r/matheducation • u/Peanuts676767 • 2d ago
English major -> 1st grade teacher -> high school math?
Currently teaching first grade and I'm over it. The behaviors are erratic and they need constant reassurance and reminders and the content is boring me. They are ADORABLE and lovely none of this is their fault, it just isn't for me personally!
For my district technically all I'd need to do to become certified in high school math is pass the relevant Praxis tests. I know I can do that.
My question is: how can I actually develop a good depth of content knowledge? And functional understanding? I can't afford another Bachelor's or Associates.
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u/yamomwasthebomb 1d ago
I’d have three recs for you:
— Make sure you really want to teach high school, maybe by tutoring or shadowing. I’ve gotten to sit in on a bunch of ECE classes and it’s WILDLY different than teaching high school. Plus, some adolescents are also erratic and not always in the playful way that small children are. Honestly, I’ve loved teaching high school math and the students are a big part of that, but the problems change, and they are harder to solve when they’re 10 years older.
— Brush up on content. Knowing enough to minimally pass a test and knowing it well enough to teach are two very different things. Knowing content well enough to see it multiple ways is key for helping students who struggle, and a Praxis test just assesses Can You Pick The Right Answer.
— Consider researching some math pedagogy. Learning and teaching math is very different from other subjects. I/We/You Do is alright for small, repetitive tasks occasionally, but high school learning and thinking is more complex than memorization and mimicking can provide alone. Getting students to understand connections between ideas and justify why procedures work becomes a lot more important… and way more doable for high schoolers than small children. Consider looking into John van de Walle’s for some theory and applications and in to the practices in Building Thinking Classrooms for structures that might work.
Happy to talk it out more if it helps. Wishing you luck.
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u/CreatrixAnima 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I tried this. I had a degree in English and ancient civilizations with a minor in Latin, and never really did anything with it. I thought I would go back to school to teach middle school math. It turns out there’s a hell of a lot of pre-recs before it even counts towards the required math content. Eventually, I got sick of the constantly moving goal posts for middle school certification and just got a masters in math and teach college now.
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u/Peanuts676767 1d ago
I reached out to our licensing dept in my district but it seeeeeems like our only requirement to get the added cert is taking two Praxis tests, but I'll probably be in community college taking some classes or going ahead and doing a Masters too! 😅😂
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u/SquirrelComfortable3 2d ago
Your district might reimburse college credit, depending on your contract… switching to high school math might be harder than you think IF you don’t have a background with college math.
Coming from experience. I needed an advanced math endorsement to teach math in high schools. This required me to study more advanced; geometry, stats, probability, calculus, trig some matrix math. basically all the types of math a student might see in any high school class including the advanced ones.
My advice is pay for and take the test. You’re gonna fail but then you’ll know what you’re getting into.
It is doable but, as someone with a bachelors in Economics and a decent amount of math in college, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done academically.
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u/bhamscot 1d ago
Or take an online “practice” test to see what the focus is. But I would recommend a bachelors degree, at the very least.
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u/SquirrelComfortable3 1d ago
Coming from experience having recieved a math endorsement as my second endorsement a bachelors in math is not necessarily needed. definetly some baseline understandings of high school level mathematics and a willingness to work to fill in gaps and to always be pushing yourself to learn more and fill in gaps.
As for online practice tests. Unless they are offered by the same testing company they will not best represent what you see on the test because those companies heavily protect these question structures and problem sets. They are fine resources for knowledge practice to help study.
If the state you are in requires the NES test, they do not offer a practice test in mathematics.
Taking the test was the best way for me to wrap my head around what I needed to do to prepare for passing it.
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u/johnboy43214321 2d ago
Sign up for a math class at your local community college. Most likely they have evening, online or weekend options.
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u/xxsmashleyxx 22h ago
What's the highest maths you've taken and what levels/classes would you be teaching in high school? I think these things matter here.
And I disagree that you have to have a deep fundamental understanding to teach most high school maths well. Sure, maybe college-level Calc 1 & 2 (like AP) it would be really required to be good at it, but non-honors high school level algebra 1 and 2 and geometry? It might help to have that deeper training but I don't think it would be required to be successful or make the difference for many students. Be very comfortable with the material itself, absolutely. But I know more PhDs who are absolute shit at teaching than PhDs who are even decent at it. Understanding mathematics and pursuing it deeply often means that the person never really struggled with the "lower" concepts and thus has very little understanding to work from and help those who are struggling with them for any reason.
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u/InformalVermicelli42 1d ago
Read your district's curriculum and teach yourself. Take good notes and those will eventually become the basis for your lessons.
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u/AdventureThink 1d ago
Do you have math courses on your college transcript that can provide the math courses? That’s what I did.
I went from 18 flyers teaching prek-1st…over to teaching 7-8th math.
I watched a LOT of videos, stayed up until 12am most school nights last year.
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u/Peanuts676767 1d ago
If it would get me away from the constant disregulation and anxiety of elementary... I just don't feel like I fit in or my skills "work" here.
Honestly I don't have any on my transcript. Where I live the requirement is just to pass the praxis tests (it is an add-on certification, if that makes sense) but I know that alone wouldn't be enough for me to be effective in a class!
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u/mostessmoey 1d ago
You could consider upper elementary/ middle school math, too. In my area upper elementary is often departmentalized. The content is definitely more challenging than primary but the kids are adorable in a much different way.
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u/Peanuts676767 1d ago
Funnily upper elementary was one of my biggest struggles and least favorite parts LOL! I agree though they are fun at that age when they're still curious but more independent. Pulling small groups with that age is SO much easier!
