Mathematics and Life 26 Improving school mathematics 11

 Improving school mathematics 11

My journey as a maths teacher 2

Mathematics is the science of recognising, understanding, appreciating, creating and using patterns in day to day life, business, sciences, work life, technology.

Grade 3 teacher to being what I am today

It gives me great pleasure to be of some help to my younger mathematics teaching colleagues Shruti Goel, Laly, Preeti Garg, Misha Nambiar, Rajendra Paliwal to name a few. And many others from other subjects too. But it was not always so.

After leaving Mumbai in 1988, till 1992, I was a simple school teacher in Indore Choithram School where I even taught standard 3 to 5 in one session. But the spirit was always high and I always enjoyed taking classes, creating innovative sheets, kept writing articles and sent them to US publications when you had not heard of email. On the flip side, I was never too good, meticulous, in checking a large number of answer books. I found rationale that I am a creative person, so it is ok 🙂, although it was not.

1988 to 1997 was the time in my life when I did not know what all was happening with me. Just imagine, Ph. D. work in progress, 3 job changes, tutoring assignments, kids too young, father's demise, change of cities from Indore to Pravra Nagar (near Shirdi) although for a very short time. Many other terrible things also happened which need not be mentioned here as they are not related to developing as a maths teacher.

But surely the work as a maths teacher kept growing, the most important shift being the introduction of the research perspective. 

It was during my tenure at Choithram School that I met Mr. Bramhdatt Tiwari who was a trained school counselor from Canada. He gave me insight into three key aspects of maths teaching as 

Concept

Computation / Operation

Problem solving

Also, during Choithram School tenure I met Mr. Jiten Sharma. Till date, he has been a constant source for thought sharing, getting deeper insight into developing Moghe Education Consultancy as a business entity. 

Would you like to know how the B. Ed. topics help in developing the research perspective and why at all you need a research perspective ? Stay tuned...

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