It All Adds Up To Experience For New Math Teachers

The ESSO Centre for Mathematics Education continues to make an impact on the way mathematics is taught not only in the city of London, but also throughout the region. The Centre is responsible for bringing openness to math instruction, such as through the well-received Family Math program. Now one of the initiatives inaugurated in September of 2001 is bearing fruit. The concurrent five-year program for Baccalaureate degrees in Education and Honors Mathematics has its first two graduates.

David Stanford, the past chair of the ESSO Centre, says that plans for the concurrent program were already in the works before 2001 but “at the time it was coming to the point of reality that was when the ESSO funding became available.” Stanford says that if it weren’t for ESSO the concurrent program simply wouldn’t exist.

Those funds enabled the ESSO Centre to hire Jamie Pyper, former Head of the Mathematics Department at Beal Secondary School, as the practicum co-ordinator. Pyper says that his role is to, “find placements for the students,” and to “ talk with the associate teachers who are out there. I help them understand their role and responsibilities as an associate teacher… I’m like an advisor to those students for their mathematics and math education experiences.”

Pyper says that the contrast between the regular and concurrent programs is noticeable. “There is a difference, I believe it’s a qualitative difference [the concurrent program students] have had more time to think about, put together, integrate, and connect mathematics learning with teaching mathematics and how somebody else learns mathematics.” The program also includes a student seminar series on the philosophy of teaching. Pyper thinks that these presentations show that the students are “thinking in a greater way than what you may normally find from a student coming out of a one-year program.”

Furthermore, the one year students only get ten weeks of practicum teaching sessions split up into sessions of three, three and four weeks at a time. The concurrent students have a practicum of a couple of weeks throughout a couple of years and then four months in a classroom setting. “That’s a phenomenal amount of experience,” says Pyper, “they have a lot of stories that they can use in their interviews to demonstrate and prove and support their mathematical beliefs and their mathematical educational practice”

The two graduates came to the program in different ways. Ian Beaman who is teaching at Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School as part of his practicum, remembers the first time he had heard of the program. “For me, I was in a class with Dr. Stanford and he mentioned it. I was in my third year at the time and I said OK maybe I’ll try that and I went up and I just talked to him.” It happened to be fortunate that Beaman had most of the requirements to enter the program and he proceeded from there.

Stacie Bertrand is currently wrapping up her teaching practicum at Westminster Secondary School. She says her interest in the program was more goal directed, “I always wanted to teach so I was originally going to go to Queen’s but I thought about it and I didn’t want to move away. So as soon as they had a concurrent program here, I asked if I could enter.... I always knew that I wanted to teach.” Bertrand added that the enriched experience of the concurrent program gives these graduates a level of comfort and confidence not acquired by graduates in other programs. Unlike other four-week programs where the material is essentially laid out beforehand, the four month practicum allows more creativity in planning the class. The experience also gives students practice in handling administrative responsibilities as well. “You don’t realize how much it actually involves” says Bertrand, “just being prepared for that as well as using the workbook …you probably would have to learn that on your own if you just entered into a job without knowledge of all of that…. It makes it a tough job, a busy job.”

Beaman says that one of the rewards this program gives is the sense of continuity, “It’s been really nice in starting a class, being there ,and seeing the completion. Now this is my class… I know exactly now how I’m going to start a class and how to see it through.” Bertran agrees, “You kind of forget that you’re in a practicum too, I kind of forget that [the associate teacher is] really the teacher of the class and he’s really the one responsible for it, I feel like it’s all mine.”

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