Partner Interview with
Aaron Brown
Q: What population do you work with?
A:I work with students from low income background, all African American, aged 14-18. These children have EMH, LD, and EBD (emotional behaviour disturbances). I teach all areas including Algebra I & II, Geometry.
Q: What are some of the challenges with mathematics instruction for children with disabilities?
A: One of the challenges I face is the students not being able to remember the concepts that they have learnt before. Additionally Students have difficulty visualizing the information the teacher is presenting. Another challenge is having students prepared for class, insisting that they take notes and refer back to the notes. Students in class who do not take notes are going to be less successful as compared with students who take notes and refer to them before coming into class.
Q: What are some strategies that you use to overcome these challenges?
A: I am fortunate enough to have my own classroom, so I use displays as much as possible. Right now we are doing an angle activity, students use straws to create angles, paste the straw on the poster boards and we will put them up for display. This helps students with the visualization and get a sense of ownership. It makes them feel like they are the part of the group and the classroom. I also use a lot of manipulatives, so they can visualize what the mathematical idea means.
Another strategy I use is guided practice. I do this often. The way that textbooks and the worksheets are structured, they are set to focus on one skill and give practice for one skill one each page - say with 6 problems or so. The next set of problems focuses on another skill to practice. I typically take a set of problems, do one on the board and explain till atleast a few children understand. Once some children understand, I get one of them to do the next problem up on the board. After which I make them work in smaller groups. At this point, I go around and work with those who need more help. This way the children feel more confident of working through the problems in the worksheet.
Q: How do you connect mathematics to your students' lives?
A: Children often think and ask – why do I need to know this (a concept in math). I always try to connect to the real world to mathematical concepts and ideas. I always think about what would be a good real world examples for the math concepts that I am introducing. Coming up with these connections is difficult the first time, but once I have it, I can use it with every class I work with. For e.g. working with like terms. I give them the example of how you would describe what is in your closet— will you say 4 pants, 5 shirts and 4 pants or 8 pants and 5 parts. So you are combining like terms. Then I make them work through worksheets and understand the concept of combining and make the expression shorter.
Click here for examples of lesson plans from Aaron
Q: What is the most important thing about teaching math? What keeps you going with the work you do with your children?
A: You have to have a passion for teaching. I don’t know what else I would be doing. The most important thing to keep in mind is not to take things personal. Put it in perspective. I like to see students understand new things and get better and when I see a student getting better and make progress that’s my reward for teaching.
Q: What are some resources that you reach out to for helping you in this process?
A: I use a series of books called "Math State Curriculum". It has rich content for pre algebra skills for 8th grade students. It can be embedded into the double period algebra curriculum. We always assume that students never forget the basic skills (addn, subt etc), but that’s not the truth. So this is a good tool to use to work with them on their pre-algebra skills (like addition, subtraction, fractions, percentages etc).
A few websites that I use are - http://www.glencoe.com - This is a good website to go to if you need say 50 problems on a specific topic. http://www.edhelper.com is another website I use often. I use the algebra tiles, art materials, straws, toothpicsk, posters, colors, anything that helps with visualization.
Click here for examples of lesson plans from Aaron
