Seeing the Future

One of the best things I have done in the Mad Math class this year had little to nothing to do with math. It had everything to do self-respect and self-awareness.

Over the last year or so, I have had the great good fortune to become acquainted with Ira David Socol through the social-networking site Twitter. (He’s @irasocol on Twitter.) I invited Ira to visit with the Mad Math class via Skype because I knew a bit of his interesting story and hoped my students would recognize a bit of themselves in it. Boy, did they.

Ira is currently a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University. He is also the author of two works of fiction, A Certain Place of Dreams and The Drool Room. And he writes one of the best education blogs around, SpeEd Change. Ira told the students about growing up moving back and forth between New York City and Northern Ireland as a child. Dyslexic, dysgraphic and ADHD, he found school to be difficult, frustrating and inflexible, particularly in the United States in the early days of special education. But he never gave up. He figured out ways to work around his disabilities and work with his strengths. As new technologies emerged, he found tools that would allow him to access the written word and communicate in writing with others. His current research is on designing educational experiences that work for all students and finding tools that benefit all learners.

Ira is a marvelous story teller. I had never seen this class at such rapt attention for half an hour. As Ira described his struggles with reading and writing which persist until this day, Aaron turned to me and said, “This man is living my life.” I honestly don’t think it had occurred to any of the kids that there is life beyond school and they can be successful in it. They feel ashamed of their disabilities, and yet here was someone speaking openly about his disabilities and encouraging them to advocate for themselves and others who are like them. Ira made a point of telling the students he would NOT tell them to try harder. Rather, he encouraged them to explore their interests, find ways of learning that work for them and to find tools and technologies that will allow them to show their brilliance. As Sammy noticed our time was winding down quickly, he leaned over and said, “Can we have him come back?”

Here are a few of the comments the students made afterward, as we reflected on our Skype session:

“…he talked about how our lives are like his. He was talking about how he had trouble in math, reading and writing. We all related to this.”

“i liked the discussion with Mr Socol because he said some interesting things from the past of his life. He mainly talked about his experience of school and his struggles in school too! He was an interesting and a nice guy. O My god He was so generous to take up as much time that he did with us and I’m so glad that someone else understands what kids with special education do everyday. Meaning a lot of kids has special education and Mr Socol has the jist of what we as students…has to put up with everyday or every once and a while. I am glad that we might do this again and talk to him again. I am so exited!!! i can’t wait!!”

“An eye opening experience that showed me that resource kids can be successful.”

We’re back to the day-to-day of learning math now, but I hope the seed that Ira planted will grow and flourish. I know my efforts to convince these kids that they can be successful fall short, but somehow, they seemed able to hear it from someone who has lived their lives. I’d give up a day of math for that anytime.

Just in Case Anyone is Paying Attention!

A pedestrian post – just an update on the last few weeks in case anyone is interested. If not, so be it – it’s good reflection for me. Remind me that I want to write a post called “Reflecting on Reflecting!”

The class has been reviewing in preparation for their unit test on measurement, using the formulas for circumference/perimeter and area of triangles, rectangles and circles. I had to take a personal day on the day of the test, which really worried me. But technology came to the rescue (remember Don’t Teach Like a Caveman?). With the help of my wonderful teaching assistant, I was able to Skype into the classroom from home and give the class last minute instructions, reminders and personal encouragement. They even got to “meet” my cat, Othello, a frequent topic of conversation in the class.

I am happy to report that everyone passed the unit test. There were two C’s, a B and an A. The student who had scored a zero – that’s right, not one point correct – on a quiz on the same topics three weeks earlier scored a 75% and was ecstatic.

The class also put together their presentation for the principal and their parents on their Peace Garden project, in which they determined the “growing” area of our school’s Peace Garden and how many bags of fertilizer would be needed to fertilize it. Watching them rehearse I thought they’d never pull it off, but put them in front of a real audience, and they stand still, work as a team, and speak clearly. They even answered impromptu questions from the principal and from me.

