The Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) named Dr. Blake Peterson as the recipient of the 2015 Excellence in Teaching in Mathematics Teacher Education Award.
The award is a national honor given every three years, and Peterson said he didn’t see it coming.
“I had no idea I’d been nominated for it, so it kind of came out of nowhere,” he said. “A couple of faculty in the department had done some behind-the-scenes work, and they didn’t tell me, so I was really surprised. It felt pretty cool.”
AMTE has given the award only three times previously, to Randy Philipp, Margaret (Peg) Smith, and Deborah Ball; all three are highly respected in their field. Peterson said it is somewhat overwhelming to be categorized with these colleagues.
“It’s almost a little intimidating. . . . They’re very well-known in math education, so it’s kind of amazing that my name would be on the same list with them,” he said.
Peterson attributed his success as a teacher to a simple and profound love for teaching itself, which seems to motivate him to go the extra mile. For example, he builds new detailed plans for every single lesson he teaches, regardless of the number of times he has taught the lesson previously.
For his math education students, Peterson has two major goals.
“[We want our teachers] to see mathematics as problem solving and to learn to see mathematics through their students’ eyes, to realize that their kids likely see it differently than they do,” he said.
He especially emphasized the importance of his students being able to explain their reasoning, both so they can solidify that thinking and so he can see their perspective. Understanding students’ thinking requires that the teacher listens carefully, a skill that Peterson has been consciously developing for a long time.
He is constantly using experiences with students—from a classroom setting to helping his own children with their math homework—to better understand how they think. He shared an example in which a student explained a problem-solving method that was new to him and different from what all other students used. He has subsequently used this novel method numerous times to help preservice teachers see the benefit of eliciting and listening to student thinking.
“That really taught me that I need to learn to keep my mouth shut, to not step in too quickly, to allow students to kind of wrestle with it and to share their thinking, and to listen. Because when you listen, you can learn these amazing things,” he said.
Peterson is the chair of the Department of Mathematics Education at BYU. Before coming to BYU in 1996, he earned his doctorate degree in mathematics from Washington State University and taught at Oregon State University.
He will share his listening approach at AMTE’s annual conference in February, where he will speak and be presented with the Excellence in Teaching Award.