“This isn’t right,” she says. “This can’t be right. All my friends got Math 7.”

My soon-to-be 6th Grade daughter is near trembling as she held her the schedule for the upcoming school year. She compares her paper with friends who were both part of her peer group as well has having the last name L through S. This is the day incoming 6th Grade students pick up their daily schedules from the gymnasium. She is at first dismayed that she isn’t in the same class as her friends. This is a bummer to kids, to be sure. But one that we all deal with and are able to handle. However, eventually it dawns on her that she was placed in a different math course from her peer group altogether: Math 6. Plain old, Math 6.

Last year, as a fifth grader, she received the message that she’d be placed in an accelerated math program. Students who were identified as Gifted and Talented were all part of the same cohort and participated in pull-out math throughout the year. There they received enrichment opportunities. She – and presumably her peers that were not part of these pull-out options – knew full well what this opportunity meant: she was one of the smart kids.

It’s in those gifted and talented pull-outs that she made her closest friends. Because why wouldn’t you? These were the well behaved kids. This was the fun class where kids get to play math games. These were the kids who were told that they were uniquely gifted and talented at mathematics.They were X-Men. They were invited to attend Hogwarts School of Wizardry. They all had that in common.

Most of those peers of hers were placed in a 7th Grade math course for the upcoming school year. They were deemed to be far enough along according to a few different metrics such that they could skip 6th grade math in order to take higher math earlier. There are three different metrics the school uses and kids have to excel in two of the three exams, including an “Algebra Readiness Test.” My daughter only excelled in one of the three exams, and not the “Algebra Readiness Test,” which, according to the school counselor, is the one that really matters. She was placed into 6th grade math, which makes sense: she’s a 6th Grader. But that’s not the message she’s receiving today.

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Flashback Charles Dickens-style 6 years ago when my daughter brought home the following artifact from her Kindergarten class.

When I saw this artifact emerge from the trappings of her backpack I was stunned. Where had she gotten this message that she was a “late bloomer” at math? She wasn’t (and isn’t) a “late bloomer” at math in any sense of that loaded word-slaw. And she was in Kindergarten for crying out loud!

Regardless of where the message came from, the next six years were an attempt at combating the stereotype threat associated with being a young female mathematician. Roughly halfway through those six years, she took a test – the CogAT – in 2nd grade which ostensibly identifies Gifted and Talented individuals. She scored well enough to be identified as such in Math and English Language Arts. I was so proud of her, and that may have been a crucial mistake. My thinking at the time was that she had worked hard (she had!) and developed a sense of self-confidence (she had!) in math, as evidenced by the results of this test and teacher observations which placed her in this special cohort of special students.

###

Every night during dinner our little nuclear family of four have a conversation of questions. That is, one of us asks a question and then we go around the table and respond. This past Saturday, my question is “If you could go back in time to any year, what year would it be and why?” My wife says when she was 10 years old: that was the best age. My son says 1883 so he could warn everyone about the eruption of Krakatoa (what?). My daughter says she wishes she could go back in time to 5th grade and study for the “Algebra Readiness” test so she can be placed in the accelerated math class.

It’s probably worth noting that she didn’t have her Gifted and Talented identification revoked. I’m not even sure that’s possible or legal. Moreover, she is still on track to take Algebra in the 8th Grade, which – as we all know – places you on a track to take Calculus as a Senior in High School. Make no mistake: she’s still on a pathway of being in the “upper track” which feels gross to type on my computer screen. But she’s apparently not in the “upper upper track” which is deeply concerning to her; so much so that she brings it up at dinner as her point of time travel.

###

Let’s not let me off the hook here: I’d have been pleasantly pleased to have her be in a math class a year ahead, just as I was happy to see she was receiving special pull-out enrichment services in elementary school. I’m all too willing to take advantage of these opportunities from a place of privilege.  I’m not even in favor of the existence of such an accelerated math program, but I’d sure let her be in it given the chance.

