In my classroom, educating the whole child means that I am not only concerned about teaching my students math. Yes, I need to teach them the math, but I would say that isn't even my primary purpose. My purpose is to help my students become the best them they can be. That means that, as I'm teaching them the math, I'm also working on improving the self esteem of some students, I'm helping other students work on their listening skills, I'm helping them all become better collaborators. I encourage students to keep working when things get hard and I also encourage them to stick up for themselves when they face some sort of injustice.
In practice, this means that I give up class time to talk about what is going on in students' lives. How are sports going? Who got what part in the school play? What does everyone think of the new schedule? Sometimes these are whole class conversations and sometimes they are quiet conversations on the side. I also do my best to support students by showing up to their events and encouraging them to pursue their interests and passions. This class challenged me to examine what I am teaching and explore ways to make the content more real. I will continue to look for ways to make lessons more relevant and more experiential. There is a chance that I will be department chair next year and will have some influence over a new curriculum adoption. If that is the case, the first thing I will look for in a new curriculum is something that is more hands on and experiential than what we currently have.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a lot more students think they are digitally literate than actually are. Digital literacy isn't just the ability to use a bunch of apps or computer programs. To be digitally literate, one must have the ability to find information digitally, evaluate the merits of said information, and create content using a variety of methods.
It is the second part of that that many people struggle with. You can take a quick look at any social media platform and see that almost immediately. People are not good at evaluating sources and that includes our students. To help create good digital citizens we, as educators, must teach our students how to discern between good sources and bad and what to do when the quality of the information can't be determined. A person who is digitally literate is in a much better position to succeed in college and in a career. The ability to find and use information to create content will not only help students once they start college courses, it will also help as they apply for college. Many careers also require similar skills. In addition, our actions online leave a trail and the wrong trail can give a person the wrong kind of image which will make it more difficult to get into a college or find a good job. I am good at connecting with student, parents are a different story. I don't have a problem with parents, I'm just not good and creating those connection. As an introvert, they take a lot of effort and most of my social energy is usually gone by the end of the school day. However, I want to change that and I think that I can with a good plan.
The first thing I want to do is come up with a routine to establish regular communication with parents/guardians. I will start by sending messages to parents at the beginning of each new unit. In this communication, I will let parents know what we will be covering, provide support materials that parents/guardians can use to help their students, and encourage them to reach out to me if their student needs any additional support. There are many barriers that students experience that prevent college and career readiness. Some of the common barriers are financial, language, geography, and family situation. The financial and language barriers are similar to what exist in other districts. I want to focus on geography and family situations.
My school's district covers a wide geographic area. Some students travel over an hour to get to school. This makes it harder for those students to participate in after school activities and to take advantage of opportunities such as after school tutoring. At one time there was a late bus that would make it easier for these students to take advantage of more opportunities, but that has gone away as budgets have been slashed. In addition, many of the students who live further from the school also live in parts of the county that get more snow. Many times, the school will declare a "snow transportation day." What this effectively means is that the students who live "up country" miss a day of school. This has always frustrated me. It seems to me that it would be better to have a snow day if the school can't safely get all students to school. I think that this is one area that has improved due to our current circumstances. Students who can't make it to school due to snow can still participate online (provided their internet is still working). My district also has a large population of foster youth. These students are less likely to go to college and are more likely to end up in the justice system. There are county programs to offer these students support, but I'm not sure how well they are utilized. I plan to look into these programs more and come up with a plan to help support foster students. As a side note, my wife and I have talked about becoming foster parents when our own children are a little older. I am continuously looking for ways to make my classes more engaging, more hands on, and more applicable to college and career readiness. However, I often feel like the math standards that I am required to teach make this difficult. We are required to cover so much material in a year that it is hard to slow down and spend much time exploring a concept and creating. However, in addition to the content standards for each course, there are the standards for mathematical practice. These additional standards, which are applicable K-12, really encourage these more engaging practices.
In my classes, I am attempting to shift my focus more towards the standards for mathematical practice. Eventually, I'd like to get to the point where the content standards are just an excuse to work on the standards for mathematical practice. These standards are more aligned to 21st Century skills and focus on a broader skill set that I believe is more beneficial to most students than the content standards. While the content standards may help prepare student for some careers (or more accurately, some college majors), most of them require me to teach my students things that they will forget soon after leaving my classroom. The standards for mathematical practice, on the other hand, help develop skills that will stick with students well into the future. Looking forward, it is the skills taught for these standards that will help students thrive as citizens in an interconnected world and a global society much more than the content standards. It is my hope that the powers that be will shift their focus in that direction and I will do everything in my power to do the same. I have mixed feelings about so-called 21st Century Skills. First, I think calling them 21st Century Skills is a misnomer. It makes it sound like they are new skills or skills that weren't important until recently. However, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills have always been important life skills, especially for the most successful people. The specifics of some of the skills have changed, but they have always been important.
