Week 2 Annotations

Topic: Highlighting the Mental Health of d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) Students

Sommers, J. (2014). The mental health status of deaf and hard of hearing children in mainstream education system [Undergraduate Honors Theses, Western University]. Digital Commons Network. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/psychK_uht/5/?utm_source=ir.lib.uwo.ca%2FpsychK_uht%2F5&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

• Resource Type: 1st out of 5 peer-reviewed articles

• How this resource develops, narrows down, or expands my inquiry topic: In Inquiry 1, I briefly explored the social issues that d/Deaf and hard of hearing students encounter in and out of an academic setting.  I want to refine my understanding of the experiences d/Deaf and hard of hearing students have regarding their mental health.  This resource addresses the mental health of d/Deaf and hard of hearing students compared to their hearing counterparts.  For example, it unveils factors that increase risk for d/Deaf and hard of hearing students to experience mental health concerns, like "the age of diagnosis and the parents' reaction to the diagnosis of deafness"

Margaret Brown, P., & Cornes, A. (2014). Mental health of deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents: What the students say. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20(1), 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enu031 

• Resource Type: 2nd out of 5 peer-reviewed articles

• How this resource develops, narrows down, or expands my inquiry topics: In Inquiry 1, I discussed types and degrees of hearing loss.  The type and degree of hearing loss a student has can impact their mental health because communication between them and their support systems can become severely limited.  This resource discusses the differences between DHH students who live with 1) d/Deaf parents, 2) hearing parents who sign, and 3) hearing parents who do not sign.  The article describes how the mental health of DHH students can be impacted by their families.  Particularly, how parents can increase the risk for their DHH child to experience mental health concerns.

Final Blogpost of 2021 on Inquiry 1!

 Learning about growth mindset from Jo Boaler was a big takeaway for me.  It helped me understand how to better motivate students in a mathematics class and made me more aware of the struggles math teachers and students have today.  We had an opportunity in this class to create an inquiry project, and I learned many things from my peers' presentations as well as researching for my own project.  I learned more about flow, how to take care of my mental health, how to support the Deaf and hard of hearing community, and more.  I think giving this same opportunity to my future math students is valuable for their learning, as well as mine!  I learned more about how to embody mathematics throughout this course.  For example, the beautiful and captivating short film where we learned about bellringing combinatoric patterns is something I'd want to show my students and have my students experience.  I met many musical and artistic students during my practicum that I know would absolutely enjoy and understand the mathematics involved with bellringing and braiding.  I think if I were to improve this course I would perhaps want to talk about the articles that we read and wrote about a bit more during class, or because it is an inquiry class, we could maybe have a list of suggested readings that we could choose from and explore the topic. Then we could teach each other about what we've read through a jigsaw activity.  However, I personally took away from every reading and activity we did, whether it were related to mathematics, art, or social and emotional aspects of teaching. :)

Inquiry Project Reflection

Overall, I learned so much about the d/Deaf and hard of hearing community, but there is still so much to explore.  During my research, I learned more ASL from watching YouTube videos and visiting ASL websites.  I tried to compare many videos when I was learning new signs because in the past I'd find that there are different ways to sign a word or a phrase (which is a general truth about signing!).  I learned that our facial expressions and head movements are just as important as hand and arm gestures, like when signing "DON'T UNDERSTAND".  Part of why I enjoyed researching this topic is that I found myself inquiring more and more about the d/Deaf and hard of hearing community.  There were many ideas that I wish I could have included in my presentation, but due to time constraints, I left them out.  These ideas include: cued speech, funding, and more on how sign language relates to embodied mathematics.  I suppose I can look into these ideas more in Inquiry II!  

Slight tangent, but when I was younger, the Filipino community was quite small where I lived.  I remember my classmates not knowing where the Philippines was on a map and thinking I was from Hawaii, India, or Mexico.  However, I have a really fond memory of when I felt my culture finally being recognized.  My parents and I were dropping off my sister at her friend's house and her friend's family was Russian.  Their accents were quite thick, but our families were friendly despite the language barriers. What I remembered most about this time was when the friend's dad greeted my dad in Tagalog.  "Kamusta!", he said.  It brought the biggest smile to my parents' face and to all of us really.  I guess the point of me sharing this memory is that learning about another community's culture, like learning their language, can create a strong sense of togetherness.  We can feel safe with each other.  I think that as a future teacher it is so important for me to emphasize that we can't create a better world if we don't help each other out, and a part of helping one another is to have everyone feel like they belong.

I'm excited to see what new and unexpected directions I may take in Inquiry II!

