tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57792713852566255332024-03-12T19:37:42.765-07:00cheesemonkey wondersrenegotiating the didactic contractcheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-27341276755907613732023-11-12T15:04:00.000-08:002023-11-12T15:15:55.309-08:00TEN TRUE STATEMENTS - Using Cognitive Load Theory to Build Toward Mastery of Proofs - Geometry<p> I've been reading and thinking a lot about cognitive load theory in Geometry class, thanks to Michael Pershan, Greg Ashman, Dylan Wiliam, and Ilana Horn. </p><p>I've pared back what I ask students to do using a new structure I've been calling "Ten True Statements." It could be twelve or eight or nine, but ten is a nice number. Here's the basic idea.</p><p>Students are given a problem that includes a diagram and a statement, but my instructions to them are extremely non-pathway-specific. I ask them to generate at least ten true statements about the situation. I given them a specific amount of time and then I yell, "GO!"</p><p>I circulate, but only provide just-enough of a hint to table groups to help them get themselves unstuck. The purpose here is to learn how to ask for help and not just stay stuck.</p><p>Here's one of the problems they did on Thursday:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJXaWaFLgkQGfFXCCIW0eBMx3PFeSekS9fJeBtjqLdbTLFgkqmVN_uzI8CyfuIm4Y7_PtDAFEKI8FVXhwC8u4amW9elvR76ytoWb6uWUS_qd-j6W9a0yH_xa40XPSRnBhj3T-A7YMhapyv2WZ8iqlItmV1JtE3kRMhKj2sepg2fU7yWd2iAyca-0M1qf4/s954/20231112%20blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="congruent triangle problem" border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="954" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJXaWaFLgkQGfFXCCIW0eBMx3PFeSekS9fJeBtjqLdbTLFgkqmVN_uzI8CyfuIm4Y7_PtDAFEKI8FVXhwC8u4amW9elvR76ytoWb6uWUS_qd-j6W9a0yH_xa40XPSRnBhj3T-A7YMhapyv2WZ8iqlItmV1JtE3kRMhKj2sepg2fU7yWd2iAyca-0M1qf4/w265-h232/20231112%20blog.jpg" title="20231107" width="265" /></a></div><br />I consider this activity purely generative. Students need practice in brainstorming.<p></p><p>I want them to lose themselves in flow so they can practice using their reference materials to develop as many ideas (aka "true statements") about the figure as they can, together with justification. </p><p>I don't care about the order of statements. I don't care if statements are relevant to a proof pathway. </p><p>The habits of mind I am trying to cultivate are to learn how to brainstorm more gently with their minds without judgment; to use their tools as a memory aid; and to document their thinking process.</p><p>My theory of action is this: the more practice they have in generating true statements and in deriving new true statements from previous true statements they have generated, the easier it will be for them to learn how to put their true statements and justifications into order.</p><p>I am trying to focus their working memory just on the generation of true statements. </p><p>All four classes are really loving this activity, so I have to go find more suitable problems for the week.</p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-76888101418462915222023-10-14T10:28:00.004-07:002023-10-14T11:35:16.463-07:00 Tracking versus Detracking in Secondary Math Programs — a primer on educational psychology<p>In order to understand the 'why' behind all the arguments around tracking versus detracking in public school secondary math programs, it is vital to understand the educational psychology underlying the argument.</p><p>The essential question for the research and practice communities is this: </p><p><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why do some students thrive in whatever math class they are placed into, while others do not?</p><p>To address this question, educational psychologists, teacher educators, and front-line math teacher practitioners have all invested considerable time and energy exploring the foundational concept called a student's "<b><i>academic self-concept</i></b>." A student's academic self-concept is one of the most important non-cognitive variables in determining student outcomes. Roughly speaking, it is organized around several key questions: How do students experience themselves as learners in community with other learners? What social comparisons do students experience when they look around at self and others? What practices and factors support students in developing a healthy academic self-concept or an unhealthy one?</p><p>Nowhere in schools are the impacts of these questions more profound than they are in K-12 math classes and programs. </p><p>A student's academic self-concept is critical to understand and nurture because it has been shown to be one of the most impactful non-cognitive factors in adolescent academic psychology, with a powerful impact on students' actual cognitive development, as well as their ability and willingness to engage and learn.</p><p>The research on academic self-concept in secondary math classes and programs has broken down into two schools of thought, based on competing hypotheses. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>THE LABELING HYPOTHESIS: THE THEORY BEHIND DETRACKING</b></h3><p>The labeling hypothesis first came into prominence around the early 1990s. The idea was that if some students are being consistently placed into a course that is labeled as "the advanced class" or "the remedial class," they will take on those attributes and incorporate them into their academic self-concept and will lose the flexibility to achieve to their full mathematical potential. The kids who are placed into the "advanced class" tend to take themselves to be "the advanced math kids," while the kids who are placed into the non-"advanced" classes tend to take themselves to be "the not-so-advanced math kids" (or worse). And then we as a society lose out on the massive human potential of all these potential mathematical thinkers.</p><p>This theory posits that when students are pre-labeled by being placed into certain levels of a class, it erodes their sense of agency and empowerment. It is argued that this then leads them to lose the capacity to discover capacities and potential within themselves that might require a little more nudging or encouragement to uncover.</p><p>This was the genesis of the pedagogy called Complex Instruction, whose founding tenet is that all kids possess "smartness" in math -- it just needs to be accessed and witnessed/reflected back to them. The theory is that by placing kids into un-labeled heterogeneous courses, more students will be positioned to discover their own "smartness in math." And teachers who are trained in reflecting back these students success to them can have a positive impact on students' academic self-concepts in mathematics.</p><p>The labeling hypothesis is the main justification behind the detracking movement — aka the opposition to tracking is that exclusively heterogeneous class sections combined with the practices of Complex Instruction will improve both math learning and academic self-concept for all students.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">THE CONTRAST HYPOTHESIS: THE THEORY BEHIND MODIFIED FORMS OF TRACKING</h3><p>As detracked classes have become the norm, researchers have begun to investigate the impacts of detracked classrooms on students' academic self-concept. And what they're finding will sound familiar to every parent who has ever worried about the self-esteem impacts on their teenager who is spending hours and hours on social media.</p><p>The Contrast Hypothesis considers the impact of constant exposure to higher-achieving, math-hungry classmates on more vulnerable and/or less confident students.</p><p>As we have learned over the last ten years, there is a social and emotional cost to detracking. Students are more affected than researchers had anticipated by constant proximity to and self-comparison against higher-achieving peers.</p><p>What does that mean? It's similar to what researchers are discovering about the impacts of social media on girls and young women who spend hours each day scrolling through images of beauty influencers on Instagram and Tik Tok and finding fault with their own faces and bodies.</p><p>Much like the tween or teen girl who feel discouraged as they scroll past impossible — or artificial — standards of physical beauty that they can never hope to achieve, less confident math learners in a massively heterogeneous classroom are being found to experience feelings of doom and hopelessness as they compare themselves to the student next to them, who is effortlessly solving <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dreampark-Megaminx-Speed-Puzzle-Black/dp/B01CCBWDYA/ref=asc_df_B01CCBWDYA/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241997379068&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12425971613659123079&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061275&hvtargid=pla-568956551933&psc=1" target="_blank">one 12-sided Rubik's Cube</a> after another before blazing through the rich problem in front of their table group.</p><p>Social psychologists are sounding the alarm about the dangers of social comparison to young teens as they measure the levels of anxiety and depression these young people are experiencing on social media. So it might have been inevitable that educational psychologists would begin to measure and discover the risks of social comparison in heterogeneous classrooms as well.</p><p>And as they are discovering, far from being a benign factor, psychologists who research the contrast hypothesis are indeed finding that lower-achieving students are suffering from the constant negative social contrasts they experience when they measure themselves against their high-achieving peers in the math classroom. </p><p>To put this in more concrete terms, what teachers and researchers are seeing — and expressing alarm about — is that our less confident or less well prepared students who are placed into massively heterogeneous math classrooms run the risk of becoming discouraged by the contrasts they perceive between their own abilities and those of other students they perceive as naturally strong or confident math learners. </p><p>This can't be dismissed as teachers simply needing to impose stronger norms on their group work. This is about how the adolescent mind lapses into social comparison whenever they experience themselves in proximity to others with different characteristics. </p><p>When teens see others, they compare themselves and then internalize what they perceive to be the contrast. That's it. That's what they do on social media and it's what they are doing in the math classroom. And it's proving to be dangerous for their long-term engagement, motivations, and academic outcomes.</p><p>And since the practices of "detracking" are now being seen to have had such a huge impact on student motivation, which is taken to be "the decisive determinant of academic choices and career decisions" (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), this is worth policymakers' time and attention to consider.</p><p>----</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">THERE IS A MIDDLE WAY</h3><p>Math programs don't have to be all one or the other. Many advocates of modified tracking in math classes use promising techniques from advocates of the detracking school, and many advocates of detracking are recognizing the need to improve students' foundational mastery of early math facts, numeracy, and mathematical language. The AVID program has launched a renaissance in teaching students organizational, retrieval, and metacognitive skills, which many teacher practitioners have integrated into classes.</p><p>There is a middle way. But we need to stop yelling past each other or engaging in cancel culture to make this happen for students.</p><div><br /></div>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-56678192405756434082023-08-30T14:39:00.001-07:002023-08-30T14:39:06.066-07:00Angle Measuring Practice & Fine Motor Skills<p>My 10th grade Geometry classes missed two critical years of in-person schooling in middle school.</p><p>One thing I've noticed is that these students seem to have more trouble than I had anticipated, and one of the things they seemed to struggle with most is working with a physical protractor in 3-dimensional space. The idea of using a physical tool to measure a spatial object seemed very foreign to almost everybody.</p><p>Every time I encounter something like this in our post-pandemic world, I've learned to ask myself what impact distance learning may have had on the students who were stuck at home. My training, my experience, and my own research have taught me that our physical organism moves towards health, so long as we assist it. That makes me want to treat this problem not as a deficit of mind but rather as a gap in experience.</p><p>I realized I needed to create an activity that would backfill this gap in experience and empower students to move forward from where they are.</p><p>So here is my <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tDxLC3iKbxdpRROLKXi718_j5KDG1hYA/view?usp=share_link" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Angle Measuring Practice activity</a> from today. There may be typos or my own silly measuring errors because I'm tired. </p><p>---</p><p>Start by printing and hanging angles #1 - 12 around the room. Kids at each table number (#1 - 9) start their measuring journey at their corresponding angle number. Everybody measures every angle. Table members compare measurements and call me over for a read through. We check for understanding -- did you accidentally start your measuring from 180 rather than 0? Clarify that. Support kids at measuring stations by asking/showing where the vertex goes. How do you align one side of the angle against the protractor?</p><p>Kids will start clarifying for each other. This is good.</p><p>When they complete the circuit, whole tables called me over for a check. We talked about estimation and levels of precision. </p><p>Then I gave them level #2 with instructions. Now they have to check their own work, using what they know about linear pairs and the sum of their measures. </p><p>When they finished, they did level 3.</p><p>I don't know what it is about hanging stuff around the room and getting kids standing up, but it works. By the time they finished the circuit of the room, they were deep into the work.</p><p>Physical collaboration is powerful. </p><p>This reminded me to use it.</p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-80251423549268521022023-07-31T11:23:00.002-07:002023-07-31T11:23:29.516-07:00PART III: The Four Mistaken Goals of the Discouraged Child<p> <b style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span face=""ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif">2. A Struggle For Power</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 3.15pt;">Misunderstanding unpacked: "I only have value if I prove my own value by refusing to cooperate with the teacher and/or the classroom and its norms." <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 3.15pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 3.15pt;">Teachers who frame classroom management in terms of compliance/non-compliance are inviting a failure of classroom community. For one thing, there are 36 of them and only one of me. But more importantly, it is a missed opportunity to create the context in which a discouraged child can come to view herself as a community member.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 3.15pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 3.15pt;">As Dreikurs says, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">It is a grave mistake to try to overpower a power-drunk child. It is also futile. In the ensuing battle, which becomes chronic, the child merely develops greater skill in using [their] power and finds greater reason to feel worthless unless [they] can demonstrate it. (Dreikurs, page 61)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Most teachers have <i>heard</i> that they shouldn't engage in a power struggle, but side-stepping the challenge to a power struggle activates reactions that run deep. In addition, if the child's intention is to assert power, any "attempts to make [them] stop only intensify [their] disturbing behavior." (Dreikurs, page 62). Resistance is easier said that done.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">What I have found most effective is to build the habit of noticing within myself whenever a student is trying to engage me in a power contest. The secret is to notice the internal trigger, name it, and refrain from reacting with the conditioned habit they are trying to generate. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">It takes practice. I find myself mentally chanting, Notice... and refrain... notice... and refrain. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">And it works. This is the fastest way I know to defuse the power struggle most of the time.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">A couple of notes. The first is, this doesn't mean there are no natural or logical consequences. There definitely are. And one of the things our students are learning is how to function in society. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">For example, one always has the power to <i>not</i> do one's tax returns, but then there are consequences. Some of those consequences are serious. But teachers should always avoid making the mistake of believing that <i>we</i> have to be the personal, immediate, and traceable agent of every consequence a student will ever encounter. That's just not sustainable, and teachers need to be in this work for the long haul.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">If a student doesn't submit an assignment that is due, I simple place a zero in the gradebook with a comment that late work is always accepted, but is subject to a one-point late fee. Zeroes are erasable. Basically, it's the same as doing your taxes. Shit happens, and sometimes you have to turn things in late. If you learn to plan ahead, there's no late fee. The point is for the student to learn how to meet their deadlines and manage their life's competing obligations. Don't make it into a big deal. Think of yourself as the government agency in charge of tracking and reflecting students' work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">This year I encountered a weird new manifestation of this power struggle. Along with all the teachers at my school, I use Google Classroom as my CMS (Classroom Management System). My policy on homework is to simply check it in as the basic routine step. I ask students to turn in their homework by uploading a photo of the first page of their handwritten work. This is the honor system. Most students most of the time turn in a photo of their own detailed handwritten work as evidence of their effort. Since homework for me is only a record of deliberate practice with metacognitive self-reflection, this is enough. I can tell from students' Burning Questions the next day how deeply they have engaged with the work, and this gives me the formative assessment info I need to adapt my instruction.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Only later -- if there's a problem -- or occasionally -- as a spot check -- do I go through students' homework submissions in more detail.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">But this year, I got a surprise at the end of the spring semester.