Richard J. Coppa - Father, Mentor, Ultimate Teacher.

In Memoriam to Richard J. Coppa - my father, my mentor, and the ultimate teacher. Long before Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset, there was my father's mindset - study, work hard, think creatively, tackle hard problems, stick with it, if you fail, try again... this is the record that plays in my mind.

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Mathematics Teacher Education

As I presented a visual model of a computation as an illustration of the new 2011 frameworks, there sat Erica. "This does not make sense to me. Why are we using this model?" I acknowledge such questions and answer with a question of my own, "Good questions. Just because the standard says to use a particular visual model, why is this better for students? And, how will you know it is better?" and thus our journey begins.

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