The demands of teaching can be overwhelming, especially for those just starting out in the teaching profession. The complexities of balancing the need to teach for depth of mathematical understanding while dealing with the pressure of preparing students for high-stakes testing can be challenging and frustrating. The teaching community recognizes the importance of mentoring and how it can give teachers the support and encouragement they need not only to survive the challenges of teaching mathematics but also to develop as dedicated professionals.

"The demands of teaching can be overwhelming, not only for beginning teachers but also those who are veterans in the teaching profession. The complexities of balancing the need to teach for depth of mathematical understanding while dealing with the pressure of preparing students for high-stakes testing can be challenging and frustrating. The teaching community recognizes the importance of mentoring and how it can give teachers the support and encouragement they need not only to survive the challenges of teaching mathematics but also to develop as dedicated professionals. This book serves as a "how to" for individuals who participate in formal or informal mentor training or serve as instructional coach, peer coach, lead teacher, collaborative peer, department chair, administrator, critical friend, team leader, university supervisor, or department or grade-level colleague. It challenges the reader to think differently about what being a mentor means."--Back cover.

Designed to support both teachers and university-based tutors in mentoring pre-service and newly qualified mathematics teachers at both primary and secondary levels, Mentoring Mathematics Teachers offers straightforward practical advice that is based on practice, underpinned by research, and geared specifically towards this challenging subject area. Developed by members of The Association of Mathematics Education Teachers, the authors draw upon the most up-to-date research and theory to provide evidence-based practical guidance. Themes covered include: the recognition of the importance of pedagogical content knowledge building upon subject knowledge developing skills of self-evaluation in order to reflect and develop your own practice the on-going need to address issues of equity and diversity within the profession the need for pre-service teachers and their mentors to work together effectively as a partnership the importance of collaboration, shared goals, mutual benefit and growth. Addressing issues of mentoring for all trainee and practising mathematics teachers, Mentoring Mathematics Teachers demonstrates both the importance of mentoring in the development of new teachers of mathematics, but also the benefits to all those who involve themselves in this challenging and rewarding task.

Readers, be warned: you are about to fall in love. Tracy writes, "Good math teaching begins with us." With those six words, she invites you on a journey through this most magnificent book of stories and portraits...This book turns on its head the common misconception of mathematics as a black-and-white discipline and of being good at math as entailing ease, speed, and correctness. You will find it full of color, possibility, puzzles, and delight...Let yourself be drawn in. Elham Kazemi, professor, math education, University of Washington While mathematicians describe mathematics as playful, beautiful, creative, and captivating, many students describe math class as boring, stressful, useless, and humiliating. In Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had, Tracy Zager helps teachers close this gap by making math class more like mathematics. Tracy spent years with highly skilled math teachers in a diverse range of settings and grades. You'll find this book jam-packed with new thinking from these vibrant classrooms. You'll grapple with big ideas: How is taking risks inherent to mathematics? How do mathematicians balance intuition and proof? How can teachers value both productive mistakes and precision? You'll also find dozens of practical teaching techniques you can try in your classroom right away--strategies to stimulate students to connect ideas; rich tasks that encourage students to wonder, generalize, conjecture, and persevere; routines to teach students how to collaborate. All teachers can move toward increasingly authentic, delightful, robust mathematics teaching and learning for themselves and their students. This important book helps us develop instructional techniques that will make the math classes we teach so much better than the math classes we took.

(Orginally published in 2009) The sixth monograph of AMTE highlights examples of the important scholarship of the mathematics teacher education community. This monograph, like others produced by AMTE, serves as a forum for mathematics teacher educators to exchange ideas, experiences, resources, and detailed acounts of work to improve preservice and inservice teacher preparation. Chapters address important issues such as: designing tasks to emphasize mathematics knowledge for teaching; capitalizing on opportunities for student teaching mentor learning; and learning to lead classroom mathematics discussions.

It is clear that teacher educators have ongoing professional learning and development needs. Chief among these are continuing to learn about content developments and pedagogical practices useful for teaching a range of PK-12 students in varying contexts; developing reflective competencies and sets of practices useful for teaching teacher candidates about teaching; effectively balancing teaching commitments with institutional expectations for scholarship and service; and forging useful understandings of identity across the spectrum of teacher educator responsibility and development over time, including taking on managerial or administrative roles. Working in institutions largely devoid of formal support mechanisms, teacher educators are often left on their own to meet these needs and subsequently must create or seek out opportunities for their ongoing growth. This volume explores in greater depth how exactly teacher educators engage in professional learning and development across their career trajectories. University-based teacher educator learning occurs in a range of settings and across the career span. Contributors to this volume describe university-based teacher educator learning spaces focused on their ongoing professional learning. Such spaces include teacher educator communities of practice, critical friendships, self-study learning groups, faculty learning groups, co-mentoring, and institutionally sponsored professional learning spaces.