for it then. From the beginning, teachers complained that there was not enough practice in the book and it was expecting students to have previous concepts that they had not. It took eleven years to replace the curriculum.

Resource:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/too-many-teachers-cant-do-math-let-alone-teach-it/article2183700/