What You Really Need to Know Before You Become a Teacher

I am a high school mathematics teacher finishing my Master's in Mathematics Education. During the Capstone Course for my master's program, we were asked to reflect on the course work of our master's degree and what we were taking from our master's program. One of the reasons I chose mathematics education is because I am interested in eventually working with pre-service teachers, to help get them ready for a future teaching career. As I reflected on my master's program, I realized how differently my undergraduate work, and graduate work, had impacted my teaching. I wanted to investigate teacher education. Do new teachers feel that their course work have accurately prepared them for a career in teaching? Are we preparing new teachers to the best of our ability? How can we maximize the effectiveness of education courses and of student teaching? What is it that teachers really need to know before they go into a classroom of their own? It is this last question that inspired me to create this book. This book is by no means a rule book to live by. It is a collection of my thoughts, some serious and some witty. Thoughts on what I have learned in the past five years that have had an impact on my teaching, which I did not learn during my undergraduate teacher education process.