Drinking and Deriving: Passionate Math Teachers Bring the Sexy Back
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I am bad at Math. A lot of people will make this confession wholeheartedly, but I would bet that few of those people have ever had to TEACH Math to people. I took on such a challenge and found two things:
1) Teaching Math is like teaching anything else: be clear about what the learner must accomplish, demonstrate it, get the learner to do it, assess, repeat.
2) I liked it a lot.
The second thing is more important for me than the first. It’s important because I was scared to do it. When I did it, though, I found myself really reaching back into my troubled Math past (the teary-eyed nights of struggling through long division) and my toolbox of real-world situations that I swore would NEVER involve math of any sort (just order too few pizzas one day if you want to see what I mean).
A few things have happened recently that have made me see that my little epiphanies are old news for the seasoned Math pros. These things have also shown me that there is something going on in Math education that the rest of us (yes…even in the humanities) should be paying attention to.
Thing 1
I recently had a great talk with a new, passionate Math teacher who just can’t wait to get kids pumped about polynomials. Now, new teachers like Tara (on Twitter at @tleipert ) often are the manifestations of both piss and/or vinegar, but what was great was about the conversation was that I could see her evaluating ways to take Math out of the textbook and into the real world.
Next, as is my tendency, I was looking for an interesting TED video to show to my homeroom class and I stumbled upon this talk by famous Math teacher Dan Meyer (you KNOW you are special when you are a famous Math teacher). You can see the video for yourself here, but the main thrust is that Math classes and textbooks take STUDENTS out of the equation by giving them all the information they need to solve problems. He espouses a type of Math study that asks simple questions as a starting point for a conversation about how to solve them.
Finally, I came across Shawn Cornally’s blog about being on a constant quest to be a better teacher. The things he tries in his classroom are really out of the box thinking for getting his youth excited about exponents. He awards game-like experience points for successes in his classes. He then allows the students the opportunity to “win some back” when they make mistakes. Take a look at this excerpt from his blog about how he allows students to re-try concepts they missed on before:
Cherub: “Mr. Cor nally, I was look ing at my grades, and I see that I don’t really under stand how to draw the graph of a function’s deriv a tive, I have a 5/10.” Cor nally: “Did you review the con cept with your notes, the book, and or try some by yourself?” Cherub: “Yes, I tried a few from the book, and I think I get it now. Can I show you?” Cor nally: “Sure.” The stu dent draws a func tion (sim ple parabola) and then draw its deriv a tive fairly accurately. Cherub: “Is this correct?” Cor nally: “Yes, but I need you to show me with a func tion that may not have already been in your head.” Cor nally draws com pli cated func tion. Stu dent draws deriv a tive fairly well. “Ok, you didn’t quite get this part … but you’ve def i nitely shown improve ment on some of the basic ideas behind this stan dard, I will change your score to a 7.5/10, a ‘C.’” Cherub: “OK, thanks. I’ll be in tomor row morn ing to try again.” This. Actu ally. Happened.(Source Cornally’s Blog, Think Thank Thunk)
The point of all of this is not that I want to go teach Math. I would still generally suck at it. The point is that the approach of creating relevant, accessible material in an area that has historically been such a huge block for people should be an inspiration to us all. In short, if Math can do it, why aren’t we all striving to make our classrooms THIS exciting?
Cheers!
S/c *M
Twitter – The Site That Needs NO Introduction (?)
I recently popped my school up onto Twitter. And by recently, I mean within the last eight hours. This is not, however, the first time I have used twitter. I have been using it on my own for the better part of a year now and, as my friends and family will tell you, I love it. Facebook is soooo “last-decade” for me.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a website that allows its users to send out short messages to other users often and for free. It has allowed people to quickly and easily share resources, ideas, and even (in at least one case I know of) life-saving information. I have thus far used the service for a nice balance of business and pleasure (there’s no reason you can’t laugh at the latest episode of The Guild while searching for SMART resources, is there?)
Twitter is for me like a garden…but a garden where you can plant a seed at three o’clock and have a flourishing blossom before dinner. As the remarkably forward-thinking Principal of a school in Stony Plain, George Couros (@gcouros on Twitter) has embraced Twitter as a professional development tool for his staff. In this article, he tells a tale about how the great educational community tweeting away out there actually made believers out of each of his staffers. Long story short, he planted a seed and, with just the slightest action on his part, an incredibly leafy and robust result was (and is still) before him and his co-workers.
Perhaps I carry this metaphor too far. The important thing, however, is that even though this service can be seen as a colossal waste of time, I have thus far only found it to be so when I let it be. I get what I put into it. With putting the school onto Twitter, I am focusing much more specifically on jumping into the thriving community of educators who are using it as a tool to make their schools the best places they can be for both staff and students.
Sound like something you are interested in? Drop in an get an account. Meet some people. Tell people what you are doing and why it’s important to you. Come to a Tweetup. I guarantee it will be worth whatever you put into it.
You can follow me @ScottMeunier. You can check out my school’s feed @BoyleStreetEd.
Cheers,
S
Review of Teaching Graphic Novels by Katie Monnin
Cover - Teaching Graphic Novels
The subtitle of Dr. Monnin’s book is, “practical strategies for the secondary ELA classroom” and I am happy to say that she has definitely placed her emphasis on “practical.” Ready-to-use materials are the best for the weary classroom teacher looking to liven things up. What’s great, though, is the accessible theoretical basis for how using graphic novels can and should be a seamless experience in an ELA context. Bottom line: if you are looking for a few back-pocket activities to spice things up, they are here. However, a systematic use of the activities and theories described herein will engage your students in ways you, your administrators, and their parents want them to be.
There is nothing technologically amazing here. There are no links to SMART activities. There are no gadgets. What you get here are soundly-designed instructional activities meant to scaffold students of all literacy levels into a critical engagement with visual and print based texts.
What I love: The direct approach and accessible language. Dr. Monnin may have fancy credentials, but she is a reader at heart and wants to help other people love reading. This fact is evident in how simply she has designed the activities and the handouts that support them. I am happy to see that many of the novels and artists that Dr. Monnin recommends are already in use in my classroom – in fact, this external support has encouraged me in the knowledge that I am on the right track with building parallel visual and textual literacies.
What I’d love to see made better: A purely nerdy part of me wished for easier signposting for the different activities. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I was in a new section or in another part of the previous section. I figured it out, but I had to think about it (this, I think, is not a fault of Dr. Monnin as much as it is a design issue to be discussed with the book’s publisher.
All in all, I intend to put this book into the hands of my ELA and literacy specialists at the school as soon as possible. There are a lot of possibilities for our population in graphic novel study. Buy it, read it, use it!
S