The Math Teacher I Want to Be

        I can’t stop thinking about something that Professor Allison Hintz said during one of our math classes last week.  In fact, I’m feeling quite convicted about it.  At the time, we were having a class discussion about the importance of doing math talks in the classroom.  During this discussion, one of my cohort members asked Allison how to handle situations where students, who are called on to answer math equations, give the wrong answer.  Allison replied by saying, “Mistakes reveal that students are thinking about math and we want our students to feel ok about sharing them.”  She went on to explain that sharing our mistakes in math allows more opportunities for student learning because they show where students are having difficulty understanding math concepts.  Allison made it clear that there is a big problem with our teaching and classroom community if our students are never sharing incorrect answers with the class.  I really needed to hear this and I felt like she was speaking directly to me.

        I love and appreciate the comments that Allison made, because I will admit, as I reflected on them later, they had me feeling very convicted about some of the ways I think about math.  As a student teacher, I have been hoping that students get the correct answers because that not only reflects my “good teaching” but it also means we can move on and progress further in our mathematics.   By moving on, we can then focus on getting our students closer to meeting those important grade level standards.  Shame on me! Allison’s words spoke deeply to me, and they made me take a good strong look at my misconceptions and what should be really important to me, as a teacher. 

        I shouldn’t want all of my students to get the right answers.   In fact, getting the wrong answers provides incredible opportunities for students to share their difficulties, which are no doubt the same struggles felt by some of their other classmates.  Wrong answers should also cause the teacher to slow down, take a step back, and try other ways of explaining mathematical strategies or concepts.  Not every student learns the same way, and this will surely allow struggling students a different perspective and it will allow non-struggling students a deeper conceptual understanding.

        I must create a classroom culture and community in which it feels safe for students to openly share their mistakes.  If our students are only raising their hands to share correct answers, than we as teachers, are not doing our jobs right. I used to think that having a handful of students sharing their correct answers with the class meant that I was a good teacher and that the class as a whole must have all understood the lesson.  I now know that what it really means, is that I am not doing my job as their teacher.  If only students with the correct answers are raising hands and answering questions, it shows that the students who have the incorrect answers or are struggling with mathematical concepts are too afraid to share them.  This is my fault as their teacher.  It is my job to create a classroom environment in which students feel secure enough to say that they are confused or struggling. 

        In order for students to feel comfortable sharing their mistakes out loud with the class, as a teacher, I must first feel comfortable in my teaching, to be open and accepting of mistakes.  There is a feeling that if you are a good teacher, you will be able to reach all of your students and they will all learn and perfectly understand what you teach them.  If you are a good teacher, your students will all be doing well on tests and they will be getting all the right answers.  This just isn’t reality. As a teacher, I must strive for deep understanding, not perfect performance.

        I owe Allison a huge THANK YOU for prompting me to be self reflective.  This has caused me to spend some time thinking deeply about the type of math teacher I want to be.  I want my students to know that in our classroom, it is alright to share the wrong answer with their teacher and peers, and that their wrong answer actually helps our entire class learn.  I want to create a classroom community where all students understand that making mistakes is normal and good mathematicians make them.  I want students to realize that making errors shows that they are trying, and real effort should be praised.  I want to be a teacher who encourages their students to explain and challenge their thinking.  I want my students to feel pride, and not shame, when they change or revise their thinking or their answers.  Most of all, I want my students to see themselves as mathematicians who try hard, and who find wonder and joy in the complexity of mathematics. 