There are a number of topics we could logically move on to. Working with the formulas could easily lead to solving one-step equations algebraically. We could continue with measurement, moving on to volume of solids. We could begin to explore triangles and ponder the Pythagorean theorem. The students had also voiced an interest in reading the book Math Doesn’t Suck by Danika McKellar and trying to figure out ways of teaching the concepts she discusses in a way that would be appealing to boys (this book is geared toward middle school girls.) In my effort to give them as much choice as possible, I let them vote. The winner: Math Doesn’t Suck. So we will be starting by reading the first chapter, learning about prime numbers, factoring and prime factorization, and trying to come up with ways to teach those topics with increased “boy-appeal.”

Students also Skyped with author Ira David Socol last week, but I will save that for a separate post.

Self-Directed Learning

This post is written in memory of Vernoy Johnson, my high school adviser, mentor and friend, who always encouraged me to dream…and to try more math. Oh dear VJ, right as always.

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, and they were a good couple of weeks in the Mad Math class. I’ll talk about that in a later post because what I really want to talk about is the high school reunion I attended last weekend and how it is informing my thinking about the Mad Math class and all “non-traditional” learners.

I attended the much-lauded New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, in the 1970s (my students are headed there, as well). The occasion last weekend was not actually my high school reunion, but the “Approximately 35th” reunion of The Center for Self-Directed Learning, the “school within a school” I attended my sophomore through senior years. It’s a bit hard to describe The Center in hindsight and from the viewpoint of my world of standardized testing, because there was nothing standard about it. It was what the name implied: self-directed learning. At the beginning of each semester, in what were called Town Hall meetings, we, the students, brainstormed what we wanted to learn and how we wanted to learn it, then we went out (with the help of AMAZING teacher/facilitators) and found people to teach us. Phenomenal people – the best teachers in the “parent” school, retired college professors, people working in the fields that interested us, and sometimes each other. Students explored their own interests through internships if their interests did not match the interests developed by the whole group.

The Center attracted an eclectic mix of students. In the “parent” school, students were (and still are) largely grouped according to “ability”, where 8th grade test scores pretty much determined a student’s academic and social circle throughout high school. In The Center, students of all abilities learned together. There were gifted artists and musicians and intellectual giants who found the parent school stifling, as well as students who were overwhelmed by the traditional work load and wanted a more relaxed atmosphere for learning. Today they are architects, actors, doctors, entrepreneurs, computer scientists and even a current U.S. congressman. I became interested in special education as a result of an internship I did while in The Center.

At the reunion, they held a mock-Town Hall Meeting. During the meeting, someone asked the 100 or so “Centerites” gathered how many of us would have dropped out of high school if it had not been for The Center. Twenty or so people raised their hands. This did not surprise me. I was one of them.

But then they asked how many there were dyslexic. Another (slightly overlapping) twenty people raised their hands (twice to three times what’s expected in the general population, depending on who’s calculating). This blew me away. I had no idea. I don’t think anyone had any idea. How could we not have known that so many of the people we were learning with had learning disabilities? I think because students CHOSE what they wanted to learn and HOW they wanted to learn it. Those with learning differences could choose to do things that insured their success and avoid doing things at which they were likely to fail. And they could choose to learn things that engaged them as learners.

This got me thinking about how often I have a heard people criticize my students, “Well, he can learn things he’s interested in, why can’t he apply that at school?” or “He can pay attention to video games, why can’t he pay attention in class?” But what if we turned that on its head and LET them learn what they wanted to learn. What if we encouraged them to find the ways they learned best, rather than expecting everyone to learn and demonstrate learning in the same way. Despite all the talking about differentiated instruction in my district these last few years, the reality is that all of the students in my school are expected to learn the same material from the same person by essentially the same method. This works for most students but not all students, and I don’t mean just those with disabilities.

I know I can’t give my students the experience I had. We live in different times. I was not bound by standardized testing; my students are expected to demonstrate their progress towards standards on very traditional tests. But what part of The Center experience CAN I give them? I’m already allowing them increased choice over what they learn when. They’ve been exploring math topics through their own interests on “My Interest Monday.” I want to incorporate even more choice, more flexibility to explore their own interests, and to help them find the best teachers to teach them about their interests. I honestly don’t know that there’s much more I can do, given the constraints I teach under.

