Early in my involvement with the GeT ESLO group, I asked about the end goal of the group. I asked this question because I suspected that my goal was different from some of the other members of the group. Sure, I agreed that the Geometry for Teachers courses needed guidelines to ensure that the course was preparing future teachers to be successful Geometry teachers, but there were many more reasons that I wanted to be part of the project.
Too often, there is a disconnect between college education courses and what is actually occurring at the secondary level. Conversely, high school Geometry teachers need to know what math deficiencies college instructors are seeing in their undergraduate students. Without any interaction between these groups there can really be no concrete improvement in the preparation of future math teachers. This project is a great example of how that interaction can work to better prepare future math teachers, let current teachers know what college level instructors think are the important topics for high school courses, and can help college level instructors improve the focus of their course.
The discussions that have occurred in the ESLO group have illuminated this, and while the overarching goal is to give feedback to the GeT SLO authors, there are powerful conversations taking place where college level instructors, as well as high school instructors, get to voice concerns that they have about the preparedness of these future students entering college, as well as leaving college. These conversations are most assuredly going back to all the participants’ institutions in a variety of ways. For example, there were some intense exchanges surrounding the use of Dynamic Geometry software such as Geogebra. The perception was that this software is being used as a substitute for compass and straightedge instruction, instead of being used as a tool to further students’ abilities to make conjectures. High school teachers in the trenches see a curriculum that mirrors these tensions. Often curriculum developers are including the use of this software to “check off” a box about their product. In those instances, the software is being used to illustrate concepts instead of making students dig deep and use the software to make and justify their own hypothesis. Good teachers recognize this,using the software in more meaningful ways and recognizing that this needs to be an explicit point in the SLO. This conversation is a small example of the power of these discussions between the two levels of educators. Improving this SLO might lead to an improvement in high school geometry instruction by making future teachers aware of the difference between superficial use of these construction tools and the real power they hold to ignite interest and excitement in the high school classroom.
I have another more personal reason for my involvement in the ESLO group. Being involved in collaboration with mathematicians in different levels of education validates my worth as an educator. The media has not been kind to public school educators over the last ten years, but I leave the meetings more optimistic about the future of education. The conversations that occur in the group reveal a passion for math education across a broad swath of educators that is invigorating and satisfying. It is not unlike those moments in the classroom when a struggling student suddenly has a breakthrough and allows the teacher to share in their momentary exhilaration. Those moments are part of our pay as educators and cannot really be explained outside the field of education.
I worry about the future of my profession. Young teachers who survived the Covid education crisis are worn down, and there are not as many student teachers entering the field behind them. We need to nurture them and allow them to see that they are part of something bigger. These kinds of collaborations can do that. New math teachers are often reluctant to teach geometry because they do not feel as prepared for this course as they do the Algebra based courses. The beauty of this project is that improving GeT courses will make future geometry teachers more confident when they enter the geometry classroom as first year teachers, and this alone will help retain new teachers.
I would like this project to be a model for cross level collaboration in math education and allow more of the new teachers access to these. They could use some validation too.