This message is almost always unintentional. It is a bi-product of our dysfunctional understanding of the discipline of math that values correctness over effort, memorization over creativity, speed over thoughtfulness. It is also commonly used as tool with which we rank order and separate students. Sure, other subjects bi- and trisect the student body but none quite have the rusty edge that math does.

###

Math makes everyone feel stupid at some point. For many, it’s early on when you’re not fast enough during Math Minute. For others, it’s not until Algebra. For others still, college Calculus is the first stomach punch. For many it’s all of the above. For my daughter, it was when she got that schedule and received the message that she was no longer one of the “smart kids.” Of course, the Original Sin was the message that there exist smart kids and not-quite-as-smart kids in math to begin with.

It took six years to communicate to my daughter that she was a brilliant mathematician. We do little Algebra exercises on the whiteboard. We worked through a Summer curriculum to keep her brain finely tuned during the summer slog. Together, we once made an instructional video on an iPad to help a co-worker’s friend’s kid. And it took one piece of paper to undo that messaging. Of course, when a structure falls apart that quickly, that’s an indication it was built on a flimsy foundation. I wonder how long, if ever, she’ll re-receive the message once again that she is a brilliant mathematician. Or will we just have to wait for the next round of test results and keep our fingers crossed?

Teaching in Texas, there was always this weird interim period between the end of standardized exams and final exams around this time of year. Usually this time spanned for about three weeks or so, during which disengagement was rampant. On top of this calendar quirk was the general end-of-school jitters, a mix of euphoria and senioritis. The end of the year was in sight and work slowed to a crawl. “Why are we cooped up in here when it’s so beautiful outside?,” I’d often hear.

The students were also ready for school to end.

So what do we do in this weird interim time? What do we do when there are two weeks of school left, there’s minimal accountability, and everyone’s got one eye on the clock and the other on the calendar? Many teachers, rightly or wrongly, feel this time period isn’t very conducive to student learning. After all, the kids know their grade is largely set in stone (with only small fidgeting based on the final exam). They also know that the standardized test that they just took is as or more important than the final exam. Often this time consists of a hodge podge of review packets and make-up work.

I found this time – The Home Stretch – to be quite liberating. To me, this was the time of the year I could try out new things, give tasks that weren’t necessarily aligned with my content standards, and perhaps undo some of the damage I had been doing all year via my fledgling teaching practice. I also felt the freedom to teach stuff that I was interested in, untethered to my Algebra, or Geometry, or Algebra 2 standards. One year this meant doing a book study on certain chapters of Freakonomics. Another year, it meant having students solve a series of bedeviling puzzles to earn their “super spy badge.”

I’m not suggesting anything I did during this time was any good, and that’s kind of the point. Maybe more than any other part of the school year, this is where I could try stuff without worrying too much about accountability – for me or for the students. I didn’t feel like a series of review packet days did much to result in long term student learning, so I decided to just… try stuff.

And this is where I’d implore you to try stuff these last few weeks. Consider doing this: head over here and click on a grade level above your class and click through until you find a task that you find particularly compelling. And facilitate that.

Some other ideas for The Home Stretch:

• Give a task that you think is “too hard” for your students, perhaps starting with a particular “Portfolio Problem“
• Head over to openmiddle.com and find some good Level 3 questions and give those (in this case, I’d suggest you can sift through some grade levels below. Some of those Level 3 questions are challenging even years after the intended grade level.)
• Do a number talk – yes, High School teachers & students: I’m looking at you here
• Give a task that is richer, and more complex than anything you’ve given thus far, maybe a Low Floor/High Cieling task
• Do Fawn’s Hotel Snap activity
• Spend a day (or two) having student do logic puzzles or puzzles from the New York Times such as Set, or Battleships, right)
• Have students do some free writing or metacognition on their learning from the past year

In other words, consider doing the stuff you like doing in math, but are always like “I would love to do that, but the standards!” Or stuff you wanted to do throughout the year (recall that first week of school where you were like “this is going to be the best math class ever”), but left it sitting on the backburner due to all the other urgent details of teaching.

