MATH 105A
Mathematics and Pedagogy for Teaching Secondary School Mathematics
Description: Lecture, four hours; fieldwork, 30 minutes. Requisites: courses 110A (or 117), 120A (or 123), and 131A, with grades of C- or better. Course 105A is requisite to 105B, which is requisite to 105C. Mathematical knowledge and research-based pedagogy needed for teaching key geometry topics in secondary school, including axiomatic systems, measure, and geometric transformations. Introduction to professional standards and current research for teaching secondary school mathematics. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
She is now Heather Dallas. Really disagreeable instructor. She never has office hours, never replies to emails, has poorly written homework assignments with ambiguities all over the place, and spends way too much time in class talking humblebragging and namedropping famous education professionals rather than actually teaching us Secondary Methods for teaching mathematics. We "learn" so much theory that we have already learned before in the prerequisites to this class at the expense of learning actually how to lesson plan, how to engage students, specific aspects of the common core, and so on. Unfortunately this course is required for the math for teaching major and is part of the teacher credentialing program so if you want to get your credential as a UCLA undergrad you're shit out of luck. Wait and apply to TEP so you can take Jaime Park's grad level Secondary Methods course instead and actually learn something. Like we spent a fucking 5 weeks on non-Euclidean geometry in Math 105B even though everyone had taken Math 123 or Math 120A where these concepts had been addressed rigorously. TEACH US HOW TO LESSON PLAN. jesus
She is now Heather Dallas. Really disagreeable instructor. She never has office hours, never replies to emails, has poorly written homework assignments with ambiguities all over the place, and spends way too much time in class talking humblebragging and namedropping famous education professionals rather than actually teaching us Secondary Methods for teaching mathematics. We "learn" so much theory that we have already learned before in the prerequisites to this class at the expense of learning actually how to lesson plan, how to engage students, specific aspects of the common core, and so on. Unfortunately this course is required for the math for teaching major and is part of the teacher credentialing program so if you want to get your credential as a UCLA undergrad you're shit out of luck. Wait and apply to TEP so you can take Jaime Park's grad level Secondary Methods course instead and actually learn something. Like we spent a fucking 5 weeks on non-Euclidean geometry in Math 105B even though everyone had taken Math 123 or Math 120A where these concepts had been addressed rigorously. TEACH US HOW TO LESSON PLAN. jesus
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 73SL. When I applied to a CalTeach course, I was under the impression that we would be learning what it's like to teach in a classroom. In Dallas's class it felt more like we were learning how to work at the Curtis Center rather than learning how to be teachers. Dallas was unorganized, frustrating, and impossible to get in contact with. During seminars she was nice and friendly, and made you feel like you knew what you were doing. But her instructions for assignments were never clear, and nothing got graded until week 9 (come to find out I had misinterpreted the instructions, although early in the quarter when I asked during class what she meant by them, she confirmed my interpretation was correct). Anyways, the person who (finally) graded the homeworks wasn't even Dallas, it was a math specialist from the Curtis Center (not anyone related to the class whatsoever). Dallas is impossible to reach via email, doesn't check the discussion board, and mentioned once at the beginning of the quarter that she had office hours but never brought it up again (and it wasn't in writing anywhere). I wasn't able to attend office hours due to class conflicts, and if you can't go to office hours you basically can't talk to the professor. She always goes over time for seminar, so if you have a commitment afterwards it's not like you can stay after class to talk to her. And her assignments for our quarter-long project were so disorganized, we didn't know what the end result was supposed to look like until week 10 (leading to us having to change a bunch of our work last minute). Overall, this felt like a boring high school class with a poor teacher who doesn't want to be there.
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 73SL. When I applied to a CalTeach course, I was under the impression that we would be learning what it's like to teach in a classroom. In Dallas's class it felt more like we were learning how to work at the Curtis Center rather than learning how to be teachers. Dallas was unorganized, frustrating, and impossible to get in contact with. During seminars she was nice and friendly, and made you feel like you knew what you were doing. But her instructions for assignments were never clear, and nothing got graded until week 9 (come to find out I had misinterpreted the instructions, although early in the quarter when I asked during class what she meant by them, she confirmed my interpretation was correct). Anyways, the person who (finally) graded the homeworks wasn't even Dallas, it was a math specialist from the Curtis Center (not anyone related to the class whatsoever). Dallas is impossible to reach via email, doesn't check the discussion board, and mentioned once at the beginning of the quarter that she had office hours but never brought it up again (and it wasn't in writing anywhere). I wasn't able to attend office hours due to class conflicts, and if you can't go to office hours you basically can't talk to the professor. She always goes over time for seminar, so if you have a commitment afterwards it's not like you can stay after class to talk to her. And her assignments for our quarter-long project were so disorganized, we didn't know what the end result was supposed to look like until week 10 (leading to us having to change a bunch of our work last minute). Overall, this felt like a boring high school class with a poor teacher who doesn't want to be there.
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