In early December, I found out that my submission had been selected as the winner of the 2019 Rosenthal Prize for Inspiration and Innovation in Math Teaching. At the time, I had zero reference point to understand what that meant, but have since experienced first hand the hospitality of the international math education community. This post is not a summary of the winning submission; that detailed lesson plan has been posted on the MoMath website. [UPDATE April 2021: Rachel Welbourn a gracieusement traduit les documents de la tâche en français.] Here, I want to take the time to reflect aloud on how this whole thing happened–a process, I think, might be of value for math teachers. I’ve attempted to distill my take-aways into four categories, but, in actuality, they still exist (for me) as a tangled heap composed of equal parts disbelief, gratitude, and empowerment to pursue the next challenge.
Category: reflection
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Thirteen Days
A huge piece of my identity is invested in being a mathematics teacher.1 This week I began a new and interesting challenge as a university faculty member preparing pre-service elementary and secondary mathematics teachers. This provides me more time to think deeply and openly about the entirety of the mathematics education enterprise, and put some of those ideas into public circulation through speaking and writing opportunities. I am really looking forward to that.
It also means that I am charged with orchestrating the formative experiences with mathematics teaching for about half of my province’s new teachers. That fact is terrifying. I am given just thirteen days in each course with which to shape the impressions, experiences, and ambitions of the future teachers of my province, city, school division, and (quite possibly) my own children. Thirteen days.
Everyone knows that you can’t wish for more wishes, but no one says you can’t wish for more genies.
According to the binding rules of genies (as published by Disney in the 1992 film, Aladdin), there are a few restrictions on what can and cannot be wished for. Probably the most famous restriction is that there is unequivocally no circumstance in which one is permitted to wish for more wishes. This is grouped with three other limitations stating that genies will not kill people, make people fall in love, or revive people from the dead. Other than that, the wishes are limited only by the imagination of the master.
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Second-hand Student-ing
Billy: “Banting, I have a question for you.”
It was 5-minute break between classes and I was trying to reset the random seating plan, open up the electronic attendance system, and load the image that would serve as a starter for the day’s lesson. During this small window of time, questions are usually about missing binders, requests for future work due to mid-semester holiday plans, or updates on my ever-present pile of grading. In short, I usually do not want to deal with them. Begrudgingly, I obliged.
Billy: “I need a piece of paper and a pen”
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Real-World: An Attack on “Relevance”
**deep breath**
Last week, I caught myself saying something to a pre-service teacher as we planned a Grade 1 lesson for the making of 10s. I asked her,
“Why would the students need to know how to make up 10s?”
When she was auspiciously silent, I filled the space with a statement said entirely tongue-in-cheek. It was only upon reflection, that I kicked myself for not being able to shut up and allow her to think. I said,
“…because my job is to convince teenagers they need logarithms, and that is much more difficult.”
Background:
On June 15th, my Grade 9 class and I hosted our second annual math fair. What started out as a small idea has grown into a capstone event of their semester. This year, we had 330 elementary school students visit our building to take part in the fair’s activities. Several people (following the hashtag #TDCMathFair2016) commented that they would like to do similar things with their student transitions. This post details the rationale behind the event, how we structured it, what stations we had, and feedback/advice from our exploits.
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Mathematics Is: Student Impressions
I have taught the second half of a Math 9 Enriched course for the last three years. The students generally finish two-thirds of the curricular outcomes during the first semester (with an different teacher). This alleviates the perpetual nemesis of time, and leaves me with no excuse to stretch the boundaries of what is possible in a classroom.
I spend most of the time developing a classroom ecology focused around conjecture, community, and curiosity. The result is a constant focus on problem shaping, solving, and re-posing.
At the end of the semester, I ask students to respond to a simple prompt. They have ten minutes to answer:
What is Mathematics?
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Classroom Clean-Up
No more students for this year. I’ve spent a full day cleaning up and re-arranging my space for my incoming intern (for whom I’m very excited for).
Amidst the broken calculators and stray linking cubes, I found a note that a student wrote me from my first year of teaching. It served as a brief reminder of why I attempt to curate a community of mathematical action with my students. It isn’t the easiest way to teach, but has a limitless ceiling.
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Math Wars North
O Canada!
The debate about best practice in Canadian math education has exploded once again. This time attracting high profile combatants.
This post is not meant to resolve deep-seated values, but rather provide a perspective that gets lost in the partisan arguments. It wouldn’t take a long time to place me in a camp, but that would be assuming that there are two camps that want drastically different things.
Twenty-fifteen will be the fifth year that my little corner of the blogosphere has been dedicated to digitally curating my own thoughts and experiences regarding the teaching and learning of mathematics. It represents a wide array of posts regarding a wide array of topics. Much has changed from new teacher status to graduate student, and the posts reflect that. Still, the heart of its posts and pages is pragmatic: I write about classroom events that seem to matter (for some reason or another, they catch my attention) in hopes that other teachers might find the same phenomenon.
I am going to call these episodes: bloggable moments.