reflection – Page 7

I had an unforgettable 7th period class today

I had an unforgettable 7th period class today. And it had nothing to do with mathematics.

The kids walk in. I assign seats every Monday using popcicle sticks, so they each grab one and make their way to their new seat. The late bell rings and I move to start class.

Out of nowhere someone lets out a curse. I think is was the f-word. Now let it be known, I have always been downright annoyed and refuse to accept any profanity in my classroom. This class knows it and every other class I’ve ever taught knows it too. (It’s a losing battle, but this is one of my nonnegotiables.)

Hearing a curse from a student in this class isn’t unusual. In fact, it’s relatively normal. I’ve accepted this, but I still firmly correct each and every curse I hear. They’ve actually gotten better about it. This particular curse gets my usual response of “watch your mouth.”

Out of sheer curiosity, I publically ask the girl who committed the verbal crime whether she’s had teachers who don’t care if she uses that type of language in their classroom. I didn’t know it at the time, but that question changed the course of the entire period.

After she responded that yes, she’s had teachers who don’t care (and even use profanity while teaching), many of the other students chimed in on the matter. Their experiences were mixed and led to a discussion around whether or not profanity has a place in schools. I mentioned that the way you speak can sometimes open the door for others to place unfounded judgements on you — and that those judgements can have lasting impacts. This drew strong reaction from the students and several more spoke up. Some said that they refused to change who they were no matter what others thought. Some referenced siblings who have offered similar words of advice.

Keep in mind that at this point we’re about 20 minutes into the period. But the fire had been lit and I was determined to get out the way. It felt like the right thing to do.

The conversation took up a mind of its own. It was morphing, changing, adapting to the needs of the students. I didn’t talk much. Things twisted and turned through religion, race, parents, and stereotypes. A few students admitted to being bullied in middle school. One girl started crying because of rumors that she was a bully. I brought her tissue and a classmate gave her a hug. Respect was inherit in everyone’s tone.

So yeah, we spent the entire 45-minute period talking…and airing out some deeply rooted emotions. We did no mathematics. Heck, we didn’t even get past the Bell Ringer.

Normally, I would consider a class period like this to be an utter failure. A huge no-no. A cause to reflect very differently on this here blog. But not today. Life happened, and I’m ok with that.

PD with Dan, creating intellectual need

This past week was workshop #2 with Dan Meyer, who was invited by the NYCDOE to conduct a three-part PD series. It’s not every day that you get to attend a workshop with him, so I’ve decided to capture each of my experiences. More on workshop #1.

Too make a long story short, it was another outstanding experience. Dan Meyer never ceases to be thought-provoking. He presents the sort of stuff that stays with you long after you get back to your classroom. Here are the details.

The focus of the session was creating intellectual need in our classrooms. He’s advocating for the learning of mathematics that doesn’t need to real world, job world, or even related to student interest. His argument was based on the work of Guershon Harel (article here). Dan believes, and I do too, that we can meaningfully engage our students by creating headaches in our classroom for our students. We shouldn’t be in the business of imposing mathematics where it isn’t wanted or welcomed. I’ve read his headache-inspired posts from his blog, so it was really cool to get to experience first hand his thoughts on the matter.

He hooked us by running through a series of small activities that are examples of creating intellectual need.

Little expressions. This creates a need for combining like terms and efficient calculation techniques.
Controversy. This creates a need a need for how we communicate and represent mathematics a series of operations.
Memory Game. He flashed first a 9-digit number and then a 16-digit number and asked us to remember as many digits as possible. Created a need for scientific notation, an efficient means of mathematical communication.
The $20 Bet. He wrote down a number and gave a volunteer ten attempts as guessing what it was. If they could guess his number, he’d give them $20 (he only had $5 though). After each guess, he let the volunteer know if their guess was too high or too low. His number ended up being 87.21! This creates a need for different number families and their relevance.
Parallel Lines. Creates a need for precision when calculating and representing two parallel lines. The coordinate plane rescues us.

