They Called Me a Murderer

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As I circulated around the room the lyrics from a Notorious B.I.G. song kept playing in my head, “Somebody got to die!”

That sounds harsh, but its my truth.  We couldn’t continue like this, its had gone on long enough.

No, this isn’t the beginning of my mystery novel, it’s actually my thoughts as I circulated watching my students engage in a Desk Hop activity.  I learned about Desk Hop from a blog I read several years ago, I wish I could cite it but I cannot remember the blog:-/.  At any rate, students went from desk to desk answering questions involving percent increase and percent decrease.  Some were fairly simple while others required a bit more reasoning.  However, the reasoning was stunted with one phrase.  One phrase that cause them all to stop thinking in their tracks and wave the white flag of surrender, paralyzed in their positions.  I can’t possible walk them through the thought process forever.  That’s when I devised a plan to get away with murder.

It was easy, I just did it.  I killed “I don’t get it”.  We had a funeral for it so that the kids would have time to mourn the lost of their old friend, which I referred to as their frenemy.  Many of them called me a murderer as they “wept loudly”.

Lucky for us “I don’t get it” is survived by “Here’s what I know… Here’s what I don’t know…”  As students became acquainted with their new friends they began to realized when they identified what they knew, developing a plan was easier than “I don’t get it” let off to be.

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Rest in peace “I don’t get it”.  I for one will not miss you!

I Must Be Okay…

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It’s impossible to fit everything in.  You would think by 15 years in this game I should be okay with this phenomenon.  Everyday, I try to summarize my lessons with some form of formative assessment: sticky bars, muddiest point, exit ticket, something.  But no matter my best intentions, these summarizing activities are just writings on the daily agenda and not actions conducted by my students.

Beating myself up during self reflection, I can’t understand why everything isn’t happening the way I plan?  In a perfect classroom, all my lessons play out exactly how I think through them in my mind.  In a perfect classroom, students will apply the strategies we’ve explored in new situations.

Today it hit me!  I have to be okay with not finishing.  Now, I’m not talking about not finishing a naked math worksheet or a bunch of Kuta worksheet word problems.  Those are meant to be used for just a portion of a class period, if at all.  I’m referring to rich tasks like the 3 act tasks we were working on today.  Tomorrow, I planned to do another task relating to percent increase and percent decrease.  But why is that necessary?  Why can’t I allow students to continue to make sense of the task before moving on?  The purpose of the tasks in to put students in problematic situation for which they can apply their reasoning and strategies to prove their estimations.  If students think the activity is fun, why not allow them to continue enjoying the mathematics in which they are engaged?

So what I planned for tomorrow will not be used in its entirety.  The Earth will not stop on its axis and the students won’t die from continuing the activity.  Learning will still occur, thinking will be completed and we will be closer to mastery than we were the previous day.  I’ll also have time to summarize the lesson.

I can’t be so tied to the plans I’ve entered into my calendar that it keeps me from productive teaching and learning, from following the lead of my students.

What’s More Important

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At the end of a unit, a decision must be made. As the teacher, you have the power to decide which mindset you want to encourage. Fixed mindset says this is the end of learning for Unit 1, show what you know and if you don’t know it too bad so sad. A growth mindset says, I know you may understand some concepts more than others. Learning is a process and you have until the end of this school year to master these standards.

I believe these mindsets are communicated to students through what we allow and disallow during the unit test/common assessments. So what did I allow for my first common assessment for my new students?

Our anchor charts we developed as a collaboration of 4 classes. Most math teachers have store bought posters hung in their classrooms. These posters remain up throughout the year and probably very rarely do students refer to them as a resource. Our anchor charts on the other hand are interactive and we refer back to them constantly throughout the learning process. And just as those store bought posters aren’t removed, our anchors are not removed during our unit tests.

I allowed students to ask me questions. Many I couldn’t answer such as, “do I multiply or divide for this question”. But for questions like, “I don’t understand what this question is asking me to do” were used as a teachable moment to apply the 3-Read Strategy to make sense of word problems. Questions like, “what’s a terminating decimal again” I answered because students were introduced to the term only a day before the test and I had yet to put it on the word wall. Here’s a note on word walls.

I helped kids use functions on the calculator. In 6th grade, students are only allowed to use 4 function calculators. Then in 7th grade, they are given TI-30s to use. And we all know the calculators don’t give correct answers if the user has incorrect thinking. So when they ended up with a SYNTAX ERROR message, I explained they had to use a different button from the subtraction symbol to input a negative number. When they tried entering a mixed number, I explained what buttons to push to get the template for mixed numbers.

I feel it’s important for students to have some success on their first assessment to help with math confidence. So on the 1st assessments , I go around checking over a few answers and encourage students to double check their thinking on those the answered incorrectly. In most cases, students have already applied some form of process of elimination and they end up with the correct answer. In other cases I can see their misconceptions even when the question is multiple choice. What I’ve found with using this method is in general students become a little more confident mathematically because of the overall success and they also become more prone to automatically review their answers before submitting their test.

And what I feel was the most important thing for them was, I asked, “is everyone doing okay?” Those that were pressed on. Those that weren’t looked up at me wide eyed and shook their heads no. Imagine the anxiety they were dealing with prior to my question.

At the end of our common assessment yesterday, I shared the class average with each class. We had a brief talk about how hard they’ve work over our two weeks together and how their hard work paid off. We discussed how our timeline for learning differed from the other math classes and how we will continue to work with the concepts to begin to commit them to memory.

I’m sure you have your own opinion about what was discussed within the post. And before you question what I’ve done, may I pose this question to you. What’s more important to you, politics and their rules of engagement or students and their overall mindset?

