Teaching Involves Engagement, not Entertainment

Someone said something at a meeting I was at yesterday that was so succinct, and was something I have always believed in, but have never thought to put it this way; "Teaching is engagement not entertainment". Sometimes when a sentence comprises only the important words it has much more impact.

This idea is particularly true in math education where we have, perhaps, been more guilty of entertaining children with manipulative materials and math games at the expense of engagement. The concept of engagement in learning means that the learner is actively, cognitively involved with the material to be learned. Something is happening to their thinking that is changing the way they think for ever; the permanent development of a concept, skill or disposition.

The difference between engagement and entertainment is not as clear or as easy to define as one might think. Here's a list of the perceived differences by Robyn  Jackson, president of ASCDedge .
There is clearly an interplay between the things listed in each column. And here's a list of myths by the same author.

Probably the place where the distinction becomes the most critical in the classroom is with the use of technology especially when games, activities or the internet are being used. Here's an attempt to differentiate between the two in relation to the use of technology in the classroom.

Finally, it looks like we won't have to worry about whether our students are engaged or not in the classrooms of the future. Students will all be wearing headsets like the students in this research project at Washington State University . This device will be developed to include a red light attached to the top of the headset. When the student is engaged with the topic under consideration the red light will come on and stay lit until the student becomes disengaged. The task of the teacher will be to make sure all the red lights are on, and remain on, for all 30 students in the class. Each head set will contain a device for calculating the percentage of time the red light has remained on for each student. The data collected each month  will be used to evaluate teachers. Yes, it's time to retire.

Here's something interesting I came across recently; Bloom's Digital Taxonomy !

Maths Gets a Bad Rap

I've spent my entire professional career trying to bring math to life for my students; to make it meaningful, personally significant, interesting and even inspiring. I like to think that those students and teachers I have worked with have seen the light to some extent or another and have gone on to share with others the wonderful sense of accomplishment one gets from understanding and remembering anything mathematical.

Sadly, it's been an uphill battle primarily because of how our culture in general sees maths. I am an avid crossword puzzler and have lost count of the number of clues than denigrate maths. Clues like "division word" (into) are fairly harmless but then there are some that are completely wrong like the clue "Number indivisible by two". The answer is "odd" but it is so mathematically incorrect as to create the false impression that you cannot divide any odd number by 2. To make it accurate it should be "Number indivisible by two giving a whole number" or something similar. Every number is divisible by 2.

But probably more troubling is the clue in a crossword puzzle I completed a few days ago: "Member of  the math club probably". The troubling answer was "nerd" which is indicative of how people in general  tend to see people who are interested in math.THIS IS SO COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
As long as we hold on to this view of math as being calculations, arithmetic and tedium nothing is ever going to change. Only when people start to embrace the beauty of fractal relationships, number patterns such as Fibonacci and Lucas numbers as well as the joys of geometric thinking will there be any change in the way we approach maths. I fear this will not happen in my lifetime, if ever,

I've been at meetings where. when the topic of math was raised, there was, sadly, an audible groan.

Common Core Math Constantly Misinterpreted

The Common Core Maths Standards must be one of the least read and most criticized documents in the history of mankind. There are myriad websites devoted to its downfall and repeal; politicians calling for it's removal and parents posting ill-informed emotional sabotage videos such as this one on the People's Voice FB. The person in the video even uses the term "new math" to connect the Common Core Math Standards with the "New Math" debacle  of the 1970s, something that has been done with great success during the past 50 years to stop progress in math education.

The saddest thing of all is that the person who made this video almost certainly has not read the Common Core Math Standards. If she had done she would have read in the fourth grade Number and Operations in Base Ten standard the following;

        4. Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm. 
             (Grade 4 NBT)

Again, in Grade 5, she would have read

        5. Fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm. 
            (Grade 5, NBT) 

And in grade 6

        2. Fluently divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.  
           (Grade 6, NS) 

The strategy that she so eloquently illustrates is just a step on the ladder to helping students

understand what the algorithm is all about.The algorithms are so much easier to remember and apply 

in appropriate places when students understand what they are doing. 


It's all here in black and white in the Common Core Standards document. All you have to do is open

the link, read it and try to understand what most of us learned by rote, without any understanding 

when we were in elementary school. The example shown in the video is an exercise a student might

do to develop understanding of the standard algorithm.


ps The picture above is a classic example of the misrepresentation of the Common Core Math 

      Standards.


   

Cheating Watches and Calculators

Just when you thought you'd seen it all something new comes along. This is almost beyond my comprehension because they are actually marketed on Amazon as "cheating watches".

Anyone who gives in-class tests will now need to monitor student's wrists to see if they are wearing one of these cunningly designed cheating devices. They even have "panic buttons" that can be pressed to reveal a regular watch face that shows the time.

The deeper significance of this whole scheme is the way the popular culture  now views education primarily as achievement, success and failure. It seems that success, as measured by tests is the goal of education regardless of whether students are learning anything. The ability to succeed on tests is more a function of  the ability to memorize or retain specific information than it is about meaningful learning.  Here's what you can get on Amazon so that you can cheat your way to an A grade. There are even cheating calculators for sale as well as watches.

There's a neat story in the Atlantic, When Success Leads to Failure  that highlights a teacher's dilemma when she realizes a friends daughter has lost the love of learning because she is so focused on test and exam results, and grades.

The bottom line is that if you cheat on an exam you might get a good grade but you will certainly not have learned the information well enough to use it to your advantage later in life. Your temporary success will lead, in the long run, to failure  

The American Dream

In the midst of this strange, and at times, somewhat scary election the idea of the American Dream is frequently raised by a politician keen to remind people that things could be better if you vote for him, or for  her.