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">I noticed that one student had turned in a photo of a cheeseburger with fries in place of his homework for that day. In accordance with my policy, I put a zero into the points field and typed into the comments field, "This is a picture of a cheeseburger with fries. Please upload a photo of this assignment to receive credit, minus a one-point late fee."<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">No reaction. No emotion. I just switched into functioning as the conduit of natural and logical consequences for a decision that was made.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Of course, this experience encouraged me to look at his other submissions for the semester. And sure enough, I had missed some other cheeseburger submissions as well. Because I am acting as a neutral agency in this regard, I changed all of the scores for those assignments to zeros and copied and pasted my same neutral instructions into the comments field. There were also photos of a sneaker, a bicycle, and photos of somebody else's homework with their name printed at the top. I modified all scores for these and copied my neutral instructions into the comments field. Zero, zero, zero. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Naturally, the student's grade started dropping precipitously, which finally prompted them to come up to me and apologize for the huge clerical mistake they had made. They asked if they could resubmit these homeworks. "Of course!" I told them. "That's the whole idea!"<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">In this case, the natural consequence of having to redo all those homework assignments was the need to spend time redoing them all -- knowing that I would look them over far more carefully than I might have done before, and also that I might discover even more phony assignments. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">A valuable lesson was received and integrated with far less conflict and more face-saving than if I had become emotionally activated. The lesson for me was, Don't bite the hook.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">There were other students who had done the same thing as well, and I treated everybody who had done so with the most consistent standard of fairness I know. One student, who actually submitted photos of a table mate's work was horrified to learn that I'd sent that table mate and their parents an email notifying them that somebody else had been submitting photos of their work and that in California, this is considered academic cheating under the Education Code and would be a serious offense. Then the student learned that I'd sent an email to them and to their parents as well about the situation. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Most students are good people. But they are also adolescents and they make ridiculous choices and mistakes. The horror for those two students of being caught out and unmasked for their parents was far more powerful than any rage-based consequence I could have meted out in the heat of emotion. And these two students both digested powerful lessons about the consequences of not living up to their own responsibilities. They each apologized to me personally and it was clear that they're not going to do this again. They were also grateful for the grace they were shown. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Never argue with a power-drunk teenager. Find ways to notice and name the power move that don't jeopardize the underlying relationship between you unless you have absolutely no other option.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Our job is to support students in learning to rise to the occasion.<o:p></o:p></p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-33398762075755655312023-06-15T14:50:00.000-07:002023-06-15T14:50:03.722-07:00PART II: The Four Mistaken Goals of the Discouraged Child<p> <b style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span face=""ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif">The Four Mistaken Goals of the Discouraged Child</span></b></p><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;"><o:p> </o:p>What I love most about Dreikurs' psychology is his clarity about boundaries -- both the parent's and the child's. By putting courage and encouragement at the center of his framework, he centers the child's development and the adult's cultivation of strengths and belongingness, not of weaknesses or deficits and punishment. As he says, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><i>Parental love is best demonstrated through constant encouragement toward independence. We need to start this at birth and to maintain it all through childhood. It is made manifest by our faith and confidence in the child as he is at each moment. It is an attitude which guides us through all the daily problems and situations of childhood. Our children need courage. Let us help them to develop and keep it. (Dreikurs, p. 55)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;">This framework applies just as much to the teacher's role in the classroom as it does to the parent's role at home. Applying his framework to my classroom management has been a lifesaver and an opportunity to generate meaningful connections.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;"><o:p> </o:p>The centrality of courage in Dreikurs' model reframes misbehaviors in a constructive and workable way. For Dreikurs, it is important for adults to understand that the child who is misbehaving or not cooperating in some fundamentally important way is the opposite of encouraged -- this child is discouraged. In Dreikurs' framing, misbehavior is the manifestation of discouragement. The genius of this insight cannot be overstated. Discouragement is a workable condition -- one from which a child can heal and reconnect with the social fabric of belonging. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;">For this reason, Dreikurs invested an enormous amount of energy in his research into understanding what it means for a discouraged child to be discouraged. Through this research, he identified what he called the "four mistaken goals" of the discouraged child. Understanding these mistaken goals makes it possible for an adult to learn appropriate, insightful, and very creative methods of responding that will redirect the discouraged child into a more productive approach to finding belongingness.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px;">The four mistaken goals of the discouraged child can be summed up as follows:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 39.15pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><!--[endif]-->undue or excessive attention-seeking<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 39.15pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><!--[endif]-->a struggle for power<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 39.15pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><!--[endif]-->escalation of the power struggle into the pursuit of revenge and retaliation<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 39.15pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><!--[endif]-->shutting down and giving up as a form of self-protection against further discouragement</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">Even though these are dysfunctional strategies for dealing with discouragement, they deserve acknowledgment for how brilliant and resourceful they are. But they are dysfunctional and we can help students to do better, both for themselves and for the whole classroom community. And this is where the framework of the four mistaken goals of the discouraged child offers highly effective ways of helping students find their way back into healthy belonging and connection.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">I want to emphasize that understanding these categories isn't a panacea. Nothing will be instantaneous. But Dreikurs' methods provide a sane, bounded, and healthy lens through which to understand what is going on with these students and to reflect on meaningful ways to address it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">Here's how I experience these in my math classroom.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><b><span face=""ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><b><span face=""ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif">1. Undue Attention-Seeking</span></b><span face=""ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">Misunderstanding unpacked: "I only have value if I receive individual one-on-one -- and often immediate -- attention from the teacher." This can take a few different forms. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">During collaborative mathematical group work (using Complex Instruction or other approaches), the student who insists on turning away from their table group and receiving help directly from the instructor is seeking undue attention. This is the reason why we keep returning to the Complex Instruction rule of "only whole-group questions" to the instructor. Part of what students are learning during mathematical group work is self-reliance and peer-reciprocal-reliance. Students are also building their capacities for executive function, self-regulation, and impulse control. Our goal for students is to help them become self-confident, independent, and self-directed learners. They are learning how to look inward to construct their own answers using the best tools and ideas they know, and to engage in positive, pro-social, and interdependent analyses and investigations when they run out of their own personal knowledge. We want them to learn how to exhaust their team's collective resources first before reaching out to the teacher because this is how healthy adults function in the outer world. This is a very different approach to authority than younger children take, because students' self-actualization learning goals are as important as their mathematical learning goals.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">The purpose of the "only whole-group questions to the teacher" rule is to build a healthy student fluency in independent thinking, problem-solving, and self-regulation</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">Another way I encounter undue attention-seeking is during unstructured group work or classwork. When students run out of runway, I encourage them to come up and ask their questions. Over the years, I have become a master at asking questions that elicit the student's thinking and at crafting the tiniest possible hint I can provide. My goal is to help them access the framework they have and to give them a little boost that can help them break through their stuckness and get them moving to the next level. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">There are healthier and less healthy ways that students try to use this kind of access. The unhealthy ways of approaching this that spill over into undue attention-seeking occur when a student plops themselves down and tries and monopolize as much time and attention as they can access from me. This is where gentle redirection is so important. I tell them I will only dispense one hint or piece of help at a time, but I invite them to come back with their next stuck point as many times as they need to. I reinforce that they're welcome to come back with their next question if they need it. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">I try not to allow any one student to monopolize access to me as a classroom resource. This is part of building trust and also of building classroom community and positive interdependence. In my 7th block class this past spring, a new piece of classroom culture emerged, in which students talked openly about "sharing the wealth." The student who had come over to ask for help on, say, problem 11, became a kind of shared community resource. Another table would call this person over to ask for guidance and they would confer and share insights -- never simply doing the problem for each other. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;">This was far and away the greatest high point of my teaching year.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-left: 3.15pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-63957062731222480542023-06-05T16:51:00.001-07:002023-06-15T14:45:28.054-07:00Belongingness Comes First: Classroom Management through a Harm-Reducing Lens -- PART 1<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: ITC Stone Sans Std Medium, sans-serif;">This is a post that has been rattling around in my mind for a long time, but this has been the year when colleagues younger and older have asked me to please write this down. </span></span><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It's the first of a series of posts I'm going to do this summer, mostly to help myself remember what I need to know when I have forgotten what works. </span><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">May it be of benefit to others as well.</span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><i><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">NOTE: The book of Rudolf Dreikurs that has most deeply influenced my work is from 1964 and is called Children: The Challenge. While every cultural reference in this book may feel cringe-worthy and embarrassing to you, don't let that put you off. Dreikurs was a true master, and his framework and insights on every page ring as clear and true as the most finely tuned bell. It just happens to come from a different age. Don't be tossed away. Dreikurs' psychological methods and insights have a clarity you will not find elsewhere. Take what is beneficial to you and release what does not serve your needs.</span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: bold;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Belongingness Comes First</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">In the child's mind, belonging is a life-or-death question.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">The fundamental insight of Adlerian child psychology -- and of Adler's disciple Rudolf Dreikurs, who originated so many of the parenting concepts we now take to be obvious -- is that every child is driven to seek out belonging. The behaviors a kid manifests are designed to achieve their survival goal of secure belonging. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">How can this be used in the classroom? Well, if a child enters a new situation and immediately experiences a sense of belonging, then things will tend to run smoothly. The child will read the room, unconsciously relax, and dive into the stream of seamless and happy participation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Sounds easy, right? :)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">In practice, it can be challenging to foreground belongingness in the classroom -- and to keep it in the foreground. It took me years to let go of my first teacher impulse to talk first and engage second. The way I've found best to implement belongingness is by consistently using a non-spoken daily structure that is impossible to ignore. When students walk into my classroom, the first thing they see projected on the screen is a "Welcome to Geometry!" slide with the instructions for the day. The very moment that class begins, I press "play" on my slide and the thundering drum fill from the Hawaii Five-O opening theme music crashes over the room. I have an ancient Bose speaker that amplifies the music. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">It's impossible to ignore. But just in case students manage to ignore it, when it fades out, I start yelling. "Instructions are on the board! Read them and follow them! Let's go! Let's GO!"<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">It's important that the first time they hear my voice, it is in service to our shared collaborative mission. This establishes the ground rules of belongingness in my classroom. WE have a job to do together. I'm just here to encourage that along.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">As we move into the heart of the first week, I use this structure to train students on how to work with Burning Questions. A Burning Question is a question about the previous day's work that students can't answer for themselves. THAT is the proper use of the teacher. So the first segment of every class' instructions is to prepare for the Burning Questions segment of class. I'll take every BQ students have, but I don't accept the answer "all of them." That's lazy and threatens belongingness.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Once we've assembled our list of Burning Questions, we walk through worked examples, but the way I do worked examples is very different from what I've observed in other teachers' classrooms.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">As Rudolf Dreikurs says, "We must observe the <i>result</i> of our... program and repeatedly ask ourselves, 'What is this method doing to my child's self-concept?" (Dreikurs, p. 39). As teachers we are always faced with the choice of encouraging independence, self-respect, and sense of accomplishment or undermining it. A huge part of what children are learning to develop through productive struggle -- psychologically speaking -- is a healthy ability to tolerate and manage frustrations. Obstacles are a critical fact of adult life. We need to support children in developing the courage to see productive struggle as another texture of adult life they can learn how to face and overcome. As Dreikurs puts it, encouragement -- not praise -- plays a crucial role in helping students develop the "self-respect and sense of accomplishment" they will need to find their place in our world. (Dreikurs, p. 39)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif;">Burning Questions is a Narrated Thought Process<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">The key to encouraging students' courage during Burning Questions is not to do <b><i>any part of the problem</i></b> that students can do for themselves. Burning Questions is a profoundly interactive segment of class.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">In practical terms, this means that demonstrating worked solutions requires modeling the metacognitive questions I would ask myself as a learner when I encounter a math problem of this type and find myself stumped. Modeling courage is essential. Students always already know <i>something</i>. And since what they know is the best thing they know, I use my understanding of their ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) to find a simpler starting-point question that they <i>can</i> answer. This is usually a question about identifying the situation at hand in the problem. What kind of triangle do we have here? Do we have parallel lines? What kind of angle pair are angles 1 and 8 in the diagram? Do we have an altitude-to-the-hypotenuse situation here?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Encouraging students to name -- and use names for -- different mathematical situations is a critical part of my pedagogy. It enables me to ask them dozens or even hundreds of times whether we can spot one of our familiar important mathematical situations<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><i>I </i>break down and ask the questions; if the students don't provide the answers to my much-simpler questions, then we simply don't progress. My wait time game is strong. I can sit silently, blinking, for three whole minutes, if need be. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Belongingness dictates students' need to collaborate to find answers. I name and narrate behaviors that I see which are positive and constructive learning behaviors which everyone in the room can do. "I see some people flipping back through their notes, looking up different situations. That seems like a good idea to me." More pages start getting flipped. Quiet conversation ensues at different tables. Students point out possibly relevant parts of their previous days' notes.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Eventually somebody brave will pipe up with an idea. I will repeat the idea for the whole class and ask if that makes sense to them. I will often take a vote. I am not some deified source of right and wrong answers. I am actively trying to encourage them to rely on courage and on each other. We'll take a vote. Only then will I confirm whether or not this makes sense.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Wrong answers are fine and we honor them by interrogating them and passing by quickly. They give me an opening to ask more clarifying and refining questions about key properties and distinctions. I tell students that spotting known mathematical situations is like bird-watching. You need a field guide and practice identifying the distinguishing characteristics of different situations. This is how people learn.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">This is <i>my</i> process for modeling courage and resourcefulness during productive struggle. Mine might work for you, or you might need to find your own on-ramp.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Students get a lot faster at this interactive process. At the beginning of the school year, I may have to wait minutes before moving on. Within a few weeks, it will only take a matter of seconds for students to pipe up with answers for each questions.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">"What kind of situation do we have here?"<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">"Altitude to the hypotenuse situation."<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">"Good. What pieces of the situation do we know? Which lengths do we have? Which lengths do we need to find?"<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Never answer a question that the students can answer for themselves or for each other. This is how we cultivate courage and endurance for productive struggle.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Piece by piece, question by question, we walk through the problem <i>together</i>. Belongingness is non-negotiable. Whole-class segments not only teach participation and collaboration skills; they enact belongingness. Even if you are totally off-task, absorbed in texting, or feeling heartbroken over your relationship break-up or something even worse, during whole-class segments, you still belong.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">As Dreikurs puts it, "All comparisons are harmful." (Dreikurs, p. 44) Whole-class segments are not the time to yell at a kid for being glued to their phone. If you have to have that conversation with a kid, do it in private. "Her abilities will increase only if her confidence is restored." (Dreikurs, p. 44). The ultimate larger goal is to encourage each student to reach "the point where [they] will enjoy learning... and may find out how much more capable [they] are than [they] have thought till now." (Dreikurs, p. 45)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Bold", sans-serif;">The Enemy of Belongingness is Discouragement<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">But if a child has become discouraged, their focus will shift from participational and cooperative behaviors toward less constructive behaviors that are unconsciously designed as defense mechanisms to protect them against their perceived failure to achieve belonging.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">This is the most important insight a teacher can integrate into their classroom management orientation. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">These are not deliberate strategies. These are observed and catalogued patterns of behavior that arise when a child fails to achieve successful belonging. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">This is good news for classroom teachers. If you can make sense of and spot these behaviors, you can generally find solutions for redirecting them into pro-social behaviors that will be more satisfying for everybody involved, including both you and the child.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">When I first read Dreikurs' analysis of the four mistaken goals of the discouraged child, I had a breakthrough in my understanding of students' misdirected behaviors. I'm writing this down because I want other teachers to be able to make sense of this too. It's so much easier to deal with when you have a validated framework for making sense of what's going on.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Here is Dreikurs' 30,000-foot perspective, with one modern update from me in brackets:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><i>Children want desperately to belong. If all goes well and the child maintains his courage, he presents few problems. He does what the situation requires and gets a sense of belonging through his [success] and participation. But if he becomes discouraged, his sense of belonging is restricted. His interest turns from participation in the group to a desperate attempt at self-realization through others. All his attention is turned toward this end, be it through pleasant or disturbing behavior, for, one way or another, he <b>has</b> to find a place. There are four recognized "mistaken goals" that such a child can pursue. It is essential to understand these mistaken goals if we hope to redirect the child into a constructive approach to social integration. (Dreikurs, p. 58)<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">Once I started understanding student misbehaviors as falling into one of the four mistaken goals of a discouraged child, it became much easier to find appropriate and effective methods for redirecting student energies in healthier and more constructive ways. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">I want to emphasize that there are two important elements to healthy classroom management here. One belongs to the teacher, keeping a clear understanding of the situation, not allowing oneself to get triggered, refraining from reacting to the triggering behavior, and maintaining healthy boundaries to preserve your own sanity. The other belongs to the student who is suffering and acting out in one of the four mistaken ways. The student needs to feel seen, understood, appreciated, and guided in a healthier way. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">But because the student is still developmentally a child -- with a child's incompletely formed sense of judgment and executive function -- plus whatever other factors are at play in the child's outside life situation, this is one of the most important situations in which to understand that telling is not teaching. This is the real genius of Dreikurs' approach. He understands that the language of actions is the only way in which the adult can successfully reach the child with these messages. It has to take place at an unconscious level. And it is by taking this approach and following it all the way through that a teacher can reach and encourage the student to follow the better, more effective and healthier path.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "ITC Stone Sans Std Medium", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in;">To put it another way, we have to use psychodynamic wisdom in order to achieve psychological goals.<o:p></o:p></p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com1San Francisco, CA, USA37.7749295 -122.41941559.4646956638211535 -157.5756655 66.085163336178852 -87.2631655tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-87289387432134117372022-06-13T13:31:00.000-07:002022-06-13T13:31:20.481-07:00Choices Have Consequences: How the 9th Grade Failures at Lowell Shine a Spotlight on SFUSD's Literacy Emergency<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Megan Potente and Elizabeth Statmore</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-59581f69-7fff-05a5-72f0-71cf2b65bca9"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000104037198; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The news coverage of the </span><a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Lowell-High-admissions-17196603.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rise in 9th grade Ds & Fs at Lowell High School after this first year of lottery admissions</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> fails to mention two things: the fact that in a wealthy city that prizes equity, San Francisco Unified School District has been promoting an unacceptably high percentage of 8th graders who cannot read at grade level; and the fact that the sudden change in Lowell admissions is what is shining a bright light on these disastrous reading results.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A recent </span><a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/CE5SQS726C88/%24file/TNTP%20K-5%20Curriculum%20Committee%20Review.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">audit of SFUSD’s K-5 reading instruction program</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> shows how the district’s toxic love affair with debunked reading fads has been harming students in predictable ways. This Lowell 9th grade class is the first cohort not prescreened for academic competencies; therefore, they must be seen as representative of future incoming cohorts of Lowell students under a lottery system. So these troubling 9th grade results this year at Lowell promise to become the new normal for future Lowell cohorts of students who will be randomly assigned to Lowell. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tripling of Ds and Fs in one year was bracing to us Lowell teachers. Reading is a skill built on foundations, but the literacy audit revealed almost nonexistent teaching of reading foundations. 92% of SFUSD classrooms were found to be not meeting standards in this area. Reading fluency depends on efficient and accurate word reading, which needs to be taught in K-2. When teaching doesn’t prioritize these fundamentals, kids move into the upper grades without grade-level fluency. As a result, reading is difficult, which means struggling readers tend to read less, and consequently their vocabulary and language development suffer. The </span><a href="https://youtu.be/iMo1PJ0TUOg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cumulative impacts</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of poor early reading instruction are astounding.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a district, we are now reaping the results of our poor curriculum choices. The </span><a href="https://caaspp-elpac.cde.ca.gov/caaspp/DashViewReportSB?ps=true&lstTestYear=2018&lstTestType=B&lstGroup=1&lstSubGroup=1&lstGrade=13&lstSchoolType=A&lstCounty=38&lstDistrict=68478-000&lstSchool=0000000&lstFocus=a" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">most recent pre-pandemic data</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> show that 55% of all SFUSD students don’t meet standards in English Language Arts (ELA), and there are huge gaps in the performances of specific subgroups. Only 21% of Black students met ELA standards. The results were even worse for English learners and students with disabilities. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Lowell teachers first noticed the high number of Ds and Fs our students were earning, we did what good teachers always do: we compared notes. Who was thriving? Who was struggling? We analyzed student work. We scoured cumulative files and lexile reports. We used student data to inform instruction.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But one thing stood out: none of us had ever seen so many 9th graders at Lowell struggling to read at grade level. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We were shocked by this lack of reading readiness. Could this be a snapshot of the general level of 9th grade reading readiness across all of SFUSD?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Judging by the audit report on SFUSD’s early reading program, it certainly seems possible.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">True Equity Demands Improving K-5 Literacy Results</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">SFUSD leadership needs to accept that the Ds and Fs among Lowell 9th graders this past year are a wake-up call – evidence that calls for a return to evidence-based reading curricula in K-5. SFUSD can no longer afford to ignore the science of reading -- a field whose consensus is so broad it has come to be called literally ‘THE Science of Reading,’ </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The continued use of debunked literacy methods in the K-5 years has taken its toll on all our students. These 9th graders at Lowell are just the canaries in the coal mine.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">----------------------------------</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elizabeth Statmore is a math teacher at Lowell and an executive board member of Families for San Francisco. Megan Potente, a 20-year elementary educator, now serves as co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. She is the parent of an SFUSD graduate.</span></p></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-64765774081426134122021-11-20T12:47:00.004-08:002021-11-20T14:19:45.904-08:00Why I'm In This Fight - the Future of Mathematical America<p> Jo Boaler is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jo.boaler/posts/10225493814002480">utterly missing the point</a>.</p><p>My argument is simply, Enough is enough.</p><p>We need <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">all</u> of our children to be mathematically competent so we can get their voices and minds into positions of leadership. We need our Black and brown children to achieve the levels of mathematical competence they will need to get them into leadership and to fulfill the promise of their brilliance.</p><p>We need all our youth to be mathematically well-educated and well-prepared.</p><p>We need them to have an <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">effective</u> mathematical education.</p><p>And we <a href="https://www.familiesforsanfrancisco.com/updates/inequity-in-numbers" target="_blank">need to be using facts and metrics that reflect reality, not magical thinking</a>.</p><p>This requires that California <b><u><i>stop</i></u></b> merely rearranging the furniture of the high school math framework every eight years and <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">start</u> pouring some of our energies in to addressing the <b><u><i>actual</i></u></b> problems that are preventing our historically least-reached students from entering middle school with a healthy and solid foundation in early childhood and elementary mathematical capacity.</p><p>We need appropriate developmental mathematics from early childhood onward. We need it NOW. Mathematical play leads to mathematical curiosity. Curiosity leads to intellectual hunger and to rigor, precision, and competence.</p><p>I want us to wake up and work together flood the world with diverse, well-educated high school graduates armed with mathematical competence because THAT is the foundation of accomplishing great things in the outer world. </p><p>THAT is what's going to save civil society and our planet.</p><p>I read accounts like David Brooks' <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/scary-future-american-right-national-conservatism-conference/620746/" target="_blank">latest report about the future of right-wing America</a> and it puts me into a cold sweat.</p><p>These people are training their children to take over.</p><p>It's time we on the left and in the center start taking that threat seriously.</p><p>That threat is an existential threat to our children, which is what gets me up in the morning to teach my high-achieving, high-poverty students to become mathematical warriors. I want them to be well-equipped to do battle with these people. </p><p>I wake up every morning and work to help build the world that OUR children have the vision and brilliance to create -- not the world that those children are being equipped to create.</p><p>It's time for us to push past the first wave of naive, solipsistic navel-gazing of "reform mathematics."</p><p>Our underserved youth are tougher, smarter, and hungrier to master mathematics than Jo Boaler realizes.</p><p>It's time to <a href="https://edsource.org/2021/one-districts-faulty-data-shouldnt-drive-californias-math-policy/663374" target="_blank">move on from what doesn't work and hasn't been properly measured</a>.</p>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-39315887047992380582021-05-30T13:18:00.002-07:002021-05-31T11:37:47.989-07:00Piercing the Enchantment<p>Having survived more than a full year of online learning, I am readier than ever to return to in-person learning. </p><p>I've been thinking a lot about what I've learned over the past year and what I will carry forward with me into the classroom as we return to in-person learning.</p><p>As a person with a lifetime of getting hopelessly lost, I have learned that once you notice that you are lost, the first thing to do is to just stop. Stop and get reoriented. This is one of the things I have learned through the power of meditation. When we meditate, we sit down and stop paying conscious attention to the crazy stories our panicked monkey minds are trying to tell us. We anchor our mind in our breath and just stay there. When the river of thoughts delivers another raging dumpster fire of crazy thoughts, we notice it, label it, and disidentify from it. Huh. That’s interesting. Another dumpster fire worth of crazy thoughts. And each time, we quietly return to anchoring ourselves in our breath. </p><p>The more we do this, the less power these storylines have over us. As Suzuki Roshi says, we start to understand that what we refer to as "I" is really only a swinging door. Breath flows in, and breath flows out. When we anchor our panicking minds in our breath, we return to the safety and goodness of the present moment.</p><p>When I teach, I anchor each lesson in an Essential Question. Under ordinary circumstances, my Essential Question is always some variation on the meta-question, <i>Why do I believe this is worth your time and attention today? </i>But these have not been ordinary times. Instead of the usual four-plus hours a week of math class I have always had, under distance learning, we have had no more than an hour and a half of teaching and learning time together each week – for the whole week. Instead of synchronous time, we've had to make do with asynchronous learning experiences, which can be isolating, discouraging, and frustrating.</p><p>This has forced me to rethink my entire concept of the Essential Question for my classes. It's hard to keep the momentum going when you lose that day-to-day in-person connection. Many students reported feeling so alone without the daily contact of in-person schooling.