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Part 1 of Our Story
Part 1 of Our Story
Click here to listen to me tell our story.
If you would prefer to read part 1 of our story, see below.
Part 1.mp4Reflecting on Our Role as Math Educators
Ever since becoming a teacher, one question has always stuck with me. How do we, as teachers, inspire children to think rather than simply to do?
Many years ago, during my practicum, I was fortunate enough to experience a student centered classroom where children were learning as I’d never seen before.
The students were truly owning their learning by following their own paths and curiosities within a culture of inquiry their teacher had created.
In my early years of teaching, I always felt uncomfortable with the way I was acting in my role as teacher.
I knew I wanted to create that classroom culture I had first experienced, however, my image of what was possible was bumping up against the way I thought I had to teach here in BC.
Particularly in math, I heard my students saying:
“I can’t do it!”
“I don’t get it!”
“I suck at math!”
“This is too hard!”
“This is so stressful!
My brain goes blank. I can’t do it fast!”
“Do I have to do it this way?
“I need help!”
Over many years of collaboration, practice, reflection, and learning, I have remained focused on re-imagining my role as a teacher in order to create the conditions for curiosity, creativity and deep learning.
In collaboration with Christine Wengenmeier, we started to see and feel real change. We were energized by what we were experiencing and how we were beginning to truly put students at the center of their learning. Our students were learning through inquiry for most of the day. They were exploring: Who am I as a reader? Who am I as a writer? How might using materials help me to build ideas? What questions do I care deeply about?
We started moving forward with inquiry based learning, and our students were really excited by the learning they were doing, but it became clear that numeracy was still an area we wanted to focus on.
So, we began by reflecting on our beliefs. As Mills and O’Keefe say, “The beliefs we hold as teachers shape the beliefs children take up about themselves as learners, the learning process, and the world around them.”
Our inquiry classroom was being built on our strong shared beliefs about the children we were teaching.
We believe all children are capable, curious, creative and courageous.
We believe relationships connect and support everyone and are necessary for our learning to thrive.
We knew we needed to think more specifically about what our beliefs were around numeracy. We would use these beliefs to create the change we knew we needed.
We believe all children are capable of mathematical thinking and understanding
We believe WE are learners
We believe our ACTIONS must match our beliefs.
It became clear that the unease I was feeling when I was teaching and assessing Math was coming from the inconsistencies between my beliefs and my actions.
I was not acting as a learner and I was teaching Math the way I always had.
Together, Christine and I began to wonder:
What does numeracy look like in an inquiry classroom?
How might we put our students at the center of their thinking, learning, and feelings in math?
What is the power of collective knowledge building in Math?
How do we continue to develop learner agency in our students?
When the opportunity to attend a pro-d session on creating thinking classrooms in Math with Dr. Peter Lilijadahl presented itself, we jumped at the chance to go. I was inspired by his beliefs about the use of vertical, non-permanent work surfaces and open-ended, rich math tasks, however, my ‘ah-ha’ moment was when he spoke about how teachers must stop answering ‘stop thinking’ questions.
I immediately reflected on my own behaviours as a ‘Math teacher’.
It wasn’t hard to recognize that my belief that all students are capable and curious was also not being held up in Math.
I was stopping their thinking by telling them what to do and what steps to follow instead of allowing them the time and space they needed to make their own meaning and to build their own ideas around numbers. I realized I was telling them what to do and then was frustrated with why they were not able to think through a problem independently.
We left the workshop energized and ready to make some important changes. We knew this change would take time, and we were ready to be patient with ourselves and with our students as we challenged ourselves to step back and to trust our beliefs as we worked to put our students at the center of their mathematical learning.
The first time I presented my students with a problem involving fraction benchmarks before instructing them on what they were.
I was amazed by the thinking that emerged. I listened in awe as my students worked together to build their understanding of these concepts.
At that moment I knew, I needed to keep learning.
The second spark for our journey with math came when myself and my new learning team were given the opportunity to travel to Portland to visit the Opal school. We were thrilled to have the chance to sit in and observe a numeracy learning session with grade 4 students. The children were thinking through a problem involving large numbers and multiples of 10, 100, 1000 etc..
They were collaborating in pairs and making their thinking visible on chart paper. I remember thinking it was like seeing all of my fragmented ideas come together in front of me in real life. This was how math should look, sound and feel. There were animated discussions, multiple ideas and strategies being shared, drawings and numbers being experimented with and tangles being worked through.
As you can see in my observation notes, I paid close attention to how the teacher, Mary Gage, had shifted her role from instructor to teacher researcher. She was observing and documenting.
She was answering the students’ questions
with more questions. I heard her ask:
“Do you want to tell me more?”
“Where is the math to support your statement?”
“How do you want to think about that?” (100 x 100)
“In whatever way makes sense to you, record it in your journal.”
“Is anybody willing to take a risk and share?”
“Can you talk us through your thinking?”
“Talk to your friends. Let them hear your voice.”
She wanted to know what strategies they had tried, who they had discussed their thinking with, what else might work. She gently guided their thinking in different ways and she never stopped their thinking with answers. She nudged them to think deeper, to persevere and to believe in themselves as mathematicians. I was inspired and excited. Yes inquiry can live in a mathematical classroom and deep thinking and understanding will happen!
As I reflect on these two experiences I realize how good it feels to learn and grow alongside my students and fellow educators. Christine and I had a conversation with Marnie right after returning from Opal School, and then again in January the following year, as we reflected on our observations and learning journey so far.
Christine: “When kids feel safe and valued, courage and learning happens. Children are really capable, they want to be engaged in deep and meaningful work.”
Jenn: “If we raise the bar, our students will rise to the expectations we set for them. We should honour every level that they rise to. I also noticed the courage amongst the students at Opal.
Christine: “Sometimes I think that these older students (grade 5) can work things out on their own. Opal made me rethink the emotional support that these students need. It’s nice to just slow things down.”
Marnie then asked us to think about: “What Learning conditions are you hoping to create in your learning community?” Together, we documented our intentions:
How can we change our current math? We want to launch inquiry in math with deeper thinking questions and more learner agency.
We want to continue to ask our students to make their thinking visible to others in various ways and to give them the time and space to build their understanding together.
We want to offer our students more social emotional support. We want to create a community of belonging, courage, safety, trust, student ownership and independence.
Susan Mackay, Author of Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers (2021)
I connect strongly to this quote by Susan Mackay, who during the time our story was unfolding was the Director of Learning at Opal School. She says, “The environment we experience, including the other people we find there, is what we use to create ourselves. This is an active process. Classroom culture is reliant on the story teachers tell themselves.”
Christine and I were actively creating ourselves in the image of the teachers we wanted to be.
Slide Deck
Slide Deck
Click here if you are interested in looking at more of the visuals on the slide deck that we used to tell our story.
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