Category: Reflections and big ideas

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Goals. And playlists.

New school year goals: Something about learning. Every. Single. Class.

I make long lists of goals each year, and this is on the list for September.  I do something about learning a lot of classes already (see, basically all of this blog), but I want to make it more consistent.

My students got a steady drip of unhelpful messages about learning in their previous schooling, so this matters.

However, there isn’t enough class time to cover all the content as it is. And — much as I love finding ways to integrate learning about learning and learning about math — there isn’t enough prep time to design new activities for every class. (Yet!)

So, one of my go-to’s for those other classes will be, um, YouTube.  (I wish I had a fancier more creative answer for you, but sometimes, you just gotta do what works)

I’ve been building myself a collection of short, accessible videos about the learning process in general or about math in particular.

I figure they’re a two-fer.

We get some good info and messaging about learning. And it’s kind of a brain break; we’re still learning, but it mixes things up a bit.

Mostly, I’m dropping these into class at/as a transition. We come in, we do our spiral review, we watch a video about learning, we move on to something new. Good, but low-fuss.

But – can we have a moment of honesty about what a slog it is to search for videos for class? It takes me forever to sift through and find something that’s the right topic/level/tone/length. (If you have hacked this, please tell — because I have not. at all. )

But, I’m slowly finding them, and (summer projects!) started a playlist. to share them with you.

YouTube: Learning About Learning, collected by Mathacognitive

Enjoy.

And, if you’ve got favorite, student-friendly videos… please return the favor! The year has a lot of classes.

 

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That week

I was on it  to start this week. I had new, fun, interactive lessons, the classroom is organized, the power point was pretty. I thought, well, if the administrators are going to conduct surprise classroom visits, this might actually be a good time.

Except, it was also that week. The one where the make-up assessment tests, and the counselor visits and flu and the cold weather and the deaths in the families and all the rest of adult life happened, and my largest class was four students.

*Sigh*

Sometimes, this is life.

This is particularly life in adult ed, where the student body are juggling a lot with little margin for error.

So my four students played like term-ominoes, and went shopping with ratios, and got lots of individual attention. I set up a spot to distribute missed handouts next week, and looked for the good things:

  • The student with the great number sense patiently coaching a classmate through ratios (and the student who is struggling through ratios, but watching YouTube videos at home to get it)
  • I challenged one group of students to make the biggest number the could using only sevens and math symbols, and the student with lots of complicated learning struggles came up with an answer 42 places long (for the curious: (7^7)^7 is apparently something like 2 tredecillion) ((Also good: The resulting mini lesson on scientific notation, which finally seemed useful to my students))
  • The math anxious colleague I helped with some algebra, who emailed me after ‘It makes perfect sense’ now  and the new group of colleagues I’ll be meeting with all spring.
  • And, the student who reassured her classmate before an assessment test, and all the process goals I met getting ready for that week, and the student who was excited about Quizlet, and the one who showed initiative, and the one who came despite all the things, and, and, and…

Because, even those weeks, are full of those things.

 

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Student Choices

No offense to professional development facilitators, but most of my best PD is sitting around a table talking with other teachers. I had that conversation recently at the end of  a workshop, and the conversation turned to giving students more choice in the classroom.

 

Truth: I have a personality that is more inclined than is really optimal to operate on the basis of ‘if you want something done right, do it yourself’.

And, truth: my students don’t get much say in the curriculum – either the content or the method to learn it. I used to try surveys and reflections to get input, but it takes more foundation-laying time than I gave it/wanted to put in.  I now take a lot of feedback (exit tickets, lots of metacognitive comments, wish my teacher knew’s) but, truth, it’s mostly after the fact/indirect.

So, there are no genius hours, PBL, makerspaces or many other cool student-driven things. Maybe someday, but not yet.

 

But — pleasant surprise of my PD conversation — I realized we do have  multiple points of student choice in to our classroom culture.

  • Each class when they finish their spiral review they have 0-25 minutes (depending on their speed) to work on anything they want.
  • Unless an activity specifically needs group or solo work, I typically give the option of working independently or with classmates of their choice.
  • I mostly differentiate by starting everyone with the same activity, letting them work at their own pace, and giving different follow up as students finish the first task. Unless a student really needs challenge or review, I mostly let them pick from 2 or 3 related tasks.
  • I’m on my soapbox about homework but they get to choose what work they do.

 

Since ‘naturally flexible teacher’ is clearly not the foundation, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to make these choices work.