</p><p>And so to help them – and to stay grounded in my efforts to help them – I changed the focus of my classes. </p><p>I began to think of my class as an Essential Anchoring Place for students first and foremost. An anchoring place where we anchor our minds using math.</p><p>My Essential Question for each day turned into something like this:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>How can I guide your attention to some things that can help you when you feel absolutely and utterly lost?</i></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>When you feel lost, the first thing to do is to stop. Just stop. Stop moving, stop striving, stop efforting. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Just sit the heck down.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>Reconnect with the body, with the breath. Return to the ground.</p><p>In meditation, we sit down and anchor our minds in our breath.</p><p>In Classical mathematics, I realized, we anchor ourselves in definitions. Definitions are mathematical bedrock. We bolt ourselves to them, making a conscious decision to take them to be true and move on from there.</p><p>We use definitions to orient ourselves. We do this not because they were handed down on stone tablets from Mount Zion or Mount Olympus but because for thousands of years, human thinkers have decided – as a thought experiment – to take these to be true and explore what can happen next.</p><p>These are our assumptions, and we acknowledge them as such.</p><p>And just as a map enables us to construct a working mental model of our journey, a mathematical definition gives us a working mental model of mathematical reality. A map is a tool – a good-enough humanly constructed tool that encodes our best, most reasonable, working understanding of how the world fits together. The journey we are on is a relay, and the maps have been handed down across generations for thousands of years. We are only responsible for our portion of the journey, though we inherit both the tools and the biases they encode.</p><p>Maps are cultural artifacts – texts which are products of the terrible racist systems in which they were constructed. They may contain some of the best thinking people were capable of, but they are also encoded with some of the worst, most wrong-headed, and most biased thinking of the dominant cultures in which they were developed. </p><p>This is why we take them only as heuristics. They are imperfect pointers to a truth, not the truth themselves. As the Buddha often said, “My teaching is like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” </p><p>So just as a map guides our thinking about how we journey in the outer world, a mathematical definition helps us to take mathematical journeys in the inner world of our thoughts and minds. </p><p>Students learned that our foundational mathematics are built on definitions. We do not prove these – we take them to be true. </p><p>Definitions provide an on-ramp for a crucial way of thinking in mathematics: the foundation of thinking in conditions. What is necessary and sufficient for a figure to be considered a circle? We start with its Classical definition: a figure is a circle if and only if it is the set of all points in the plane equidistant from a given point, the center. Where does it start? With a center. Does every circle have a center? Yes it does – by definition. What else does this definition tell us a circle has? Students fasten on the idea of a fixed and equal distance. Is the circle a set of points? How many points? Does the circle as a mathematical figure include the points inside the figure? How do you know?</p><p>The definition becomes my students’ friend. It contains a set of tests. What if one point of the figure were discovered to NOT lie in the plane? Would it still be a circle? Why or why not? How would you know?</p><p>The idea of a set of true-false tests becomes a foundation in which students can ground their thinking. They always know something, and if worse comes to worst, they can go all the way back to the ground of the definition. In this way, mathematics becomes a tool for getting yourself oriented. It becomes a culture and a community of belonging. We have to look beyond ego, beyond personalities, beyond individual likes and dislikes, to uncover what is true, enduring, unshakable. Definitions open a door to ways of thinking that have proven themselves to be durable and useful over time – over years, centuries, millennia. </p><p>We really go all Platonic in our search for definitions, seeking out the perfect and ideal mental forms. We developed a crazy love affair with thinking in conditions. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for an object to qualify as a member of this category? We start with real numbers and the real number line. We unpack the definitions of positive, negative, and zero. We go a little Aristotelian for a moment. Every real number has a fixed address on the real number line, and all addresses on the real number line fall into one of three categories: positive, negative, or zero, which is defined as being neither positive nor negative – the perfect inflection point. What does it MEAN for a number to be positive? to be negative? to be zero? How do you know? Slowly we construct an answer – these are by definition. They are what we are choosing to take as being true. </p><p>This leads us to another mathematical love affair – the habit of thinking in cases. What is the set of all possible cases here? Is this a possible case? Why or why not? How do you know?</p><p>Students do a lot of casting votes in the chat window. “OK, does this figure meet all of the conditions required to qualify as a circle – yes or no? Don’t hit return until I count down.” I give them a moment. “Three, two, one, zero – hit return.” 30 votes pop up in the chat window. Yes, yes, yes, no?, yes.</p><p>I run an anonymous survey to see how things are going. Students tell me, “I like this class.” “This class feels the most normal.” I’m surprised. My Zoom policy/default is cameras-off. Many students were too self-conscious about their living situations. </p><p>I worked with that. Every day starts just like my class would start in person. Slide with instructions, homework, and a countdown timer running for two minutes. Hawaii Five-O theme music playing loudly. I mostly used my iPad and Apple Pencil to do what I would have done on the smart board or document camera. More direct instruction than I would like because we have only 30 minutes together three times a week. Camera transitions and breakout room logistics eat up too many precious minutes. I give up after the first two weeks.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>How do we reorient ourselves when we feel hopelessly lost?</i></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>We stop, sit down, and think about what a question is actually asking us. We allow ourselves to wonder what tools we have that could help us find the good-enough appropriate next step.</p><p>And then we do it again.</p><div><br /></div>cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-46641247728810607132020-05-11T08:19:00.000-07:002020-05-11T08:27:29.660-07:00With sincerity and love to Nikole Hannah-Jones and all the beloved urban public school parents struggling to make sense of learning under quarantineDear beloved urban public school parents,<br />
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Please forgive me for being out of touch. I know you're worried about your child's learning during the pandemic, and I know I've been remiss in explaining everything I've been doing since March 7th. You could say that I've been building the plane while I'm still learning how to fly it. Plus I've been so busy trying to figure out how to salvage what I can of my school's and students' year I haven't had time to communicate it all clearly to you and to answer your many questions -- which, to be honest, are also a lot of my own questions.<br />
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Apart from supporting our students and their families who are getting sick and dying, or losing their incomes and housing, or struggling with food insecurity, one of the top three biggest problems we teachers are wrestling with right now is this:<br />
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<i>All of our best teaching & learning practices of the last 50+ years are based on layers and layers of assumptions of direct, in-person collaboration.</i></blockquote>
All of the most effective pedagogy is based on conclusive evidence that effective learning is socially constructed. We've trained at least two generations of teachers based on this assumption, and our entire schooling system is based on this premise. So we teachers are working on figuring out what we can salvage, given what is possible given our limited time and circumstances.<br />
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Collaboration is not only baked into the physical circumstances of our schools, it's also baked into the state-approved approved curricula.<br />
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Now under this pandemic -- and for the first time in about 3,000+ years of teaching and learning -- we are all physically distanced. In addition to being physically separated, due to the inequities in socioeconomic, housing, and medical circumstances, much of my urban students' learning has had to go asynchronous.<br />
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In all of recorded human history, this has not happened before. Everything we front-line teachers and administrators know and have learned about best practices being collaborative and cooperative is just gone.<br />
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So for me, as a veteran classroom teacher, this leaves me with three Essential Questions that no existing education "expert" can actually answer for me.<br />
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1) How do children <b><i><u>actually learn</u></i></b> under these circumstances?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2) How do I <b><i><u>triage and reprioritize elements of the curriculum</u></i></b> to accommodate this new teaching & learning reality and to <b><i>ensure the legally mandated Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)</i></b> to which each of your children is entitled --including students with disabilities and learning differences?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
3) What <b style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">adjustments do I need to make to</b><b style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;"> equitably engineer the greatest possible learning opportunities for all students</b>, given the already-vast inequities that are being amplified every day in every dimension of this pandemic at every turn?</blockquote>
I'm spending much of my time working on these questions and talking to my professional teaching & learning communities so that we can address the new reality for as long as it holds.<br />
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Sorry to have been so out of touch. I promise I'll keep trying to do better.<br />
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Love,<br />
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Doctor S and every other public school teacher everywherecheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-57305177303766715972020-01-19T11:47:00.005-08:002020-01-20T15:27:16.913-08:00Rooting Out Opportunity Hoarding and Perverse Incentives in the Math Classroomtl;dr The incentive structure of the math classroom is broken.<br />
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I live and teach in a community where opportunity hoarding is rampant. Students hoard points as if they were drops of water in the desert. <br />
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This leads to some perverse behaviors in the classroom. Students who have mastered a task or level want to take their attention to other parts of their lives. Their attitude is, I finished MY work; therefore MY obligations to math class are done. Students who have <u><i>almost</i></u> mastered a task or level of a topic become demanding of my attention in infantile ways. As soon as they run out of ideas, they tug on my sleeve, demanding that I re-teach them (or re-re-teach them) individually or in small groups. They value productive struggle only up to the point where they get stuck. The most challenged students feel so ashamed that they don't even know how to get started or even minimally unstuck that they try to hide in plain sight.<br />
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In a word, the incentive structure here is truly broken -- and perversely so.<br />
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I believe this is because the incentives here are all based on an assumption of individual attainment.<br />
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To allow a culture of individual attainment (what score /grade/mark did <b><i><u>I</u></i></b> get?) is to be complicit with the toxic culture of opportunity hoarding that pervades our whole society. I believe that the drive to hoard opportunity is one of the most powerful factors underlying the culture of systemic racism and oppression in schools.<br />
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Dylan Wiliam talks about how feedback needs to be more work for the recipient, yet every working classroom teacher I know knows that you can't force a kid to read or digest the comments. This is especially true when you have massive classes. With 37 kids per class, it's just not feasible. Kids look at the score and move on.<br />
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In my view, this is because the incentive structure of the math classroom is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it is sick and toxic. And we need to rethink these incentive structures if we truly want math class culture to heal.<br />
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If my grade means I personally have mastered or not mastered a topic, then once I get the score I want, my job is 100% done.<br />
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My problem with this is that, from the societal perspective, <b><i><u>that</u></i></b> is not my job as a classroom teacher.<br />
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My job as a classroom teacher is to get everybody over the finish line at the highest possible degree of mastery. For this reason, my classroom's economy of achievement needs to become more collective, and less individual. I need to cultivate an incentive structure of positive interdependence -- "I" don't win unless others win too. Then we all win together.<br />
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There are times in my room when we're 37 individuals and there are other times when we are one classroom community. This is how things work on teams and in organizations throughout one's life in the U.S. So if we're one classroom community, then we need every individual to be as empowered as possible to achieve at the highest possible level.<br />
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For this reason, I've been expanding my whole-class skills quizzes. For a compound, complex skill such as solving a multi-step special right triangle problem (with interdependencies along the way), the quiz that I give is one that individuals <i>take</i> but each person's <i>grade</i> is an average of the scores of all the individuals in the class.<br />
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For two days leading <i>up</i> to the quiz, we do intensive collaborative work, including reciprocal doing-and-teaching practices such as speed dating. We also have unstructured time in which students identify as tutors or learners and then work to help each other improve the overall level of mastery in the room.<br />
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Our goal is a whole-class goal of mastery -- not an individual one. The goal is to raise the overall level of mastery in the room. Our goal as a class is to get <i>everybody's</i> level of understanding up. If you want to sit off to the side and work on your chemistry homework, then you're going to have to answer to your peers -- not to me. And if you don't like the grade that the whole class achieves, then too bad. Positive interdependence rules the day.<br />
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There are always one or two students who are so addicted to the toxic culture of individual attainment that they object, demanding, "If <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">I</u> understand it and <i><b><u>they</u></b></i> don't, then why should <b><i><u>I</u></i></b> be punished?"<br />
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And I have to explain to them over and over again. I tell them, "That's an infantile perspective. The better-prepared everyone <b><i>around</i></b> you is, the richer and more powerful <b><i>your own</i></b> learning experience is going to be -- both now and into the future. My job is to provide you with the richest possible learning experience so that you can go as far as you want to go. My job is to set the floor, not the ceiling. And this is how I, as the expert on learning, am empowering us to raise the floor of understanding."<br />
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Our school is unusual in that students get to choose their classes, their sections, and their teachers. My classes are very popular and are always among the earliest to fill up.<br />
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I choose to use this platform and my privilege to educate them. I'm blunt with the students who complain. "Listen," I tell them. "You <i style="font-weight: bold;">chose</i> this section. If you'd prefer a teacher who only gives individual scores on everything and lets you work on your chem homework when you're done, then we should talk to Counseling and get you into a course section where your desires are going to be met, because that's not going to happen in my class. There are plenty of other kids who'd be happy to switch with you."<br />
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I realize this may sound harsh, but they usually come around. And the fact is that my job is <b><i>not</i></b> to give them everything they think they want but to teach them and help them get aligned with the reality of things as they are.<br />
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The results bear this out. The lowest average on this first whole-class score of all my Geometry sections was an 87. The highest was 93.7.<br />
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The number of "free points" I provide in other parts of my class (through professionalism, home enjoyment packet completion, etc) makes this a wash. Nobody's grade goes down because of anybody else, but most people's grade do go up because their understanding improves. And as I tell them over and over and over again, what they need to do to raise their grades is to improve their understanding. The structure of the whole-class skills quiz empowers them to do so.<br />
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There's also less cheating and more cooperation because the incentive structures are aligned with our better, saner values.<br />
