Writing Kids Notes

So much is not going right in my new classroom, but some things are. One thing that is going right is my off-stage strategy of writing kids notes. Megan Hayes-Golding blogged about her teacher notecards a year ago, and right away I stole the idea. Megan is a genius. They are comic strip-style notecards with "Dr. S" at the top of the main thought bubble, surrounded by comic strip energy.

What do I write notes for? The answer is as individual as the kids themselves. Sometimes I write a note to compliment a student on her renewed focus in class. Other times I will write a note to thank a student for a particularly insightful contribution to our discussion or to our classroom community.

Sometimes I write a note to encourage a student's courage:

Dear ___ — 

Thank you for asking Mr. X if you could come to my room during 4th period for help with your completing the square homework. I was proud of you for advocating for yourself when you were not sure what to do. Once we got to the bottom of that one piece of confused thinking, you were completing the square like a champ. For future reference, once Mr. X has called over, you don't have to wait outside the door to come in — you can just come right in.

Keep at it, ___. This new approach you are trying out is really working. — Dr. S

Another powerful kind of note is an apology for something boneheaded or inadvertent that I have done.

Dear ___

I am writing to apologize for calling you __ [another student's name] the other day in class. I felt bad all day about that because I value you so much for all the energy and effort you bring to our class. I never want to hurt your feelings, but I could see that when I made that mistake, it really hurt your feelings. I hope you will accept my sincere apology for my actions.  — Dr. S 

In my new school setting, I notice a thousand times a day how teacher energy and attention and support are a form of currency in the classroom and whole-school economy. Notes become talismans that support new behaviors and learning patterns and most importantly, courage. They are tangible artifacts of social and emotional learning that is every bit as hard-won for a student's mathematical and academic development as their mathematical skills.

Whatever the circumstances from which they come, I want all of my students to grow up into compassionate and mindful persons of power in their communities.

Sometimes the competencies we need most to cultivate within students are social and emotional. Many times I notice that the lack of well-developed psychological or emotional resiliency blocks a student from being fully present in their mathematics and from taking even small risks with their learning. And if we want students to be accountable for their behaviors, then we also need to model being accountable for our own.

Dear ___,   Thank you for telling me what is not working for you in our class. In addition to showing great courage in your learning, you have also saved me from wasting more of everybody's time using the same old failed teaching ideas. From now on, I am going to do more direct instruction and note-taking practice at the beginning of class first — before we break into group work. I think that will help you and the whole class to get the main idea students need to be successful with our investigations and practice problems. Thank you for helping me to understand what is not working for you so I can find a way to do it better. — Dr. S

Notes can become treasures that help students remember to advocate for themselves. There's nothing secret inside their envelopes, but they heighten kids' awareness that something important has been going on and that I have noticed it. Most of my students have never been noticed at school for much of anything. But because they are amazing and growing human beings, they want it. Some of them want it bad. And that is a big part of the culture I am trying to create. I want students to want to receive positive acknowledgment of something they have done in class.

"Dr. S! Percy is trying to look at my letter!"

"Percy! Leave Q's letter alone! That is her stuff!" 

Sometimes this system of accountability touches a nerve. Sometimes it touches a heart.

And *THIS* is why I love the MathTwitterBlogosphere, part 573 – Infinite Tangents interviews Lisa Henry, Part 1

There are some very good things about Halloween on a school day, but a mandatory classroom "party" in advisory last period of the day on a Thursday is not one of them.

When I had finished complaining to myself about the state of my classroom and cleaning up the last of what the 13-year-olds had left behind that really bothered me, I packed up my stuff and got into my car.

And I remembered that I had an Infinite Tangents podcast all cued up for myself — one I'd been saving for a moment when I needed it most. A moment like now.

So I got to spend the drive home with Ashli and Lisa Henry. Part 1. A glorious triumph of delayed gratification.

