Genius Hour Assignment SUBMIT ME

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Jan 9, 2024

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Genius Hour Assignment Guidelines Genius Hour is a period set aside by a teacher for students to explore something that they are personally interested in. Since our class meets only once per week, you will complete your genius hour outside of class and you will share what you learned in class. For this Genius Hour assignment, you will select a professional development opportunity that is personally interesting to you. It should connect back to the course objectives and prepare you to be an inclusive educator of students with learning disabilities . You will explain how this was achieved in your reflection (see template on final page). Possible Ideas for Genius Hour Podcasts Podcasts are a great way to learn about a topic of interest if you are a commuter, if you enjoy listening to something while you complete mundane tasks. http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/pod/ This one is my favorite. I always find myself learning something new. You can listen on the web or via your smartphone as a download. Online modules Online modules work well for those who like to see and listen as content is being delivered. http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/iris-resource- locator/ and then select “modules” from the drop- down menu. Please do not select the module on RTI. Documentary Documentaries are great for those who like to watch videos. Talk to Dr. Hansen about your interests and she may be able to share examples of documentaries students have enjoyed in the past. Professional development workshop From time to time, there may be local opportunities that may be of interest to teachers. Sometimes these will include university-sponsored activities. TBA Teacher choice! Do you know of something else that you can do to develop your readiness as a future inclusive educator? I’m all ears! (This assignment has been adapted with permission from an assignment shared by Dr. Janet Bertoni.) Rubric (10 points)

CPSY 2101 Dr. Hansen TOTAL: _____________

CPSY 2101 Dr. Hansen Name: Nathalie Fernanda Cuevas Describe the genius hour activity you engaged in and why you selected this activity. Why does this topic matter to you? Write at least one paragraph. A paragraph is at least five sentences. The genius hour activity that I engaged in was listening to a podcast called The Mindful Math Podcast on Spotify. The episode “Preventing and Overcoming Math Trauma” discussed how educators need to reflect on their math experiences and how they impact their teaching practices in the classroom. Chrissy Allison, the podcast host, with her guest, Dr. Kim Melgar unpacks this controversial topic of math trauma and anxiety, which influences how students see and use math throughout their lives. Followingly, Chrissy and Dr. Melgar analyze the importance of empowering math educators to help themselves and their students to replace their math traumas with positive math identities. I selected this activity because I spend a great amount of time in my car going to school, work, or any activities in between. Honestly, I enjoy podcasts because I always feel like I am learning something new or reevaluating the way that I perceive an experience or event. As a result, choosing to listen to a podcast is enjoyable and easy for me to do because I am always listening to a couple of episodes throughout the week. The topic of math trauma matters to me because after I graduate, I would like to teach middle school math. As a student, I have math trauma that began during middle school when I began to realize how important grades were for my future success. I always struggle in math, but I enjoy the challenge. However, my teachers believed that being good at math meant getting good grades in math. As a prospective teacher, I learned the importance of struggle in learning, which helped me appreciate my perseverance and understand that struggling does not equal laziness. Through this realization, I became aware that I accepted what my teachers told me about being a mathematician and what it means to be one. In the future, I do not want to impose the beliefs that my teachers did directly on me in math. I want to be the teacher that I needed as a kid for my future students and grow from that starting point. As a result, this podcast engages in the math trauma of all educators and the reflective steps that we need to take before entering the classroom to help our students overcome their math trauma. I need this for myself and my future because I want to create change in the classroom as a teacher. This topic inspired me because it tackles how we can implicitly set our math trauma on our students and the importance of reflecting on our daily practices. I can personally relate to math trauma, and I want to prevent it in my classroom to the best of my abilities. List 2-3 specific examples of new content you learned from this genius hour activity. Fill in the table below. I learned about the usefulness of math from the perspective of long-term use because I feel like our program focuses on lesson planning and covering the standards that we forget the reason why we teach this. This podcast taught me to teach math to inspire students to use math in their daily lives even if they struggle and to be comfortable with the struggle. I learned to use math for the long term to help my students pursue and engage in math outside of the classroom and their role of being a student. As a result, I need to ask myself “Why is this topic important,” “How will my students apply this topic in their lives,” and “How will this topic help us long term.” According to Chrissy and Dr. Melgar, internalization is a process of learning where students absorb information from their surroundings indirectly and directly. They applied this concept