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There is still a place for individual attainment. Unit tests are individually graded as is the final exam. But individual attainment is demoted in my classroom and is put into better balance within our classroom community.<br />
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Individual attainment and opportunity hoarding are symptoms of our society's sickness. If we want to heal our learning environments and improve outcomes, we need to be open to revising the unconscious, unspoken incentive structures that keep reinforcing the systemic oppression we need to heal from.<br />
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FOLLOW-UPS:<br />
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@KarenCampe asks:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">Wow this is amazing. Kudos to you for implementing something that really changes the game.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">Do you have parent pushback?</span><br />
— Karen Campe (@KarenCampe) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarenCampe/status/1219008868161925120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 19, 2020</a><br />
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I'm fortunate to have a lot of support from both site and district administration. In my view, this is a moral choice. My job is to create an equitable learning environment. If a parent were to insist on an inequitable learning environment for their child, I'm not sure what there is that we could do to satisfy them, given that this is public education.<br />
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Thanks for the question.<br />
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@timteachesmath asks:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">Thank you for sharing! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">You've detailed your conversations with those 'done early'; </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">what do those still learning think? Is there pressure to catch up, or a super supportive community?</span><br />
— <span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">Tim (@timteachesmath) <a href="https://twitter.com/timteachesmath/status/1219305615815794695?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2020</a></span><br />
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They appreciate that there is time and support being made for them to master what they find challenging. They want to learn the skills, but they get to do so in a way that does not punish them for needing more time or practice. They appreciate being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And they are better able to participate and achieve their ends -- which is the goal. We are trying to normalize high achievement for everybody -- not sort out who "got it" first and who didn't.<br />
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Thanks for the question.<br />
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<br />cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-53248928133917336882020-01-04T14:38:00.002-08:002020-01-05T12:07:24.695-08:00How do we teach our students there are other ways to interact with the world beyond permanent war?<br />
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My last encounter with physics did not leave me with a deep confidence in the practicality of math or science to save us. The course was taught by a man with no practical skills or insights or interpersonal skills, even though he was a tenured full professor at Princeton. What came through was that this was a man who allowed his wife to cut his hair using an upside-down bowl as a cutting guide. His hair was never even mildly symmetrical.<br />
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I put my faith in medieval literary history instead.<br />
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During the Dark Ages, clusters of monks in far-flung Irish monasteries kept the fires of learning lit. While the Vandal and Viking hoards stole, looted, burned, sacked, and traded away every last good thing the city-states and peoples of Western Europe had built, the Irish monks in remote scriptoria copied and illuminated manuscripts that preserved and spread the greatest learning of the day. And they taught their new generations how to carry out these vital matters of preservation and transmission along the way.<br />
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When everyone else was taking cover and hoarding, the Irish monks kept learning alive, so that when the need – and demand – for it reawakened, it would be ready. Their system was like a beehive. When it became possible again, the hives could be opened again and the contents could be used and shared for the public good.<br />
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The desert is a lot like this. Things appear to have gone dead on the surface, but just below the veneer, the Earth is teeming with life – positively giddy with abundance.<br />
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This is what gives me confidence to keep teaching and learning. <br />
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It gives me confidence that something will survive until there is intelligent life in our world and in our government again.<br />
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How do we keep the fires of learning lit in our society while those in power all around us seem to be losing their minds?<br />
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We do it by putting our faith in our teaching.<br />
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We do it by banding together – and by not letting go. We develop a hard, hard crust and we protect our water resources well. We do it by remembering that our job is to stay present with our students and teach them how math and science are opportunities to understand the divine. We remember that human beings at our best are thinking-based life forms. We remember to bond with our kids. We remember that the kids are always watching and that we have an opportunity to model the next right thing to do. We do it by remembering that teaching and learning are effervescent and holy.</div>
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cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-69402198507052773852019-12-16T11:24:00.003-08:002019-12-16T11:50:46.901-08:00Purpose and Meaning in a Final ExamEver since @CmonMattThink tweeted out this poster that I'm just nuts about, I've been thinking about all the different uses I have for this saying:<br />
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Today, as we're starting our final exam week, I'm thinking about it with regard to assessing the meaningfulness of a final exam. </div>
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We give common departmental finals, which is why, when my normally independent 9th graders felt compelled to pepper me with questions about the majority of questions on the test, it made me notice and wonder about the test itself:</div>
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Is this test a scavenger hunt for right answers? Or does it measure students' ability to provide evidence of their understanding?</div>
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There was a previous conversation on Twitter a while back in which some of us were debating the allowability and rationale for allowing students to have a reference sheet on a test. Darryl Yong (@dyong, who you should follow if you're not already) said something that I 100% agree with: if I am measuring higher-order thinking and problem-solving, then THAT'S what I should be measuring and a reference sheet makes sense.</div>
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If I am measuring students' effectiveness at memorizing things (such as vocabulary terms), then a reference sheet doesn't make sense because memory and recall are what are being tested.</div>
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So right now I'm sitting in a ditch, frustrated by the fact that my Algebra 1 students have been run off the road because the current test is merely a scavenger hunt for right answers to memorized algorithms... when what I REALLY would like to be measuring and understanding is, Do my students know what to DO with their knowledge in both routine and non-routine situations?</div>
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And I hate this particular ditch.</div>
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As Beckett's Molloy says, "I was out of sorts. <a href="https://cheesemonkeysf.blogspot.com/2019/12/purpose-and-meaning-in-final-exam.html" target="_blank">They are deep, my sorts -- a deep ditch and I am not often out of them. That is why I mention it.</a>"</div>
cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-44565207068502573212019-10-02T15:05:00.002-07:002019-10-02T15:06:33.134-07:00Building a Feel for 'Major Moves' in ProofThis year I'm experimenting with developing students' intuition for and sense-making about what we call 'major moves' in proof.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuBHzohSglu7igxsRVFyAfSMwu4HQa-fq3i15iDENpZ5RqVL9YUh-bbOvYlVkymLVnczTuRmWX8HGzpRXzhY9g9ZPyHMgRL2jkqC04vTcMfHUh86PAr3V86BjUpTBZS498iZQflBValIw/s1600/20191002+major+proof+moves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuBHzohSglu7igxsRVFyAfSMwu4HQa-fq3i15iDENpZ5RqVL9YUh-bbOvYlVkymLVnczTuRmWX8HGzpRXzhY9g9ZPyHMgRL2jkqC04vTcMfHUh86PAr3V86BjUpTBZS498iZQflBValIw/s320/20191002+major+proof+moves.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a><br />
Rather than ask students to buy into the illusion that two-column proofs emerge spontaneously and fully formed from their brow, we are inquiring into how we mortals can better brainstorm and use our reference tools to create the sub-assemblies that we can use to build our rough draft proofs. Then we'll be better able to polish our final proofs and present our work.<br />
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This has meant that we are developing students' intuition that that these sub-assemblies are knowable and predictable. We call these our "major proof moves." Some of our major categories of major proof moves include:<br />
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<li>the relationships between parts & wholes</li>
<li>a sense of bisectors and "half-ness"</li>
<li>parallels and the results of parallels</li>
<li>perpendiculars and their results</li>
<li>right angles and their results.</li>
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It's working out surprisingly well.<br />
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Today we started experimenting with using these higher-order concepts to work on harder, multi-stage proofs. The kids were quite excited to be able to figure things out.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSu4wZvwUgjEey7MfKYTAU6VlBAgLUhcdVgwZFstPcPdAw58zEJstY4lVpDnAYiRnqYD28BrzqSL5RWkrcCnS7DSjNqznDtY2rkxGFKhMIos0dSjJIV7qTMLyDmXu2p5sNneoxalXvs0k/s1600/major+proof+moves+example.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSu4wZvwUgjEey7MfKYTAU6VlBAgLUhcdVgwZFstPcPdAw58zEJstY4lVpDnAYiRnqYD28BrzqSL5RWkrcCnS7DSjNqznDtY2rkxGFKhMIos0dSjJIV7qTMLyDmXu2p5sNneoxalXvs0k/s320/major+proof+moves+example.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
Every year I am amazed at how many times students have to repeat an experience before they get that "click." This is giving us a much wider field to wander in as we master the art of proof.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-86160043056709208172019-08-30T17:47:00.000-07:002019-11-03T10:35:50.166-08:00The First-Ever Block 5 Math Department Pot Luck LunchToday we had our first-ever block 5 Math Department pot luck lunch.<br />
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We have a very large department (24 teachers) and not all of us have the same block for lunch. The block 6 lunchers had a pot luck last week, and so fueled by the competitive spirit, the block 5 lunchers were mobilized by one of the least social people in the department to host our own pot luck. The sign-ups were on the corner one of the office white boards, so the menu was shaped over the last week. And since we have by far the largest crew, hopes were high that we could pull this off. And we did so -- with style.<br />
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I made the Lemongrass and Ginger Roast from the Field Roast cookbook because I've been wanting to try it and we have a surprisingly large number of vegans and people with significant food sensitivities. I rushed home from school yesterday so I could make it and set it on the stove to simmer. Sarah made a salad which I had been planning to use as a base for my new favorite school lunch (chef salad surprise). Ernie made an incredible, silky hummus and pita bread. Lisa made a shrimp and avocado ceviche. Raymond made a wonderfully spicy red lentil dal, which I still don't understand how he heated up but it was delicious. Tyler brought donuts. Scott baked a boule of crusty sourdough with cheese and sausage.<br />
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Not to scale</div>
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But the runaway winners of the day -- and in my opinion, the offerings that raised this pot luck to the level of Artistry -- were Robert's mother's fried chicken wings and Alex's made-to-order waffles. <br />
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Alex brought in his waffle iron and a killer cinnamon syrup that he had discovered on the internet. His TA worked the waffle-making station at the standing desk, making waffles to order and generally supervising (don't worry, we fed her).<br />
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That's right.<br />
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We. Had. Chicken. And. Waffles For. Lunch.<br />
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In. The. Math. Office.<br />
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And fresh-baked sourdough bread. And vegan charcuterie. AND DONUTS.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who can turn down a good donut?</td></tr>
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At one point, Art strolled in from the computer lab and felt bad that he hadn't brought anything. Everybody jumped in and chided him, "DON'T FEEL GUILTY -- WE ARE DROWNING IN FOOD." So he loaded up a plate and joined us.<br />
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I don't know why we never did this before.<br />
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As we were winding down, Lisa said, "I kind of have a math problem I wanted to ask about, but I don't want to spoil it."<br />
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And everybody jumped in again and said, "DON'T FEEL GUILTY." She sketched the problem and most of us started tinkering on scratch paper, but as usual, Robert saw straight through to the core of the simplification. We all put down our forks and pencils in shock at his surprising yet unsurprising clarity.<br />
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Then, of course, we needed another round of waffles.<br />
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It was the best community-building activity I've ever done. And it was basically free. I hope we do it again soon because Raymond's grandmother made these killer dim sum things for our end-of-school pot luck last year that nobody knows the name of but everybody devoured them. They look like little fried footballs with some kind of mystery meat or veggies inside their cavernous pockets. And they are TO DIE FOR.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-26175287358039539702019-07-29T11:45:00.004-07:002019-07-29T11:53:21.176-07:00Summer of Healing and Self-CareI am sitting on the sofa in our dining room, deep in avoidance. I need to pack for the red-eye back east to see my family. There is thick silver cloud cover all the way down the hill to the bay and across the water. I can see a freighter which seems to be anchored on the water, but the East Bay hills, which I can usually see, are completely missing. Lost in the fog.<br />
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This has been my summer of self-care and healing. There have been too many deaths in my life this year. I needed time alone to grieve and to heal so I can turn the page and carry on. Fred always said, when it gets like this, it's time to turn inward. Focus on yourself. Ask, what is the best way I can use this situation for growth?<br />
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A big part of my work is focused on equity, but it has become a much more in-person thing and less online than ever before. I became the co-sponsor of our Black Student Union (BSU) and started raising money for them and advocating, mentoring, and learning alongside them. I started receiving awards this year for my equity work in my school and my community. On my end-of-year survey for the district's BSU program, the form asked, What is something you are most proud of this year? I wrote, "I raised over $8,000 for the programs and initiatives my Black students wanted to bring to fruition." The district BSU coordinator set up a phone appointment to follow up on our questionnaires. He asked me, "How did you DO that?" I told him, "I used my privilege and my connections, and I wouldn't take no for an answer."<br />
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I held my community accountable and I started to break through. And it made everybody feel much happier.<br />
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I won some actual awards for my work, but I don't like to focus on that. The actual ability to do this work is its own reward. I got some wonderful nods for an NPR commentary I did about what I am learning. And I realized I have found my path.<br />
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It was hard losing TMC because it got caught up in ripcurrents that were only partially about what they claimed to be about. That left an emptiness in my calendar in late July, but the harder thing was the loss of friendships I have cherished and come to rely on. I had to pack away gifts from former friends, wrapping them in tissue paper and tucking them into the back of a cabinet. It made me too sad to look at them. I received more hate-tweets and actual hate mail than I'd ever thought possible. I discovered Twitter's block function, but I learned it is only a mesh, not a wall. Hate still gets through.<br />
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I am learning how to develop a thicker skin.<br />
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I poured my energy into building our garden. Nothing heals like growing things. I spent days and weeks on end building and learning. It's become a sanctuary, a sacred space for growth. Now I'm studying hydroponics so I can grow lettuces and basil and tomatoes in the garden. Whole new parts of my mind and body are coming to life.<br />
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Now I'm headed east to visit family and to spend time down the shore, as we say in South Jersey. The garden is my West Coast bracket for healing. The warm waters of the Atlantic are my East Coast bookend. Connecting with family gives that healing burst of nutrients, and with my feet in the warm waters, I find nutrition for my next chapter of growth.<br />