We then explored two of Guershon Harel’s five components of intellectual need: the need for computation and the need for communication. These two needs were directly tied to the five activities that Dan shared. More on the five intellectual needs here.

Dan mentioned that there are three questions that he asks himself when he attempts to design experiences that create intellectual need.

If [x] is the aspirin, then what’s the headache?
Why did mathematicians invent [x]? Can I put students in that place even for a moment?
How can I help students view [x] as powerful, not punishment?

A common theme throughout the day was how we should get into the habit of turning up the dial slowly. You can always give more information to your class, but you can never take it away. SO TRUE. This connected well with session 1, specifically the use of the white rectangle to remove information and increase access. The introduction to a lesson (the Do Now) was emphasized as a critical phase of creating intellectual need – students must be able access the content however inefficient their means may be.

The afternoon began with an activity creating a need for proper labeling and name-giving in geometry. Dan had a bunch of random points on the screen and had two volunteers each choose one and attempt to describe which point they’d chosen to the other person. Another headache ensued. For the 2nd person, he labeled the points with A, B, C, … and the aspirin was given.

We then were broken up into groups and were given a scenario. They all showcased the opposite of what a needs-based classroom looks like. We were asked perform a makeover. We jigsawed it back together, read the summary of each prescribed remedy from Harel, and everyone in our original group shared. What stemmed from the conversation was awesome: developing a need for the algebraic form of a function. The Points Desmos activity followed, emphasizing the usefulness of inequalities when representing all points that satisfy a given set of conditions.

Lastly, we explored Polygraph as a way of creating a need for math-specific language related parabolas. This was great.

Other interesting bits:

The word student means “to take pain” in some language (can’t remember which)
Whenever students laugh during an activity, you know their pain has been relieved
Algebra is sophisticated version of trial and error
Math pedagogy aside, I’m always find it compelling how Dan manages his audience. He greets everyone at the door. His warm use of “friends” and “colleagues” whenever referencing the audience makes everyone feel a sense of togetherness despite being strangers. I also liked his use of the phrase “For those of you that have the answer, say it out loud.”
After discussing the need for the algebraic representation of a function, Dan referred to algebra is “a more sophisticated form of trial and error.”

Dan’s Google Doc of the session.

Hey, instructional routines, where are you?

This is my midyear wake up call.

At the beginning of the school year I developed some goals. They were ambitious, to say the least. It was around the start of December that I realized how unreasonable my expectations were for 2016-17. I’ve been in the game for a while, I should’ve known better. Shame on me.

Despite my lack of judgement and setting myself up for failure, three of my goals came with a higher priority for me. This post serves as a self-critique on my progress towards one of those three: my use of instructional routines.

I worked on these routines a lot last summer through New Visions (here and here) and at TMC16. I had a crazy vision that they would transform my teaching this year. They were going to help my students leverage mathematical structure like never before. Being routines, I was going to get better at using them as the year progressed. I was going to learn to lean on them.

Well, next week the first semester is coming to a close and my use of them has been pitiful. Sure, my first unit in algebra 2 held much promise. I used the routines five times over the course of a few weeks, which was a huge win in my book. I started off strong. Slowly, though, I got bogged down with the curriculum. I got consumed with more immediate concerns and stressors, like being at a new school, running around to three different classrooms during the day. In the meantime, I forgot all about the instructional routines that I so zealously committed myself to back in September. I’ve used Connecting Representations one time since that first unit. I haven’t used Contemplate then Calculate at all.

Accepting this isn’t easy because of how much I really wanted to use these routines. That said, I know that it’s normal to unintentionally forget about goals. But I also know that if I recognize the struggle, write about it, and let it breath, I can begin realigning myself to the vision I had back in September.

What’s great is that I’ll soon begin digging into Routines for Reasoning and have scheduled a workshop with New Visions, both of which should help me find the routines that I so desperately want to implement.