An #MTBoStory

#MTBoS got some public play this afternoon at our faculty meeting.

Today was our second and final day of opening meetings.  Our school's theme this year is "Curiosity."  Our dean of faculty asked several teachers to present brief summaries of what they had done this summer to demonstrate their own curiosity, and since she'd seen me sitting for hours on Twitter and rambling on about this #MTBoS thing I discovered, she asked me to be one of the presenters. (She knows all of this because she's also my wife.)

I decided that I wanted to take a risk -- I didn't think it would be very interesting to explain briefly what the MTBoS was and then show some of the things I'd found via this group.  It would translate:  "Here are some resources I found on this thing called the internet!"

Instead, I would simply do what I do -- open Twitter and search the #MTBoS.  Live in front of 80 colleagues.  And see what would happen.

Here's what happened.  The first tweet up was from Fawn Nguyen, explaining how a student came up with a third way to multiply 24 x 8.  I noted how that was interesting, scrolled down, saw some other cool stuff (Bumper Car Desmos!) and talked about how valuable I'd found this community.  It's a combination of the best magazine ever and the best faculty room ever. 

As I was wrapping up my five minutes (at the end of a 7 hour day of meetings, I might add), my friend the Spanish teacher (40+ years in the classroom) interrupted and said, "Wait a minute.  I want to know more about other way to multiple 24 x 8."

So, by popular demand we discussed at least three ways to find that product.  I was able to talk about how that's what we want of our students in a math classroom.  They are often focused on the answer; we want them to focus on the process, and the more different routes the better.

In summary: After hours of meetings, the idea that 24 x 8 could be found in multiple ways engaged adults who maybe hadn't been in a math class since high school.  Best. Subject. Ever.

Postcript:  A faculty couple pulled me aside afterward and said that they felt like their son was the kid who always had the third method.  He'd get the answer right, but was feeling from his teacher that he wasn't doing it the right way and therefore wasn't good at math.  He's starting middle school this year, which will hopefully offer him a fresh start, but it was a reminder to me of how I need to make sure to let each student be heard, even if it takes me a bit of effort to understand what they are saying.

So thanks for this, everybody.  I'm inspired by and in awe of what you're all doing every day.

Lastly, be sure to click here and pick a number!  'Cause that's always my bottom line.

#MTBoS Pick-a-Number Round 5

The winning number for round 5 is:  1.  All glory to  @meredithpurser.

 We seem to be stuck on about 17-20 players.  That works, but it's not really enough to start seeing patterns over time.  At my school, I do this weekly and I usually have between 50-60 players (our student body and faculty number about 400 total.)  This allows for some speculation from students, which is good discussion.  One theory is that the numbers tend to spread out and contract over time.  Another strategy is to pick a number and stick with it.  

I don't want to be a Twitter Nuisance (is there a portmanteau word for that?), but I'd like to get the number of players up.  Any suggestions would be welcome.

While you're here, pick your next number here.   Raw data and graphs are available at the links to the right.

Making the Intangibles Tangible

As I was writing this, I came across this quotation via someone on #MTBoS.  Perfect.

"We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience." - John Dewey

Last year, I decided to attack an issue that I had felt for years:  I was not doing a good job of getting students to understand what is really important to me in my classroom.  While I could talk a good game about the value of a good question, the importance of making mistakes or the idea that "it's all about the journey and not the destination, "most students focused on the bottom line both in the micro-view ("Is my answer right or wrong?") and in the macro-view ("What is my grade?").  I couldn't blame them, for many reasons.  First, while I was evaluating them in different areas, getting an "A" required correctness, perhaps above all else.  And second, when they left my class at the end of the year in June, the only tangible take-away from the experience was their grade for the year.  They knew this and I knew this -- it is the burden of teaching within a traditional system.

I was particularly inspired by the not-small number of students who brought great things to the classroom each day -- curiosity, enthusiasm, creativity, etc. -- yet weren't necessarily as rewarded through the grade as they might have been.  These are the students who bring classes alive, the type who are easy to write college recommendations for because they add so much to everyone's experience. 

So I decided to add a reflection portfolio to my grade.  I identified 7 things I wanted students to recognize in themselves as we learned together.  For each item, I wrote a few brief questions for them to respond to.  Students would then put their responses into their individual portfolio folder, and put a sticker representing the topic(s) they responded to on a poster I made for the class, so that we could see the progress of the group as a whole.