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I think I will create a living wall in my classroom this year. A living wall and a Peace Corner. Some things are more important than math.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-79818019334708706232019-06-07T10:17:00.003-07:002019-06-07T17:50:29.677-07:00How I Started the Lowell Faculty Seminar on the Climate Emergency (and how you can too)Towards the end of school, there's the narrowest of windows between the end of AP testing and the beginning of final exams when teachers at my school can sort of catch our breath. It's a week or two of relative down time for review and synthesizing and studying which reminds me of my beloved Reading Period at Princeton.<br />
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This year, I decided to put a stake in the ground and create an event so that our faculty community can make better use of this moment to collaborate in an interdisciplinary way on how we teach and learn about the climate crisis.<br />
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I have been reading and thinking about <a href="http://drawdown.org/" target="_blank">Project Drawdown's</a> web site and NYT best selling book <b><i><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse-Warming/dp/0143130447/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1P82MPYFIBGFH&keywords=drawdown+paul+hawken&qid=1559931291&s=gateway&sprefix=drawdown%2Caps%2C267&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Drawdown</a></span></i></b>, so I wrote a grant for a pilot project to get fifteen of our 200 faculty and staff together to help each other integrate climate change into our teaching.<br />
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The response was tremendous! So I wrote this blog post as a guide for myself and for anybody else who is like-minded about how I organized this faculty-led PD program -- and how you can do this with your faculty too.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-small;">THE LAUNCH</span></b><br />
In May, I ordered 15 copies of <b><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse-Warming/dp/0143130447/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1P82MPYFIBGFH&keywords=drawdown+paul+hawken&qid=1559931291&s=gateway&sprefix=drawdown%2Caps%2C267&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Drawdown</a> </i></b>and sent out this e-mail blast to the faculty inviting them to the Lowell Faculty Seminar on the Climate Emergency:<br />
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;">Hello colleagues --</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> A new NPR/Ipsos poll shows that 86% of teachers say that students should learn about climate change... but only 42% teach it. </span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> Because of this, it seems like the #1 thing we as a faculty can start doing about climate change is to talk about it -- and help each other understand it better. </span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> So if you would like to read, learn, & discuss climate change with other Lowell teachers in a friendly, interdisciplinary way, then please join us (K__, C__, and E__, to start with) in the new Lowell Faculty Seminar on the Climate Emergency (aka the climate change book club). </span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> SO, AFTER AP EXAMS -- To start things rolling, we will read and discuss <a href="http://drawdown.org/" target="_blank">Project Drawdown's</a> NYT best selling book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse-Warming/dp/0143130447/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1P82MPYFIBGFH&keywords=drawdown+paul+hawken&qid=1559931291&s=gateway&sprefix=drawdown%2Caps%2C267&sr=8-1" target="_blank"><i>Drawdown: The 100 most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming</i></a>:</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #999999;"> This is a global problem so all are welcome! </span></blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> Our short-term hope is to develop a common understanding, vocabulary, and framework for talking about climate change among the faculty. Our longer-term goal is to evolve some form of ongoing PD to help us integrate climate change across the curriculum.</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;"> GOOD NEWS! Thanks to A__'s and S__'s expert budget planning, we have 15 copies of Drawdown for teacher-participants who would like to join in this effort.</span></span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;">Please reply to this e-mail and let me know if you would like to join us (and if you would like to reserve a book). </span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);"><span style="color: #999999;">Best,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(106, 168, 79);">Elizabeth (Dr. S -- room 274)</span> </span></blockquote>
I received about 20 yeses, of which 15 turned out to be viable. During my prep blocks, I went around distributing books and introducing myself to staff across the faculty and across the campus who were interested. It was great to meet colleagues in English, Social Studies, Ethnic Studies, Peer Resources, World Languages, Academic Counseling, and Physical Education who were thinking about the climate crisis too, in addition to us nerds in math and science.<br />
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We used a Doodle poll to find an available after-school hour and I sent out a message confirming time and place and logistics. Everyone committed to reading the three introductory sections of <i>Drawdown</i> in preparation for our kickoff meeting.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">OUR FIRST MEETING</span></b><br />
The first meeting focused on introductions, intentions, and the basic science of the climate crisis. Our goal was/is to map out topics, strategies, and projects on which we could collaborate over the next year in our work together. Many other teachers who were not available for our kickoff meeting also expressed interest in these conversations over the next year.<br />
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In an interdisciplinary context, it felt essential to make sure that everybody -- including colleagues in non-quantitative fields -- felt equally empowered by the science rather than intimidated. I served as the seminar leader and ran the agenda, even though it was intimidating to do so in front of our two National Board Certified AP Environmental Sciences teachers and a number of other accomplished science teachers.<br />
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One benefit of my being the one to lead the meeting -- as a math teacher, meditator, writer, Black Student Union advisor, and member of the school's equity leadership team -- was that I could bring slightly different lenses to the process of discussing the climate.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: large;">AGENDA</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">I. OPENING </span></b><br />
I asked for the group's indulgence to begin with a slightly different opening ritual than we usually use at our PWAI (Predominantly White and Asian Institution) -- a <b><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-small;">LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT.</span></b> We stood and I read this draft of our statement:<br />
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<i><span style="color: #999999;">Before we begin...</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="color: #999999;">We pause to acknowledge that Lowell sits on the traditional lands of the Ohlone people, who are the indigenous stewards of this beautiful place we teach and learn on. We acknowledge their ancient and federally unrecognized claim on this land, their enslavement in our city, and our own uncomfortable role in this history. We do this to pay respect to all Ohlone people, past, present, and future.</span></i></blockquote>
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This led to an amazing and heartfelt discussion. We talked about the fact that we have Native Americans in all parts of our school -- on the faculty, in our staff, in our alumni community, and in our student body -- and that this is something we need to acknowledge in order for everybody to feel seen and included.<br />
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The faculty of color at our meeting expressed surprise that they had not previously experienced this kind of ritual at an official school event, and everyone expressed interest in having us integrate these acknowledgments into our future events as well.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">II. INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE </span></b><br />
For many of us, it has been years since we've formally studied the science of climate change, so it seemed important to set our initial level of understanding. I used this video by noted climate scientist and explainer, Katharine Hayhoe, of Texas Tech University to kick off our discussion of the science:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6cRCbgTA_78/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6cRCbgTA_78?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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We followed this up with an open discussion as well as questions from the non-science teachers. The "1.5 to 2 degrees" limit proved to be a very fruitful hook which everybody was eager to use in their pedagogical thinking.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">III. THE LANGUAGE OF CLIMATE CRISIS </span></b><br />
A big part of introducing the climate crisis into our pedagogy involves using current and appropriate language for framing our discussions. This brief opinion piece by the Environment Editor of The Guardian newspaper gave our English teacher member an on-ramp to lead the next part of our discussion:<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment</span></a></i></blockquote>
What role do our language choices -- both conscious and unconscious -- play in how we teach and learn about the climate crisis? Is it sufficient to call it "climate change" or is it more accurate to use terms like "climate emergency"?<br />
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T__ was particularly interested in using this op-ed with her Critical Writing classes, although everybody wanted to do more thinking about the effects of the language we use, so we stuck a pin in this as a topic we would like to collaborate on over the next year of our meetings.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">IV. DEALING WITH CLIMATE SCIENCE DENIERS </span></b><br />
Even though we teach and learn together in liberal San Francisco, which is an admittedly friendly context for mobilizing about science, we all admitted frustration over the frequency with which we encouter climate science denialism.<br />
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I introduced the free, self-paced MOOC (massive open online course) I have started taking from edX, offered by the University of Queensland in Australia, called <b><i><span style="color: #38761d;">Making Sense of Climate Science Denial</span></i></b>:<br />
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<a href="https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-of-climate-science-denial-2" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-of-climate-science-denial-2</span></a></blockquote>
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In particular, their chart on the five characteristics of science denial found immediate fans and a home in our soon-to-be-revised Critical Writing course:</div>
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<a href="https://courses.edx.org/asset-v1:UQx+Denial101x+2T2015+type@asset+block/FLICC_handout.pdf" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="FLICC acronym (Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, Conspiracy theories)" border="0" data-original-height="1237" data-original-width="1600" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhADvOF9wRHFDkTwX1xGl-qiXHLbJW0LdayF5u2JMLGkmoZka_40buk3RlKOSQx3X8LHXxliMi44aSAuGGvfausAQtkbuwXvb-ONUJtAWrNMR09sSTsIs9A4gxA2CuIQEiTGOWe78huL-Y/s320/unnamed+document+copy.jpg" title="5 Charcteristics of Science Denial" width="320" /></a></div>
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Several colleagues promptly expressed their intention to take this course over the summer.</div>
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">V. USING THE NEWS AS A SPRINGBOARD FOR INQUIRY </span></b><br />
The <i>New York Times</i> provided a timely article from the previous day about how the Trump administration is doubling down on its attacks on climate science:<br />
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html</span></a></blockquote>
This prompted a discussion about how we can integrate current news stories into our curriculum.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">VI. CLOSING ASPIRATIONS & NEXT STEPS </span></b><br />
We set our intention to meet monthly during the next school year and also to set up an e-mail alias for ease of communications.<br />
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Over the next two weeks, I heard from so many participants and soon-to-be participants about how valuable they felt this was. It really drove home the message of<span style="color: #6aa84f;"> <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/katharine_hayhoe_the_most_important_thing_you_can_do_to_fight_climate_change_talk_about_it?language=en" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Katharine Hayhoe's viral TED talk</span></a></span>: that the most important thing we citizens -- and particularly teachers -- can do about the climate emergency is to start talking about it.<br />
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<br />cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-20695881533649841162019-04-27T11:23:00.003-07:002019-04-27T11:42:54.101-07:00Trust is built in very small momentsD stopped by my room after 7th block. He came by to just hang out before our BSU meeting. Usually he drops by for a quick hello during passing period to work on my handshake. Spoiler alert: I'm still terrible. Today, he just felt like hanging out. He kept me company while I purged papers from giant piles on my desk.<br />
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D is a big, handsome, talkative, brilliant and witty young guy, a very strong student, solidly built, with dark skin, a ready laugh, and the brightest black eyes I have ever seen. He asked me how I liked his new twists, tilting his head so I could get a good look. I liked them a lot. He explained the process of setting them up and caring for them. His girlfriend really likes them.<br />
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We just shot the breeze about everything and anything in the late-afternoon light. He asked my advice about two gift options he was considering for his and his girlfriend’s three-month anniversary. He showed me some pictures on his phone and I gave my opinion (I liked both, but had some thoughts). We talked about climate change, the school-to-prison pipeline, manners and the lack of manners, Flat Stanley (“Flat <i>who</i>?” I could see the wheels turning in his head. Finally he quirked an eyebrow at me and said, “White people have some crazy-ass ideas about education”), course selection for the fall, summer plans.<br />
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It felt like such a blessing.<br />
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I never taught him as a student, so it felt like an extra helping of miracle for us to be just sitting there in my classroom after school, hanging out.<br />
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One of the books I’ve been reading in my personal school equity work this year is Dr. Joy DeGruy’s <i>Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing</i>. I have found it most helpful in understanding the legacy and issues that come with this transgenerational trauma. Much of the current equity focus among teachers and teacher-educators in math education has been from a sociological lens, which I honestly have not found that helpful in addressing the systemic issues in my teaching life and in our school. I come to my teaching work from a more psychodynamic point of view. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sociological work; I do. I just find it the psychological perspective more clarifying.<br />
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The most important learning I’ve had this year came from a passage in Dr. DeGruy’s book. The section on the preeminence of relationship in Black culture really made an impression on me and has been foundational. She writes, “In African American communities, relationship frequently trumps everything else. Consideration of relationship permeates all of our interactions. For example, when Black students feel they have been disrespected by a teacher, they often feel completely justified in rebelling and shutting out the offending teacher, even if it means failing the class and sabotaging academic aspirations “ (p. 19).<br />
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This makes enormous sense to me, especially in light of what I know from the work of Drs. John and Julie Gottman in their work on repairing and rebuilding marriages. Trust is the foundation of everything in a close relationship, and as John Gottman says, “Trust is built in very small moments.” So this has become my mantra in all my equity work this year at school. Without trust and relationship with my Black students, there is nothing.<br />
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It doesn’t matter how many book chats I do on Twitter, how many times I get called out for my own internalized racisms and make changes, how many times I support my BIPOC adult colleagues. What matters for my equity work with my students and with my school is how much trust and relationship there is in our shared well.<br />
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D and I ran the backstage happenings at our Black History Month assembly in February. Actually, he was the stage manager and I was his assistant. What truly mattered, it turns out, was the fact of weaving that relational web together.<br />
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I noticed the time and said, “Hey, would you help me close the windows? It’s time to go to BSU.”<br />
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He took his BSU jacket out of his backpack and carefully pulled it over his head. Then we flipped off the lights and headed down the hall together to our meeting.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-85862991610702739682019-04-21T11:26:00.002-07:002019-04-21T17:13:15.788-07:00Dismantling Privilege Up Close is Personal, Part 1<i>How do my teaching and learning practices as a white, middle-aged, math teacher with a great deal of privilege either support or disrupt the unconscious processes of systemic racism that underlie every aspect of my classroom?</i><br />
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At my very large, very diverse, high-achieving, high-poverty urban magnet school, this has been a question each of us 180+ teachers has been investigating daily, both individually and together, over the past three years.<br />
