Join the amazing #UMD #CenterForMathEd - we are wonderful people who care about #teachers and #MathematicsTeaching! (And yes, we’re also cranky that it’s a #clinical position instead of #TenureTrack 😡 AND that it’s a low salary for the qualifications we’re requiring - we are battling for change behind the scenes 🤞)

https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/106712

I'm behind but want to weigh in on e.g. "if you can't explain to a 5yo, you don't understand" or maybe fairer: don't fully understand. After all understanding is not binary.

It's meaningless as stated. You could very well read your own research paper to a 5 year old. What's the supposed outcome? That they understand as well as you? As well as anyone could? That they understand something at all?

But there is a baby in that bathwater I can't help but feel. As I understand things better, I feel more confident explaining it to others, at various levels. Teaching (ie making non specialists understand) famously improves your own understanding.

Also as time progresses, cutting edge research slowly enters the curriculum. This represents species level improvement in our understanding of such topics. I think it's true to say that the topics we can teach to 5 year olds (addition and subtraction) are among the ones we understand best. The quote is backwards, maybe.
#math #mathematics #MathematicsTeaching

Today I used a new metaphor to introduce proof by induction to my students. I used a metaphor of building a tower, needing to assume a block existed in order to place the next one in the sequence.

It seemed to work much better than my previous "falling dominoes" metaphor.

#MathematicsTeaching #Proof