But I can dream, and if The Center taught me nothing, it taught me to be responsible for my own dreams.

Indicators of…Something

My school district’s most recent strategic plan was designed to take our schools “from good to great,” based on the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, which is about companies that “make a leap” in that direction. I’ve never been completely clear about how this relates to a school district, but apparently some people higher up than me are. We have posters all over that say “The enemy of the great is the good.” And in our Community Room, we have a giant poster that lists “Indicators of Greatness.” These are the evidence that we have achieved greatness in the various goal areas of the strategic plan.

This whole “greatness” thing sometimes seems a bit arrogant to me, especially coming from a district that consistently ranks in the top 15% on every conceivable indicator – test scores, fiscal stability, minutes of instruction (and of course, administrator salaries), and often is in the top 2% on measures of student achievement. Where does this leave the Mad Math students who score between the 6th and the 25th percentile nationally when the vast majority of their school mates score above the 80th percentile? I can tell you where, because I’m in that place every day: It leaves them in a class of four for three years in a row, isolated from their peers, feeling stupid, defeated and miserable.

So I’m not looking for indicators of greatness in the Mad Math class. All I want is some signs that I’m making progress with them. Making math a better place for them. Helping them to see their own intelligence and self-worth. And I am beginning to see some hints that we’re getting there. Small signs, for sure, but indications that something is happening.

While Sammy still occasionally comes to class tired, most days he comes ready to work. And he smiles sometimes. Pat, who tests lower than everyone on standardized tests, aced the first quiz. Jerome is FINALLY beginning to understand and apply the difference between radius and circumference (after I’d nearly thrown my back out coming up with new ways to show it). The students want to present their work on the peace garden project to our principal because, according to Pat, “When you work that hard on something you want someone to see your work.” After a terrible day of struggling through a challenging puzzle on Lure of the Labyrinth, they worked together as a class to conquer it, and did. They are completing the small amount of homework I give. And they are asking about how to improve their grades – an indication that they are beginning to care about their performance in the class.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have plenty of rough moments and bad days. And I feel certain that when I ask the students again how we’re doing they’ll tell me this is just the same as every other math class they’ve been in. But I’m seeing small indications that maybe they can’t see yet.

Perhaps the biggest indicator is a little hard to quantify, but it tells me we’re making progress toward something: There is laughter in our class again.

Downs and Ups

We sometimes do an activity on Fridays in my classes called “Downs and Ups.” We go around the room and each person tells one thing that was a downer for them in the week, and one thing that uplifted them. It’s a simple reflection tool, but the students always seem to enjoy it.

The last couple of weeks have been full of downs and ups in the Mad Math classroom.

In my last post I reflected on my inability so far to make the Mad Math classroom a different place for my students, despite my best efforts. I took to heart Lani’s comment “Not a promise broken I don’t think, but a promise in progress and under construction!!” I talked with the class about that again on Tuesday, and I gave them time to write their own blog posts reflecting on how things are going and what they’ve learned so far. Of course, I can’t post those to our class Ning because they still don’t have school email addresses and now there is a debate in my building about whether we should give our students limited email access (e.g. emails could only go between teachers and students) in my building.

When the students were done reflecting, we moved on to studying the area of circles. I quickly reviewed with them what we know so far (perimeter and area of rectangles, diameter, radius, chord, circumference, Pi, etc.) By the way, my students love talking and thinking about Pi – they are fascinated by it.

We were just beginning to discuss the formula for area of a circle, when the head custodian for our building walked in, carrying a bag of fertilizer. He looked out the window at the peace garden planted in the lawn below. He sputtered a while in mock frustration. I asked what the problem was. He said our principal wanted him to fertilize the peace garden. He was trying to determine how many bags of fertilizer he would need to fertilize the garden. Now, the peace garden is, of course, a circle but a circle that has path cut out of it in the shape of a peace sign. There is also a ring (think circumference) of shrubs around the outside, and the instructions on the fertilizer bag said to handle fertilizing those differently. I suggested to Mr. B. that perhaps we could help him – after all, we’re a math class studying area.

