Last week our school was lucky enough to have Peter Liljedahl come to do a three day work shop on Building Thinking Classrooms. Occasionally I look back on my blog to reminisce and something that always strikes me how much more I seemed to be engaged in teaching. In recent years I think it is fair to say I lost some of this passion. I am not sure I am a big supporter of how we educate now, I think we are educating students for the past we had instead of the future they will have. I wonder how useful Calculus or Trigonometry will be to 99.9% of my students and well that makes it hard to feel inspired. This three day workshop was something I needed. I still do not think we have it right but it least it gave me a new framework for teaching Maths that will get students thinking. I do agree we have to teach students to think (there is a difference between deep thinking and just learning algorithms, as so often is the way in Mathematics). It was a great workshop and I feel inspired again. It was also great to see David Suraz, I went on a course that he led 14 years ago that also changed my teaching, Challenge by Choice. It was super nice as he told me in all the years he ran the course, I was his most memorable attendee (he said I was off the wall, full of energy and passion around teaching).
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