Melissa's Musings

During my on campus interview this time last year someone somewhere in some meeting (the days just sort of blend together in my head at this point) asked me about an area where my teaching could improve. My response? That I needed to work on my storytelling. It's easy for me to lose track of the story arc of a course amidst the technical list of skills I want students to learn. Those skills are important (I think we can all agree that we'd like the people building our bridges to have a precise grasp of Calculus -- right?!), but they lose their meaning when they're not explored within the context of what Calculus is (which at it's heart is a story about chasing after infinity) and how it fits into the broader context of mathematics (a way of describing the way God ordered our world). Aside from the fact that you're probably more interested in calculus than you were five minutes ago, you're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with content mapping...

As we've jumped into the deep end this week talking about teaching online, I've been reflecting on my teaching journey so far. I had the (somewhat shocking) revelation that 7 years ago, I'm not sure I knew what pedagogy was (or at least I couldn't articulate it).  Regardless, I definitely couldn't tell you what was different about math pedagogy from other content areas. However, five years ago, I jumped into learning about mathematics pedagogy by joining some welcoming communities that encourage me to try things outside of my comfort zone, comfort me when things don't go well, and cheer me on when they do go well. I am excited to be learning about online education in an equally welcoming community. In particular, I’m excited to fill in the various sectors of the TPACK Venn diagram that are currently empty. For example, what precisely is at the intersection of mathematics, pedagogy and technology? I have some vague ideas, but I think they’re mostly trying ...