This election was remarkable for a number of reasons. I've worried that students come to math club just to humor me. The fact that six students have a desire to lead our club gives me confidence that students actually enjoy the club I've set up. For a while, I've wanted to make our meetings more student-run and student-directed. Having specific leaders – who volunteered for that role – to turn to lets me shift a lot of the responsibility for that onto them. As his first official duty, I had Sam lead the review of the day's math problems. He did a great job of facilitating a discussion of students' answers and directing questions. Later, Kathy proposed the idea of having students give small presentations on a topic of their own choosing. She already has an idea about something called Russian Peasant Math that she'll present this fall. Math club is starting to feel like an activity the students enjoy and are choosing for themselves.
On Friday, not fully knowing fully what their roles would be, math club took the bold step of electing our first Math Club Co-Presidents. Of eight students present at the meeting, six expressed an interest in being president. After the votes were counted (two votes apiece) it was nice to see that everyone who ran had received at least one vote from someone other than themselves. We selected our two co-presidents, juniors Sam and Kathy, with four votes each. I was glad to see that the students selected one boy and one girl and one international student (Sam) and one American-born student (Kathy). This is fairly representative of our group as a whole.
This election was remarkable for a number of reasons. I've worried that students come to math club just to humor me. The fact that six students have a desire to lead our club gives me confidence that students actually enjoy the club I've set up. For a while, I've wanted to make our meetings more student-run and student-directed. Having specific leaders – who volunteered for that role – to turn to lets me shift a lot of the responsibility for that onto them. As his first official duty, I had Sam lead the review of the day's math problems. He did a great job of facilitating a discussion of students' answers and directing questions. Later, Kathy proposed the idea of having students give small presentations on a topic of their own choosing. She already has an idea about something called Russian Peasant Math that she'll present this fall. Math club is starting to feel like an activity the students enjoy and are choosing for themselves.
2 Comments
Rachel
5/21/2014 05:31:50 am
This sounds great. Glad to see students stepping up to the plate, and that they have ideas they are passionate about!
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About Me
I started this blog to share my transformation from math nerd to math nerd who loves to share math with young people. I teach high school in Hanoi, Vietnam. Your comments are always welcome. Archives
May 2021
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