Happy Thoughts

So... the schedule on my campus is crazy, especially on Wednesdays. We have minimum days to accommodate staff meeting time, and at the end of last year, a group of the junior high teachers had this idea of running an "elective wheel" on Wednesdays. We are a small school, and since we all teach required subjects all day, there isn't much time for electives (we have one period where electives are possible, they are all at the same time, and various interventions occur at the same time as well, so many kids never get an elective at all). 

I was originally supposed to co-teach a performing arts elective, but as things started falling into place it was determined that I needed to teach intervention, and I partnered up with the 7th grade math teacher to do so. The nice thing about it is that we get full control over what we do and which kids we get and when. So we decided to run various themed intensive interventions with kids from 6-8th grade. 

While I am STILL trying to figure out how to keep up with the rest of 8th grade math in my district with one less day of instruction every week, I am actually incredibly grateful for these times with students. I get to do the things I know students really need, and I have the time to work on mindset, exploration, inquiry, and lots of number sense. 

This past Wednesday was particularly fun, and since I spend so much time thinking about the things that need fixing, I thought I would indulge myself and think about the things that were good!

So, here's a little run-down:

Group 1: Number Sense focused on Multiplication and Building Rational Numbers

My first group is mostly made up of kids that I also had during last trimester and they are the ones who struggle the most in their classes. We focused really heavily on number sense with multiplication last trimester (as well as mindset), and most of them actually requested to be in our class again! We had done work on whole number place value and operations before, but this trimester, we are working towards dealing with rational numbers. 

During our number talk the prior week, one of the students happened to question whether 0.9 and 0.90 were the same thing. We had a pretty big discussion and the class convinced itself that they are in fact the same value, even though the numbers are different. 

Because this idea of equivalence and place value came up, I wanted to start with that, so I made a list of equations and students had to discuss and determine whether they were true or false and why. Part of the way down the list, I had the equation "0.10 = 0.010" and boy, was that controversial! One group of kids was convinced that the two sides were equivalent and they put up quite the argument. The rest of the kids went through 4 or 5 different ways of looking at the numbers to try to prove the statement false. I had kids jumping out of their seats in excitement over what other students said. Students were at the board drawing, explaining, justifying, asking their peers questions. I WISH I had thought to take a picture of my whiteboard at the end - it was COVERED with math from students. And these are the kids who are supposed to be "bad at math" - what a bunch of hooey. At the end, one of the students looked at me wide-eyed and said, "That discussion was CRAZY!" I asked if he thought it was important and I got "Yeah!" right away. Then he asked if we could do number talks again next week. This is a student who was loudly complaining about being placed in this class at the first meeting (the prior session). 

Group 2: Place Value

Our second group is the only one that includes 6th graders (because of timing). My partner teacher and I decided to ask the 6th grade teacher what he would like us to focus on, and he requested place value. 

I had done some research on various routines and strategies for place value, but instead of trying to "teach" place value, I decided to do an exploration with "Exploding Dots" from James Tanton (you can check out the entire course here). At the first session, I showed this animation and we did notice and wonder (we did this twice, since it's hard to tell what's happening in the video right away). Then, students worked on answering their list of wonderings. This time, I showed the video again (there were a couple kids absent), and then had the students work on creating the code AND the boxes for 1-20 (in base 2). Our focus was on finding patterns. As students were working, I just wandered around and asked them what they noticed and if they found any patterns. 

6th graders are really cute and small by the way. 

Anyway, the 6th graders take the longest to warm up to me because I am TOTALLY new to them and I also seem really weird because I make them do things like watch weird videos and make them look for patterns instead of taking notes. But, as different kids started to see patterns, they totally lit up and wanted to tell me about it. Some of the more notable noticings:

 - As you count up consecutively, the last digit will always alternate 1, 0, 1, 0, etc. 

 - There is a pattern of circling back around to all the things that happened before every time a new place value happens

 - Any double is the same number, but with a zero at the end (basically, shifting place value).

We didn't have time to get to talking about what "1" dot is worth in each box, but that is where we will go next week. 

