brian

Teaching the same students

Early in my career, I taught the same group of students for back-to-back school years. This happened a couple of times when I taught Geometry and Algebra 2. There was even one class taught back-to-back-to-back school years (Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2). That was wild.

Reflecting on those students, I think about the unique circumstances that emerged from teaching them for multiple years. Specifically, I remember how our preexisting relationship shaped the year. In September, instead of “Nice to meet you,” it was “How have you been?” A sense of continuation and familiarity filled our days. Our shared history meant we picked up where we left off, leading to a lively class dynamic.

I didn’t appreciate those students and the gift we inherited from the Scheduling Gods. Unlike the waves of new students I teach every year, we already had a foundation. We weren’t laying bricks each day to build our castle in the sky. We already had our castle. Reuniting for a second (or third) year meant we could forge an empire. I didn’t take advantage of this, but the opportunity was there. In my defense, that was 15 years ago, and I was in my third year of teaching. I was treading water — I wasn’t prepared to serve them in a way that honored and built upon our past.

As this school year gets underway, I am recalling those early years a lot. For the first time since then, I am teaching an entire class for the second time. Scheduling changes dropped this opportunity in my lap on day 1, which I never expected.

I must say, I am excited. My ability to build community with students has sharpened through the years, and teaching has slowed down. We have so many rich memories and experiences to fall back on, which will only enhance the new ones we make. Our reunion as teacher and student this year is a gift I never knew I always wanted.

This class is mainly filled with seniors, adding another layer to my anticipation. Their maturity will carry us further than my other classes, but I was candid with them about my fears about the plague known as Senioritis. Although it won’t be personal, I envision most of them leaving me high and dry at some this year as they taste life after high school. The kids are wonderful and reassured me, but I have been down this road before.

Time will tell how this unique opportunity unfolds. Will we build an empire, or will it simply be a dream that never was?

Staying in touch

I’ve struggled to stay in touch with people for as long as I can remember. Much of this has to do with my upbringing. When I was young, we didn’t have many family friends or close relatives. My immediate family and I lived in a bubble. The bubble would expand every now and then but remained largely unchanged over the course of my childhood and adolescence.

My inherited tendency to not keep relationships alive has transferred to my life as a teacher. Through the years, I haven’t kept in touch with former students as much as I could have. So many outstanding kids have gotten lost to time. Considering how long I’ve been teaching, this is disheartening.

All of this became clear last school year when a couple of my former students made it a priority to keep in contact with me. They were still in the building (they hadn’t graduated), and I don’t think they did it on purpose, but we still managed to have ongoing relations in ways I never have before. We went beyond the casual hello in the hallway; we laughed and discussed everything and nothing at the same time. They kept me grounded and primed me to be the best teacher I could be.

To these students, staying in touch meant informal chats in a comfy classroom. To me, it meant much more. Through our check-ins, these students showed me the value of staying in touch. And since I don’t have much experience with it, they also showed me what it could look like.

A student-teacher relationship is sacred because of our frequent interactions, the space we co-inhabit each day, and the ongoing need to learn from one another. When a young person is no longer my student, our relationship loses the gravity that drew us together. Thanks to a few students, however, I realized that it doesn’t have to be this way. I now believe that meaningful relations can indeed exist after June.

As this school year unfolds, I know I can’t keep in touch with all my former students, but at least now I know it’s possible, how it feels, and what form it can take. This challenges my longtime inability to keep loved ones close, which feels like a personal and professional breakthrough.

Non-instructional routines

In teaching, there’s no denying the benefits of instructional routines. Every good teacher has them: the Turn and Talks, the Stop and Jots, the What do you Notice? What do you Wonder? These types of practices—and there are many, many more—are essential to any teacher’s toolbox. Discovering how they fit into our teaching and using them consistently can be challenging, but they are powerful (and necessary) vehicles for student learning.

Instructional routines are so powerful and carry such weight that they often overshadow the many non-instructional routines needed to produce a healthy, thriving classroom. In my experience, non-instructional routines, which usually never appear in a lesson plan, represent the glue that holds a classroom community together.

