Subjects Matter: Chapters 6 and 7. Math Team

           Chapters 6 and 7 of Subjects Matter reinforced the need for reading and comprehension strategies and then began to establish how having a community of learners can help our classrooms.  Some of the advice that stuck with me regarded how we, as the teachers, need to filter our textbooks.  There is no need for the students to read every word in a textbook and this is even advised against.  Reading every word would not engage any student, never mind help to foster a love for the content.  This is why it is very important that we know our textbooks inside and out.  Knowing exactly what is inside helps us to decide exactly what is most important for our classrooms.  This might not be the same for everyone, but with only 180 days at our disposal, its important to have an opinion on what are the central concepts of the course. 

Another great piece of advice is to know exactly what are on those “big tests”.  For now anyway, it is clear that what is tested by the standardized tests needs to come first.  We still have room to explore and supplement, and we absolutely should, but leaving out something that will be tested on in exchange for a fun activity could be disastrous.  One of our responsibilities in the current educational climate is to become masters of the standardized assessments.  This idea is actually very in line with UbD and backwards design.  If our students are going to be taking these tests, we should start by examining the assessment, and then craft our lessons based on what we know is on the test.  Planning this way allows for teachers to prepare students for the standardized tests while hopefully making an effort to craft interesting and engaging learning experiences.  Last summer I took a course on teaching Calculus with Dr. Humphreys, and she also stressed the importance of becoming an expert on the test we are preparing our students for.  The AP tests are very different from PARCC, but the lesson is still the same.  If I am not absolutely sure of what is going to be on the big test at the end of the year, how can I make sure my students are ready for it?

            I also really appreciated the shoutout to how math textbooks are very different from the rest in Chapter 6.  As I have been doing all the readings this semester, I keep thinking “But my math books are going to be so different, does this really apply? Or how can I change this so it does apply?” Reading this section just makes it even clearer that I need to really focus on these comprehension strategies to make the math textbook digestible for students.  Part of why students have such a hard time with them is definitely because how different they are from the rest of the textbooks!  Reading on their own, if a student does not understand a sentence somewhere along the line in their history book, they will probably still be ok.  They can still take away the main ideas from understanding everything else in the reading.  In math however, not understanding one sentence might handicap a student for that whole section, that whole unit, or depending on the sentence, the whole course.  This is a very serious matter and I need to do something that I did not expect I would be doing as a math teacher before this semester.  I need to arm myself with a full arsenal of reading and comprehension strategies and employ them every day.

            While reading Chapter 7, I was immediately reminded of an article I read last semester while “Catching the News” in Dr. Brell’s class.  “Teaching in the Shadow of the Ferguson Shooting” was written by Inda Schaenen and appeared on edweek.org last September 4^th.  In the article, Mrs. Schaenen explores all the difficulties she will face teaching her 8^th grade language arts class this year.  She knows that the children do not feel safe in their community.  Many of the students deal with the events in seemingly odd ways, even going so far as re-enacting Michael Brown’s shooting in the school.  What I really took away from reading this was that these children are not going to be able to learn until they feel safe again.  They have way too much on their minds and way too much to be worried about to focus on their notebooks, worksheets, and textbooks.  None of that matters to them when they are afraid. 

In Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you need each bottom layer to have the layer on top.  Without food and water, a person can not feel security and so on.  Bringing this ideology into the classroom, we see that "achieving one's full potential" is at the very top.  Before students can learn, they need to have the basic needs, feel safe at home and at school, and feel like they belong.  As teachers, we need to try our very best to making sure that all our students feel safe and included.  If a student feels like he or she really belongs in their math class then they will start to succeed.

            I really believe that a classroom community needs to come first and then learning comes second.  And when learning comes second, it is more efficient and more powerful.  Daniels and Zemelman back up this point saying “In schools where teachers explicitly taught the social skills of small-group interaction, the students gained an average of 11 percent on both their course grades and on high-stakes standardized tests given in their state.” (Pg. 203-204)  When students feel safe, then they can focus on all the other things.  When students aren’t worried about being made fun of, aren’t embarrassed to make a mistake, aren’t thinking about whether the bully will stop them in the hall today, that is when they can get excited about learning something new.  Something that I want to do with my classes and something that I think about a lot is turning my classrooms into teams.  I am still not even close to having a fully realized idea, but I know this is something that I will develop and I will put into practice.  I never want to really have a “class”.  “Class” can have a tendency to invoke an image of desks in rows, children working silently, and a teacher in command.  I want to have teams where the players learn together and understand the benefits of helping one another and working for a greater good.  I want to be the coach of this team.  Someone who knows the game of math and can help them execute all the strategies.  I hope that doing this will bring my students and myself closer together and create a space where cooperative learning can take place.