The students were immediately on to me. “Did you put him up to that?” Well, of course I did. But it didn’t matter. It was a real problem and they were excited to solve it, all except Sammy. He continued to be lethargic and uninvested, even as the excitement of his classmates grew. I was worried that if he stayed, his attitude might be contagious. I sent him to the nurse telling him something like, “Go ask her if she has any suggestions for how to wake you up” (I’ll let you use your imagination as to what I actually said.) The rest of us headed out to the garden and had a look around. Interestingly, Sammy joined us within about 5 minutes, but his demeanor was unchanged.

After exploring the garden we came back inside and discussed how to approach this problem. We drew a rough picture of the garden on our Promethean board. The kids came up with three things we need to do to:

1. Find the area of the whole garden.
2. Find the area of the peace sign (path.)
3. Subtract the area of the walkway from the total area to find the area of the garden.

At this point, the students haven’t figured out that they are going to need to know how much fertilizer is used per square foot, but they’ll get there if I ask the right questions.

Later in the week, we went out to the garden again to find the radius. I had printed the picture we drew at the Promethean board, so they could record their measurements. Back inside, we solved for the area of the whole garden. In the days in between, I’d been doing some fairly traditional lessons on this topic. But the class was more invested because they had a reason to learn it.

Our next task was to find the area of the peace sign. It didn’t take much for them to see that the peace sign was made up of three rectangle and two (approximate) triangles. We hadn’t talked about triangles yet, so this was the perfect lead in to teaching that. Here are a few pages of the flip chart we’ve developed so far:

Throughout, I’ve been emphasizing using the formulas, explaining to the class that this is the beginning of algebra. When they get a solution correct, I bow down and say something silly like, “Oh wise one, you are the master of algebra.” I started to notice a slight change in Sammy as we worked with the formulas over and over. Like the rest of the class, he seemed to be seeing the simple elegance of formulas – plug in the numbers and they work every time. Toward the end of the week as we checked over some work on our peace garden measurements, Sammy declared, “Ya know, this algebra is actually kinda fun.”

Up. Way up.

Broken Promises

My last post was a week ago. It was about the first day of school – which was a week before that. I had really hoped to write a post every few days so that my observations and ideas would be fresh in my mind. Now I can see that that may not happen. Life interferes with reflecting on life.

Sometimes our best laid plans are thwarted by circumstances beyond our control. Before school started, I had ordered subscriptions to Acellus Math and HeyMath to try with the Mad Math class, but had received nothing telling me how to access our accounts. Turns out my order had never been placed because the department secretary was uncertain as to whether the order went through her or our tech director. I had set up a classroom Ning, but couldn’t invite the students to join it because they don’t yet have school email addresses. I was assured both problems would be solved soon. Oh, and the books I ordered because my class wants me to teach math through reading won’t be in for a couple of weeks. No worries. I have many more tricks up my sleeve.

I was feeling pretty good after the first full week of school. The students had chosen a name for the class (41st Millennium Math – that’s when the game Warhammer, which several of them are into, takes place.) We had discussed their interests and how we could teach math through their interests. On Thursday and Friday, we did a little bit of placement testing to determine what they know already, and we assessed their calculator skills. I also let them experiment a bit with Lure of the Labyrinth to see if they liked it, and happily they all really enjoyed it, although we had to ask them not to play again until I got the class account set up. I told them Monday would be our first “My Interest Monday.” They could bring in something of interest to them, and we would try to figure out how to teach the requisite math through their interests.

Monday morning rolled around and we had a really excited group of kids on our hands. They couldn’t wait to tell us and each other about what they had brought in. One student brought in materials to make friendship bracelets; another brought materials to make origami kimonos. We finally got to see what the Warhammer game looked like. My teaching assistant and I went from child to child as they talked about their interests and we thought about and tried to talk about the math involved in their interests. My teaching assistant proved exceptionally skilled at seeing the math in these varied activities: patterns and angles in friendship bracelets, geometry and proportions in kimonos. At one point I stood back and looked at the whole class: every student was more engaged than I have ever seen them. They were all talking, smiling, laughing, sharing and actively doing something. But were they learning any math?