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We just finished Year 3 of our five-year program of anti-racist transformation and I tell you, it has been (and still is) grueling. It is exhausting to inquire into the tiniest corners and crevices of your teaching practice to root out systemic oppression. Looking into the mirror of your practice like this every day is just draining. But the only way out of this systemic mess is through, and so I slog on.<br />
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Year 3 of our guided process has focused on pedagogy and personal practice and transformation. Every teacher is part of a 10-15 person interdisciplinary inquiry group. The group I am in includes teachers from math, English Social Studies, world languages (Chinese, Japanese, Romance Languages), Special Ed, orchestra, English, and PE. This has been a deep year as we have begun to really get at the in-class and in-person ways in which white supremacy, privilege, and the systemic parts of systemic racism manifest in our classrooms, in our school/community, and in our personal teaching practices.<br />
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Being able to talk in a trusted and trustworthy way about our distinct experiences with the same kids across different parts of their academic and social experience has opened a lot of minds. It's like really seeing the differing facets of the same crystal in the light. It has also honed our individual and collective abilities to see the <b><i>systemic</i></b> parts of our racist culture playing out in our <i style="font-weight: bold;">personal</i> lives and practices. Nobody just yells out, "See? White privilege!" any more. We notice it more quietly, more deeply. The learning grinds away at us.<br />
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One of the most recent news stories around all this that is still playing out on the national stage has been the college admissions cheating/bribery scandal. This is only the latest and most publicized instance of how privilege and white supremacy in our culture of systemic racism are operating, but it has affected me and others in my group profoundly. It has focused our attention on the issue of opportunity hoarding -- the many ways in which privilege reproduces itself by taking advantage of leaks in the educational system which can be turned to the advantage of the privileged classes.<br />
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I need to add in a clarifying note here. The dominant culture at my school has its own unique flavor and manifests in ways that are uniquely Californian and uniquely San Franciscan. At 41% Asian and 23% white, our dominant culture is a strange fusion of Asian and white cultures. We already <i>are</i> a "majority minority" institution. But we also reflect the unholy history of racism in California and San Francisco -- a dominant culture that codified its anti-Black and anti-Asian racisms in law during the years leading up to the Civil War and statehood. The anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Native American, and anti-Latinx racisms we have inherited were institutionalized in a racialized way in the California Constitution. And they were crafted with intention to pit racialized minority groups against one another in an ongoing battle for "second place" after whiteness. My school was founded in 1856, in the middle of all of this, and our culture today retains many of the structural and institutional traces of the pre-Civil War and Reconstruction-era racisms that continue to impact our school, city, and state to this day. In a nutshell, Reconstruction-era California was really weird -- and completely distinct in its inheritance of Jim Crow-style anti-Black racisms from the Southern states and of aversive-style anti-Black racisms from the Northern and Midwestern states. California's forms and history of systemic racism are truly weird and unique. If you are interested in learning more about this, I recommend the late D. Michael Bottoms' history, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aristocracy-Color-Reconstruction-California-1850-1890-ebook/dp/B00GH2D4U8/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1" target="_blank">An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850-1890</a>.</i><br />
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I say this because when I talk about the dominant culture at my school, I am not just talking about the kind of white supremacy I grew up with in New Jersey. What we experience here daily at my school is a direct legacy from the free-soil movement before the Civil War, as well as the segregation of Chinese and Chinese schools into the largest Chinatown outside of Asia, plus Reconstruction, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and every other toxic legacy that white migrants brought with them from other parts of the country. Black students and families were integrated into our school long before Asian students were. In fact, Black students were first integrated into our school in 1875, then <i>re</i>-segregated and <i>re-de</i>-segregated multiple times before the Civil Rights era. When I look at our ancient yearbooks, I see Black faces, Asian faces, and Native American faces sprinkled in for years at a time, and then suddenly disappeared. I can see the pitting of racialized minority groups playing out across the pages of our historical yearbooks, working backwards into the late 19th century and probably into Reconstruction and the Civil War era.<br />
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What I'm trying to say is that my school's dominant culture of Asian and white cultures pitted against Black, Native, and Latinx cultures to compete for status and resources has a long and well-documented legacy. At least our unique dominant culture comes by its deep and toxic weirdness honestly.<br />
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So when I talk about <i>my school's dominant culture</i>, I am speaking of a terrible alliance of legalized striving in California that was put into place to put racialized minorities at odds with each other as they fought to win second-place in an unholy alliance with the white power structure.<br />
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My school's legacy of this strife in is that our dominant culture reproduces this alliance between Asian and white cultural groups. Our district takes off both Christian holidays and Lunar New Year, although lip service is paid to Native cultures through the renaming of Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day. But the power structure strongly reflects this alliance of white and Asian cultural groups. Majority rules with a velvet gloved fist.<br />
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Asian cultures in our school retain a lot of their unique distinctions. There is a status hierarchy of cultures that I have learned about. But the power structure is definitely a streaming arrangement, with the majority Asian community flowing in unquestioning currents with the white community through an unspoken power-sharing dynamic.<br />
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All of this plays out every day in my classroom, in our hallways, in our PTSA, in our alumni association, and in our school district.<br />
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I could not have explained any of this four years ago because I had only the shallowest understanding of it. But now I see it operating everywhere I look.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-28172981548774854852019-04-18T12:14:00.001-07:002019-04-18T12:15:28.007-07:00What I am still learning from Twitter Math CampHere's what I have learned and am still learning from the birth, life cycle, and death of Twitter Math Camp.<br />
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1. Begin with an abundance mindset. See your own blessings. </div>
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2. Create wonderful things.</div>
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3. Don’t be afraid to create new wonderful things.</div>
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4. Share them. Be generous. Give without expecting anything in return.</div>
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5. Search for what you need/want.</div>
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6. If you don’t find what you need/want, reach out.</div>
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7. If you still can’t find what you need/want, create it.</div>
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8. If you get stuck, ask for support.</div>
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9. Try your best to avoid giving in to negativity. </div>
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10. Don’t let other people’s scarcity mindsets stop you from creating wonderful things. </div>
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11. Don’t be afraid to get criticism, but don’t let it shut you down either. People’s opinions are just their opinions. Even if they are opinions from the most righteous and celebrated human beings in our world, they can still be wrong. In no case were they carried down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai.</div>
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12. If people insist on killing off what you have created or loved, grieve your losses; then dust yourself off and create something new.</div>
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13. Remember to check in from time to time with step 1.</div>
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14. Remember that all organisms have a natural life cycle. Things are born, they flourish, and they die. It’s not the end of the world. Something new will arise in its place.</div>
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15. Keep creating new and wonderful things that nourish your soul until we finish healing the world.</div>
cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-79338873547540209952019-03-11T11:39:00.001-07:002019-03-11T11:40:06.021-07:00Make It Stop -- Toward a Conservatory Model of Math EdI've been thinking a lot about why I hate the distinction that gets made in math education between a so-called "conceptual emphasis" and a so-called "skills emphasis."<br />
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Maybe it's because I grew up with a conservatory model of musical performance education, but after 10+ years of keeping quiet, I'm ready to propose a different distinction.<br />
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In a conservatory model of musical performance learning, there are multiple different dimensions from which a learner approaches their learning. The basic dimensions of focus are:<br />
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<b>Repertoire: </b>There is repertoire for your instrument or ensemble (the composed or improviseable pieces of music which the student is learning to play and/or perform. There are compositions for every level of player: as a very young child, I played pieces from Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook that were appropriate for beginners because the technique they required was accessible to my level of technical and interpretive skill. More accomplished players might work on pieces from the Two- and Three-Part Inventions and even up to the Goldberg Variations and beyond.<br />
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<b>Technique:</b> A student also learns how to do focused regular work on technique, without which one lacks sufficient skill to support the playing of the repertoire. A steady diet of technical work (scales, arpeggios, Hanon exercises, etc) would probably lead to world wars because taken alone, these are boring. But they are the skills out of which we build our playing and understanding. No one wants to hear <i style="font-weight: bold;">me</i> play the Goldberg Variations. My technical skills are just not there. However, they are quite sufficient to not cause a casual listener pain while I work on Two-Part Inventions.<br />
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<b>Music History & Theory:</b> We study the context of the music we play because it gives us important insight into the composer's thinking. Understanding contemporary preferences, styles, beliefs, and historical context enable us to make some better sense of the pieces we play.<br />
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All three of these strands help us to make meaning & sense as we play, perform, practice, teach, and learn together. These are not the extent of everything we do in a conservatory model of teaching and learning, but they feel like a reasonable basis for comparison.<br />
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<b><i>My Essential Question is</i></b>: Why do we not take this kind of woven approach in math ed?<br />
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Modeling and problem-solving are the heart of our "repertoire." I want my students to be able to <i style="font-weight: bold;">think</i> about how to solve problems which may be "real-world" or not, but they are authentically problems that require thinking, activation, and transfer of prior learning in a new or novel way.<br />
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In music education, technique is the difference between musical performance and music appreciation. If I'm taking time to further develop technical skills that will enable me to access (i.e., to perform) more complex compositions, then am I not weaving together both conceptual and procedural forms of learning?<br />
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And if I'm simply listening and understanding musical compositions as a listener, then I am definitely <i style="font-weight: bold;">accessing</i> the concepts to be sure. But I am not at that moment engaged in the struggle of problem-solving/mastering/practicing/performing that composition. It's not that this posture in this moment doesn't inform my generative/productive performance/practice/learning as a performer. But I'm not acting in the role of performer in that moment. I'm acting in a <u style="font-style: italic;">re</u>ceptive capacity.<br />
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By the same token, I have many times in my life had a major light-bulb moment while doing warm-ups like Hanon and realizing that THIS piece of technique can be used to improve my performance of THAT compositional passage. This is an authentic moment in which practicing skills can lead to true conceptual and performative insight.<br />
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So when I read <a href="http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2019/real-world-math-is-everywhere-or-its-nowhere/" target="_blank">Dan's latest blog post</a> about how everything is modeling, that feels as true to me as saying that everything is based on skill-building. The kinds of mathematical thinking I want my students to be able to access includes powerful, flexible productive/generative mathematical modeling as well as sensitive and receptive mathematical listening/reading. I don't want my students to JUST unthinkingly repeat skill practice, but I also know that without a deep and flexible number sense and other forms of fluency, they will be cut off from the kinds of problem-solving I value most for them.<br />
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This is the question of "access" that I truly wrestle with.<br />
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I'm wondering if anybody else thinks of the nexus of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency in a related way.<br />
<br />cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-91639797602479984862019-02-23T11:01:00.002-08:002019-02-24T10:02:45.312-08:00Dreaming is Hard, But It's the Only Way to Make Something — BSU Design Thinking, Part 1This is the first of a series of posts I am writing for myself so that I can remember how I've been using design thinking in my work with our Black Student Union (BSU) program.<br />
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One of the things Steve Jobs always valued about me was my ability to mobilize a huge group of people to do impossibly large things. In college, I ran an opera company. In the 1990s, I started NeXTWORLD Expo (which signaled the inflection point that would eventually lead NeXT to save Apple). In the 2000s, I was a co-founder of a women's wilderness retreat. And in the 2010s, I helped to start Twitter Math Camp.<br />
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Now I am one of the faculty leaders of the equity steering committee at my very old, historically entrenched, very large, racially and ethnically complicated academic magnet school. Three years ago, we embarked on a five-year process of school culture transformation to make it a more welcoming place, both for our students of color and for our faculty and support staff of color. Our students' families and communities are engaged, our PTSA is an active participant, and our 40,000-member alumni association is also involved. We are up to our eyeballs in the process of waking up to the toxic soup of systemic racism that we all swim in. I have often used the Zen metaphor of fish not noticing the water that they are swimming in, but I've come to realize that systemic racism is a polluted condition of that water. Our goal is to learn how to notice the pollution and to stop polluting the water further. We need, as the Tao Te Ching says, to let the mud settle and the water run clear.<br />
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The goal is not only to disrupt the trance of inequities that we all walk around in; the goal is also to create a healthy and sustainable school culture in which learners from marginalized communities are entitled to thrive.<br />
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The progress is slow. The work is grueling. But there is also a lot of heart in our community, and sometimes that opens up an occasional moment of grace. So when our Black students told us what they needed, I took them seriously.<br />
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Raising money and helping them organize to achieve their deep dreams are things I know how to help with. So back in September, I got busy doing what I knew how to help with. The BSU officers and I met in our classroom to work together on envisioning and fundraising and mapping out our plans.<br />
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The envisioning is always harder than the fundraising, but when you are discouraged, it looks like the opposite is true. That is part of how the status quo and the power structure maintain their hold. The status quo <i style="font-weight: bold;">wants</i> you to believe that money is the problem, but I'll let you in on the secret: money is almost never the problem. The reason nine out of ten start-up efforts fail is not for lack of money; they fail for lack of imagination. This is one of the illusions that Design Thinking can help thinkers to break out of. The imagining is the hardest part because it requires us to go against the psychological and emotional defense mechanisms that keep us locked in our "safe" but disempowered crouch. They keep us thinking and dreaming small, when what we really need to do is to take the risk of thinking and dreaming big.<br />
