After watching a couple interviews about Frank McCourt, it really struck me how nonchalant his attitude was towards his life. It was really interesting to me how not having experienced secondary education shaped his outlook towards learning about the different perspectives of his students.
It inspires me to try to show a bit more humanity towards students and try to genuinely understand how they think. Often times I have made the mistake of being a little obstinate about getting students to complete practice questions just because it's required of them. I appreciate McCourt's often unconventional approach to try to understand his students and I am worried I will be too risk averse or lack the flexibility to properly adapt my future lessons to best meet the students needs. Frank's advice reminds me of the themes discussed in "How I Wish I'd Taught Maths: Lessons Learned from Research, Conversations with Experts, and 12 Years of Mistakes" by Craig Barton. In the book, Barton talks about previously teaching based on what he assumed works for children instead of a more pedagogical approach influenced by research. When I was a student, I never really paid attention to how different ways of learning were more or less suited to each individual. As a high school student, I was always aware of different "learning styles" but I did not really reflect on which of them worked for me as I usually could understand concepts without too much trouble and as such never appreciated when teachers changed their approaches.
Barton has a Medium article where he posted an excerpt from the book.
https://medium.com/eedi/how-i-wish-id-taught-maths-8ec9b0578228
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