We cut it off after about half an hour to switch to a new activity. Their placement test had told me that they were fairly strong in the basic geometry of rectangles and I wanted to build on that. You know, start with something they felt confident of and expand on that. So for the rest of the day, we reviewed area and perimeter of rectangles using real objects, then moving to pencil and paper tasks. The next day, we began with circle vocabulary, and did an activity where the kids used string to measure circumference and diameter of various circular objects to discover the relationship. They quickly recognized this as Pi. And from there we taught the formulas for solving for circumference and diameter when the other is known.

It all seemed to be going along fine. It took a bit for them to get comfortable with choosing and applying the correct formula, but they were starting to get it. Yet, as I taught, I watched one of my students, we’ll call him Sammy, slowly begin to disengage. By the end of class, Sammy was slumped over with his head was on his desk the way he had been pretty much every time I had walked into this class last year.

When class was over, I asked Sammy to stay and talk to me. When the others had left, I told him what I’d observed and asked if something was bothering him. “You promised this class was going to be different and it’s exactly the same.” Ouch. I tried to defend myself – reminding him of My Interest Monday (“It’s only one day and it’s not even the whole period”) and Lure of the Labyrinth (“We were only allowed to play it once”) – but there was no defense. Two weeks into school and I’d already broken my promise to them.

One of the things I love about teaching is the endless opportunities to improve your practice. If a lesson goes badly, you figure out how to teach it better next time. If you have a bad day, you can make the next one better. Even if you have a bad year, the next year can be completely different. In teaching, there are “do-overs.”

So the next day, I told the class what Sammy had said to me. And I told them he was right. But I also told them all the things I am trying to put in place for them and renewed my promise to make this class different for them. I reminded them that I too am learning.

I better get this do-over right.

A New Beginning

So, here we go! We had our first half day in mad math class last Monday. It’s my first period class, so we had the usual advisory stuff to get out of the way. Advisory is whatever 1st period class you have in my building.

Then I began to talk about math class. Usually I give all of my classes a course overview handout the first day. Not for this crew. Instead I projected the “Overview” on my brand new Promethean Board telling the students I didn’t want to waste paper. Here’s what it said:

Welcome to ???????? Math

What You Need
You tell me.

What We Will Learn
Here I inserted a link to the state standards and showed them the list.

How You Will Learn It
Beats me.

So they got through the “What You Need” pretty easily: they figured out I wanted them to tell me what supplies you need for a typical math class. They, of course, had the look of shock and awe when I actually showed them the state standards and told them this is what they are expected to know by the time they graduate 8th grade. And, as I expected, I got blank stares when I said, “Beats me” to how you will learn it. They were confused and caught off guard, as I had hoped. I hope to change things.

Then I handed each of them a blank piece of paper and said, “You tell me how you’ll learn it. Your homework for tonight is to design your ideal math class. Draw what it will look like. Tell me how you will learn.” I gave them a few examples of things they might include, but not too many, because I wanted this to be their thinking. Oh, and I also told them that it was ?????? Math because I hate that their schedules say “Resource Math.” What a ridiculous name for a class. Their other homework assignment was to come up with a new name for our class.

I thought I’d done a reasonable job of convincing them (in less than 20 minutes) that this class would be different. This year would be different. Maybe not.

I was sitting in a meeting that afternoon when the principal came to the door and motioned me out. She told me she had received phone calls from a couple of parents who didn’t want their kids in my advisory. It wasn’t that they didn’t want them to be in my math class, just not my 1st period math class with only five students in advisory. (I understand this: The way our building’s schedule works, the only time a multi-grade class can take place is 1st period. So, since 6th grade, these students have been stuck together in an advisory of 4-6 students of different grade levels.) The principal and I agreed that the schedule being what it is, there isn’t any alternative, and she agreed to contact the parents.