An old college friend from England asked the question on Facebook this morning; "So  what is the American Dream?". I didn't have to think long about what it is for me, and probably for many thousands of other immigrants to this country. The American dream is opportunity; the opportunity to fulfill one's life ambitions through hard work and perseverance. And with opportunity comes hope and the belief that things can be better.

Growing up in England in the 50s, 60s and 70s one's life was pretty much mapped out by the time you left high school. If you passed what were called 'O' level exams at 16 you got to stay on in high school and take 'A' level exams at 18. If you got really good grades in these 'A' level exams you got the opportunity to go to University. I think it was less than 8% of the population got this opportunity at the time.

My 'A' level grades weren't good enough to get to University so I became an apprentice surveyor. At the same time I was playing field hockey for a mixed team of men and women at the weekends and it turned out most of them were teachers. They seemed like a really fun bunch and so I decided to enroll at a teacher training college, where my 'A'level results were good enough, to become a teacher. Four years later I graduated with a bachelors degree in education and started teaching a fourth grade class at a primary school in Bristol, England. A couple of years later in 1974 I was also  invited back to the college as a Resident Adviser which is where I met the exchange students from the University of Illinois.

At the time I had progressed as far as I could through the teaching profession; the next step being a headmaster (school principal) which I knew I did not want to do. The other career path was to be a college professor and teach other people all about the wonders of teaching. Unfortunately, my 'A' level results were still not good enough for me to pursue this avenue even though I now had a BEd degree. "So why not come to America and get your PhD at the University of Illinois" said one of the American professors who accompanied the US exchange students, "It's the land of opportunity" he continued. So I did. I took advantage of the opportunity to get my PhD in teacher education which then enabled me to become a professor in a teacher education program helping future teachers learn all about the wonders of teaching young children. The American Dream is opportunity.

Curiosity; the Acorn of Inquiry

Many years ago when I was a graduate student at the University if Illinois one of my professors, the renowned Dr. Lilian Katz, gave an in-class assignment in which we had to rank 26 characteristics of elementary school students. The task was to put them in order from most typical to least typical based on our experiences working with children in the K - 6 age range.

The most vivid and enduring memory from that activity is how differently different students ranked one particular characteristic; curiosity. Some of us ranked it as high as 1 or 2 while others ranked it as low as 24 or even last at 26. Being graduate students in an Education program all 20 or so of us had experience working with children so it wasn't as if we had randomly ranked the characteristics. Once we started discussing why we thought this had happened a remarkable pattern emerged. There was almost complete correlation between grade level experience and ranking of the curiosity characteristic. All the teachers who taught kindergarten or first grade ranked it 1, 2 or 3 while all those, like me, who taught fourth, fifth or sixth grade ranked it 24, 25 or 26. Second and third grade teachers ranked it somewhere in the middle. After a lively discussion we came to the somewhat depressing but probably true conclusion that our school system and our teaching do little to foster, or even maintain our students' curiosity about the world in which they live. They enter kindergarten with a total sense of curiosity about the world and by the time they get to 6th grade we've completely destroyed it and replaced it with the search for the right answer or doing things the right way, so to speak.

I was reminded of this experience yesterday as I watched my grandson, Lachlan, playing with different things. One of them was a set of colored, wooden stacking rings of different sizes. First he tipped them off the post and then put them back on in a random order. He then held the stack of rings close to his face and pulled them off one by one running them over his face and through his hair. He did it gently and carefully savoring the feel of each ring as it bumped over his nose and through his hair. He then dropped each ring behind his head and watched it roll across the floor. His curiosity about the things he plays with is inspiring. He wants to know, to find out, to learn and to discover the world around him. Later, he was eating a circular piece of provolone cheese by tearing it into strips. As he did so he was mesmerized by the way it came apart in  long, even  strips,  

And, quite amazingly, he does this all without standards, performance criteria, blended learning, grades or any of the other verbal paraphernalia we have designed in the name of learning and education.

  

A Son, an Uncle and a College Student

Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon I sit in my car on the south side of the campus quad at St. Michael's College and watch my son run across the grass on  his way to class on the north side of the quad. It doesn't matter if there is green grass showing or an inch or two of snow he always takes the same. most direct route always stopping at the same spot to retie a shoe lace. I sit and watch because I just want to share in his unbridled joy of attending a college class.

He's a student, a "sophomore" now, in Professor Doyle's class that meets in the Robotics lab. He absolutely loves the class and his fellow students and, of course, Professor Doyle. Taking classes at St. Mike's has added a major dimension to how he sees himself, to what he knows about the world as well as who he knows and socializes with.

Andrew is 23 and has Down Syndrome and is now a college student as he frequently tells me in his daily report to me of who and what he is. It always begins "I did hug Keith and Neil (two members of his favorite group, Celtic Thunder, whom he really did hug after their performance last year at the Flynn Theater in Burlington) and ends with "and I'm a college sophomore".

He takes from the class what is important to him. It's not a grade or a collection of assignments, papers or complex ideas. It's factual information about things that interest him related to the course content; facts he can recall at will in conversation and will always remember because he has a remarkable memory.  It's the interactions with his fellow class mates; listening to their stories, helping solve a robotics problem, feeling the joy of success when a project  finally works for his group.

But it's what he brings to the class that is, by all accounts, so wonderful; a boundless sense of optimism, an eternally positive outlook on life where there are no mountains too high or seas too wide. An individual challenge to each student in the class to look inside themselves and see who they really are, and then to grow in the knowledge that they have made a new friend, understood someone who thinks a little differently and, perhaps, overcome some assumptions.