Daniel J. Brahier
Department of Educational Curriculum & Instruction
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403

APRIL 2002

This past year, I have been sharing my reflections as a university professor who is on leave to teach full time in a high school.  As my school year winds into its final few weeks, I recognize that I have gained as much as my students have over the past 8 months.  I will surely be processing the lessons learned for many years.

Most recently, I attended the NCTM annual meeting in Las Vegas ñ one of only two meetings I could get away from my school to attend this year.  One of the presentations was given by a university professor who was addressing the issue of how to motivate and improve the attitudes of elementary teachers toward teaching mathematics.  With interest, I arrived early at the session to assure myself a good seat.  However, less than 30 minutes into the talk, I left the room to get a Coke and discern why the presentation was doing nothing for me.  The reason was simple, I decided:  The speaker presented a theoretical model of how teachers "should" teach lessons and moved from one transparency to the next, explaining this model.  However, not once in a half hour did the speaker provide an example of how to put this theory into practice.  I thought it was ironic that the same person who talked about motivating and changing attitudes presented in such a dry fashion that it did nothing to motivate or change the audience.  All I needed was just one lesson plan, one activity, one anything that I could put my hands on as a concrete example, but I never got it.

As the afternoon continued, I reflected on teachers who have attended my workshops and presentations in the past.  There have been many times that I have become upset at the notion of providing ideas for Monday mornings in an in-service workshop, thinking, instead, that we need to go deeper than the activities.  And while this is true, I am realizing more now than ever how important it is for teachers to experience classroom ideas that we expect them to use in their own classrooms.  Theoretical models are important as underlying frameworks, and discussing them after-the-fact is probably necessary.  But as a classroom teacher this year, I have become considerably less tolerant of presenters who have forgotten that I have to rush back to school tomorrow and spend another day with 117 teenagers and am expecting something more practical than a diagrammatic model in a presentation.

I recently attended a workshop on using Geometerís Sketchpad in the high school classroom, and the presenter met with us in a computer lab and spent most of the session doing what we needed most:  actually using the Sketchpad and reflecting on how our students could most effectively use it.  The theory was there, but it was latent.  I challenge all of us in the mathematics education community (particularly as I re-enter the college setting this Fall) to keep our work with teachers practical and useful.  We all need to recognize the difficulty of being in a classroom all day and bring teachers forward by providing examples for their experience.  There is a traditional Buddhist saying that it is virtually impossible for the turtle to explain to the fish how to live on dry land.  Instead, dry land living is something that one must experience for his/her self.  Perhaps the same is true for getting teachers to visualize a reform classroom in operation.

This is my last 'Musings' column, as I have asked our President to relieve me of the duty.  I have been writing this feature for almost seven years and decided it was time for our RCML members to 'listen' to someone else's opinion.  I am grateful to Bill Speer for inviting me to write this column and to all of you who read 'Musings' and provided feedback that led to other articles in the past.  I would particularly like to wish Dr. Rama Menon the best as he takes over the duties of writing the column in the Fall.  If you have any reactions to this article, please feel free to send a short email comment to Daniel Brahier at brahier@bgnet.bgsu.edu.  Reaction comments can be included in future 'Musings' column publications in Intersection Points.