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So the BSU officers and I engaged in a first draft envisioning and imagining conversation. This was some of the most exciting but complicated — and emotionally exhausting — work of my teaching career so far.<br />
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"What do you want to accomplish?"<br />
"We want jackets."<br />
I scribble on my list. "Done. What else?"<br />
They were stumped.<br />
"What else?"<br />
"But we can't afford jackets. We need to have more bake sales."<br />
"Don't worry about the money. That's my job. What do you want to <i style="font-weight: bold;">do?</i>?"<br />
They thought for a minute.<br />
Um, maybe a camping trip."<br />
I write this down. "Good. What else?"<br />
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For thirty minutes, I pushed them and insisted they just toss out crazy ideas. No self-defeating talk about implementation, just make a list. Brainstorming rules. No judgment. Don't think.<br />
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And they starting coming up with ideas. College visits. Service projects in their neighborhoods. A Senior Showcase. An assembly.<br />
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"Good, good, good. What else?"<br />
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Every time they used the word "But..." I cut them off. "We're not talking about that right now. We're talking about deep dreams and making a list. What else?"<br />
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It was bewildering to them. They've been conditioned not to dream and I was prodding them to reconnect with this basic human capacity. Honestly, I don't know if we could have gotten anywhere if there had not already been a years-long foundation of mutual trust woven between and among the five or six of us. They know I'm a little nuts, but they also know that they can trust me. They know that when I screw up, they can call me on it and I will own it and apologize for it. We've been blundering along together for years. I taught all of these girls as freshmen and sophomores, and I've been mentoring them, tutoring them, coaching them, writing letters of recommendation for them, and pushing them to reach high for all the time they've been at our school. And now they are on their way to becoming persons of power — the scientists and artists and politicians and engineers they are determined to become.<br />
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But the academic stuff turns out to be the easier piece. Dreaming is a different kind of path, and it's one that usually only the kids with privilege get mentored into. I was breaking this boundary, and it felt dangerous. That is almost always the way I know when I'm doing the right thing. As George Lucas once said, "When people tell you it's impossible, you're on the right track."<br />
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Once we had a huge list, we did some analysis on it. What are the must-haves? What are the nice-to-haves? What are the pieces we can live without if we have to? We prioritized. We negotiated. We gave things up; then we put them back onto the list. We organized them into categories. We identified the critical path. We flagged the dependencies. "This thing has to come before that thing. This thing can't happen unless that thing happens first."<br />
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It took a <i>long</i> time to get them into flow. There is a suspension of disbelief that has to happen during the envisioning phase. Otherwise nothing happens. They started getting involved in the process. Their body language loosened up. They leaned into the discussions. They started to lose their inhibitions about jumping up, grabbing a whiteboard marker, and drawing a matrix or a diagram on the board. Developing the comfort and safety and confidence to break the rules of compliant and oppressive forms of discussion is a giant step towards true empowerment. We began to make progress.<br />
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Finally, we got to a place where we could begin packaging up what we had thought of and started productizing it. Our first "product" would be a Black History Month program for the school. With each step, we asked ourselves, How will students benefit from this? How will the school benefit? What are the tangible and intangible outcomes? How will we be laying the groundwork so that future cohorts of the BSU will be able to replicate this program and grow it over time?<br />
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We started building a grant proposal draft and a spreadsheet on our BSU Google classroom. Parents requested permission to join the documents and spreadsheets and chats and I was thrilled. Request for access messages started popping up and I approved them as fast as they came in. Click. Click. Click. The parents mostly lurked and marveled at their children's boldness and imagination. They expressed their excitement and gratitude at Back To School Night, but I turned it right back on them. It was <i>their</i> children doing the amazing stuff. I was only the facilitator.<br />
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The kids occasionally panicked. "I don't have time to work on the grant proposal! I have a chem lab due and a mock trial event in LA and a basketball game on Wednesday. I don't know how this is going to get done."<br />
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And I did what I had been trained to do as a manager of large teams. I pitched in. I did whatever parts of the work I could help with. "Don't worry about it. I'll write a draft and people can edit it in the Google doc. We'll make it happen. This is the power of teams."<br />
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And we did it. In the end, I wrote the grants for their ideas. I interfaced with the power structure. And I got them the money.<br />
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Then the real work could begin.<br />
<br />cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-34859066784183758852019-02-18T14:04:00.002-08:002019-02-18T14:04:20.908-08:00If you believe you have achieved escape velocity from white fragility yourself, you are doing it wrongOnly by being ruthlessly honest with what we have internalized can we confront this problem.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-982240187167385172019-02-10T12:26:00.002-08:002019-02-10T12:26:43.548-08:00We need to reimagine our whole-community conference from the ground upWe are trying to squash a new paradigm (a teacher-driven, free of charge, math ed professional development conference that locates equity at its center and foundation) into a too-small and outdated structure (TMC). We need to understand more about how the existing structure works so we can create a better plan.<br />
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We are still not anywhere near the point of identifying or understanding the unconscious, unspoken, equity-blind, harm-causing assumptions in TMC's structures. We're just not. This needs to be a whole-community effort. We're trying to set new goals but we're still walking around in the same old consensus trance.<br />
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There is no way that a small group of people could tackle this problem successfully. It's not realistic. It will take everybody in our community to surface and and interrogate the hidden assumptions in our structures. The problem with blind spots is that they are blind spots. If we don't work together on surfacing and transforming our assumptions, we will continue to just tinker around at the margins and that's not going to be satisfactory to anybody. It is also not going to unleash the liberatory potential in a a whole-community effort.<br />
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Here is an example of what I mean.<br />
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VERY SMALL-SCALE EXAMPLE<br />
One of the toxic assumptions I stumbled on in my own classroom lately and am ruthlessly rooting out is the notion of individual attainment — the idea that each person has their OWN learning/mastery that is unconnected to the learning of anyone else in the room. This gives rise to a toxic kind of individual competition that is antithetical to sane and healthy learning for all.<br />
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This is the assumption that, once "I" understand the concept and "finish" an "assignment," then I am "done" and am on the hook for nothing more, leaving me free to play video games or do some other work.<br />
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But what if we were to start rejecting the underlying assumption(s) of individual attainment?<br />
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What if the goal were for the WHOLE CLASS to achieve fluency in a particular concept or skill as best we can, rather than for each individual to do it as best they can?<br />
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How would each of us teach, learn, listen, collaborate, help others? How would that change what I/you/we want? What would I/you/we need? What I/you/we would give?<br />
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What I realized in this thought experiment is that when grades are given for individual attainment, that is based on a socially Darwinian set of assumptions in which everyone arrives in my classroom with the same levels of everything. Every kid for themselves.<br />
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Once I <b><i>saw</i></b> this assumption, I couldn't un-see it, and I also couldn't help but challenge it. I am responsibility for every student in my room; therefore my goal needs be to get everybody over the finish line, right?<br />
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That forced me to look at the base-level operating assumption about individual attainment as the only measure. What if I were to change our goal to being one of, nobody wins unless <b><i>everybody</i></b> wins?<br />
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As I saw in the episode I wrote up on my blog, the kids took to this like ducks to water and our class averages were in the 90s rather than in the low 80s to high 70s.<br />
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IMPLICATIONS FOR A WHOLE-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE<br />
How would we — each and collectively — think differently about our whole-community conference if equity were to be the absolute bedrock foundation upon which we were committed to build?<br />
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Wouldn't we have to <i style="font-weight: bold;">start</i> by analyzing together what the unconscious assumptions in our existing structures are?cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5779271385256625533.post-82298604816114614262019-02-08T10:38:00.004-08:002019-02-08T10:44:14.091-08:00Walking in the World With a Broken Heart – A Love LetterBefore I came back to teaching, I spent 25 years starting software companies in Silicon Valley. Starting organizations is a whole unique area of expertise. There is a huge amount of institutional knowledge that sprouts up about the life cycle of organizations. Newborn organizations become toddler organizations and if they survive, they become children and teenagers and adults.<br />
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Organizations are born, grow, split off, spawn new organizations, die, get acquired, fail to get acquired. Sometimes organizations become zombie organizations. A very few organizations get big. Some organizations stay the same size. Some organizations shrink. There are as many ways to thrive as there are to die.<br />
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In the corporate world, there are definitely different kinds of people who find they are suited to different kinds of organizations: there are start-up people and there are big-company people.<br />
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It takes a whole different skill set to start and run a start-up than it does to work in or run a large organization. The amount of infrastructure in a large organization is really impressive to me -- even in a poorly organized or run large organization. Anybody who has ever worked in a school district knows what I am talking about. There is a form for everything, a department for everything, a mission statement for everything.<br />
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Start-ups are completely different creatures. In a start-up, there's no infrastructure unless you create it. When you finally move a start-up organization out of the corner of your bedroom or your basement or your garage, you start encountering questions like, Where do ISBN numbers come from? Where do conference tables come from? How do boxed products get assembled and shipped? How do I calculate and submit sales tax to the state? Where does liability insurance come from?<br />
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I have always been a start-up person, descended from a long line of start-up people. Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. As I've done genealogical research on my family, it has been fascinating to discover that in between being attacked by pogroms and ethnic cleansing, my people as far back as the 1860s in Elizavetgrad in the southwestern Russian Empire were starting businesses and growing them and spinning off new businesses from old businesses.<br />
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So when we decided to start TMC almost ten years ago, it struck me as extremely exciting but also no big deal. I had done this kind of thing six or seven times before, plus I'd been watching my family members do it for generations. As Paul Hawken, the great environmental entrepreneur and author writes in his landmark book, <i>Growing a Business</i>, you don't start a new organization to overtake the competition. You start a new organization because there is no existing organization that exists to meet an identified need that is going unmet.<br />
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We started TMC because we felt like isolated individual math teachers who wanted to connect with other math teachers for free to find ways to improve our teaching practice.<br />
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And it's been amazing. My closest math teacher friends are people I would never have met otherwise. They come from all over the planet. They do not look like me or teach like me or have backgrounds like mine. And yet, I know their hearts in small ways and they know mine, and I love every single one of them dearly.<br />
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Starting a new organization is filled with risk. You are throwing in your fortunes with people you really don't know. What I think of as The Great Facebook Friending of December 2011 felt like a huge risk because it was. Everybody I know said, ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU ARE GOING TO MEET PEOPLE YOU MET ON THE INTERNET? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT DANGER IN THIS WORLD?<br />
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But I didn't care. I knew what the risks were, and I knew that I might need to go into Facebook Witness Protection if the 25 people I had just friended turned out to be psycho-killers.<br />
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They weren't. And I've never regretted it.<br />
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But something I learned by growing companies is happening now. within the TMC community and organization. If an organization succeeds, its mission starts getting stretched. People of good will have different ideas about what it means to live out the original mission.<br />
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This is normal. This is organizational growth. Sometimes it is possible to expand an organization's mission to meet differing needs. Sometimes it isn't. And that's when new organizations get born.<br />
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I have been wondering if this is why I feel less freaked-out about the evolution that is happening than other people do. I feel sad to see people I love leave this project I am committed to, but I'm also very used to seeing people I love leave my project to go off and start some other project that is going to be its own powerful, amazing force in the world.<br />
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The one thing I know about start-ups — and big organizations too — is that you can't just give them a personality transplant. A new organization is often needed to meet a need that is not being met by an existing organization.<br />
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It's important that we not view this as a problem. This is a great opportunity for our community.<br />
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There is so much institutional and organizational knowledge now in our MTBoS community about how to start, run, and grow a conference and a community that I see this as an enormous moment.<br />
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I am very sorry that people I admire and respect feel like they cannot live out their missions about how to create a teacher-led math conference/community focused exclusively on equity, but to me, it is very exciting that these incredibly creative, energetic, and dedicated teachers are spreading their wings and committing to figuring out how to bring their ideas about what they should look like to fruition in the world.<br />
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TMC is TMC. Something new will be something new. This is what exponential growth looks like. Today we are exploring the doubling function in our connected educator worldwide teacher community.<br />
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In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is said that when a lot of things start going haywire all at once, it is because something large and beautiful and powerful is trying to be born.<br />
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This is what I see happening here. It doesn't work to try and do a brain transplant into TMC because nobody knows how to do that — and it's just not how organizational development and growth work. It just isn't.<br />
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But something new is in the process of being birthed, and I see it as a "both / and" moment.<br />
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The world is an enormous place and our country needs every kind of lens we educators can bring to it. And we have no time to lose.<br />
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I am excited to think that there could be TWO or more teacher-founded math conferences in the world started by people I love and admire and feel awe-inspired to teach and learn with.<br />
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Please let us know how we can help. My heart is with TMC from the start, but as you sail off on your next adventure, please know that I will be that tiny figure on the shoreline, waving and cheering for your mission and wishing you every possible success.cheesemonkeysfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09311170815422010013noreply@blogger.com15