I can have all the shiny, research-based instructional approaches I want. Still, effective, holistic learning cannot take root in my class without a good amount of hearty, wholesome non-instructional practices. These routines work to connect us as humans and bridge a divide between us and the content. Students can learn without these routines, sure. But to what degree?

Non-instructional routines vary greatly from teacher to teacher and stem from the interests of the teachers and students in the room. I’ve written a lot about some of the routines I use in my classroom. Beverage Friday was the newest, which I invoked last spring. The set of routines constantly evolves and adapts to the students before me.

This year, my school has made it a goal to focus on routines that further learning. I love this idea. I just hope that, in addition to the heavy emphasis on outright instruction, we also hold space to discuss non-curricular and non-instructional routines that foster trust, community, and love. Our students need these, too.

Math Stories

In the land of Mathmatica, there are two happily married variables named Xara and Yesod. They lived happily, and they deeply enjoyed each other’s company. One peaceful day, however, the widely-feared gang of Arithmetic Operations suddenly took Xara within their clutches.

That was how one of my students started their Math Story, an assignment I gave students last week. The assignment tasked them with writing a piece of fiction that weaves an Algebra 2 problem into the plot. Students had a choice between eight problems my cogen helped me select, all of which we discussed as a class during the last several weeks. The only other restrictions for the assignment were:

The story has a clear beginning, middle, and end
The story has a problem or challenge that is resolved by the characters
The solution to the chosen math problem is included in the story, with work
The story is at least one page, double-spaced (not including the solution)

I gave students the option to work together, even if it was with students from another class period.

Students write regularly in my class throughout the year. However, asking them to write a short story offers them something entirely different than what I have previously done. With it, I aimed to tap into their creativity and let their imaginations run free, using math as the driving force. I’m truly horrible at unlocking this side of their brains within the context of problem solving. Practically all of what we do daily is grounded in algorithms and procedures. The Math Story was a break from that.

The assignment came as a recommendation from an English teacher at my school. We were at one of our monthly professional cycles discussing literacy across disciplines, and he suggested I try it. I always find myself telling stories at home with kids. It seems natural to bring the idea to school. Why not?

I drafted a version of the assignment and took it to my cogen students. They were into the idea and offered a few pointers to tighten it, like how long it needed to me and when it should be due. They thought it could be fun. I wrote two exemplar stories for the class to accompany the guidelines. Students had one day in class to work on it to help kickstart their writing. Everything else had to be done on their own.

The result was some awesome stories! Sometimes I forget how creative teenagers can be! Here are a few excerpts that do not do the students justice, but will have to suffice for the purpose of this post:

Once upon a time in the realm of Mathlandia, there ruled a king of mathematics known as “King Palacios.” King Palacios wasn’t your ordinary ruler. He didn’t just wear a crown; he wore an oversized calculator as a hat. Also, instead of having royal duties, he had math duties, where people had to pay him $2,000 of gold to get a chance to talk and solve their math problems. People from all over the kingdom came to him with their problems.

There was once a quiet city on the edge of the earth. In this small city, there was a mathematician that people had huge expectations for. You might ask, why? This mathematician was supposed to save the city from a nuclear beam by solving this one equation. The solution would disarm the beam.

Evil Mr. Palacios and Mr. Palacios have a math fight. This was one of the most insane math battles of all time. Their auras grew stronger as the battle continued, improving their math knowledge by a factor of seven. They both expanded their math domains, one of their most powerful techniques. This meant that whoever was stronger would win the battle since being in another’s domain meant being completely vulnerable to any attacks and having no way of fighting back.

Mrs. Yasin had a really hard time solving this problem. First, she replaced p(x) with c(x), but that didn’t work. Then she remembered what her amazing Algebra 2 teacher Mr. Palacios taught her way back when she was in 11^th grade, which is the equation p(x) = r(x) – c(x). This equation shows the relationship between profit, revenue, and cost of owning a business.

There was a trend of students using me (or at least my name) in their stories. As students wrote, they asked for extra credit if they used my name in their story. I don’t give many extra credit opportunities, so why not? It was a fun twist that proved to be worth it. Very memorable!

The cherry on top is that, at the end of the year, I hope that some of my students’ math stories will be included in our class book, Mathematical Voices Volume 5. It’s been a few years since the book welcomed a new writing task, so I look forward to adding it to the compilation.