Portrait Welcome! My name is Lyron Winderbaum and I have been called a statistician, mathematician, and scientist but I am now a pre-service teacher. This site is my teaching e-portfolio, and it is organised under the following three headings: The information on this "About me" page is organised under the following headings:
  • Personal Teaching Statement: My perspective of teaching, the role of a teacher, and the kind of teacher I aspire to be.
  • Short History: Where I am from and how I came to be a teacher.
  • Influences and Hobbies: Some deeper insight into the people and things that have influenced me, as well as some details of my ``extra-curricular'' interests.
  • Résum‌é: A concise summary of my qualifications, skills and professional employment history.

Personal Teaching Statement

This personal statement is organised under three main APST headings. For previous versions of my personal statement written in different formats and with different foci, see below.

Professional Knowledge

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Central to my teaching ideology is that each student has individual learning needs, and that the best most practical way to address these is use student voice and student driven content to inform my teaching. I build relationships and rapport with students through one-on-one conversations to create an environment in which they feel safe and comfortable communicating with me honestly. This allows for ongoing informal formative assessment of their learning, which I use to differentiate and adjust my teaching to their needs. I offer choices to my students in my classrooms as much as possible, as I beleive this provides opportunities for students to differentiate their own learning by choosing an option more beneficial to them as individuals, while also supporting and encouraging them to be self-reflective about how they learn.

I beleive that when students make choices about their own learning, they can become more invested in the activity, be more engaged, and get more out of it. To this end I encourage students to take an active role in shaping their learning in our shared classrooms. In practice this takes many different forms: students asking for me to speed up or slow down as we go through subject matter, students engaging is self-directed investigations, to customisation of the physical and social environment through negotiation and guided self-reflection. The depth of my knowledge in mathematics and the sciences allows me to easily extend students well beyond their year level (or even beyond school level curriculum as appropriate), give context to the learning by placing it in an authentic framework. My experience working at the maths learning centre has exposed me to many differnt ways to understand the same mathematical concepts, which can be a very valuble when students are struggling to understand something. Beyond simple extension and alterative explanations of concepts, my experience in mathematics and science also allow me to guide students on self-directed investigations of great depth, which I thoroughly enjoy. For example, if doing a practical in science and students suggest changing the experimental design in some way, I will guide them to make adjustments that make sense, and do everything in my power to support this happening.

Professional Practice

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For students to learn and excel they need to feel comfortable and safe. As such, an affective approach to student wellbeing is crucial. By producing an environment in which students can feel safe, I can help them to discover their strengths and excel. I do this primarily by building relationships with my students. This is a subtle process that takes some time, but gradually trust is developed and through that I can gain some insight into how my students are feeling and make adjustments to the classroom environment in order to help them feel more comfortable. For example, in one of my classes I ran an activity in which I taught the class how to fold A4 paper into silver rhombic dodecahedra and had them investigate the properties of this shape. The process of folding the paper is quite therapeutic, and as I ran this activity after already having had the class for a few weeks and having established relationships with them enough that they felt comfortable coming up to me and telling about their feelings, one student came up to me after class and admitted that she had been suffering from severe anxiety and that had been the reason that she had missed alot of classes but that folding the paper rhombic units had actually helped her feel a lot more comfortable in class. As a result I modified the classroom environment the next week by putting a stack of paper in the corner of the class and informing the class that if anyone was feeling overwhelmed or anxious during class that they could move over into the corner and fold some rhombic units for dodecahedra as a calming exercise. Several students beyond the original one who had come to talk to me took advantage of this corner in the weeks to follow, and several of them told me about how it had helped them calm down after having had some pretty severely traumatic events outside of the class. Some of these students attendance rates also improved after this. Its in ways like this that I aim to create a safe environment in which my students can feel comfortable and productive. If students are in an uncomfortable environment or feel unsafe it is completely unreasonable to expect them to be able to learn, so as teachers providing a safe environment for our students has to be one of our highest priorities, not just because without that it would be impossible for our students to learn, but because everybody deserves to feel safe.

Professional Engagement

Learning is a passion of mine, and I have never stopped learning at any point during my life. Through discussion with colleagues and self-reflection I identify my weaknesses and areas of ignorance, and constantly work to better myself and improve. I particularly benefit from open discussions with colleagues who hold very different views/ beliefs and use very different teaching methods to me, as this is when I learn the most. For example on my placement to BHS, one of my mentor teachers had a very different teaching style to mine. Through discussions with her and with the students I gained alot of insight into how there truely is no single best teaching style, there is simply teaching styles that better suit certain students, and teaching styles that better suit different teachers. I learnt that there is alot of value in learning from teachers with different teaching styles than your own, because pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and learning these different skills can be incredibly valuable with faced with students who do not respond to your preferred style. Professional development is always a pleasure for me, and while I was at BHS and they had a numeracy focused professional development day I offered to take a workshop on probabiltiy and share my expertise with the rest of the staff. I even had one staff member approach me several days later and thank me, because she had apparently suffered from severe maths anxiety, having a minor panic attack on the morning of the PD day because she realised it would have a numeracy focus, but she said that the workshop I ran had opened her eyes to the possibility that maths might not actually be all that scary and more connected to concepts with which she felt comfortable than she had previously realised. I was very proud of her, and I only wish I could bring experiences like that to more people.

Previous Personal Statements

Below is a list of previous personal statements I have written Many of these are written from different perspectives and with a focus on different aspects of my teaching practice, so they can give a deeper insight into my teaching philosophy. This is often reflected by how they are structured and what headings they are organised under. Also, these can give an idea of how my teaching philosphy has evolved over time and become more detailed as I have accrued experiences and reflected on my teaching.
  • Initially I wrote a personal statement based on my core values.
  • After my teaching practicum experience as part of the Master of Teaching program, I then re-wrote a personal statement that was more focused on specific examples of my practice, and was organised under the three main APST headings.

