The Smaller Office

The lights go out and it’s just the three of us                                                                                 You, me and all the stuff we’re so scared of

~Bruce Springsteen~

We’ve had a busy few weeks at my school as we approach the March break in Ontario. Into year two of a new reporting timeframe, educators are adapting to the reality that with report cards going home in early February, the cycle and flow that we grew accustomed to has been altered (and change is scary).

Principally, the past practice was to use the last few weeks of February to assess, evaluate and report, which meant we could say things like “…this is important stuff, report cards go home soon!” to keep things in order and in response to the question “Why do we have to do this?”

Then we would all take a well-deserved break.

Now February and early March are filled with learning and teaching. With the next report card months away at the end of June, February now is the beginning of a learning cycle, not a culmination. Our thinking has had to shift and this is kind of scary for us. Fortunately, we have really brave and curious teachers at our school and they are eager to adapt and grow. So, I’ve been doing a lot of co-planning, co-teaching and professional inquiry, especially in our grade 7 and 8 classes, where the “why” question is not easily answered.

We’ve been exploring ways to build inquiry into our learning tasks; just in math for now and, soon in language and the other pursuits. We been thinking about ways to use the question “Why?” and adding the questions “How?” and “When?” and, “Why not?” as the launch pad for our learning.

Much of this was prompted by a spike in student actions that were not okay to us and required some responses (read disciplinary) and some reflection on our part as a team. We realized our older students were trying to tell us (and show us) that they needed something different and personal. We have decided to look upon this as their invitation for us to change; an invitation we decided to accept.

Early results from our students (and teachers) is this is good stuff. We are talking more with each other (and not at each other), we are using more complex and creating contexts for learning about number and taking the time to support our students to work in small teams to solve problems. We are all smiling more, and laughing more.

This is a much nicer way to lead up to a break, I think:)

“In a community of discourse participants speak to one another. They ask questions of one another and comment on one another’s ideas. They defend their ideas to the community, not just the teacher.” Fosnot & Dolk 2001

Language is the definitive and most enduring  human technology and words are the tools of thought. It is language that translates impulses and needs into the rational thoughts. It is language that conveys these thoughts, first inside our own minds and then to the minds of others. It is language that spurs action, prompts reactions and carries all that we pass on from generation to generation, culture, science, ideas and knowledge.  And, all language development must follow the simple path that has been tread upon for eons; from listening and speaking to reading and writing.

My colleague @CarmelCrevola has worked with focus and purpose to move our shared understanding of the importance of oral language to a position of prominence as a context for teacher professional learning.  Drawing upon current research as well as the lessons learned from collaborations with schools and school districts around the world, Carmel compels us to examine the type and quality of oral language instruction that all students receive, with a particular focus on early learners. What I appreciate about Carmel’s work is the fact that it is practice-based, informed by classroom work and is transferable to all teaching contexts and content.

Context and content are key for me as I see some powerful connections between this work and the shift that we are working to achieve in the design of effective mathematics learning experiences for students.  The components of effective, accountable talk can be broadly categorized as:  expressing thoughts and opinions, justifying a point of view, questioning and clarifying as well as listening and responding. Each of these components can be more discretely broken down into specific prompts that can become a focus for ongoing classroom instruction.

For me, talk is the the foundation of all effective mathematics learning communities. Author and mathematics educator Catherine Fosnot challenges us to engage students in meaningful mathematics learning contexts and to create classrooms where the interplay of ideas, models and proofs is the norm. When I reflect upon the oral language components I see  many rich opportunities to integrate oral language instruction and the learning of important mathematics. The essential tools of the mathematician are not only numbers, models and symbols, they are thoughts, opinions, conjectures, proofs and, most importantly, questions. Each of these tools can be the focus for explicit oral language instruction, leading to more focused writing and reading instruction within the content area of mathematics.

As we lead and learn, in our classrooms, schools and networks, we face a great challenge of building knowledge of effective practice on the fly. My goal as a school leader is to ensure that student and teacher learning is focused, important, efficient and deep. Looking at the connections between oral language and mathematics as a focus for our learning and teaching allows me to achieve these goals. By ensuring  that our mathematics learning   ‘floats on a sea of talk (Britton, 1983) we push our students to do the very things that mathematicians and other thinkers have done throughout the ages and provide language learning that counts, literally.

“Most of us teach mathematics as if it were a dead language.” Catherine Twomey Fosnot

What is ‘important mathematics’ for you?  Is this question easy for you to answer, or is the asking of it so anxiety-prompting that you need to take deep breaths and sit down, or run to the wine rack? Are you one of those educators who are certain that you know all you need to know about the teaching of mathematics, or are you one of the many who slink down in your chair, hoping you won’t be called upon?

It should not be a surprise that research has provided a fairly robust and clear vision of the most effective approaches for teaching mathematics in elementary and secondary school for teachers to draw upon. After all, mathematics as a discipline has been with us for thousands of years, it’s not like it is ‘new’. It is impossible to think, view, act or speak without using mathematics. And, unlike language, it is based upon a consistent, concrete set of principles that hold true everywhere in the know universe. How’s that for an unlimited, juicy context for learning?

