Geometric Puzzles
for Prospective Math Teachers

GeT: A Pencil is an online community of instructors of geometry courses for future math teachers. They developed a set of ten Student Learning Objectives for those courses. I (mostly) agree with those objectives, so when they asked me to contribute a chapter to a book of resources to support those objectives, I was happy to oblige.

I knew that Robin Pemantle, my co-author for There Is No One Way to Teach Math, had taught such a course. I encouraged him to submit a chapter based on this experience. He agreed, and ended up incorporating some of the ideas from our forthcoming book on curriculum and policy (Beyond the Math Wars), so I co-authored that chapter.

I also wrote my own chapter. It is based on the idea that geometric puzzles, and a puzzle approach to many geometry topics, could enhance the GeT (Geometry for Teachers) course. The chapter also serves as an overview and introduction to some material on my website, with many links. Therefore I think it will be useful not only to the mathematicians and math ed professors it was intended for, but also to middle and high school teachers who teach geometry.

In the process of writing the chapter, I received massive feedback from reviewers, which turned out to be extremely useful, and drastically improved it. In particular, it was a reminder that the intended audience may not be as steeped in the teaching of secondary school geometry as I have been. This forced me to clarify many, many points which would not be obvious to those readers or to beginners.