Here are the graphics that went with my topics.  (Clearly home-made!)  You can click on a topic to see the google doc with the related questions.

Brain Growth:  I want students to understand that mistakes are NECESSARY and WONDERFUL and VALUED.  Over the years, I've learned to make sure that on the first day of the year, I explain how excited I will get when I see a thoughtful, creative mistake.  I can't help myself -- this is when learning happens.  I want students to embrace these moments and realize how important they are.

Pride:  I want students to recognize their accomplishments and take a moment to be proud.  This is often difficult for students (and for most humans.) Don't rest on your laurels, but don't forget to take a moment to pat yourself on the back and reflect.
 

         

Aha!:  These are the moments that remind us why we teach and learn. Taking a moment to reflect on these can only make us more determined to find that feeling again.

Passion: Part I of Angela Duckworth's trio.  Students will sometimes say, "You know, I really enjoyed that homework," surprising themselves.  I want them to pause and reflect, hopefully realizing that there's fun to be had in simply learning something new.  Perhaps if they can identify what about a particular activity or assignment they enjoyed, they can learn a little more about themselves.

Perseverance: Duckworth's Part II.  I have found that students are eager to tell me when they persevered, meaning they know that this is what any teacher wants and is a critical part of being a successful student.  Reflecting on this will encourage it.

Grit: Duckworth's conclusion.  This is the toughest one, because it's the most complicated to understand, and perhaps the most difficult to generate independently.  Grit requires (according to Duckworth's definition) Passion and Perseverance.  You need to find that thing that inspires and drives you, along with a challenge to overcome.  In a sense, this is what we search for in our lives.  If each student can find one moment of Grit in a year, that might be a success.

 Question: In a way, this inspired the entire exercise.  I had a student who did okay grade-wise, but would consistently ask great questions, some of which were perfectly timed and moved us along the path I'd hoped, and others of which would have brought us to some wonderful places that we just didn't have time to explore.  This is my attempt to reward curiosity, and to allow some further exploration beyond what we were doing in class.  It doesn't need to be a full-blown project, just a little research.



My stickers matched the icons above (with the right sized Avery product, easy to make), and I made posters with the images for the walls of the classroom. My class web pages featured my icons prominently.  I was branded!

I told the class that this portfolio was worth 30% of their grade.  I'm thankful to have this kind of freedom in my classroom (although it also may be a sign of my initial slide off the deep end.)  Regardless, I knew that nobody was going to be hammered by a poor portfolio, and it also wasn't possible for a student to live solely  in the "meta-land" of my reflection questions and be successful - they would need to do good work as well.  My goal was to communicate to them that I thought these things were important.

I think that all of the students appreciated and understood what I was trying to teach them, so that was successful.  Some students took it to heart and spent a lot of time reflecting throughout the year.  They told me that they appreciated the opportunity to reflect, and I enjoyed reading what they had to say.  Still, for a good number of students, it remained more of a burden than anything else which was certainly not my goal. 

This year, I'm going to de-emphasize the value of these reflections to the grade.  Overall, that felt counter-productive last year.  I am going to require some to be written.  I haven't settled on a number or frequency yet.  Lastly, I want to allow for electronic submission through Dropbox or some other means.  I have a week and a half to figure that out.

Any tweaks, critiques, comments, whatever would be welcome!  #PushSend

#MTBoS Pick a Number Round 4 Results

Round 4 winning number: 5.  Congratulations @fractionfanatic .  Feel the glory

 I continue to try and build players.  I seem to be stuck at around 20 each week.  Again, it's difficult to play if you don't have a sense of how many players there might be.  I'll keep working to build my Twitter base, and if you are reading this, keep retweeting my Tweets.  In May we'll decide if this is fun.

I have been trying to send out a tweet once a day -- more often seems like it would be annoying.  That amounts to roughly three players per tweet.

While you're here, go ahead and put your number in for Round 5.

Classroom Management: The Cell Phone Dilemma

Let me begin by saying that if you are looking for a solution to the cell phone in classroom dilemma, there's no need to read any further -- I don't have one.

