A sizable portion of the work involved in teaching takes place well before the first day of classes. Beginnings are important. Students will decide very early—some say the first day of class—whether they will like the course, its contents, the teacher, and their fellow students. In continuing the discussion on “Equity in Mathematics Education” we turn our focus this month to the preparation it takes in beginning the first week of class.

At a workshop in April a particular PowerPoint slide appeared during a discussion on preparation titled “How Preparation Matters.” The slide quoted a teacher who left the profession after the first year, “I could maybe have done a bad job at a suburban high school. I stood to do an awful job at a (city) school where you needed to have special skills. I just didn’t ever know I needed them before I went in. I felt like, OK, I did the workshops; I know math; and I care about these kids…You know, I had the motivation to help, but I didn’t have the skill. It’s sort of like wanting to fix someone’s car and not having any idea how to fix a car. I wasn’t equipped to deal with it, and I had no idea.” It is poignant that perhaps as educators we might not be cognizant of the extra preparation that could be done with regards to teaching for equity this fall for the 2010-11 school year.