Yet, on Tuesday morning, everyone showed their drawings and described their ideal math class. I shared, in 8th grade terms, some of what I discussed in my second post. Then I gave the students a blank piece of butcher paper and some markers and told them to work together to construct their ideal math class. BUT NO TALKING. They could use gestures, notes and pantomimes, but no spoken words. (I did this because I know some of the students are more vocal about their ideas than others. It levels the playing field a bit.) My teaching associate and I did the same.

It seemed even my teaching associate, who has worked with these students since 4th grade, was pleased with the result. Somehow the need to develop “group-think” – without words – allowed for shared voice and cooperation. It was a delight to watch them motioning, gesturing and as a last resort writing notes to each other to get their ideas across.

Here’s what they told us through their drawings: We like to read. We want to learn math through reading. We like hands-on activities. We enjoy playing Warhammer, making friendship bracelets and/or designing kimonos. We want different places in the class for doing different things. We learn by doing. We need to feel comfortable and safe doing math (my interpretation of their desire for bean bag chairs in the classroom.)

Well…alrighty then! I have never taught math through reading and I have no idea what Warhammer is. But this is what my students are telling me, so I guess I’ll go find out.

A Bit More on…Don’t Run a Class Like a Caveman

It is astounding how quickly the world is changing right now. The 8th graders I will teach this year were born the year I began teaching at my current school. I remember when I was applying for my job, I was surprised and pleased to discover the district had a web page on the internet. There wasn’t much more there than a description of the district, but most schools didn’t even have that. Now, of course, every teacher maintains a web page on the district’s site. Back then, I was happy our district subscribed to books on tape for students who needed them, even though the machines to play them were huge and clunky and playing the tapes was so complicated and cumbersome that many students opted out of using them. Now these same students can access their texts online and have anything online read to them using services like VozMe and WordTalk. In my students’ lifetimes, the way we  teach, learn and track progress have changed significantly. It’s work to keep up. Here are some things I’m thinking of trying.

Online Resources for Teaching Math

Acellus – Acellus is a subscription service that provides students with interactive lessons taught by experienced teachers. Students can work at their own pace, replay all or part of the lesson, and practice. I haven’t used it yet, but I think some of my kiddos will find the self-directed and self-paced nature of this product appealing.

Real World Math Using Google Earth is a website that provides “lesson ideas, examples, and downloads for mathematics that embrace active learning, constructivism, and project-based learning” using Google Earth. (Thanks to Wes Fryer for this suggesting this one.)

HeyMath “is an E-Learning program that provides concept clarification visually through animated explanations.” Teachers demonstrate the lessons – students complete them at home. It seems like it would be way more fun than traditional homework. The teacher can track the students’ progress though the lessons.

zefty is a website for teaching children about money management. If the students are interested, we can set up virtual bank accounts and they can earn “money” for things like completing lessons and assignments. They can save up to “buy” something they want – a virtual car or Game Boy system. Since it’s all virtual – they can dream as big as they want.

Online Resources for Learning and Practicing Math

Lure of the Labyrinth is a digital game for middle-school pre-algebra students. It includes a wealth of intriguing math-based puzzles wrapped into an exciting narrative game in which students work to find their lost pet – and save the world from monsters! Linked to both national and state mathematics standards, the game gives students a chance to actually think like mathematicians.

MathsFile This site is no longer being updated so I don’t know how long it will be around. It does have a ton of cool activities and games I think my students will enjoy.

Interactivate “is a set of free, online courseware for exploration in science and mathematics. It is comprised of activities, lessons, and discussions” according to the description of the site. More activities for them to explore.

NumberNut also has math lessons and activities that go with them. There is  lot of reading on this one, and the activities aren’t as fun and engaging, but I may have a student who prefers this over the others.

Online Resources for Tracking Progress

BrainHoney tracks grades and monitors progress against state standards. We will be using it to choose which standards we are addressing with various activities and to give students some ownership of what they will learn and how they will learn it. Students will track their progress toward the standards with their BrainHoney accounts.

