summing up the course

When I reflect on the course, I think there's some value to mentioning the first few things that come to mind without flipping back through readings and blog posts as these are likely the most profound learnings I have taken away from the course

1) I recall in one of our early courses the discussion about what it means to have a deep understanding about something and the relevance of being able to express something in multiple ways. I know I ( and my students) have been frustrated at times with textbook questions that dictate how work should be shown, or ask for multiple representations of the same work or answer. I think this discussion helped me appreciate the value in not stopping as soon as one understanding is attained.

2) I appreciated the challenge of taking a few textbook questions and trying to 'open them up' as per the readings on the week we focused on problem solving. While my initial reading of the chapters had me thinking that they were trite and stating the obious, the challenge of re-writing and the discussions that ensured were valuable and brought up some ways to 'open up the questions' that I had not previously thought of.

Some burning questions...
1) How can assessment be fair (standardized?) yet still evaluate the softer skills fairly, while being possible to do with a courseload of 200 students?
2)How can we bring together the importance of practice and rote learning with the importance of student driven learning and abstract thought?
3) Will the new curriculum bring any real change to my classroom?