It’s not really the logistics. Mostly these choices means making copies of a few different worksheets.  It’s different to implement a homework system where they pick, but I don’t think it’s harder (honestly, now that I’m in it, I’m exhausted by the thought of keeping track of who did page 74, instead of my “did they do something” routine)

 

Mostly, it’s a mindset thing

 

Partly, that’s reminding myself that I neither want nor need to control this particular thing.

Because decision fatigue is real.

Because I really do believe in a democratic classroom.

Because they’re adults and they are perfectly capable of, say, figuring out who to work with.

It helps when I remember that one of my core goals is that they learn how to be strong learners – and they can’t do that if they’re never in control of their learning.

 

AND THEN once I’ve wrapped my mind around this idea, I have to help them wrap theirs around it.

Students who end up in my classes do not have a lot of experience with teachers asking them to make choices about their learning.

Every time I get new students, I go through the same conversation

“Great, you’re done with the review early, what do you want to work on?”

“I don’t know” OR “Anything” (or some variant, usually with a confused look that says the real answer is “Why are you asking me?” and “How would I know?”)

And then my job is to teach them how to figure out what they want/need to work on. Was there something on the review that was hard? Something from a previous class they missed or want to practice? …

Odds are good, we’ll repeat the conversation the next week.

And maybe the next.

But eventually they figure out how to choose something to work on, and that’s a great moment.

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Growth Mindset

It’s probably not a surprise that I talk about a growth mindset with my classes. I also talk about neurons, and how to study, and test taking and anxiety, and metacognition and finding your best way to learn.

I make it part of math lesson: there’s a giant decimal number line on the floor and we position ourselves along it to start the discussion (and get familiar with decimals)

Last year, I made a note

“I’m always surprised at how growth-y my students are.”

But really, it makes sense that the people who decide to show up after working and taking care of the family and everything else to learn algebra would identify with grit (the most emphatic answers are always about the value of effort)

This year, I updated the questions on my assessment, and made some of them math specific. And I had my entire class piled on top of each other to declare that there are math people in the world and there are non-math people and that was that, end of discussion, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

And it broke my heart.

And made me mad.

Because I didn’t have to ask whether they thought they were math people or not.  They might believe that effort matters, but they are also certain they are not math people.

I told them there’s no math brain that scientists can find. And I showed them Sal Kahn talking about neurons, and Jo Boaler. Before that I told them all about my belief in them, and that I hadn’t liked math in high school either, and that we all learn in our own ways.

But mostly, I mentally glared at all the people, and messages, and experiences that told them they couldn’t do this.

And remembered that convincing them otherwise is the most important part of my job.

My growth mindset number line questions (plus variations) are available on TeachersPayTeachers

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Wins And Losses

It’s more fun to talk about the wins, but we learn so much from the losses (if we take the time to look). Wins and Losses is a chance for me to reflect on one of each.

(Also, I could use a better series title, stay tuned for updates or suggestions)

 

Loss:  Group Dynamics

I have one class with a particularly challenging mix of personalities. Some super quiet, some rather oblivious to social cues about volume and sharing air time, and a wide range of maturity, mental health, math skills, personalities and opinions about school. Individually, they all have plenty of things going for them, but it’s not a group that’s gelled.

After a frustrating class where more of my energy when to classroom management than to teaching, I decided to break it up. Small groups, spread far enough apart that they couldn’t distract each other, each with one of my generous classroom volunteers facilitating.

I gave them a beautiful activity, from a thoughtful resource, setting up functions by exploring the calories burned in different activities. Last time I used this, I had one student skipping soda and climbing the stairs by the end of class.

This time, I had, instead of one classroom full of conflicting dynamics, two. I was short a volunteer, so larger groups than planned, and had designed the groups to spread out the different management problems. In the process, I got groups with vastly different math skills, and no interest in working together. The quick ones were bored, the slow workers were lost, and I got “Is this on the test?” instead of “I’m taking the stairs”

 

Take away: Design for learning first, then dynamics. If I were to do it again, I might do more homogeneous groups and give chocolate/many thanks/lots of support to the volunteers working with the more challenging ones.    

 

Win: Fractions

I don’t know about those of you teaching K12, but in ABE, fractions are a black hole filled with quick sand (or some other appropriately sticky metaphor). They’re counterintuitive, take for-EVER, set off students’ math anxiety, and then rarely appear on the HiSET.

*grumble*

But last week, my students figured out how to add fractions, with no explicit instruction on my part.

I gave them fraction circles, and visuals, and partners and said “observe, try it and report back”.  And they reported back a neat summary of adding fractions, and that it was easy. I typed up their observations, gave everyone a copy and moved on to mixed numbers.

Take away:  Trust them. With the right supports, and the right sized step (we saved uncommon denominators for the next class) they can do it.