Inquiry Project: Supporting the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community

Hello!

Here you will find my inquiry presentation: https://prezi.com/view/mmmQzU6jkgDGmVcwaJq1/

I hope you enjoy. :) 

Exit Slip: Bellringing Patterns & Braid Groups

The sunlight shining on our vibrant permutations (original set is the rightmost column)!

I love vivid and almost jarring colors like the chartreuse and blood-orange origami papers in the photo above.  Seeing such lively colors almost engenders excitement (at least for me it did!), and I think that was the point of today's class.  Mathematics teachers have a reputation of being dull, repetitive, and uninspiring.  I think if we make it a goal of ours to integrate creative, multi-modal activities that put mathematics under a different light, we absolutely have the power to inspire our students to like math--maybe even love math.   

I can imagine all the activities (bellringing, poem permutation, paper permutation quilt) we did today and applying holiday themes to them!  I wonder what the switches would look like if we were to create the image of a Santa Claus hat or a snowflake. 

Annotated Bibliography - Early Stages

This is a link to my annotated bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c0kD_sd3ca3dy14Cg6l_0tOVCZQdaE-ZAm6YZW2ypc/edit?usp=sharing

I left a note, but I'll mention it here too!  A lot of interesting ideas came up while I did research for my inquiry topic, so I may be adding or possibly closing in my focus on fewer ideas as I create my presentation.

Thanks!

Exit Slip: How to Contact 'Real World of Teaching and Learning' & Focusing Topic

Plans for getting in contact with the 'real world of teaching and learning':

• After learning that there is a school for the deaf in Burnaby, I'm going to try and get in contact with administration, teachers, or other staff at the school.  
• Upon more research, I'll try to coordinate more conversations with people in the deaf community.

Focusing Topic:

• Depending on the research I come across, I may combine the first all three of my concepts: 
• Is ASL the predominant language used amongst the deaf community?  Size of community?
• What research exists on how deaf children communicate at home? With their peers?
• How well do deaf students integrate into the school system?  What have their experiences been like?

Exit Slip: Female Representation in Mathematics

October 21, 2021

    We spoke about the lack of representation of women in mathematics and science today, but I do want to acknowledge the progress that has been made for women in general over the years.  This might be small to some, but I feel really grateful and privileged that we, as a class of women and men, can discuss these ideas openly and respectfully with each other.  I also want to acknowledge that I'm speaking as a Southeast Asian Canadian woman and that my experiences and perspectives derive from the fact that I live in Canada and was born in a generation where women have been treated with more respect.  However, I do still feel the weight of being a woman everyday.  I don't always feel safe walking alone--day or night.  I don't always feel like my voice is heard when I'm speaking to a group of men.  I think this goes into the ideas discussed in class where women and men have been socialized in a certain way and to the point where society's discounted the abilities of half of the world's population.  I'm not entirely sure if there is a huge wage gap between women and men within math- and science- intensive fields, but these wage gaps do still exist in many other sectors like media and politics.  I wonder if this is why women are under-represented in mathematics and science.  

Inquiry Project: Topic, Concepts, & Motivations

My motivations and connections to this inquiry topic stem from my sister's experiences as a teacher.  She had a student whose parent is deaf, and when she learned about this, we both wanted to learn more about sign language.  American Sign Language was what her student's parent used to communicate to her child.  My sister and I had conversations about the different ways the deaf community could understand others.  For instance, reading lips is a method for deaf people to understand what is being said to them.  However, this kind of dialogue felt one-sided in the sense that only one person was "communicating".  They also communicated by writing on a piece of paper and passing the paper to one another, but again, that seemed to be the parent making the greater effort to communicate rather than the conversation being an equal effort.  Shortly after, my sister and I tried learning a little bit about American Sign Language so that she could communicate to the parent in a language they knew.  Very much like how my family and I enjoy hearing people speak to us in Filipino, there is a greater sense of community when people try to learn each other's primary language.  In our teacher education program, we've been learning about how to foster a more inclusive environment, and I have rarely heard about the deaf community and how they are supported in the school environment.  I think they are a community whose ideas and thoughts are not commonly recognized, so I want to bring light to their experiences and learn more about whether or not the deaf community is supported in the school environment.

Entrance Slip: On Marks, Grades, & Their Effects in Schooling

What are my "student bird" and "teacher bird" thoughts about assigning percentages or letter grades in the assessment of student work?  What do the grades indicate?  How are they arrived at?  Whose purposes do they serve?  What are positive and negative aspects to giving grades? To be assigned grades by an instructor?

