Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Education: From "Here" to "There"

Southpark Mall in Shreveport, Louisiana was one of the first large shopping malls built during the late 70’s in North Louisiana.  From a people watching perspective, it was awesome.  From a ‘get what you need’ perspective, it could be a frustrating experience filled with questions like:  Where am I?  Where is that store?  Which direction do I go?   

The “Directory”, a mass produced map of the entire kingdom, was the key to answering these questions.  It was here that the weary and confused stood and performed the same routine:  look up, look down … look up, look down … point, nod, and proceed.   Deciphering the map was made easier when each Directory was customized with “YOU ARE HERE” labels.   

So much work for answers to three simple questions: 
  1. Where am I? 
  2. Where am I going?
  3. How do I get there?

If you thought maneuvering a shopping mall was frustrating, you should have tried traveling using a
printed map.  For many just folding the map was a challenge … much less trying to answer those three questions (especially if you had the map upside down).  Fortunately, for many direction challenged people, google has simplified our task and alleviated much of the frustration.  At the touch of an App all we need to do is follow the blue line to get from where we are to where we desire.  It even gives options in case of road construction, an accident, or just a desire to see the countryside.

For educators, classroom teaching can be like planning and taking a journey every day.  We have to ask and answer those same questions.
  1. Where are they? (what do my students know)
  2. Where do they need to go? (what do they need to know).
  3. How do they get there? (How will they experience the material so that learning happens)

Fortunately there are a number of tools and resources to help answers those questions and the challenges of often needing alternate pathways (differentiated instruction).  The power of collaborative teams, curriculum maps, digital tools, and much more are at our disposal (even Google).  While answering those questions in a classroom of diverse learners is not as easy as “the touch of an App” it still should be much better than a confusing experience with a  1970’s mall directory or a time-consuming wrong-turn experience with a Rand McNally Road Atlas.  Let’s make every effort to use those tools and resources so we all enjoy the journey that is education.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Routines, Procedures, and Celebrations

Growing up, I spent the summers at my grandparents’ cottage on a lake in Northern Michigan. We’d eat oatmeal for breakfast, picnic at the beach for lunch, and spend our evenings watching Jeopardy or playing board games. The days were hot, but night time called for a sweatshirt…my favorite weather! Sitting on the porch early in the day, you’d hear the hum of boat engines, even though you couldn’t see them from our spot on the hill. No smart phones, no internet, no friends to play with. This wasn’t a fancy place, but it sure was good. The simple routines created a safe and fun environment that, as an adult, I am so thankful for. 






Creating a safe and fun environment is also important in our classrooms. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but it does require intentionality. Routines, procedures, and celebrations are the foundational elements of classroom culture. The beginning of a school year is the ideal time to examine the routines, procedures, and celebrations we have it place. Consider the following:

  • What classroom systems have you established that work really well?
  • What is something new you want to try?
  • How might your experience be different if a new procedure is implemented for a usually challenging experience in your classroom?" How do you explicitly teach your classroom expectations? What verbal and visual cues to you regularly use?
  • What do you celebrate in your classroom?

And what does any of this have to do with math? The classroom environment sets the stage for how students understand content. We want our students to personally, specifically, and actively experience math. In his book, “How the Brain Learns”, David A. Sousa writes, “Emotional climate is directly related to classroom climate, which is regulated by the teacher.” As the teacher, you have the power to create routines, procedures, and celebrations to guide your classroom culture and facilitate student success. Routines and procedures create safety and minimize distractions. Celebrations are a way to positively reinforce the values you want to define your classroom culture. None of these things happen by accident. Take time to reflect on your current systems. Make a plan for implementation. And celebrate along the way!

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Silly rabbit tricks are for kids! Or are they?

As we come into another testing season, I am reminded of my first year teaching mathematics in the public school classroom. As a naïve new teacher, I had every confidence that my 7th graders were going to knock the socks off the state assessment. I had spent the entire year giving my math students the tools they needed to be successful on the state exam; furthermore, I felt I had prepared them for their future math classes. I thoroughly taught them every math trick
I had picked up on in my teacher prep courses and from veteran teachers willing to share them  on my campus.


The butterfly method for adding and subtracting fractions.
Check.

The bat and ball method for solving proportions.
Check.

The alligator eats the larger number for comparing rational numbers.  
Check.

Keep change flip to multiply fractions.
Check.

I quickly realized that there are so many tricks that it could be quite confusing for the students. In short, I may have been doing more harm than good. If I were a doctor I may have been cited for not living up to the Hippocratic Oath.  But what if I teach my students all the necessary rules and algorithms to solve math problems? Is that any better?  Although well intended, in reality I felt that even following logical rules was more focused on teaching students to follow instructions rather than providing a pathway to become mathematicians.

Where did I lose my way?  I was turning my students into robots that have an operating system, able only to do simple tasks like memorization of facts and tedious procedures. What about critical thinking, applying prior learning to new experiences, and being able clearly explain reasoning?

The argument is made that we don’t have enough time to do those types of things, but a good friend of mine always responds, "We don't have time not to do it." Initially, the time spent is greater, but the benefits are also greater. Teaching students conceptually allows them to retain more and learn more, thus allowing for fewer misconceptions when introducing new content from year to year.

“But what about the yearly state assessment?” you ask. Having a solid conceptual foundation, I believe, is far more useful than a bag of tricks. If we have worked with our students on reasoning practices, explaining their thinking, and problem solving tools, won’t our students at the very least confidently eliminate unreasonable answer choices on any given assessment?  Perhaps students will even reason all the way through a given math problem. 


I have recently started reading "What's Math Got to Do with It?" by Jo Boaler.  In the book she tries to answer the exact question we have raised, saying, "It [math] has a lot to do with children having low self esteem throughout their lives because they are made to feel bad in math classes; it also has a lot to do with children not enjoying school as they are made to sit through uninspiring lessons, and it has a lot to do with the future of the country, given that we urgently need more mathematical people to help with jobs in science, medicine, technology, and other fields."

Let me end by challenging myself and other math teachers to reflect on the lasting impact we have on our students when we reduce the beauty of math to a collection of tricks.  I believe this quote from the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science sums it up quite nicely.  "Show a child some tricks and he will survive this week’s math lesson. Teach a child to think critically and his mind will thrive for a lifetime."


Wednesday, April 20, 2016

A Few Good Words?

"You can't handle the truth" ... Perhaps one of the most iconic movie lines ever delivered on screen by the infamous Jack Nicholson to the sharp dressed attorney played by Tom Cruise in "A Few Good Men".

Are we silently replaying that scene in classrooms in an effort to simplify math?  Is the absence of precise academic language because we don't believe our students can handle the truth? There are times when the terms "roots, solutions, zeroes, and x-intercepts" are used interchangeably as if they all mean the same thing.  But do they?  A quick Google search reveals some nuances to those terms that would indicate they are not all the same.  Do we fail to shed light because we believe a half truth is less confusing than the whole truth?  Is it just not that important?  What other academic words do we bypass because they contain too many syllables?  Or the ones we can replace with simpler, more "descriptive" words.   What about the word we can define less precisely?  It serves the immediate need but does not build the conceptual base required for next year.  


Let's face it ... Math has a rich vocabulary.  It is a needed vocabulary that can and should be handled.  So let's challenge each other to use the vocabulary .... The complete and precise language of math.  May our plea be that of Tom Cruise, "I want the truth".