I feel lucky to have gotten to know Lisa first through Twitter and blogs and then in person at the first Twitter Math Camp in 2012. Lisa has a gift for teaching through community-building, and she has brought this gift to bear on Twitter Math Camp. I admire and appreciate her respectful and inclusive community-building, and it inspires me in my own classroom and in my life.

Now, like most teachers, I come from a family of storytellers, so it's probably no surprise that I love hearing other people tell the stories of events I participated in. I love the prismatic contrasts of perspective and memory – the way something that struck you as essential to an event gets bumped down or deflected sideways in another person's memory due to proximity or overtaking or whatever. So I love hearing Ashli and her guests telling stories of events I remember because that process invokes the same pleasure twice – the memory of the event itself and the joy in the retelling.

My mood lifted considerably as I gained distance from school and lost myself in the conversation and the memories they were weaving on my car stereo.

It was fun to hear about and remember the great Facebook "befriending" moment in 2011 or so—that moment over Christmas Break when a bunch of individuals who'd been nothing more than virtual colleagues on Twitter (but who were still basically strangers) decided to take the seemingly insane step of "friending" each other on Facebook.

It was a moment of enormous risk.

It's one thing to share teaching ideas or goof around on Twitter, but crossing that line between virtual and IRL felt profound. What if these people turned out to be crazy? unpleasant? dangerous? Or even worse — what if they turned out to have different political beliefs than I did?

The risk felt very real at the time, and sometimes it still does. I don't pretend to be something I am not. I am a liberal. I live in San Francisco. I am a practicing Buddhist and a Democrat. My representative in Congress is Nancy Pelosi. I believe in a lot of things I know that a lot of other people in other parts of the country do not.

But the one thing I know in my feet is that I am a teacher — and a learner.

And I knew that all of these other teachers all over the continent who had become my tentative friends and virtual colleagues on Twitter in exploring what it means to teach and learn math were every bit as committed to what that means as I am. So I guess I trusted it. I was willing to go with it, and to push myself beyond my comfort zone for the sake of connecting with a community of like-minded math teachers who want the same things for our kids and for our communities and for our countries — regardless of what we may believe at the grassroots personal level.

And with all of that as background, I have to admit — it was one of the best and most profound decisions I have ever made.

I was one of those crazy ten or fifteen people who was hellbent on attending Twitter Math Camp even if we had to hold it in a yurt outside a garbage dump. I knew that these were people I wanted to be connected to and spend time with and get to know, even if we seem like we'd be completely incompatible based on what you can see from examining our surfaces.

There was a (now-hilarious) period of several months when it seemed as though what my new friends most wanted us to do was to go on a cruise together and do Exeter or PCMI problem sets together. I remember that Julie looked into costs and group rates and I thought to myself, what in the name of everything sacred have I gotten myself into? I hate situations like cruises. I get seasick. I could imagine nothing worse than being trapped on the open ocean for days with people I don't know.

But there was something about the energy of the group that I innately trusted.

I kept my cruise-hating thoughts to myself, but I hung in there because I knew I did not want to miss out on what appeared to be happening. These were people I wanted to spend time with, and I supposed that if that meant I would HAVE to spend time on a cruise ship, I could probably get a prescription for some kind of anti-anxiety medication to have on hand in case I completely freaked out.

And I just hung in there.

Eventually, the cruise ship idea fell apart, thank God, and the math camp idea came together. And nothing has been the same in my life ever since. And it's been good. Very good.

By the time I went through the toll plaza at the city end of the Golden Gate Bridge, I was not only not crabby any more, I was actually happy.

I felt connected to something much larger than my own daily grumbles, and that was enough to wash all the grouchiness away.

By the time I had parked the car, walked the dog, and poured myself a beer, I realized I needed to blog about my drive as a way of remembering what was good and sane and life-affirming about this experience I am having of being part of a worldwide community of math teachers who see teaching as something much larger than what is happening just in our classrooms.

So this is my "One Good Thing" for the day. Thank you, MathTwitterBlogoSphere, for being there on the other end of the Twitter line whenever I need to feel connected.

Gasshō.