If you need something with a little more explicit rigor (thanks, admin), consider just going with the first suggestion – a task that’s allegedly too hard – and align it with the CCSS Standards of Mathematical Practice and you’re good to go. The nice thing about that is that you’ll get those rich artifacts that I’m always yammering on about.

We’re in the Home Stretch now folks. Let’s finish strong and send kids into summer with some fun math, real math, while we’re at it.

Update 5/18/16: Jeez, just go look at what Nora‘s doing after her final exam. Seriously, go read about it. As someone who’s participated in an escape room experience, this excites me to no ends.

(Editor’s note: this post is part of my not-necessarily math related posts. I spend a good portion of time in non-math classes these days. And thank goodness, because it exposes me to practices that I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced.)

I had the pleasure of sitting in on some student presentations on a recent site visit to a school. The presentations were for a English-Social Studies project in which students were giving a “Shark Tank” style pitch for a particular social issue. The format of the presentation was fantastic.

Before I describe the presentation format in question, let me describe how my (read: bad) presentation formats went.

1. Students present solutions
2. I ask, “Any questions from the audience?”
3. *crickets chirping*
4. I say, “So uhh… how did you convert miles per hour into kilometers per minute?” Presenters respond.
5. *every student except the three or four students presenting are staring at the clock and not paying attention in any way whatsoever*
6. I say, “Any other questions?”
7. *crickets have stopped chirping and have now also fallen asleep*
8. I say, “Thanks gang! Who’s next?”
9. Repeat with the next group

By about the third set of student presentations I was barely paying attention. Part of that was probably the oft-poor design of the problem or project at hand – it is said when multiple groups are presenting the same solution, they didn’t solve a problem, they followed a recipe – but it was also due to the nature of the presentation format. Even when solutions were different, or solution paths varied, I had the same problem of “any questions?” followed by silence.

Scripted initial questions, student panels, reconvening with deeper questions

The following presentation format was the brainchild of Kay and Chizzie. And it resulted in a level of student-to-student discourse more authentically than I ever achieved.

Here’s how the presentation format went according to this “Shark Tank” project.

1. Students presented their work. They had about 30 seconds.
2. A few students served as a panel (if we’re sticking with “Shark Tank”, these are your Mark Cubans, your Mr. Wonderfuls, etc.). The teacher had prepared a few scripted questions, which the panel asked psuedo-randomly. The presenters knew these questions ahead of time and had to be prepared to answer them.
3. Students responded to the questions that were selected.
4. The panelists convened with their groupmates to discuss the presenters’ responses and to develop deeper, more probing questions. The presenters also had a couple minutes to regroup and confer.
5. After convening, the panelists return to their station and ask the questions that they and their group came up with. The presenters respond. From this point, it becomes semi-conversational as all the panelists are interested in getting their question answered.he presenters then answered those questions, which were generally more specific in nature and based on the initial responses of the presenters.

The two design features that separates this presentation format from my terribly ones are the following:

Design feature 1) Having a few “starter” questions that the students were aware of ahead of time, if only to get the conversation started.

Design feature 2) Letting the panelists confer about what they just heard with their group before proceeding to ask further questions.

There are so many things I like about this format over my non-format. Let me break down all the ways in which I like it:

• Having a set of pre-written questions (designed by the teacher, presumably, but asked by the students). This got the conversation going. It normed the students into question-asking mode. Even though the questions were scripted, it was coming from the panelists and the presenters were speaking to the panelists. It became a conversation which allowed for more, in-depth explanation and gave the class more info to go on when designing their deeper, more specific questions.
• The format involves the entire class during presentations. Even students who aren’t part of the panel or the presentation need to pay attention in order to design deeper questions upon convening.
• Students have an opportunity to brainstorm and develop questions at a not-immediate pace, rather than coming up with questions on the spot. It’s hard enough for you and I as teachers to ask immediate off-the-cuff questions, in retrospect it was probably foolish of me to expect that of students in a consistent manner.
• Conversations during the convening pretty much necessitated that kids pay attention to the content presented by the other groups.

