Teaching Math in the 21st Century, by Barry Garelick [book review]

• Main Author: Richard P. Phelps
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nonpartisan Education Group 2015-05-01
• Series: Nonpartisan Education Review
• Subjects: mathematics; education; teaching; learning; school
• Online Access: http://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Reviews/v11n2.htm

Barry Garelick recently retired from a long career as an analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency. Probably most individuals toward the end of their careers prepare for a retirement of less work and increased leisure; Garelick attended evening classes to become a public school teacher. (Incidentally, he has written entertainingly about his graduate school experience in earlier publications.) He timed his teacher’s certification to coincide with his retirement from the federal government, moved to the west coast, passed his California licensure examinations in mathematics, and started looking for work. Teaching Math in the 21st Century lightheartedly journals Garelick’s experience during a school year in which he substituted at two schools for full-time teachers on long leaves of absence. Each chapter is a short story about a day’s experience with a teaching challenge, a challenging experience with a student, or experiences with parents, faculty, or administration. His chapters could sequence a slice-of-life television series about an ordinary guy with good intentions trying to do an essential job for skeptical kids who need him, hamstrung by an out-of-touch bureaucracy mostly posing impediments.