The takeaway from John Sarte and Sherri Hughes' Refocusing our efforts: A shift from grading to an emphasis on learning is that "learning occurs without the use of grades".  My student bird reminded me of when I focused on attaining high grades because it felt good.  I'd feel accomplished and that all my hard work had paid off.  However, my teacher bird asks me if the marking schemes used to define my intelligence were even accurate?  Were my grades an actual reflection of my intelligence or were they a reflection of how well I managed to complete the work?  Jo Boaler highlights the idea that math competency is based on how student perform rather than what students really learned.  I have a strong belief in that grades and percentages aren't accurate feedback; they are superficial feedback and don't always give the student the entire story of what they actually learned.  I learned that many years ago, mark books would only be filled with words describing where a student glowed and where they needed to grow.   This approach of providing feedback seems more clear, more honest, and more thoughtful.  Raw marks or percentages are more convenient, but they can be misleading.  For example, what does half a mark even mean?  A student could have a high A while another student receives a low A, yet they both are A students.  

I think math and science teachers can offer so many opportunities of assessment that don't require a grade.  For example, listening to how students present their ideas to their peers is a method of assessing their comprehension of math or science ideas. As mentioned by Sarte, Hughes, and Boaler, grades get in the way of intrinsic motivation.  When students want to learn about something they then have the will to learn.

Exit Slip: Student Inquiry & Problems with Praise and Grades

    Both Jo Boaler and Alfie Kohn raised issues pertaining to education and the impact that traditional teaching has on students.  One quote that stood out to me was that "Math is popular... just not in education".  Math, in a way, is quite similar to those stereotypical, cool-kid, main characters in movies.  Math can be intriguing and admired by many people, but it may only be seen and understood on a superficial level.  If we want to take this metaphor further, math can be that popular but mean jock that terrorizes students, causing anxiety and stress.  However, usually when we're able to get to know this character a bit more, we begin to learn that he/she/or they have more dimensions to them, just like how mathematics is more than memorizing formulas and pencil-to-paper activities.  So, I wonder...how can we get to know mathematics better?  When we see how mathematics is used by other disciplines, like Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, etc., mathematics is elevating these subjects.  One would think a mathematics class is self-elevating, but the traditional ways that mathematics has been "taught" has diminished math's character.  The rumors about math being dull and uninviting have been deeply embedded in the school environment that math began to take on that persona.  

    It is quite scary to be defending something that has a lot of negative connotations.  Like what Rebecca said, it is scary that, as prospective teachers, we have a responsibility to undo the problematic methods of teaching that we once experienced and felt the repercussions of as students.  Having learned the traditional ways of teaching math as a student and then now learning our job as teachers is to unlearn a lot of these techniques is an overwhelming task.  However, I like to think of it as giving our students opportunities we weren't given when we were in their position, and hopefully, students do have a chance to get to know mathematics a bit better.  Even if I can build this bridge between students and mathematics, I should be aware that not all students will want to venture on to the other side; in other words, they might not want to pursue mathematics in the future despite my best efforts.  However, if my students can take something positive away from my class, whether that be a new passion for math or a lack of fear when approaching math, I'd feel like I've done math and math students justice!

Entrance Slip: How to Swing or Parkour the Grid of Schooling

    As I sit on my couch and look around my apartment, I see that my shelf follows a grid-like pattern, so do the keys on my keyboard.  Now I’m thinking beyond my apartment and how Vancouver city follows a grid-like pattern and how the windows on the building across from my apartment are in grid form, too.  I think about nature and search for a photo of a zoomed-in leaf and discover a beautiful system of grid-like designs.  

    So, I wonder why we see such a pattern in both spatial and conceptual structures.  As discussed in the article, grids exist all around us, and “we are a culture in love with the grid”.  This may be due to our natural gravitation towards feeling safe and perhaps wanting to combat overwhelming feelings and/or promote convenience.  The lines of a grid can act like supportive structures while also creating a restrictive presence; this is an idea that I’ve had concerns about when it comes to teaching.  The rigid boxes that I may need to fit into as a new teacher scare me, but the familiarity of timetables, organized curriculum, and a yearly calendar are comforting.  Having to find a balance and be able to ‘swing dance and parkour’ the grid is both an exciting and terrifying process; I worry that I need a lot of experience before I can do so effectively, but I also realize that the process could allow for exploration and creative discovery.  I feel that this is the thrill of teaching and what has really pushed me to take up the profession.  It’s like riding a rollercoaster; I may be terrified at times, but the ride is intended to be enjoyed.  What I wonder about now is how strongly will I be influenced by the established teachers I meet in the future.  How will I fare in a school with teachers and administration that strongly rely on the ‘grid’ or strongly detest it?  What do I do if during my practicum my potential school advisor is a diehard grid fan when I am not?   I also wonder how else we could combat an ‘indoor versus outdoor’ school culture.   