Maybe the big difference for the 21st century is that we have decided that everyone should be taught these skills and not just the select few who are deemed worthy. Public education hasn't traditionally been about helping students realize their full potential. Instead, it was about creating workers who could do what they were told. Critical thinking isn't necessary for a factory worker. Skills that developed people into creators, entrepreneurs, and leaders could be left to private schools and the means for that sort of thing. The public just needed to learn how to follow directions. Thinking about the content that I teach, a focus on 21st Century skills requires me to focus more on teaching students how to approach problems creatively and come up with solutions on their own. They need to be taught to think critically about problems, to use technology and other resources appropriately, to communicate and collaborate with others, and to apply existing knowledge in creative ways to solve new problems. This will do my students more good than teaching them to memorize a bunch of formulas to solve a bunch of problems that have already been solved. The simple answer to this question is obvious. Yes, there are things that all students need to learn. However, as we dig into what those things are, it gets complicated, messy, and controversial. It is also something that I'm not sure how to answer.
I believe that public schools should offer all students the same opportunities. I also know that all students have different strengths and different interests. Historically, there has been a debate between having all students on a college prep track and offering students a variety of classes/academic paths to choose from. Both arguments sound good. All students should have the opportunity to prepare for college, but not all people need a college education. In fact, we need people in careers that don't require a college education and college is too expensive for most people to do just for fun. However, when the system has allowed different tracks it has historically led to inequality for certain groups. I am not sure what the solution is. I do know that something needs to change. I currently teach Algebra 2. Algebra 2 is a requirement for four-year colleges/universities, but is not a high school graduation requirement. As much as I like Algebra 2, there are a lot of standards that I teach that most students will never use again. It doesn't hurt them to learn it and they are becoming better and more logical thinkers in the process, but there are other things we could be teaching that would be more beneficial for most students and make math more accessible to all students. For example, I just finished a section on imaginary numbers. Most of my students did just fine with it, but very few of them will ever need to use imaginary numbers again outside of another math class. Most students would benefit more from spending more time learning how to balance a budget, understand compound interest, and other more practical topics. However, the standards have been set and there are so many of them that it is difficult to squeeze in those other things. The same can be said about lower math classes as well. So many of the standards exist to get just a few students ready to eventually take calculus. Most students will not take calculus and do not need to take calculus, but the standards seem to have been written with mostly those students in mind. Our students would be much better served if we were to look at what skills all people need and focus on those. More people would enjoy math and fewer people would be afraid of it. The advanced courses can still be offered and I believe that the students who will take those classes will still succeed. This seems like such an obvious question. School is for educating students, right? But what, exactly, does it mean to educate someone? Is education simply the act of passing on information to another person? I sure hope not, because the internet holds much more knowledge than I could ever imagine and it is available on demand.
I think current events show us that our culture views the role of schools as much bigger than just passing on knowledge. If it was just about getting information to students, online school would be ideal; it is more efficient and more flexible. However, society expects more from schools. As the pandemic has revealed, schools are a source of childcare, a place where children are fed, and a place where students' social and emotional needs are met. It is one of the few places where young people get to build safe (usually) relationships with adults who are not relatives. Adults who, yes, pass on information, but who also provide wisdom and direction as they discover who they are and progress toward becoming good, productive citizens. Schools help children learn how to use the knowledge that is so readily available. They help students learn how to persevere, think critically, problem solve, collaborate, and create. It is so important that us educators keep these things in mind. As a math teacher, it isn't enough for me to get my students to memorize enough formulas and rules to pass a standardized test. I must teach my students how to think creatively and use the formulas and rule that they can look up in creative ways to solve novel problems. I must teach my students how to collaborate, to be bold enough to share their ideas with peers, and to be humble enough to listen the the ideas of others. I also get the privilege of teaching students that they matter, that they have a voice, and that each one of them has something important to contribute to the world. |
AuthorHigh school math teacher and TCSJ student. Archives
March 2021
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