Adventures in Teaching: A Professor Goes to High School to Learn about Teaching Math

D uring the 2009–2010 academic year I did something unusual for a university mathematician on sabbatical: I taught high school mathematics in a large urban school district. This might not be so strange except that my school does not have a teacher preparation program and only graduates a few students per year who intend to be teachers. Why did I do this? I, like many of you, am deeply concerned about mathematics education and I wanted to see what a typical high school in my city is like. Because I regularly work with high school mathematics teachers, I wanted to experience the life of a high school teacher for myself. I had neither a research project nor an agenda for changing schools or teachers. I kept a blog during my adventure, but it took some months after that experience before I could begin to process all that had happened. Four lessons emerged from my experience that I hope will give college and university educators a clearer view of what teaching high school mathematics is like. Before we get to those four lessons, some background information might help. First, you should know that my story is not going to turn out like Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, or any other inspirational Hollywood movie about a teacher who helped students achieve great things through painful sacrifice and struggle. The Hollywood idealization of a teacher as a martyr who sacrifices her personal life for the sake of her students propagates unrealistic and unhealthy expectations. Teaching is hard, but it shouldn’t have to be that hard. This is also not the story of a professor coming down from his ivory tower and becoming outraged by the horrors of how children are taught in schools. I find these narratives unproductive. This article conveys one person’s perceptions of the struggles that novice teachers face in one school and discusses what the general public rarely hears about public education. I applied for teaching positions just like other teachers in my district, though I did not take all of the necessary steps to become credentialed. Visiting Faculty Permits, which were authorized between 2007 and 2013 through California Senate Bill 859 by Senator Jack Scott, gave me a convenient way to teach in the California public school system without a credential. I was hired at a school that serves about 1,100 students. It is one of three high schools in a working-class neighborhood. Roughly 40 percent of the students at this high school are English language learners, 80 percent qualify for free or reduced meals, 85 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino. In 2009 only 3 percent of students at this school were deemed proficient on the Algebra 1 California Standards Test (CST). That year, I taught Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, and a math intervention class (an additional period of mathematics for students who are struggling in mathematics). Even though I taught four different classes, I did not teach a full load (six classes at this school). One of my Algebra 1 classes was an inclusion class—half of those students had learning disabilities or some other reason to warrant having an Individualized Education Program (IEP). In that class, all students, with IEPs or without, learned math together. Darryl Yong is professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. His email address is [email protected].