Exit Slip: Revisiting Our Spots & 'Geometrizing' Leaves

You never know who'll be there with you on your journey!  I met this little fella when we went back to 'our spots' and it made me think about how big the world is compared to this little slug.  Made me feel how big the world is compared to me.  

You can see another tiny slug near those chomped up clovers.  

During this activity, we were getting a better sense of the geometry behind leaves.  I tried to encase the segments of this leaf within a circle (I should've used a flatter surface to make those lines more defined) and then the entire leaf within a bigger circle to include the petiole.  Next time, I'd like to fill in the negative space with more circles of similar diameter and then possibly fill in the gaps in between these circles, and so on until very little, visible space is left.  Maybe I could use parts of the clover leaf to help me get an idea of what size circle can fill in the negative space.

 

Entrance Slip: Renert on Math and Climate Change

 A quote from Moshe Renert's Mathematics for life: Sustainable mathematics education article that really resonated with me was, "Since school is a social institution situated at the intersection between present society and the promise of what society may become, educators are more likely to succeed in their work with messages of hope and possibility."  Conversations about climate change can quickly lead to feelings of helplessness and despair--feelings in which many students struggling in math may experience.  There were many other parallels that Renert made when speaking on sustainability and mathematics education which I had never considered.  For example, sustainability itself, a term referring to the ability of living systems to endure over time, can relate to chaos theory, which is the mathematics of complex dynamic systems.  Both involve evolving systems--a commonality between mathematics and ecological sustainability that seem so obvious and yet is not immediately assumed.  To elaborate on this point, I want to mention Renert's claims about "humans' inability to feel large numbers".  I still find myself having a difficult time truly comprehending the magnitude of climate change.  Though I try to eat consciously, I might not always read the labels on products that I purchase to see if it contains palm oil (an ingredient in many products that is supplied by penny-pinching food companies that are supporting the mass deforestations in Borneo and Sumatra).  I think many people doubt their impact on the world--myself included.  I think if we, as prospective teachers, can have conversations with our students about mathematics and its relation to sustainability, like quantity sense and its implications on our ecosystem, then great strides can be made in nurturing a future generation of global citizens.

Exit Slip #3: Rope-Making and Poem

 

Exit Slip #2: Reflection on Sept. 16th Outdoor Class

We often lose sight of our senses in regards to mathematics, and we can get into the rhythm of looking at the subject through a narrow lens.  However, our outdoor class reminded me of the different ways of approaching mathematics and how to incorporate all our senses in a lesson to maximize learning and relational understanding.

I found that drawing natural, living things and human-made objects provided a unique, creative perspective on angles.  Reconnecting with the nature that sparked the inspiration and innovation of various math concepts keeps us mindful of what we are learning.  When we shared our ideas of when and where we see right angles in nature showed how diverse the students in our class think about/approach questions, which I thought was really cool to see in action rather than just read about in an article.  What I thought to be the greatest takeaway from the class was to let your students get out of the standard classroom setting and to give them autonomy to be curious, be imaginative, and be mindful that the way we learn mathematics has no creative limitations. 

Entrance Slip #2: Sharon Kallis & The Power of Choice and Reuniting with Ancient Skills

“We use our purchasing power to dictate the terms of consumerism we want.  That is a best-case scenario, but sometimes options are limited, and funds are scarce” (Kallis, 2014).

    I found this quote to be profound and provocative as it reminds us that we have the power to create remarkable changes in society yet calls attention to the social and physical obstacles that limit us from feeling in power.  I think about food deserts—places where residents don’t have access to nutritious, affordable food options.  Food industries have taken the power of choice away from the residents of food deserts; they identify these residents as low-income and then subsequently raise the prices of fruits, vegetables, and other healthy food options and then cheapen the price of foods that lack high-quality, nutritional content, making the latter choice the feasible choice.  Introducing ancestral knowledge and skills, like how to grow your own food or weave the fences that help to maintain your garden, is a way to give power back to these communities.  Of course, we have to acknowledge that economic and physical barriers are not the only factors preventing these people from thriving.  However, the importance and power of reconnecting and relearning ancient skills remains.