Catching My Breath

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How is it that we’re 6 weeks into the school year and this is my first time blogging?! It could be the fact we were out three days last week due to Hurricane Irma and the following two days were a whirlwind. Or the start of a personalized learning format has been taxing. I feel as though I haven’t been able to catch my breath.

My First Two Weeks

I wanted my Math Enrichment classes to be a place students wanted to come and learn math. I wanted it to be a place where they knew they had a voice and flexibility with a balance of structure. So we spent the first two weeks establishing our routines and procedures.

We had flexible seating in our classroom. Seats were assigned using playing cards. Students would enter the classroom, place their book bags near the door, find their seats and read the Daily Message. It worked well for us. Students never fought over who would sit where and they would have all materials needed for class before I was done greeting the last student.

Because students would work independent of my instruction, we needed clear expectations. What better way than for students to set the expectation for themselves. So each class participated in their own affinity map activity.

Each class had their own unique set of expectations in which they were held to during self guided work time. Of course I had to remind some that they in fact set the expectation they we currently not meeting. Ownership goes a long way.

The Work Began Week Three

We didn’t begin jumping into content until the 3rd week of school. The personalized learning curriculum developed for my course has 4 levels for each unit. I had all students begin at level 1.

Each day we were to complete self guided assignments, students would complete our goal setting form before diving into the assignments. At the end of the work session, students would complete a reflection form.

I was in a groove, and 5 weeks into the year, I was informed I was moving to 7th grade…

Being Black at TMC

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As an African American female, I often feel I have a heighten awareness of how I relate to the world around me. To be more specific, I have a conscious thought of the places I go, who I may encounter there and whether or not I have to enter said place with my guards up. Being an African American female in the south makes this awareness even more potent.

It's important to know that I grew up in the suburbs of southern Maryland with a diversity group of people, I never attended a predominately minority school nor did I attend a historically black college or university. With this said, I have been aware of my blackness and it's relationship to my world literally all my life.

I've made my own conclusion about life. One in particular relates to my attendance at Twitter Math Camp 2017. I concluded that by attending this conference, I'd be one of few black people there. This thought seemed very normal to me. As an educator, I've been in many professional learning sessions where I was the sole African American "representative" in the room. I've grown accustomed to it, making it my duty to represent my race and culture with dignity in those rooms.

So when I walked in the Dining Hall of Holy Innocent Episcopal School along with around 200 other participants, I wasn't surprised to see like 4 or 5 other brown skinned people. But that evening I received a DM from another participant which read, "Where are all the black people?"

In that moment, reading that message, I realized it wasn't my role to be the sole representative. It isn't supposed to be normal for me to be the only black face in the room. I had to ask myself some really hard questions. Jenise, what have you done to engage your African American counterparts in this forum? What message are you sending when you don't question why there aren't more African Americans in the room? And the toughest one, what's your role in this discussion?

Attending TMC was on my professional bucket list. I so desired to attend that I even wrote about it around this time last year in a Global Math Department article. When I shared this wish of attending with a good friend of mine, his response was, "To be honest Jenise, if you want to attend, you need to present." I immediately felt disappointed, with my first thought being, "I don't have anything to offer." But my desire to attend weighed so heavily upon me, I pulled up my big girl panties and submitted a proposal.

Fast forward to #TMC17, completely geeked up from the opportunity to learn from people I admire, I walked into something for which I was not prepared. Days leading to the conference, I received messages of encouragement from other #tmc17 participants when I expressed presentation gitters.

Walking into the Dining Hall, smiling faces greeted me and offers for seating invited me. Conversations were easy, many happening as if I were talking with an old friend I hadn't seen in a while.

To take things a step farther, opportunities for deep and vulnerable conversations about the art of teaching math occurred in multiple sessions. I found out quickly that I did have something to offer, and it was more than I expected.

Which brings me back to my tough questions. Could it be that many of my African American counterparts are not in these math communities because they've yet to be informed through a simple invitation? Is it because they feel they don't have anything to offer? Or do they feel our ways of teaching math are so drastically different that others wouldn't understand their perspective?

I don't have an answer to those questions. I know that #TMC17 has made me a better math educator with one conference. I can only imagine how I will continue to evolve as I attend more TMCs in the future. So I'm changing my #1tmcthing to speaking up and out about the underrepresentation of African American teachers in #tmc and #mtbos. Not speaking up as if these organization have purposely caused an injustice. But speaking up to inform, empower and educate African American teachers how to #pushsend and join the conversation. You have a lot to bring to the table and your voice deserves to be heard.

It’s All Becoming Real

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I blinked and pre-planning is next week!!  I’ve had a productive and relaxing summer, so no regrets (not even that 20 hour drive to Boston).  Now it’s time to put my game face on and head back to work.

Me

My game face!

I’ve setup  my classroom, for the most part.  I call it my cubby.

 

Just moving in
Just moving in (another angle)
Flexible seating arrangement
Accessible manipulatives

My lesson plans for the semester are uploaded.  T.I. said, “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.”

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This is T.I.   I don’t know him personally.

And thanks to @JoyKirr, I have selected activities to fill my agenda for the first 2 weeks of school!! Sidebar: I’ll see my classes every other day.

eCLASS Scavenger Hunt

Manipulatives Exploration

Procedures and Routines Nearpod

and More!

Sneak Peek

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Like most people in my profession, my summer has been laced with relaxation and preparation for the coming school year.  I made this short (10 minutes) video for my collaborators of a new curriculum we’re planning to try this school year.

Just a little background before you view the video.

  • I’ll be teaching 6-8 grade math enrichment.
  • My max class size will be 20 students.
  • I will have access to 20 computers daily.

Personalized Learning Screencast

I’m open to feedback and suggestions.