NCTM National Conference

I had the wonderful opportunity, thanks to the S2TLC grant, to attend the NCTM National Conference in Boston this past April. It was my first experience speaking at a conference, and while I initially had a hard time understanding my role in the process and why someone would want to come listen to us, I am very glad that I did it and felt that it went well. The crowd was comprised mostly of administrators and college professors that were implementing co-op programs at their own school and wanted to know the successes and struggles that we had as a group, and were looking for insight on how to better support the new teachers coming in.

My biggest piece of advice for them was to have a mentor program in place with continued communication after their service year. I continued to speak about my experience with Lorie, and how her forcing me into the teaching role from day one, with constant reflection, really helped shape who I am as a teacher today, and that without that I probably would have left my current school after one year. I learned so much from her that year, and while the work was burdensome at times, without it, I would not have been even close to prepared for what I dealt with at my current school for the first two years.

After our speaking was done I managed to go to 9 more presentations over the next few days. The highlight being a woman from Toronto who shared her curriculum for developing an in-class economic system, where students had defined jobs, with salaries, and were forced to rent their desks, pay for “life events”, host auctions, pay taxes, and so much more. She said she dedicated roughly 15 minutes each class to keep the system going throughout the year and said that the buy in from the students was always near 100%, and that they thoroughly enjoyed it. I would really like to implement this at my school and was thinking about integrating into a new curriculum that I will be teaching next year.

End of a Semester

The semester ended on December 17th and I’m really looking forward to break. With that said, I’ve been happy with the year so far. I see my students giving themselves more time to work through a difficult problem. I see them advocating for themselves more and speaking up when they have questions. I see them roaming around the room, relying on their peers for help and not just asking me. I see them genuinely interested at times and determined to improve their grades. While the grades are not important to me, it’s a solid step in the right direction and hopefully is a starting point for them to develop a desire to learn.

Because of all of these improvements compared to last year, I’m enjoying being at work more. I’m finding more time for myself, but also partaking in more after-school activities because I’m not completely drained at the end of the day. I’m throughly enjoying the time spent with my colleagues and quite a few of them have become some of my better friends out here in Colorado.

I am a little worried though that I am not pushing myself as much as I did last year. Since almost nothing worked last year I was constantly trying to find new ways to improve the classroom. I spent a lot of time searching for new lessons, trying new classroom configurations, reading more math related material, and spending a lot of time focusing on how to improve in all aspects of pedagogy.

This year it has been almost like “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” What concerns me with that though is that I know I have so many more places to improve and more ways to connect with the kids and that they may get sick of what’s going on in the classroom as well, but I haven’t been concerning myself with it as much since things are going well. They could also go better though, and I could find richer projects, reach out to the community more, contact more parents, develop a part of the curriculum that involves some sort of apprenticeship/work-related experience, but it hasn’t been as motivating to put in all that time and effort into to “fixing” something that is working. I guess I need to work on finding a balance.

Challenge Activities and Accountability

The students that I have are at least two years behind grade level according to their test scores and several of them have developed “learned helplessness” and/or self doubt in mathematics over the years. In order to combat this I’ve spent part of the year having them work on hands-on challenge activities that require them to work in pairs on difficult problem solving/engineering type projects. They seem to enjoy the ideas behind them a lot, but on the more difficult activities the turn out of finished projects has dipped significantly.

So far we have done an egg drop where they had to design a device out of (3) 4″ x 6″ notecards and 50 toothpicks that was capable of allowing an egg to drop from a height of 10 feet and survive. I had nearly 100% involvement on this project, and while only one group had their egg survive, I still felt that the project was a success due to the range of different ideas and the engagement level of the students.

After that we did another egg drop that had the kids design a shipping container for an egg that used recyclable and reusable materials and was as efficient as possible (small and light). The completion level for this project was still above 75% and the ingenuity for some of the projects was great.

After the shipping container things started to go downhill. The first two projects had a timeline of one week and then the students had 3 days to write a technical report about the whole process and the results. The third project required the students to build a mousetrap racecar. The students were allowed to use any materials that they wanted, but there were only three finished projects, and one of those three did not even work.

The fourth project was a cardboard chair, made entirely out of cardboard and glue and capable of supporting 200 pounds. One class only had 3 completed chairs out of 11 groups and the other class had 8 completed chairs out of 11 groups. The difference between those two classes is that the second class is more efficient with their actual algebra work so they get more time in school to work on their projects.

My goal for these projects is just for the students to come up with whatever ideas they can, whether they work or not and reflect on the learning process of the projects by writing technical reports. Right now I am hesitant to continue with these projects though because of the drop in participation and because of that there are many students failing that section of the class.

New year, new attitude, new ideas

I’m 5 weeks into school and so far the year has been great! There is a noticeable change in teacher and student attitudes, the schedule change appears to be working well, I’m using the second half of my time with students to emphasize problem solving skills through hands-on projects, and my classroom management is improving by the day.

