Month: July 2016

My hope for group work…and introverts

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Lately I’ve been thinking about group work.

This past spring, I reached a point in a lesson where I wanted students to work together on a few tasks. Prior knowledge was there. Things were accessible. Heterogeneous groups abound. All the standard stuff. There was no reason why the kids shouldn’t have been good to go.

What did they do? They waited for me. They couldn’t get started without me but, even worse, they couldn’t even use one another to get the ball rolling. Despite being more than capable, they wanted me to feed them…again. I say again because this was a fairly common theme all year. It just took this particular lesson for it to hit me.

Realizing this, I didn’t want to lecture them on how I knew that together they could accomplish the tasks I set forth. So I sat on a desk and stared at them. The result was a bunch of concerned faces asking me why I was so quiet. I responded with silent eye contact to each and every one of them. It took a full three minutes of awkwardness before they pieced things together. Oh, he wants us to figure this stuff out. 

In the moment, I was really disappointed with them. I was borderline furious. I overplan my lessons, pour growth mindset into them all year, and live with a low floor and high ceiling. Yet why couldn’t they work together, independent of me?

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was the culprit. This situation was a direct consequence of me neglecting to develop a culture of interdependency. Now that I think about it, my classes have been like this for years.

Next year I am determined to get out of the way. For everyone’s sake, my students must need me less. I want group work to be the norm. A successful mathematics class is dependent on communication and inquiry – both of these are byproducts of collaboration.

I’m still finalizing a structure, but thanks to a workshop by Phil Dituri, I have some tentative group norms that I’ll use next year.

  • If you have a question, ask your group before asking me.
  • If someone asks a question, do your best to help that person.
  • It is the responsibility of the group to ensure that each and every person in the group understands the task at hand.
  • If you finish and check your work, you should ask others in your group if they need help.
  • Discuss different answers and try to agree on one. You should be able to explain your group mates’ solutions as if they were your own.
  • No talking to other groups.

It will be challenging to develop these norms with students that may not understand how to work together effectively. There are strategies that will be helpful in the process, but I still may have to start with one or two at the beginning of the year and build on those.

I want my students to value collaboration and learning from one another, but there’s another aspect to this talk of group work that’s worth noting. It’s the societal belief that collaboration is the root of all things great and that everyone must collaborate in the same way. Susan Cain argues against this mantra in her book Quiet and I agree with her. She calls this the New Groupthink because it “…elevates teamwork above all else. It insists that creativity and intellectual achievement come from a gregarious place.”

This line of thinking is a huge disservice to our introverted students. I bring this up because of my own introverted tendencies, like preferring one-on-one conversations over group discussions, enjoying listening more than speaking, and leading in non-traditional ways. The need for some students to think and work in solitude is something I get. It’s how I’m most productive. Reading the book was like uncovering so much of myself.

Studies show that one third to one half of us are introverts. The class I mentioned was full of introverts and they needed a structure to work together. I hope that my system encourages collaboration and interdependency while addressing the needs of all my students, but especially my more introverted ones. My norms won’t be a saving grace since research advocates for other strategies to support introverts – such as small groups, individual think time, and supporting individual passions, all of which I could improve upon. But hopefully my group norms help to celebrate introversion and make it easier for students to rely on one another as opposed to me.

 

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The video club 

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This is the follow up to my post last summer that outlined my anticipation of a research-based, video-based professional development that I was to facilitate with the math department at my school. We coined the name of the PD “The Video Club.” So, with the extended arm of Math for America, I was lent a HD camera, omnidirectional microphone, and a tripod. The goal: analyze, interpret, and get better at responding to student thinking.

Here are some takeaways from the experience:

  • The entire department felt the PD was worthwhile and would love to do it again. Everyone was highly engaged throughout and over 80% of the group felt that this PD helped them gain key insights into student thinking. This was a relief. I believe in and value the work, I just hoped they would also find it worthwhile – which they did. Plus, I’ve never headed an initiative like this before, so I’m glad it was a source of growth…and not utter failure.
  • The department felt that the experience made us more conscious of the words and terms we use with students. For example, the use of the word “cancel” was recognized as something to rethink. We discovered that many students infer, for instance, that the common factors in the numerator and denominator of a fraction “cancel” out, when in fact they are a form of 1. “Cancel” made our students feel as if the factors just disappeared. This is subtle and a direct result of our utilization of the word in class. On a related note, a colleague mentioned that students’ mathematical abilities are a reflection of our teaching and that she witnessed her own shortcomings embedded in their thinking. Interesting.
  • The experience helped us develop better questions – or at least to habitually reassess the quality of questions that we ask our students. Questions should anticipate and clarify student thinking all the while pushing kids to make connections. There were instances where we spent all of 15 minutes debating a 7-second student discussion. This deliberate focus on the details of student thinking allowed us craft questions that addressed very specific areas of student understanding.
  • We realized that the more analysis we did of student thinking via the video club, the more we valued the process of analyzing student thinking. This lead us to create more opportunities for our students to discuss mathematics during class so that, in turn, we could analyze their thinking. This may have been the result of the tangible improvements in our planning and teaching that we made after each of the sessions.
  • Many teachers are mandated to analyze student work. It hit me early in the year that recording student discussions around a task was actually an elevated form of this. We weren’t interpreting written work to get at student thinking. Instead, we were watching and listening to them explain their thoughts, which is a much more sophisticated way of understanding student thinking.
  • This seems somewhat counterintuitive, but I learned a great deal about mathematics. Specifically, I learned more about how mathematical relationships and ideas are viewed through the eyes of my students. For example, I explored why it is so common for students to reference the Pythagorean Theorem when they see a triangle labeled with sides a, b, and c – no matter what the problem is asking. (Our dependency on those arbitrary letters may have something to do with it.) This type of perspective taking has proved to be incredibly powerful when it comes to developing impactful learning opportunities for my kids.
  • I came to embrace the openness of each session. I prepared prompts and questions beforehand, but insights from the team really led the way. Over time, instead of being a “facilitator,” I was just another member of the group who helped push the conversation forward. I learned that the uncertainly involved with this work is a good thing.
  • When I initially dove into this project, I was concerned about the amount of prep time required – especially since we were dealing with video. Anyone who has dealt with video knows that the editing process can be discouraging and straight-up unbearable. I was elated to find out that, from beginning to end, the process requires no editing. Sustainability!
  • Lastly, this experience afforded me an opportunity to lead my colleagues. I was empowered. And I’ve taken on other leadership roles in the building, but for reasons that I cannot seem to pinpoint, this one felt different. It may stem from my own personal belief about how this work provides exceptional hands-on improvement for teachers – and how rare this is.

I’m enthused to continue this work next year. MfA has been an invaluable partner and I’m pleased to know that I have their continued support!

 

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