We will also be setting up a class Ning. It’s not set up yet, because we want the students to design it, but it might look something like this test Ning I am going to show them. Each student will have their own blog on the Ning to reflect on what they are learning. We can use the discussion forum to pose questions for them to solve together.

I’d love to hear your experiences with any of these resources, as well as what you use and what works for you.

To Be Transparent or Not To Be

What I really want to do right now is find a new word for “transparent”. When people first started to use the word to mean that their actions would be displayed for all to see, I’ll admit, I liked the usage. But quite quickly the word became so overused that now it’s just another buzzword and I am bored with it. However, we all understand its new connotation so I’ll stick with it for the time-being.

The question I’m currently pondering is this: How transparent is transparent enough? Specifically, how transparent should I be with this blog?

No question, this blog is out there for all to see. I’m not hiding anything. I could write this thing, leave it public, but not advertise its presence to my administration, colleagues, parents and students. I think that is what lots of teachers do. But is that really transparent? I don’t think so.

I am weighing risks here. I love my job and my students and I want to stay where I am teaching for a long time. I also want to expose my teaching practices to public view because I know I have much to learn and gain from others, and I hope I will have insights to share. But there are risks involved.

Do I tell my students I am blogging about their class? Obviously I won’t be using their real names, but I bet if they read what I write they’ll be able to identify themselves. They may worry about other students finding out about it and recognizing them. What 8th grader wants that exposure? Yet if I don’t tell them about it, I think it could lead to a major violation of trust.

Do I tell the parents of the students in the class? I’ve already talked with a couple of them about how I plan to organize the class and they are supportive. They understand that their students don’t learn in a traditional way. But I could easily see a parent in this small, very well-to-do district complaining to me or the administration about their child’s business being made public. Everyone knows everyone here and parents may be concerned about their child’s class being discussed in a public forum. Again, I know I can be discreet enough to protect individual identities, but parents may worry, nonetheless.

I am not using my district web site for this blog, but obviously I will be writing about my work within the district. Should I tell my administration I am blogging about my class? If I do, I run the risk of them telling me to take it down. I realize legally they probably couldn’t make me do that, but if they told me to I would. As I said, I love my job, and I won’t do anything to jeopardize it. If I don’t tell them and they find out (which they likely will), is that worse?

My inclination is to be utterly open and tell students, parents, colleagues and administrators that I am writing in this space. Let the chips fall where they may, and I’ll deal with the ramifications of that decision as they come. But I worry, too. So tell me what you think. And if you have any personal experience with this kind of thing — positive or negative — please tell me about  that as well.

Now Where Do We Go?

Please note: I am writing this post with only one (half-)decent eye – I am between cataract surgeries and not seeing well at all. Please excuse any typographical or grammatical errors I have missed.

In my first post, I introduced readers to my class and my challenge as a teacher. I have spent a good deal of my summer reading, talking to colleagues, exploring resources, and pondering the best approaches to take with this crew. Based on what I have learned so far, these will be the guiding principles on how life and learning will take place in the Mad Math classroom:

1. Be Learner in Chief
2. Tap Interest, Choice and Ownership
3. Remember the Standards Are the Standards
4. …But Toss the Textbook
5. Take Ira’s Advice
6. Make it Real
7. Don’t Run a Class Like a Caveman (or Woman)
8. Listen

I will elaborate a bit on each:

Be Learner in Chief
I think I first heard Will Richardson use this term, and I must make it apply to myself this year. I will be very clear with my students that, while I am still their teacher, I will also be learning right along with them. They will be helping me learn to be a better teacher. If I want my students to be open to learning, I must be open to learn myself and be a role model for them.

Tap Student Interest, Choice and Ownership
Interest, choice and ownership are important when it comes to engaging any student. When working with students who have not been successful learning the standard curriculum in the general education classroom, interest, choice and ownership are even more essential. The students I teach often feel no connection to what they are being taught, and often have no personal investment in it. It’s irrelevant to them and what they know and want to know. They go through their school days with no say about what they are learning or how they learn it. As a result, they are disengaged and utterly passive and I have to find a way to change that.