Despite it being toward the end of the class period and several presentations already having been given, students were still engaged in the questioning process. And of the presentations I saw, student panelists asked excellent, varied questions after convening with their group mates. The group conversations during the convening were meaningful and related to the content presented. Everything I’d hope for in a formal presentation of learning to peers.

I’m sure there are also some meta-lessons to learn: giving students time and space to develop their questions, scaffolding the design of questions via some scripted prompts, and the like. While the premise of the project at hand was tied to the “Shark Tank” format, I see no reason why this or something like it couldn’t be a ubiquitous presentation format for a class throughout the entire year, or, better yet, an entire school.

I struggle with how “special” we treat math in schools. It’s not uncommon for math teachers and departments to run professional development apart from all other subjects. Or use different classroom norms. Or instruct entirely differently. Or blog or tweet exclusively about math. Math teachers have their own software, their own language, different and separate from the rest of the school.

The entire design of New Tech Network schools, for whom I work as a Math and School Development Coach, purports that schools work best when staff practices, protocols, norms, and buy-in are all aligned. For example, entire staffs are committed to the same norms, the same school culture, and the same protocols. So I’m often biased toward thinking about how kids are experiencing school, rather than just math.

Still, even with that alleged common understanding, I’ve heard so many times from non-math teachers, “oh, that’s the math department, we just let them do their own thing.” Or, from math teachers, “oh, this is math, we do it differently in here.”

It’s also quite rational behavior for teachers. If I have limited time for planning and reflection (if any), I’m not going to use it to explain what we’re going over to teachers who won’t give precise feedback. And If I’m employing instructional software as my teaching tool, my peers have literally nothing to offer me.

Is this OK? Is this best for a student’s schooling experience?

I often wonder how are students experiencing and witnessing this. Do they see the disconnect between math departments and the rest of the staff, like the way children intuit when parents aren’t getting along? Do they experience firsthand the pedagogical isolation of a math class compared to the (more often) aligned approaches of other subjects?

It makes me wonder if there’s an upper limit to how great a school – or even a math department – can be if they’re so often sequestered from the rest of the staff.

I worry sometimes that perhaps a great folly of all these rich math resources online is that they can allow math teachers to remove themselves from school norms and ways of being (editor’s note: I want to emphasize the word “can” here, not that it does, but that they can. Are we cool, now? Cool.) Great tasks and lessons are the technical solutions. A staff coming together to determine how to best support students is an adaptive one. (For more an the technical vs. adaptive terminology, head over here.)

So how can math teachers engage productively with the rest of the staff?

At the most successful schools I work with, there are a few common threads, which I wrote about at the beginning of the school year. I would like to highlight/reiterate the notion of, as a staff or grade-level department, examining samples of student work across subject areas. In addition, consider intentionally inviting peers into your classroom. Facilitating a really cool task sometime in the next couple weeks? Send an invitation and/or record yourself so others can see what you’re doing, and perhaps by proxy, get oriented to what fun math can actually be! Follow it up by inviting yourself in to a non-math classroom to observe and learn.

To be sure, the discipline of math is peculiar, to the point of being existential. There are certain teaching moves that are special to the discipline. There are attitudes within students unique to the subject developed over time that we must examine and treat. And to be fair, every subject has their own discipline-specific ideas and norms. Math classrooms just seem to take it to the extreme in terms of looking different.

This is the tension I find myself in: just how different is math as a subject? When is it appropriate and beneficial to think about math-specific teaching strategies vs. general strategies? To what degree does math’s “specialness” hinder or help the overall goal of a school where students and adults feel connected and successful?

I’m not sure I have any concrete answers to these questions, but I do know a couple things: that teaching math is enhanced by leaning upon fellow awesome math teachers and their lessons AND students experience school best when overall teaching practices and norms are aligned.