Four questions with Steven Boyce, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Portland State University

• What is special about your GeT course? I am a former high school geometry teacher, so I include my perspective of what was useful and what was missing from my own preparation in college for teaching high school geometry in my GeT course. My course begins with finite geometry, then transitions to Euclidean for the majority of the course, and closes with taxicab, hyperbolic, and spherical geometries. We use Geogebra quite often, and I previously had students collaborating with groupmates on classwork by uploading snapshots to the LMS or typing into a Google Doc; this helped with the transition to remote teaching, as I give students the choice of participating synchronously or asynchronously.
• Who are your students? Most of my students are undergraduates and either math majors or math minors. About half the students are prospective secondary math teachers. There are typically a few post-baccalaureate students in the class, as it is a requirement for entry into the teaching program that students are often missing if they didn’t focus on preparing to become a teacher as an undergraduate. There are students of a variety of ages and backgrounds in my classes, which provides (mostly) benefits but also some challenges.
• What are you most interested in learning/achieving through participating with the GeT: A Pencil community? I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about the variety of emphases that colleagues across the country have had in their courses. I haven’t been able to participate as much this quarter with the demands of remote teaching, but I am excited about the products coming out of both of the Working Groups and feel fortunate that I was able to contribute my ideas.

• What is your favorite book you have read recently? With the current sheltering-in-place, I recommend the dystopian Children of Men, by P. D. James. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve read it and am itching to read it again. My favorite academic book I’ve re-read recently is probably von Glasersfeld’s Radical Constructivism, which, for me, is also a great pleasure to read.