Group 3: Number Sense in Application

My last group is more focused on heading into grade-level work, but they struggle with application. They tend to sort-of get and do procedures, but they don't really have the background of how/why things work and they get confused. We are working on making sense of problems and connecting representations. 

I just stole Steve Leinwand's suggested plan for improving problems from the curriculum (from his Asilomar 2016 presentation) - sorry... I can't find a link, but here is a link to his twitter page and his blog. Here's the basic idea: Give a one piece of info from the story (math problem). Ask the kids what three things they can tell you? Allow them to make inferences (they think this is hilarious). Then give them the next piece. Ask what three things they know... etc. Then, ask them for the question. They solve the questions the class posed. 

This went pretty much as expected, except that the kids went WILD with wanting to make up stories for their word problems. One of my squirrely boys who complained about being put in my class was ALL excited to make up stories about the boring word-problem-people. He would get so involved, he would often have to solve most of the possible questions as part of his story. This rubbed off on my MOST reluctant student, who begged me to let him make a word problem story to share with the class (part of the plan for the next session). 

So yeah - it was a fun day - lots of questions, lots of smiles, and lots of math. Who knew that math intervention could be such a magnet for joy :)

Help!

I know it's a cryptic title, but hey, I decided to go for as true and concise a request as I could muster - it got you here, right?

So, now to explain myself...

I just got home from the CMC North Conference in Asilomar. It was wonderful to finally get a chance to go, and even though the experience was wonderful, the feeling I am left with is bittersweet. 

You see, I am in - 100%, drank the kool-aid on things like building up my classroom culture to support productive discourse, using rich tasks and questions I don't know the answer to so I can learn to listen TO my students instead of FOR an answer, and changing how I think and speak about learning to honor the "partial understandings" of all kids without pigeonholing them into mastery (or non-mastery) boxes. 

But I have a LONG way to go, folks. I am trying. I really do give my best effort to make decisions that are in my students' best interest every day. But more often than not, I see a huge gap between where I am and where I want to be. Most of the time, this motivates me to be reflective and continue the work to improve my practice, but there are times where I just want to throw in the towel (or at least throw it in someone's face... HARD). A lot of those times are when it seems like factors I cannot control get in the way of my goals and vision for my classroom. 

And here is where you come in. Below, I will detail some of the situations where I am currently feeling stuck and frustrated and my hope is that some of you may be able to offer some beginnings to possible solution paths :)

First... Just a little background about where I came from:

• This is my second year in a new district. I came from a district that started implementing common core 5 years ago where I was the department chair during that shift. Compared to many people's   experiences, we were pretty well supported in this work. Over my time there, we did a lot to develop as a team, and by the time I left, we met at least weekly to discuss goals/outcomes,  build assessments, co-plan lessons, and just discuss the craziness that is teaching math in middle   school. We struggled with a lot, and certainly didn't always agree but we had a lot of really good  collaboration. The biggest obstacle for our team was overcoming student apathy and "behaviors"

and where I am going:  

• My new district is still struggling with the implications of CCSS implementation and hasn't had as  positive an experience with the transition. Some parents do not support the idea of National  Standards, and there are a lot of conflicting ideas about what math education should look like. I'm at a little K-8 country school that has an awesome family feel to the campus, but I am the only one   teaching 8th grade math. Most district-wide curricular decisions are made by the large middle   school and because I am not there, I tend not to be included in many of those discussions. My biggest obstacles in this moment are below:

1. "Collaborative Competition" - I was in a meeting this last Wednesday where my principal rolled out our new (or perhaps old and just new to me) mission & vision statement which includes this signature idea. My understanding of how it's supposed to work is that the teacher strategically assigns teams, the kids come up with team names which are displayed in the room, and teams earn "points." The most common way this is done is by counting up the number of test questions each person got right on an assessment. Then the team goes over the most missed questions as a group so everyone understand the right answer. Then they set a goal for how many questions the team will get right on the next assessment. Then they earn team points for improvement. I think. There is some variation too - something about doing math tasks in teams then the teams earning points but I'm not totally sure how exactly that works at this point.
• What bugs me: I am REALLY trying to do things in my class to convince those kids who have struggled with math their whole lives that they have important mathematical ideas. I have heavily emphasized the idea that making mistakes, reasoning, justifying, explaining thinking, asking questions, and listening to others are all MUCH more important to learning than right answers the first time. I also want students to feel pride and accomplishment when they figure things out for themselves, and I hope that that will (over time) translate to some increased internal motivation for doing mathematics. I feel like the competition aspect of this idea is basically an external motivator that trains kids to try to get "points" for right answers. I worry that those struggling kids who might have spoken up to offer an opinion or different perspective to a task might now shut back up because they will just wait for the "smart kid" in their group to tell them how to do the procedure so they can get the right answer and not lose points. 
• What I've done: I voiced my concern to my principal. At first he thought I was afraid that other kids would bully the low kids, and I explained that this is not my fear at all, and tried again to give my concerns. He said it is my responsibility as the teacher to "coach up" the kids so this doesn't happen. I'm not really sure how to coach up a kid to feel confident sharing what (s)he thinks is probably not right when I'm giving points for being right. We kind of went in circles about this and that's where it stands.
• What I need: There are a few possibilities here:
• Perhaps, I need a paradigm shift. Maybe I AM being short-sighted here and competitions with team points are a great way to maintain my classroom norms. Someone please explain this to me so I can understand. Right now I just feel sad and scared about what it means for my timidly emerging mathematical thinkers...
• A way to show my point of view and back my concerns so it is more clear to my principal. Dan Meyer talked about "problematizing" in his keynote at Asilomar, and while I am not sure I am using it totally correctly, right now I have decided it means to find a way to make your problem visible and understandable to someone else so that they can empathize with your situation and clearly see your point of view. Suggestions so far have included bringing him to Asilomar and having him read Jo Boaler's book. I will tell you that neither will happen. Too many competing priorities on his desk. I was thinking maybe a one-page study/article that shows how answer-getting and external motivators like "points" can further shut down kids who already have a tenuous relationship with math, and another well-thought-out conversation. Your thoughts? Especially how to get my views to make sense. 
2. Assessment Calendar: Another important part of the meeting we had was talking about assessment calendars. We are supposed to give an assessment every 2 weeks and enter in a bunch of information (like what topics, standards, ELD objectives are addressed). After students take the assessment, we are supposed to list the percentage of students who "met/exceeded" standards, "nearly met" standards, or did not meet standards. Then we list the names of the kids who didn't meet the standards so we can identify what we are doing in terms of intervention. 
• What bugs me: Even before attending Megan Franke's keynote today, I felt like the data I was putting in this table was totally uninformative to my instruction. I test multiple skills and sometimes multiple standards on the same assessment. I could have a kid who "exceeds standards" but demonstrates a misunderstanding about a certain concept in her work, or a student who gets every answer wrong, but still demonstrates understanding of certain skills or concepts. This document tells me nothing about what students actually know. Even my grade book is more informative because I have it organized by the important ideas I want students to demonstrate understanding around (so for one test, I might put in 3 separate scores). This document is busywork. But more than that, it is a huge focus for the school. If this is how we talk and think about students at least every two weeks, will the language and culture around "assessment" be heading in the direction that is best for teaching and learning? The biggest struggle for me? the title of the document is "FORMATIVE assessment calendar" - meaning it is supposed to inform our teaching. How? I don't get it. 
• What I have done: Attempt to fill it out. Asked questions about what was expected. I was too scared to rock the boat on this as of yet. I am new and I have had a hard time figuring out how to share my ideas and opinions so that they are understood. I also wasn't sure how to put into words why this bothered me SO much until seeing Dr. Franke's keynote today.
• What I need:
• Ideas: I haven't figured out how to do it, but I was kind of thinking it would be helpful if I could modify this form so that it is...