Why is then that most school math instruction is so…limited? Why is it that we focus so much on the memorization of tricks and short cuts to apply the algorithms for computation? Why is it that most of our mathematics instruction is focused on drill or simple, contrived ‘ number situations? Why is it that we look at school mathematics as a series of subjects, or strands, to be covered, rather than as a way of discerning and describing patterns and relationships in the world around us?

For most of us, the answer is simple, we teach math the way we were taught. And we were taught by teachers who did the same…and so on. Leaving aside the issue that no pedagogy should stand unchallenged for even one generation, let alone several, let’s consider the world that demanded the mathematical understandings that underpinned this instruction. A world where calculations were carried out by clerks, not computers, where measures and financial matters generally involved face to face interactions and where opinions where formed based upon conversations and community cultural norms and values. An analog world formed the basis of this  mathematics.

The  digital world we live in now demands that we focus our mathematics teaching to develop each student’s understanding of important mathematics ideas so they may learn to solve authentic meaningful problems, in context, and, with purpose and creativity. This is the mathematics that has been with humans for thousands of years, long before the shop clerks of the 19th century co-opted it.  This is the mathematics we spent the week talking about at MathCamppp.

Sounds great…how do we do this?  Deborah Loewenburg Ball’s research suggests that we need both mathematics content knowledge as well as pedagogical content knowledge to pull this off. In other words we need to know that math our students need to know, as well as how to develop lessons that push students to develop this knowledge. Processes such as Lesson Study (an action research model developed in Japan), when grounded in research-based resources, can develop both of these areas when used by teachers. As does co-teaching with a knowledgeable coach. These are the processes we are implementing this year at our school to support our teachers as learners.  Among the key insights I gained from my time at MathCamppp was the understanding that we have lots of people willing and qualified to support this process.

The question I have is what is stopping us?  To paraphrase Simon Sinek, perhaps it is not what, but why? We focus so much on the what of mathematics; the rules, the labels, the stuff, that we forget the importance is in the why. We have only four operations in math (+,-,x,/) yet we have an infinite quantity of numbers, the why, my friends, is in the numbers, the patterns and the relationships. Why do we need to teach so that students may learn ‘important mathematics’ to solve real problems, in context and with creativity and purpose? Because they will need to be able to do this to make a life, because mathematics shouldn’t be the sole property of the elite, because a digital world means a mathematical world, because mathematics is not a dead language.

I just spent a week at camp! Specifically, a summer learning camp funded by the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) through the GAINS initiative. I was at Math Camppp – not a typo, the three ‘p’s represent the precision, personalization and professional learning referenced in the book Breakthrough by Fullan, Crevola and Hill. Our camp was located on the sunny shores of Lake Simcoe at the Kempenfelt Conference Centre in Barrie, Ontario. A Literacy Camppp was hosted a few hours away, in Parry Sound, Ontario.

Over the next few entries I’ll post some of my reflections and insights related to some narrow themes (like the current state of mathematics education in Ontario), and some broader ones (like the role of technology and social networks, what constitutes juicy professional learning and the zero sum game of over valuing LITERACY over literacies.)

Across the Water, Over the Land and Through the Air

Math Camppp (#mathcamppp) was a face to face and online gathering of over 200 K-12 classroom teachers, district personnel and school administrators from across Ontario. Our focus was on exploring the concept of proportional reasoning through an emphasis on developing conceptual understanding of important math through problem solving. As we gathered together on the first night a few of us were delighted to see some of our tweeps f2f for the first time. We were quite sight, clustered around the buffet, handhelds out, the Geek Brigade assembled. Over the course of the week, the diverse dots of my PLN were connected, often with the facilitation support of tweeps from around the province (and beyond) thanks to @TechieAng and @r_o_y_a_n.

By the third day, we  were connecting with our tweeps from the other camppp in Parry Sound through some common followers. By Friday morning, we were tweeting highlights from Alec Couros (@courosa) and Marian Small’s (@MarianSmall) between the sites, sharing common messages and making connections around the key messages and big ideas. This, of course, is not novel or unique. There are any number of mediated professional learning experiences that occur on a regular basis within and across social networks.

And that is my point:  it is evident that we are in the midst of a wonderful shift in education and we have social networks to thank (or blame). No longer are passionate, innovative educators just left to the often harsh whims of the learning culture within the four walls of their school, they (we) have the choice to access a support network of  professionals from around the world. They challenge us, they fill our buckets and they expand our horizons.

A true learning community is build upon trust, common purpose and the belief that every idea is improvable. We also know that, as Richard Elmore says, “Isolation is the enemy of improvement.”  Are we seeing, through social network, the breakthrough that we though we would never see in school-based professional networks? Will these networks grow and sustain change? Will they impact learning in school-based networks positively or create even more tension? Thoughts, anyone?