Short History

I was born in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1989. My family moved to Australia in 1992, when I was three years old, and since then I grew up in the Adelaide hills until I moved out of home into the inner suburbs in 2007. After graduating highschool in 2006 I went straight to university, studying a Bachelor of Science. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do yet exactly, but I knew that whatever it was it would be somewhere in the Science/ Maths areas. I changed my mind about what I wanted to major in every year of my undergraduate degree, finally graduating in 2010 with three majors: Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, and Statistics.

Brainrack

In 2011 I started (and completed) an honours degree through the School of Mathematical Sciences in the discipline of statistics, working on a project analysing LA-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) geochemical data from pyrite sections under the supervision of Associate Professor Andrew Metcalfe. At the same time (also in 2011) I started teaching at the University of Adelaide: tutoring, marking, and demonstrating through the School of Mathematical Sciences, and also through the Maths Learning Centre --- where I developed a love for helping people find the joy in mathematics. Together with Dr. David Butler and a few other people we coined a term for this, ``mathefreude'', which we later discovered is actually already a word (which is awesome, by the way). Working in the Maths Learning Centre is also when the seeds where first planted that would later grow into my passion for teaching, although I don't think I was fully aware of that at the time.

In 2012 I continued my trajectory into academia, beginning my PhD project on ``The Statistical Analysis of Proteomics Imaging Mass Spectrometry Data'' under the supervision of Associate Professor Inge Koch, which I worked on until it was accepted for the degree in 2016. During that time interspersed between my PhD candidature I worked as a research assistant, but also continued teaching. I eventually dropped the teaching work through the School of Mathematical Sciences, but continuing to work at the Maths Learning Centre throughout.

Conway's Tangles

After I completed my PhD I continued working in the field as a postdoctoral research assistant for over a year (including all of 2017). At the beginning of 2017 I was asked to take on a full time research position at the University of Adelaide, which I initially accepted, but as a consequence I had to give up on teaching through the Maths Learning Centre. It was during this time that I realised the importance teaching had grown to have for me. I was unhappy in academia and I missed teaching. I starting going into the Maths Learning Centre and helping students there in my free time, on my lunch breaks and so on. It was then that I realised... if there is a job that I enjoy so much that I would volunteer to go and do it in my free time... that is probably what I should be doing with my life. Even having this realisation, changing direction is difficult, careers seem to have momentum and they pull you along with them. Initially I only took a half-step towards teaching, asking to go down to a part-time load of research so that I could start teaching again because of my realisation of its importance to me. This satisfied me for a time, but when my research funding ran out at the end of 2017 I realised it was an opportunity to focus all my time and efforts on my passion, and so I enrolled in the Master of Teaching program.

Influences and Hobbies

Shedidit

Along the way I have been inspired by many people. Dan Kortschak inspired me to think about problems from the perspective of a systems or software engineer and not just that of a mathematician. The writing of Paul Halmos, first recommended to me by my PhD supervisor Inge, inspired me to be a better communicator with it's concise eloquence. But most of all the enthusiasm and pedagogy of David Butler's teaching practice at the Maths Learning Centre truely inspired me to be a better teacher.

Brendan Bentley once said in the first intensive week of my Master of Teaching program, "Don't Assume", and that hit a powerful chord with me, reflecting my view on the importance of behaviour and the use of language in creating welcoming environments. In context, he was pointing out that when a student shows up late or falls asleep in class, you don't know what they have been through --- maybe their mum is sick in the hospital and they where up all night caring for her, you have no idea what they've been through. Don't Assume. That resonated with me.

I enjoy rockclimbing, having been involved in the Climbing Club of South Australia (CCSA), the Adelaide University Mountain Club (AUMC), and University of South Australia Rockclimbing Club since 2013. I also enjoy cycling, hiking, and rogaining. I also enjoy go/igo/weiqi/baduk and helped run the University of Adelaide Go and Chess club in 2009-2011. I've also been interested in puzzles and been involved in the University of Adelaide Puzzle Club and later One Hundred Factorial group 2010-present.

Résumé

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What follows is some brief dot points outlining some of my education, qualifications, and experience. A more detailed and formatted generic CV is available (LaTeX source also available), as well as a more concise one-page résumé (LaTeX source and BibTeX references also available).

Teaching Experience

My teaching experience includes:
  • Tutor at the Maths Learning Centre, University of Adelaide (Mar 2012 -- present)
  • Private Tutoring through Tutoring for Excellence (Mar 2018 -- present)
  • Pre-service Teacher at Blackwood Highschool (23 Jul 2018 - 21 Sep 2018)
  • Pre-service Teacher at Norwood Morialta Highschool (4 Jun 2018 - 29 Jun 2018)
  • Tutor at the School of Mathematical Science, Univerisity of Adelaide (Mar 2012 -- July 2015)

Education

I have undertaken all of my tertiary studies at the University of Adelaide. These include:
  • Master of Teaching (Jan 2018 -- present).
  • Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (conferred: Dec 2016). My thesis is titled "Statistical Treatment of Proteomic Imaging Mass Spectrometry Data". Source code for my thesis is also available on my GitHub.
  • Honours in Statistics (conferred: Dec 2011). My thesis is titled "Multivariate Analysis of Trace Elements in Pyrite".
  • Bachelor of Science (majoring in Chemistry, conferred: Mar 2011)
  • Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (majoring in Pure Mathematics and Statistics, conferred: Dec 2010)

Other Qualifications, Clearances, and Personal Learning

Shedidit