Textbook Reflections

I thought this reading was quite interesting. I have been on both sides, as the reader and the writer. I haven't written a textbook, but I did write a masters thesis, and when I did I was very intentional in the ways that I addressed the reader. As a student I was so frustrated by my math textbooks! I was so so so so so sick (cannot express this enough) of the textbook addressing the reader as "he". When I wrote my thesis I referred to the reader as "they", a gender neutral term. I also got frustrated when the textbook would refer to exercises as 'easy' and 'trivial', because a lot of the time, for me, they weren't. In my thesis I never wrote things off as easy and trivial. 

The examples given by the article were a bit surprising to me! I was surprised to find that the textbooks didn't use "I" or "we", as those are quite common math terms. Whenever I explain a math concept, I always use 'we' - e.g. 'now we divide by three'. I like this because it shows that math is collaborative - we are doing it together. As a high school student I never read the textbook, I only did the exercises. I do wonder what I would have thought as a high school student though. 

As a teacher I like using a textbook. I like textbooks because they organize the material for me, and they provide me with a starting point for how I will present the information and teach it to students. I also like the exercises in textbooks. I view textbooks as more of a teacher resource than a student resource at the high school level. I honestly don't expect the students to read the textbook - whether this is a good expectation or a bad one.