    This brings me to other point that Sharon Kallis mentions which highlights the “incredible emotional boost” that people can acquire by learning and creating.  While intently watching Susan’s instructions on how to make rope, I attempted to replicate the process using my hair.  Creating the Z twist from the angle I was holding my hair was a little hard because my hair was still attached to my head and my view of what I was doing wasn’t ideal.  But!  I managed to create a segment of rope using my hair!  I twisted my hair 360 degrees to create a single S twist, and the length of my hair could only achieve 16 S twists.  I don’t think I got the desired outcome of Z twists because, at this point, I wasn’t twisting my hair to the same degree each time.  I definitely feel proud of what I accomplished, though I don’t know if I would necessarily want or keep a piece of rope that I made from my hair.  Nonetheless, I had fun!

An attempt to make rope with human hair 😀

 

Entrance Slip #1: Grant & Zeichner on Becoming a Reflective Teacher

Despite being written in a different time and place, the article, “On Becoming a Reflective Teacher”, still has pertinent, thoughtful, and helpful information and more notably, mentioned ideas that I have personally thought about as a prospective teacher.  I have the privilege of being amazing friends with my older sister who also happens to be an outdoor, elementary school teacher.  She is my go-to source of information about teaching and teaching experiences.  And thinking back to the moments I’ve bombarded her with questions about how to approach a specific, hypothetical problem in the classroom, she always gave me a somewhat open-ended yet reassuring answer.  I asked my sister, “How is it physically and emotionally possible to teach twenty-five students of varying skill levels?  What do you do when a student finishes early, or if a student is working at a much slower pace than everyone else?”, and I thought that the intent of efficiently and effectively solving any problem was the incontestable goal.  I thought that finding a concrete solution was ideal and fathomable, but this attitude towards teaching might possibly lead me to burnout early and easily; I might unknowingly gravitate towards the approaches and methods of unreflective teaching, in the sense that I might be practicing this unideal approach, so much so, that I subconsciously concentrate my efforts on determining the most effective means to just achieve ends.  From the article and from my sister, I learned that I might have to face a multitude of teaching scenarios in which I feel so overwhelmed by and believe I have gone through all the solutions for, but this is normal.  And reflecting and discussing the realities of teaching, no matter the situation, is preparation—is a solution—in and of itself. 

Exit Slip #1: Frank McCourt, Inquiry-based Learning, and Recognizing Privileges

Greetings fellow teachers!

I hope that in this blogpost someone can relate to something, maybe be enlightened in some way, or have any opinion, for that matter.  And thank you to Bonyo and Marlaina for the great discussion we had at our table that helped me to write this.

Frank McCourt and My Thoughts on Inquiry-based Learning

Facing fears, biases, and other challenges are all part of our responsibility as educators.  Now, being an anxious human being whose heart races almost every time she has to public speak, I strongly resonated with Frank McCourt when he said he had to come out of a massive timidity and discover himself before his students.  I've worked as a tutor for an English language school and education company.  In both institutions, I met a diverse group of children and adolescents who always knew how to challenge me in different ways and brought me out of my comfort zone.  I had to learn a ton of math concepts that I had never seen in my early math education and it was incredibly intimidating.  However, with each interaction I made with a student, the easier and more comfortable a tutoring session felt.  In essence, learning more about my students and sharing a bit of who I am fostered a safe space for all of us; we could all be comfortably brought out of our comfort zones so that learning could really prosper.  I think that was a big takeaway from the discussions I had with my peers: one couldn't really teach effectively without constantly learning about their students and the world around them.  I believe that this captures part of what inquiry-based learning is--asking questions, thinking critically, actively listening, and soaking up as much knowledge as you can.  Learning and teaching are deeply intertwined, that to progress in one, you have to also being proceeding in the other.  And this also goes for students and teachers.

McCourt's Experiences from Another Lens

The experiences that McCourt shared were undoubtedly inspiring; however, I couldn't help but wonder how women and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color would fare if they were to pursue the same goals as he did during that time.  I thought of this when McCourt said he left White Horse Tavern and walked straight to NYU; this may sound like an easy, thoughtless task for some, but walking the streets of an American city as a southeast Asian woman during the 1950s sounds kind of terrifying to me.  Recognizing your privileges as an educator was another point I took away from the discussion with my peers.  We, as educators, should remember that everyone has their advantages and disadvantages in life.  If we can always implement empathy into our instructional designs, then hopefully, this empathy can breed respect and safety that'll allow for greater growth--both academically and emotionally.  The video about McCourt also made me feel grateful for the progress that's been made since his time.  His views were so clearly progressive and thoughtful; it makes me wonder what advancements in teaching will be made in the generations to come!

Hello World!

My name's Nicole, and I love pie!  I know this isn't a picture of pie, but it's a picture that brings me peace, just like pie does!

😊😊😊