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CPSY 2101 Dr. Hansen to learning math because internalizing and learning math are two different ideals. Learning math refers to memorizing, taking notes, and seeing math as an algorithm. However, internalizing math is messy because students are asking questions, thinking, and working to find a solution. Consequently, teachers need to first teach then ask students to communicate how they thought about the problem and the steps they take. Even though finding the correct answer can be important relating to grades, students understanding their thinking, and correcting their understanding if needed is more important for a real-life application of mathematics. I never knew that there were different ways to assert math trauma in the classroom. I always believed that asserting math trauma involved the teacher communicating to the student that he or she is not good at math. However, math trauma can happen indirectly as how many times a teacher chooses or cold calls a male student over a female student. Followingly, math trauma can happen with the way a teacher presents and talks about math with his or her students. Consequently, math trauma can involve how the student manages his or her emotions when the student faces math challenges in the classroom. I learned that we cannot eliminate math trauma in the classroom, but we can try our best daily to help our students appreciate math. I learned that as a prospective teacher, I need to consider the math trauma my students may carry and how I can challenge them in the classroom. List 2-3 specific connections between course content (reading, discussion, activities) and the genius hour content. (This reminded me of… I connected this to…). Fill in the table below. The message of this podcast reminds me of the “Day in the Life” activity, where we read stories about students with learning disabilities and how they perceive the world. My group and I read about Ava, who has dyscalculia, and how her struggles with math impact her daily routine. I loved this activity because it gave me a better understand of how students with dyscalculia feel anxious to use math. This is the type of thinking that the podcast communicated that educators need to apply to their classrooms to better understand their student's academic struggles. With Ava, I learned that math trauma extends from the classroom into their daily lives with the emotions that she communicated when she needed to use math or have a mathematical understanding. I never knew that math trauma can permeate a person’s life and causes frustration and sadness of a great magnitude. Even though Ava has dyscalculia, I know there are many students who feel exactly how she does when they need to use math in their lives. There are many students who feel like Ava waiting for math class to be over and avoiding any chance to do math because they are not “math people.” In the podcast, Chrissy, and Dr. Melgar talked about teacher instruction and how teachers should listen to their students’ thought processes. By listening to their students, they will adjust their teaching practices to suit their student’s needs. This idea reminds me of Week 3, where we talked about Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports and focused on the response to intervention approach. I believe that all students need with or without math trauma need a strong system of support in the classroom to internalize math. As a result, a response-to-intervention approach is needed in all math classrooms because the teacher is actively making sure that his or her students are receiving the support that they need. Specifically, the use of curriculum-based measurements reminds me of Dr. Melgar’s ideas to prevent math trauma by using consistent testing. She focuses on low-scale tests where the students should not even know that they are taking an assessment for knowledge. This reminds me of CBMs because that is what these

CPSY 2101 Dr. Hansen assessments do; they quickly assess student progress to see if any change is needed in the teacher’s practices. Being a math teacher requires prospective teachers to create rapport with his or her students by focusing on the students learning process, which reminds me of the message of the episode and Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports. Reflect on how this information can be applied in your future classroom and make a connection to a future area of study. For example, did this make you want to learn something related? What’s next for your learning? Write at least one paragraph. A paragraph is at least five sentences. The future is a bit unclear to me because I enjoy teaching, but I feel like I am losing my spark to teach because I have forgotten what it is to step into the classroom and teach from passion. However, if I decide to teach after graduation, I will create my classroom based on this episode's messages of perseverance and math messiness. My goal in my future classroom is to understand my students and their struggles in math by working together to conquer the curriculum together. Following Chrissy and Dr. Melgar’s advice in probing, allowing the classroom to get messy, and focusing on our critical thinking skills in math, I will help my students to use math in their lives with confidence. My goal in teaching math is not to memorize or copy information from the board, but it is to help students understand the importance and usefulness of math in their lives. The episode, “Preventing and Overcoming Math Trauma,” focuses on the dynamic between the teacher and student in the math classroom to establish connections of math to the real world and personalize it for students to see math as more than a subject. I know this may sound idealistic, but that would be my goal as a teacher because as a student, I know how the pressures of school can diminish the spark to discover and enjoy learning. This episode encouraged me to dig deeper into understanding different math perspectives and open my aperture to what I need to do to accomplish my goal as a future teacher. Not only will I continue to listen to this podcast, but I am convinced to get my substitute certification because I want more classroom exposure. Before my student teaching, I would like to engage more in teaching math and feel more comfortable in interacting with students. In the future, I would like to continue in education with my studies, but I want to enter advocacy for students from low-economic backgrounds. The career of advocacy makes me feel excited, which I have not felt since the moment I taught math last year in the Spring. I do not know where my future will take me or what I will do in my future studies in, but I know that it will be helping children to succeed. The best part of this episode is the message about education, which ignites that spark in students to try despite the challenges they may encounter in math and life.

Genius Hour Assignment SUBMIT ME

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