I've gone through phases in my approach, and have yet to find something that works.

Attempt 1:  Speak to the students and then trust them. 

Philosophy:  I believe that my role as a teacher doesn't just include math, so I want to teach students how to be disciplined themselves regarding the use of cellphones.  If I forbid them in the classroom or make students put them in a basket, I am teaching them nothing.  I do teach relatively small classes (12-16), and the desks are in a horseshoe, so it's difficult to hide the phone during class.  I have eyes in the front of my head and I know how to use them.

Results:  Not so great.  Probably once every two classes I would find a student looking at a phone ("I was just checking the time!"), which means that being alert to phones being used was taking some non-epsilon-sized amount of my attention away from what's important.

Attempt 2:  Speak FIRMLY to the students and confiscate phones when I see them being used.

Philosophy: Similar to Attempt 1, with the ugly truth that I was acting in conflict with my philosophy that confiscating things is a terrible way to teach.  It feels like a simple use of my power as a teacher, especially in high school.  It doesn't feel like I'm educating; instead, I am punishing.  Certainly punishment can be educating, but when it's simply me saying, "Give me your property," that doesn't feel healthy.

Results:  This didn't reduce cell phone use, but it did force more individual conversation between me and my students.  Also, it made me realize what research has demonstrated -- this is an addiction.  At the beginning of one period, I gave a particularly impassioned plea to the class that they should put their phones away.  I explained how I'd confiscated someone else's phone that morning, and how I felt disrespectful doing that but I didn't know what else to do.  Then, not 3 minutes later, I caught a young man texting.  When I took his phone, he was stunned that he had gotten himself into this position.  He had heard what I said, understood it, and yet couldn't control himself.  He was shocked, as was I.

Attempt 3:  Phones must be left outside the classroom.

Philosophy:  Out of sight, out of mind.

Results:  This worked better in the sense that students knew that they shouldn't have the phone in the classroom, so if they didn't remember to put the phone outside, they sure remembered not to take it out in the classroom.....for a while.  At some point, my vigilance waned, and they "forgot," and phones slowly started to make their distracting way back into our classroom.  That's my fault, technically, but I can't think of another norm that I can spend six months reinforcing that can't stick on it's own for another two.  Such is the power of the cell phone.

The biggest issue I had with this approach, however, was how it made students resist entering the classroom until the last minute.  We have five-minutes of passing time, and they would use every minute of it to be on their phones.  They'd enter class at the last moment, and only then start to get physically and mentally ready for class.  This prevented the casual conversations that students should be having with each other and with me that are an important part of building class culture.

This brings me to what I am planning for this year.

Attempt 4:  Students will come up with a plan for where their cell phones will be ("Distraction Basket", bookbags, etc.)   I will provide an engaging question that will make students want to enter the classroom when they get there.

Philosophy:  Creating a community norm is always worth a try.  You can't really demand a "community" norm -- that's just a "Feitelson" norm.  Which is fine, too -- I am the teacher, after all.  Still, better if it's done as a group.  I believe that students understand how their phones are a distraction and will welcome the opportunity to help address the issue.  What we come up with will sound good in theory -- whether they can turn that into practice is the challenge.

The second part of this attempt will be challenging to me.  My thinking is that kids have become used to getting external mental stimulation from their phones, and so if I want to compete with that I need to provide my own external mental stimulation for them.  If I'm clear that I expect them to start getting ready for class when they arrive, even if they're early, and I give them something engaging to think about, I think I have a good chance of success.

Results:  <Please get back to me in 3 months.>

____________________________
An interesting set of articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education about this issue.

Two books on our faculty summer reading list on this topic:

Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle

Irresistible by Adam Alter

#MTBoS Round 3 Results

Round 3 winner:  Number 1 again. Congratulations @Long_Tailed_Tit

In my experience, it's not unusual for 1 to win -- everyone avoids it except one person, who then gets to look like a genius.

In the #MTBoS game, as opposed to my school game, it's difficult for people to know how many players there will be.  This spreads out the choices, since larger numbers can be good guesses if there are a lot of players.   The last two weeks, there have been only about 20 players, which has made for quite a dull bar graph.

If the number of players continues to be around 20 and those players are aware of that, the data will change and the numbers will get smaller.  But we'll see.