• meaningful to my teaching and students' learning
• still meeting my site's requirements
• manageable in terms of implementation (meaning both in terms of time, and level of complication involved)
3. Isolation: Not gonna lie, one of the hardest things for me about my job now is that I can't just pop next door and see if the lesson flopped there too. I knew that my team was really important to me, especially after I had spent so much time working with them to build up our capacity to collaborate, but I have really realized HOW important that collaboration was for me. I spent most of last year questioning my capabilities as a teacher, and my only respite was going to conferences and some intermittent conversations with old colleagues to make sure I wasn't going crazy or harming my student's mathematical future. Now, I don't want to give the idea that I have no support - I work with some awesome, helpful, collaborative people... I just don't happen to teach the same thing as any of them. I can't bounce content ideas off of others quickly and easily, which means I tend not to. I know #MTBoS is out there... but again, while helpful and informative, fast and easy hasn't really been my experience.
4. Isolation 2.0: Another piece of this puzzle is that I am already kind of the "weird" math teacher on campus. I tend to see and do things differently than others, which also separates me in a way. Part of this problem is exacerbated by the fact that I cannot convince ANYONE to come with me to conferences! Most of the things I do are part of my practice because someone else presented them as an important way to build students' mathematical futures. If other people came with me, maybe they'd try this stuff too, so even though they teach other content/grade levels, perhaps we could at least have a conversation around the practices that support mathematical learning. Part of this is my fault - I haven't found a way to fully communicate the awesomeness of the experience (otherwise they would OBVIOUSLY jump on the bandwagon, right?). Part of this is the fault of the teachers - there is a surprising amount of what I can only call fear about venturing out past Sanger and going to "PD" that isn't forced. And by far, the largest part of this, is the institutional system surrounding these types of events. First of all, I have to pay for EVERYTHING myself, even when I am a speaker and am basically a walking advertisement for the district and site. They won't even cover my sub. So I have to use sick days when I go. It is possible to use sick days for conferences in our contract, but we have to fill out additional paperwork, get it approved, and it can be denied if our reason for attending isn't worthy enough. So most people who go to anything just put in as an illness. But you can't enter in an "illness" absence ahead of time. Which means you can't guarantee a sub you know, or plan fully for your class while you are gone to at least attempt something productive. And it just feels sneaky and integrity-deprived. Oh, and if you happen to try to get units because you want to attempt to afford survival, they have to be pre-approved by the district (which obviously none of mine are because I am taking sick days to go). Think about the messages being sent here - What teacher who has never attended this type of event, gets paid a teacher's salary, and already has fear about doing something like this would be willing to venture outside the bubble? I can tell you exactly how many: None. Because I am the only one I know of who ever goes!
• Why this bugs me: Well... I guess I should have said spoiler alert above because the cat's already out of the bag here. But I will try to calm my jets and say what I mean more succinctly: I am in a district that has an incredible reputation, fantastic people, and a track record for being responsive. How do the practices and systems detailed above even make sense? Is this the image and set of ideals we want to embed into the teachers here? I just don't see alignment between ideals and actions, which makes me think and hope that it is unintentional. Even so, I feel like it is a dangerous way to run things.
• What I have done: Ask questions. Lots. To lots of different people. Get surprised by the answers. Ask more questions. Get disappointed. Then frustrated. Then sad. I DID happen to have a conversation with important CMC board type people about this fact and we talked about possibilities for structuring scholarships for first time attendees. This will help... but it does not solve the underlying issues.
• What I need: Tenure and some guts so I can go have some tough conversations? I don't know. I don't know who I would talk to, and like I said before, I haven't had a great track record of explaining myself in a way that is understandable to the people who make these decisions. 

Some final thoughts: I would like to point out that I do enjoy my work, my students, and my colleagues. I know it's easy to paint individual people as antagonists in my story, but the truth is, my principal is a charismatic and supportive guy who genuinely does what he thinks is best for students every day. I don't know that he sees mathematics education in the same way I do, but I'm working towards finding better ways to illustrate my perspective. The teachers I work with want to collaborate and learn from others and do new and innovative things all the time, even though they do it without leaving home. And I have to believe that my district does want teachers to be supported, innovative, and connected to the outside world, and that the systems just need to be considered and updated. I am not trying to blame any of these people for the obstacles I face, but as I stare up at them, I am realizing that I need to find ways to convince those people to come down here with me and stare up from my perspective so that maybe they will see my struggles and offer some support for the climb.