Research shows that teachers have rich lived experiences that impacts their beliefs about math teaching and learning. Many have had meaningful eureka moments in math when they first discovered the beauty of the pattern in numbers like seeing how all the sums of odd numbers were square numbers or a phenomenal math happening like using math to figure out exactly how much food to prepare for a Thanksgiving! Well, you always overestimate when it comes to food and inviting company 🙂 The fact is that when push comes to shove, we teach the way we were taught. So if we really want to invite our students into learning environments where they feel like they belong, we will have to be sure we keep equitable teaching practices front and center. Van de walle et al (2019) showcases the 8 teaching practices that we hope all our aspiring teachers see in their present field placements and hope to implement in their future classrooms.
