A Preview..
"...when school systems open mathematics, and give students the chance to ask their own questions and bring their own natural creativity and curiosity to the foreground as they learn, then they change them as people and the ways they interact with the world. When teachers set students free, beautiful mathematics follows.”
-Jo Boaler
Recently Jo Boaler published a paper on intellectual freedom: "Psychological Imprisonment or Intellectual Freedom? A Longitudinal Study of Contrasting School Mathematics Approaches and Their Impact on Adults’ Lives"
Soon we will be sharing how we create a classroom environment where students experience this intellectual freedom. In the meantime, we leave you with our students' quotes on how this impacted their experience in our classrooms.
From our students...
“What I enjoy about this math class is that our ideas are able to be heard and we can actually be open-minded about other people’s ideas. And that we are able to express ourselves.”
“I enjoy the challenging problems and having a skeptical teacher :-) I also like the amount of freedom we have when working on a problem and how it is a lot of interaction with your group.”
“I enjoy getting to learn the subject ....the flexibility of the structure (we can debate all day, work the whole time, or present), and how the priority is understanding why, not how long it took”.
“I enjoy the 'open-ended' aspect of this class. I enjoy not being given the answer, and figuring it out myself, and having the 'aha' moments.”
“There is no right or wrong answer!”
-Jo Boaler
Recently Jo Boaler published a paper on intellectual freedom: "Psychological Imprisonment or Intellectual Freedom? A Longitudinal Study of Contrasting School Mathematics Approaches and Their Impact on Adults’ Lives"
Soon we will be sharing how we create a classroom environment where students experience this intellectual freedom. In the meantime, we leave you with our students' quotes on how this impacted their experience in our classrooms.
From our students...
“What I enjoy about this math class is that our ideas are able to be heard and we can actually be open-minded about other people’s ideas. And that we are able to express ourselves.”
“I enjoy the challenging problems and having a skeptical teacher :-) I also like the amount of freedom we have when working on a problem and how it is a lot of interaction with your group.”
“I enjoy getting to learn the subject ....the flexibility of the structure (we can debate all day, work the whole time, or present), and how the priority is understanding why, not how long it took”.
“I enjoy the 'open-ended' aspect of this class. I enjoy not being given the answer, and figuring it out myself, and having the 'aha' moments.”
“There is no right or wrong answer!”