 

~ Christy

The Importance of Reading Comprehension

    I have been thinking a lot about the importance of reading comprehension lately.  I appreciate the way in which authors Reutzel and Cooter talk about comprehension.  The say that “Comprehension is a complex process . . . often viewed as "the essence of reading.” (2012, pg 259) I think this is a wonderful way to describe comprehension because it stresses its importance and what is really at the heart of reading, which is understanding.  In thinking about comprehension, my third grade buddy comes to mind.  Because she has difficulty decoding words , she often misreads words or skips over them entirely.  This brought to mind the Denney article that I was reading this past week .  In the article, One-minute fluency measures: Mixed messages in assessment and instruction, Deeney contends that, “Misreading critical words, or a large percentage of words, can derail comprehension.’’ (2010, pg 440)  For my third grade buddy, misreading important words proved to be a challenge for her by making the text difficult to understand.  For example, she read a short story about two boys who get lost in a jungle and can’t find their way home.  While lost, these two brothers encounter a bird whom they hope will help them find their way home.  When I asked my buddy a comprehension question about why the brothers needed help, she answered that they needed help because they had gotten lost while “hiking,” which she thought was strange because when people go hiking, they stay on a trail to avoid getting lost.  This answer puzzled me as it wasn’t hiking the brothers were doing in the jungle, but hunting.  When I listened back to the audio recording to complete my running record of her reading, I heard her read the words …”on a hiking trip” instead of reading the correct wording …”on a hunting trip.”  While the activity that the two brothers were engaged in when they became lost wasn’t a key detail in the story, it reminded me how easily mistakes like this can be made. 

       Unfortunately, my buddy encountered more difficulty with comprehension when she made a second comment in response to the  question about why the brothers needed help.  She added that the boys shouldn’t be lost because the jungle “wasn’t very big.”  This response surprised me and I asked her why she thought that the jungle wasn’t large.  She answered by saying that “it didn’t say so in the story.”  Again, when I went back and listened to the audio for my running record of her reading, I found the discrepancy.  Instead of reading the correct line “Jungles are enormous,” she read, “Jungles are important.”  By not decoding this one word correctly, and swapping the word “important” for “enormous,” it changed part of the meaning of the story for her.   This time the simple mistake she made had a large impact on her comprehension of the story.  She had difficulty fully understanding the story because she didn’t understand why the brothers would be lost in such a small area and therefore why they needed help in finding their way home.  This was a powerful connection for me, as it solidified the importance of reading comprehension and of going back and trying to find the cause of the break-down in understanding.  It also reminded me that as I continue to work in my main placement I will need to keep a close eye out for discrepancies so that I can support the student using fix-up strategies that can work to repair comprehension.

    ~ Christy

 

 

 

The Power of Rewards!

As I visit other classrooms in my main placement school and observe the various teaching styles of our talented school staff, I have become quite interested in the systems of rewards for positive student behavior.   In our school, there is an established reward system that all classrooms are expected to follow as a "standard" form of reward.  Most teachers I have spoken with have chosen to supplement this system with a rewards program of their own as well.  The school wide behavior program is a ticket system where students are given a small slip of blue paper (called a "Cub Paw") for making excellent behavior choices.  The students write their name on the "ticket" and put it into a bin or basket in their classroom.  The teacher then draws names from this basket at the end of the day or week and are rewarded with candy and prizes for "winning."
My Cooperating Teacher only uses the standard, school wide reward system.  She doesn't do any additional rewards, because she believes they can become expensive for her as a teacher, or distracting for students.  At the beginning of the school year, getting a ticket was a huge motivator for our Kindergarteners, and as the year has progressed I notice that it continues to motivate good behavior.  Our students love candy and little toys (marking pens, erasers, fancy pencils, etc) and will do almost anything to get them.  I see these rewards being given for completing assignments, good attitudes, helping another student, or even picking up trash off the classroom floor.  While it is wonderful that students are eager to be helpful and well behaved, I am concerned about the motivation for this behavior.  My concern comes from observing students express that they won't help friends, finish work with effort or pick up the floor unless they are instantly rewarded with a ticket.  For example, the teacher will say to the students, "I will be coming around to each student to make sure that you have remembered to write your name at the top of your paper."  Students will then respond, "Will we get a cub paw for it?"  If the teachers answer is yes, the students get excited and quickly comply.  If the answer is no, the students grimace and make no effort two comply.  What is this teaching our students?

That Time Of Year!