So I will work to discover students’ interests and find ways to teach math skills through their interests. I know one student is interested in sewing and fashion design. Surely I can teach estimation, fractions, measurement, pattern recognition, as well as some geometry through those interests. Several of these students are big nature-lovers. I should be able to work with that, too.

I will give them choices about how they learn the material and own their own learning. We will have a variety of options for learning new material, including individualized instruction, group work, interactive video games, video lessons (via Teacher Tube, Acellus, etc), and anything else we come across to help them learn the content. They will monitor their own progress at BrainHoney.com.

The class will develop its own rules. The goals of the class can’t change (see next section), but how we get there is up to the class. It’s OUR class, not my class (let go you controlling teacher you, let go).

Remember the Standards Are the Standards
This is the part I can’t budge on. I am paid by my district to teach students certain things. We are OCD about test scores in my school because there is an expectation that we will be tops in the state. While these students are behind and everyone knows it, the expectation remains that they will be making progress toward the Illinois Learning Standards for Mathematics. I don’t think anyone will object to anything I try … so long as the students are learning what they are supposed to learn and can demonstrate it on a standardized test. In other words: I can change the way I deliver the content but I can’t change the content. I can use alternative assessments all I want, but the kids had better be able to show what they’ve learned on a standardized test or I will hear about it from my administration. (An aside: we just went through a curriculum adoption for math. This class was never mentioned – not once. New textbooks were adopted for every other math class (including the Pre-Algebra class I co-teach), with the understanding that the teachers will teach using those textbooks. The special education teacher who teaches this class – i.e. my 7th grade counterpart last year, moi this year – is expected to decide on the textbook and all other teaching materials.)

…But Toss the Textbook
Okay, okay, relax, dear principal, I don’t mean to say we will never crack the textbook. Of course we will. But we will use the textbook as a resource to reinforce what we are learning, as a reference tool when students need it, and occasionally to hold open the door of the classroom when our doorstop disappears. We will not follow the textbook as our curriculum guide or the primary source of instruction. I’m sorry; it’s been tried with these kids and it hasn’t worked.

Take Ira’s Advice
When I first started hearing about these students from their 7th grade teachers, I asked my professional learning network on Twitter for advice on how to approach this class. They gave me good, generous advice, resources and ideas. But nobody was more generous than Ira Socol (a trusted mentor and colleague, one of the handful of folks who have become true friends through Twitter, although I’ve never met most of them). Ira wrote a post on his blog about how to teach math to non-traditional learners (he speaks from personal experience as a non-traditional learner). You will see much of Ira’s advice incorporated here. If you are an educator, you should subscribe to Ira’s blog.

Make it Real
Ira’s main advice to me – and I’ve heard this from many others – is to “get them out of school.” What he means by this, I think, is to stop trying to teach them math in the abstract. The work we are doing needs to be real and meaningful to them. And I don’t mean “real world” as in taken from a book of projects and activities based on the real world. I mean things that are important and relevant to them: money, sports, cars and bicycles, cooking. But also drawing from real world examples – population growth, average distance to school, calculating carbon footprints, batting averages – the list is as big as … well, the world! And literally going outside the classroom, going outside the school. We have several gardens around the school. There is so much math in a garden!

Don’t Run a Class Like a Caveman (or Woman)
We have evolved, people. My students have calculators, cell phones and computers at their constant disposal (yes, we have a 1:1 laptop initiative at my school) and I plan to make full use of these tools. Why would I continue to try to teach them to tell analog time when they can look at their cell phones and know the time? Why continue to to teach them long division when they can do it on their calculator (on their cellphone!) We will explore online resources for learning math like Lure of the Labyrinth, HeyMath, MathsFile , and Interactivate. We will use the Internet to explore their interests, answer their questions, and find them far better teachers of mathematics than I.

And finally … I will Listen
I will listen to my students and hear what they are telling me about how they learn and what they want and need to know. I will listen to their parents and learn from the years of experience they have being their child’s most important teacher. And I will listen to you. If you have suggestions, ideas, criticisms, or even rants, I will listen. I am here to learn.