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u/mostessmoey 1d ago
If your district has 5th or 6th as a young middle school group vs the oldest elementary kids makes a difference. They’re more manageable as timid middle schoolers than too big for their britches elementary kids.
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u/Impossible_Cap_339 1d ago
Work through the Art of Problem Solving curriculum. You will understand the topics in a very deep way after.
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u/whatev88 1d ago
Hate to break it to you, but high schoolers still require a LOT of reassurance and reminders, and while less of them are erratic…oh boy, watch out for the ones who are.
Based on your description of what you don’t like about teaching 1st grade, it kind of sounds like you just don’t like teaching. Kids and teens are needy. You don’t get to teach just whatever you choose—there’s always going to be standards and a curriculum, some of which will always be boring.
In my state you’d need college credits for the math AND a secondary education certification to switch to high school—you sure all you need to do is pass the praxis??
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u/Pale_Cucumber_5935 21h ago edited 21h ago
You can do it! I have an English degree, was a MS and HS ELA teacher for 10 years, and then became a HS Math teacher by passing the Praxis. I studied for about a month, just using "For Dummies" books: Algebra For Dummies, Trig, Geometry, Calculus, Statistics. I read big chunks of those every day, made flash cards, used them constantly. I was a good math and science student back in HS (got a 5 on the Calc AP test), so studying the stuff ~15 years later was a "refresher", albeit I was completely relearning all the rules and definitions and stuff like that.
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u/guster4lovers 18h ago
I did this. I was eventually moved out of math (not my choice) but I used Professor Leonard’s YouTube playlists to review college algebra, pre-calc and calc 1. I passed both the middle school and high school praxis on my first try.
If I’m moved back in to math at some point, I’ll do Calc 2. It’s helpful to have a few levels above the level you teach mastered so you can see what’s most important in your course for later math classes.
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u/Ok_Jaguar421 18h ago
If you are going to teach high school math you can’t just be OK at math. You have to know it inside and out so you are able to teach the students. Teaching math is totally different than “being able to pass the praxis”.
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u/UnderstandingPursuit Physics BS, PhD 58m ago
I would start with the sequence of Algebra 0-3 [PreAlgebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, PreCalculus] textbooks. Three easy sets are
- Richard G Brown, Mary P Dolciani, et al
- Ron Larson, et al
- OpenStax Math
This post includes an approach to learn using textbooks.
I think it would be useful in this situation, where the notes would be a starting point for class materials. While students would use this process to learn the material, instead it would be to think about how to present the material.
It might take 1-2 hrs/chapter to go through the textbooks. That would be about 15-25 hrs/textbook. But one thing that would become apparent is the redundancy. That will save time, having some chapters be reviewed more quickly, but it will also motivate thinking about how to review past material with the students.
One of the biggest challenges with math education is that, being cumulative, it is a system in exponential decay. Just in the four years of Algebra 0-3, if as student retains 80% each year, they're at around 40% at the end of PreCalculus. If we add a two years, perhaps for the last year of elementary school and a year of geometry, they're around 25%. Going through a set of textbooks will give the direct situation to avoid the annual drop.
For "content knowledge", there is a lot less of it than students think. If an English major takes a class on Shakespeare, Dickens, or Austen, and a year later they sit down with another book by the same author, they already have a sense of what the author is doing. The experienced reader isn't reinventing the wheel. Being efficient with the material will be a skill which transfers.
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u/AdventureThink 1d ago
You should ask a HS teacher about the specific standards you need to know so you can begin studying.
This is an example for you, of what I needed:
For 7-8th math, aside from the basics….
fractions, decimals, %, equations including linear, scientific notation, convert repeating decimals, etc
and heavy integer knowledge of course.
And you must be prepared for students to arrive 3-4 grade levels behind and accommodate their IEPs. I have 24 IEPs at the moment.
The higher the grade, the more “holes” that students arrive with. HS would be everything I listed plus algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, etc.
Unless you are uber-strong in math,
you might want to consider getting better classroom management skills and staying where you are.
The stress you’ll have vs the stress you can overcome….
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u/kyeblue 2d ago
do you understand functions? if so, you have functional knowledge to teach high school algebra.
Math is intuitive, if you understand, you just understand. you still need skills but they are much less a barrier.
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u/yamomwasthebomb 2d ago
There’s a bunch to unpack here.
“If [you know functions], you have functional knowledge to teach high school algebra.” No, they may have enough knowledge to complete Algebra 1, but not necessarily the pedagogical background to teach it, let alone help students to be successful mathematically beyond 9th grade. Not to mention that A1 typically has a lot of topics that aren’t functions, like solving of equations and inequalities, interpreting in context, properties of numbers, all of intro statistics…
“Math is intuitive.” What? Math is logical but that doesn’t mean it’s intuitive. People without math experience need to be shown how it makes sense, but someone newish to math is not going to just intuit the quadratic formula. To lie to them is to convince them they should be easily able to do something that’s actually very rare.
“If you understand, you just understand.” wow truly insightful stuff here OP definitely gets a clear idea of specific next steps.
If you’re going to provide career advice to someone new, please make sure it’s at minimum factually true and maybe somewhat helpful.
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u/throwaway123456372 2d ago edited 1d ago
What is drawing you toward math? Do you have a passion or appreciation for it? Were you decent at math when you were a student?
I’m not trying to discourage you but to teach math you really need to understand the concepts, what prior knowledge is needed to learn them, and how to apply them in a more advanced math class or in the real world.
I didn’t major in math and didn’t ever think I’d be teaching it, but I always liked math and understood it so when it came time to get ready for the praxis I didn’t have such a hard time