One of my big downfalls from last year was my classroom management. I tried to develop an inquisitive learning environment without spending the time to develop the communication and perseverance skills needed to succeed in that environment. I introduced the curriculum, but the students that I had were already at least 2 years behind grade level and had a strong distaste for math, so asking them to think about the mathematics was a huge leap and the class fell apart early. Students would lash out about their own misunderstandings by making paper airplanes, cursing, leaving the room, talking constantly about anything but the math and/or flat out doing nothing. It made it extremely difficult for those students who were interested and as a result the growth was not made.

This year I spent the first two weeks doing nothing but team building activities. I changed the seating arrangements to have the desks in groups of 4 facing each other so the students were forced to check in with one another, and focused on lots of hands on activities for part of each class that did not directly deal with math, but focused on a lot of the practice standards such as communication, perseverance, and developing and trying new ideas. Since then, the amount of “math work” that is done in the class has increased drastically. Students feel comfortable moving around the room and talking to each other, asking questions and defending their own answers.

Another strategy that I am using to help develop the skills necessary to be a mathematician is using one of the periods for “Peak Performance” activities. Our schedule changed from block scheduling (4 – 90 minute classes) to 7 – 55 minute classes. However, my students are required to double up on math and have me back to back periods. We spend the first class building their mathematical toolbox and working on math concepts, and we use the majority of the second period to do hands-on activities such as designing and building a chair out of cardboard that is capable of holding 250 pounds, mousetrap race cars, balsa wood bridges, etc. The students really like these activities and they are supplemented with math questions that pertain to the content that we are currently covering. They are also required to write a technical report that include creating tables, drawn to scale pictures of their creations, and reflection pieces.

Shark Tank

I decided to have the students do a longer project as part of their final for this semester. I tried to recreate the show Shark Tank which has entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a team of investors, who ultimately decide whether they are going to invest in their company or not.

The project has them focusing on linear and exponential equations, mathematical modeling, systems of equations, areas, and critiquing reasoning of others, as well as gaining basic computer skills such as properly using search engines, email, locating appropriate information, and using Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Prezi, and other presentation formats.

The students had a fun time coming up with their ideas and researching what they would need to get their businesses up and running, but I’ve noticed a few things that I can definitely do better the second time around. One would be to limit the option to just coming up with an invention or one unique idea. Many students wanted to set up clothing boutiques, shoe stores, sporting goods stores, etc. The issue they were encountering with these ideas was identifying their revenues. It ended up relying far too heavily on consumer research and guessing sales which added confusion to their equations and they needed far more support than those focusing on one item.

Another strategy that I would use going forward is to introduce the math for each part a little more clearly with an opener and then close with an exit ticket to see if they are making the connections from the real life applications to the more traditional applications. Many of the students were more than capable of doing the math when I would talk with them one on one but they did not realize that what they were saying had many mathematical applications, so I think I need to strive help them make that connection going forward.

With all that said I have been pretty happy with the engagement with the project so far. I have had several students who have done very little all year, really grab the bull by the horns and lead by example with this project and even taken on a teaching role. There are still certainly students that are performing far below what I would like and far below what they are capable of, and I am not sure if that is just to be expected from project to project, or if that is the school culture, or if it’s the end of the year and they’ve given up, or a combination of all three.

Northeast Regional Noyce Conference

I just finished attending the Northeast regional Noyce conference in Philadelphia and I left with some great resources and some great ideas that I hope to implement in my classroom. The highlight of the trip was definitely the session led by Pennsylvania’s teacher of the year Ryan Devlin. His speech focused on using great, free, online resources in his classroom and how those resources help trigger interest, creativity, and a thirst for learning amongst his students. His list of resources can be found on his pinterest page: http://pinterest.com/rydev22/

Ryan also stressed the importance of thinking differently about education and to really push past the boundaries of a traditional classroom setting. Hearing him speak and provide examples of how innovative he is on a daily basis really helped reinforce my own beliefs about school and has inspired me to put into action some of the ideas that I have been flirting with for a while.

I really want to run my algebra classroom using a well-rounded curriculum that looks past the math and has the students use their own creativity to create projects and enhance their understanding of how they use math on a daily basis without even realizing it. At my school there is such a fear of math and even if the students are more than capable of being successful with the material, they are still too afraid to even try. That is why I want to “hide” the math in a project setting. The one that I really want to try is based off of a Zombie Apocalypse. I want the students to take a week and research different diseases and how disease spreads, how cures are developed, etc. We will then use that knowledge to assess a new disease that is infecting people with the zombie virus. The students will have to calculate the rates at which the disease is spreading and then choose from potential medicines that slow down and eventually eradicate the disease. They can present their material through comic strips, videos, music, whatever they want. Through this type of project they will develop skills in presenting, computers, art, design, and hopefully gain a deeper understanding of functions, rates, systems of equations, graphing, and pattern recognition. Most importantly I think it could spark some interest in learning and really get the students to buy into the idea that they can succeed in school.

Some other ideas that I am working on are:

Recreating the show Shark Tank, where the students will come up with their own product to market and sell and they have to pitch it to angel investors and focus on the financial side of the business. This will also hit the majority of the standards that are focused on in 9th grade algebra.

Investing in the stock market given a certain amount of money.

Remodeling a home on a budget

Financing college, housing, food, etc.