It's that time of year again...parent-teacher conferences! To be honest, when I saw that I would be back in my main placement this past week, I was excited. I was down right thrilled when I discovered that our half day kindergarten classes were cancelled for both Thursday and Friday for potential parent-teacher meetings.  According to our district, these conferences are optional and typically teachers only schedule them with students who they have academic or behavioral concerns about.  Seeing as how most of our AM class is already performing at or above standard, I assumed that we might only be meeting with a few of our PM families. This wouldn't take too long, so I was hoping my Cooperating Teacher and I could get some much needed time to talk curriculum. I thought wrong. To my surprise, my CT had decided to conference with every one of our 41 students.  Since a few couldnt make it, this meant that our two days would consist of dozens of back to back half hour meetings. What it turned out to be was a two day excersize in stamina and patience. These conferences were much more emotional than I had anticipated and parents friend from happiness and from disappointment.  The most difficult aspects of these meetings for me were the lack of time in between meetings to not down notes or take a breath, and the frustration of having the same conversations over and over again. While it was completely exhausting, it was also very rewarding to be able to connect with our students families on a deeper level. At the end of day, I have to say that I admire my CT for giving up some of the "extra" time she might have had, in return for greater connectedness with her student's families.

Teaching Students Sustainability

I very much enjoyed spending part of my day today learning about teaching students sustainability.  The class was a wonderful reminder for me that environmental education is incredibly important and that it can be taught in simple, yet highly impactful ways. While participating in several example activities today, I noticed that they all emphasized bringing environmental issues to students' attention, and then encouraging students to make connections between what they have learned and their own personal experiences.  What I will take with me from our class session is how accessible environmental education can be for young students. I enjoyed connecting our activities to my main placement kindergarten classes. It would be so simple to take the students on a nature walk through the woods on our playground and allow the students to take in their surroundings and explore the nature around them.  They could touch, smell, hear, measure, and count everything and then write in their science journals (that we would create) all about their experiences and observations.  For a class that currently only focuses on math and literacy, this would be a great way to incorporate science into our curriculum.  I can't wait to start!

- Christy

Loving Our Students

 I have been thinking lately about the conversation our cohort had a week ago about how we as teachers feel about using the term "love" when talking to and about our students. I thought our group discussion was very interesting due to the variety of opinions on the subject.  I appreciated the cohort's honesty regarding this topic and the large participation in the discussion. Author John T. Spencer contends that LOVE is that defining characteristic that makes him a teacher. He writes that it is a "real love, a muddy love," and that it is "love for the students, love for the content, and love for the process of turning knowledge into wisdom."  In our class discussion of his text, it seemed that the only "love" that made some cohort members uncomfortable was the love for students.  While I agree with Spencer that the term "love" seems appropriate, I do completely understand how some cohort members don't like it.  When I think of loving students with a gritty, muddy love, what comes to my mind is cherishing and encouraging students when they are at their most unlovable. Sure, there are students who we enjoy more than others, but even our most favorite students have days or moments where they seem unlovable. For me and my very limited experience thus far, finding something lovable about a student when they are at their most unlikable, is an example of extending grace, and is at its core, love.  I think Spenser says it well when he proclaims, "We all live in the imperfect tense. However, I have never met a teacher who failed when motivated by love."

- Christy

Purposeful Postcards!

 I recieved a wonderful teaching tip from a friend of mine who is in her first year of teaching first grade.  She asks her student's parents and families to send the class postcards from places that they visit throughout the school year. When she recieves the postcards she then reads them to the class and they look up the location of the postcard on their giant classroom world map. I LOVE this idea and I think it would be a wonderful way to incorporate geography into your day.  It seems to me that you would want to introduce this idea to parents at your curriculum night so that you could explain your idea and answer any questions brought up.  My teacher friend enjoys doing this and says it is also wonderful pick-me-up to recieve postcards periodically throughout the year because her box is usually filled with district mail etc. She says it always brightens her mood and the students feel so important recieving mail. I was thinking you could take this activity a step farther by displaying the postcards in a fun way and by having students create their own postcards and mailing them.  What a great way to help students of any grade experience that writing is fun and purposeful.  I can't wait to try it in my own classroom someday!
 
   - Christy