While Jo Boaler encourages us to teach math with greater depth, problem solving, and exploration, the reality remains that our standards-based curriculum includes many new concepts, skills, and knowledge points to relay, information that is often best relayed through a step-by-step introduction. Ideally that introduction would be preceded or followed-up by worthy, hands-on, meaningful exploration, but we often simply run out of time for that rich learning. However, it's that rich exploration and problem solving that makes the learning engaging, empowering, and memorable.
I am not giving up on Boaler's ideas as I believe in her research, but I also have to meet the expectations of introducing a large number of math concepts, skills, and knowledge points this year. So I'll take a procedural approach with regard to introducing the concepts and continue to look for time to deepen the learning experiences as Boaler's research encourages us to do.