Should you have read this far, and if you have any suggestions as to how I can encourage more people to play, please chime in!  For my part, I'll continue to plug away.

Raw data is available at the links on the right.

First Day Plan: Math teaching as Improv

I had a job interview for a summer program a few years ago, and as part of the application I had to submit a lesson plan for a random day in the middle of the summer.  I chose to do a lesson I had successfully run in a few classes exploring Conway's Tangles.  I carefully wrote out a step-by-step plan (3 minutes on this, then 5-7 minutes on this, and so on.)  Then it got to a point in the lesson where I needed some student to have a flash of inspiration -- it's never failed to happen, but I didn't feel like I could write "Student has a flash of inspiration (2 min.)" on my lesson plan.  So I became vague and unclear as to what would happen next, and my lesson plan meandered from there.

I realize now that the lesson plan communicated at best little information about what happens in my classroom, and at worst a disorganized teacher.

I am not disorganized, even as my classroom can sometimes seem chaotic.  I know where I want to start, and I know what my goals are.  What happens along the way is often a mystery to me until it happens -- not unlike an improv performance.  I've seen many teachers write of the importance of "yes, and..." in a classroom, and I will add myself to those voices.  If I am offering up "yes, and..." it means students are guiding what we are doing.  I need to be flexible and quick on my feet, but those are my strengths.  (And also my weaknesses -- sometimes "flexible" becomes "taking a random unnecessary tangent that distracts."  I continue to grow and learn, though.  But, predictably, I digress.)

So to my first day plan. It was inspired by this vSauce video .(The relevant section starts at about minute 14).

I'll shuffle a deck of cards (at least seven times) and claim that never before in the history of cards has a deck been in the exact order I've created.

Students are to agree or disagree and defend their answer.

The goals:

• Discover that n! describes the number of ways to order n things.
• Review of scientific notation.
• What mathematical rigor looks like.
• How to accept something that violates your intuition.
• How to resist using the internet to solve problems.

Students will work alone, then in groups, and then we will .... improvise!  I know that kids will stand and move and talk to different people and have cards and whiteboards available if they want.  In the end, each student will have to write a summary and defense of their answer using mathematics.  Our first class period is 30 minutes, so we'll see how far we get.  I suspect we can finish sometime during the second class.  Then, we're off!

Three Goals, because three is always the right number of things.

Three Goals, because three is always the right number of things.

 

1.         To become an active and known (by at least some) member of #MTBoS.

            I’ve been mostly lurking throughout this summer, and I am amazed at how many good teaching ideas arrive via Twitter every day.  I’ve been really intrigued as well by the “How welcoming are we?” debate over the past few weeks.  As a newbie with 35 years of teaching experience, it’s been interesting to see an online community experience what any successful community goes through.  Lots of thoughts about that, but maybe for another post.

I will re-energize my pick-a-number game.  I did it every week at my school last year; starting this week I’ll do it every week on the internet, based at #MTBoS.  Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won’t.  If it does, it will be fun for all.  If it doesn’t, I’ll be that sad (but known!) guy with that game.  It’s win-win.

2.         To create and execute a 3-D design and printing curriculum for my Algebra II – Honors class.

            Last year was the first time I’d done any 3-D printing in class.  It was reasonably successful – the students enjoyed it, and it supported the curriculum in a nice way.  It required natural persistence and tenacity, often with frustration followed by excitement – the perfect path.

3.         To be more creative with assessment.

To me, it’s an axiom of teaching that students will put their efforts toward what is evaluated – how do I evaluate “be creative”, “struggle and fail and struggle some more”, “support your classmates”, and so on?  I’d like to rid myself of tests altogether, but that seems unrealistic.  

Short and sweet, at least for me.

#MTBoS Round 2 Results

The winner of round 2 is @samjshah with the number 1.   Three cheers.

There were only 20 entrants this time -- and the game lasted longer than I planned by weeks.  I blame: 
1)  Long trip abroad without computer.
2)  Moving
3)  General summer lethargy

But that's over now!  Round three will begin tomorrow and each round will last one week.  My goal is to be like Einbinder Flypaper, the flypaper you've gradually grown to trust over the course of three generations.  (See:  Bob and Ray).  Build a following!

Stay tuned.