Saturday, April 8, 2017

My Journey to Authentic Engagement

Jeremy Lee

It’s 10:15 pm and I am reading a bedtime story to my two year old son (don’t judge).  I am completely enthralled in the story creating voices for characters and being the most engaging reader that I can be, when all of the sudden I read a sentence in the story that made me sad.  Not just like an awe sad, but a punch in the gut sad, a lost your dog sad, a genuine feeling of anguish, almost despair.  The character in the story is having a hard time falling asleep and says “I have tried everything.  
I even tried thinking of things that are boring, like math class.”
Engagement Trial #1
As a new teacher fresh out of college I was determined to make math fun.  I was sure by being an engaging and dynamic speaker my students would be excited to attend my class and want to do math.  I took the approach as if I was preaching a sermon.  I included stories and anecdotes and always drove home the main objective at the end of the speech.  Students would see the example that I had performed and would then replicate the steps on their own.  I even took it a step further and had the students explain their reasoning after each step.  Reasoning that I had already given to them in the sermon of example problems.  The students were simply being entertained by me, not truly engaged in the math itself.  
   
Engagement Trial #2
Growing professionally has always been at the top of my priority list and the driving movement of the time was the phrase “real world problems.”  This should make math even more engaging to the students.  I responded to this idea by continuing my sermons, but using “real world” examples.  I continued to strive to be an engaging speaker, but now the examples that I was presenting had a context that would hopefully make math even more engaging.   I gave examples of which the numbers must be extracted and be put into a structure that was provided by me for the students.  I used the “I do, We do, You do” philosophy to make it easier on us all.  Besides, learning should be easy, right?

Reflection
Upon reflection of my own mathematical journey as a student, I realized that even with the goal of engaging my students, my students were not authentically engaged.  As a student I was never engaged in math problems.  I could, however, easily repeat steps and understand the reasoning behind the given steps to solve the example problems.  This made me appear “good at math”.  The engagement into mathematics did not arise for me until I was in college and attended a number theory class taught by Dr. Michael Starbird.   It was different.  No examples, only questions and statements to prove.  Questions posed in which students answered and discussed those answers as a class.  Each question posed was built upon the previous.  These were questions that provoked thought, logical reasoning, and ultimately our own creation of mathematics.  I was very uncomfortable.  It was a struggle and I learned more in that semester than I had in my entire student journey.  

As a class, we were authentically engaged in the math itself. Dr. Starbird was simply a coach, directing the conversations between his students.  This method was continued in my post graduate work under Dr. Mark Daniels.   Now through a lens of not only a student but also as a teacher of secondary math, I was able to appreciate the masterful way of guiding a classroom into authentic engagement.  The daily challenges were extremely beneficial to my mathematical understanding and solidified the results of this approach in my learning as well as my pedagogy.  I created a new goal that was a bit different from my original goal of being an engaging teacher.  It was to guide students to become authentically engaged in mathematics.

Realization
As a math teacher, I had fallen into the trap.  The trap of thinking that if math is easy for the students, then I must be doing an awesome job.  I should, however, expect a level of discomfort within the learners, just as I felt in beginning stages of my own experience of finally being engaged.  The growth happens in this uncomfortable state of not having the right answer instantly, yet being engaged in thought by the opportunity to prove the unknown.  Math should provoke thought and creativity.  It will be a struggle.  And, it will take time.  

Engagement in mathematics does not lie in an entertaining presentation or real world problems, but in the connections in the math itself.  Students become authentically engaged when they are wrapped up in the web that mathematics is constantly weaving.  When students can begin to ask questions of each other’s ideas and drive the learning process without examples or yes/no questions, mathematics becomes a creation from the students rather than monotonous repetition of rote processes (yes that is redundant and so is this teaching strategy).  The teacher becomes a coach or facilitator for the learning process of the class.  This does not insinuate that the teacher does nothing.  On the contrary, I would argue that it is much more difficult to prepare for this type of instruction.  Teachers must have a deep understanding of their content and must be ready for all paths that the class may take.

I am eternally grateful for the innovative instructors such as Dr. Starbird and Dr. Daniels at the University of Texas who are dedicated to inquiry based mathematics approach.  This Modified Moore Method of teaching allows access to sophisticated mathematics to the everyday student, creating mathematicians.  Giving the students tools to think and the ability to be creative is the goal in an engaging math classroom.  Students will begin to realize the complexity in the simplest statements and the beauty of pure mathematics.