Persevering through BTC & Rich Tasks

Devan Smith

October 2023

Now that we are three weeks into our first year on offense, I am sure we are feeling a bit of friction either within ourselves or with our students as we adjust to our new initiatives: Building Thinking Classrooms, Facilitating Deeper Learning, and Developing Future Ready Learners. Trying new things is hard for everyone, especially when we are in our comfort zones and when we have so many responsibilities as educators, family members, parents, friends, and citizens. BUT I have found in my experience that educators are the most resilient, brilliant, capable human beings on the planet! We are also some of the people who want what is best for kids. So what is best for them?

In September of 2019, the Harvard Gazette published this article on the power of active learning. In the article, the author explains that while students believe they learned more during passive lectures, they actually learned and obtained more when they were engaged in active learning experiences. They also outperformed their peers who did not engage in those rich opportunities.

"Now that we have a rhythm, we have a much easier time making lessons in the BTC model." - Aaron Myers

Even though the learning is harder, the impact is deeper. With that being said, we are encouraging you to keep pushing through, keep trying new things, keep offering richer experiences to your students, and maybe take a second to remind them why struggle during learning is so very important to the learning process.

"My students remember concepts so much better with BTC" - Brittany Pirtle

We have heard from several schools about the impact of BTC in the classroom. The Geometry team at Bayside High School has reflected on an improvement in Unit 2 Assessment scores. They were worried after the Unit 1 results, but have persisted through the learning curves with BTC and are seeing improvements in conceptual understanding they haven’t seen in years past. Landstown High’s Algebra 1 team has expressed they are seeing the best mastery for solving equations they have ever seen. Finally, Lauren Vento from Princess Anne High has said of BTC, “Not only are my students actively thinking more, but they are also interacting more with each other. They are surrounded by peer work on a regular basis and can learn more freely from each other.” The gains we are seeing in classrooms are tremendous and we are looking forward to seeing how impactful Liljedahl's 14 Practices will be towards deeper learning for our mathematics students.

We know that it takes courage to try new things, but we are here to help as much is needed. Walter Elliot said, "Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” If you're struggling with taking that first leap into that short race, we are here to help you along the way. It's never too late to join one of our two book/action studies (Asynchronous & Face-to-Face). For more details, please don't hesitate to reach out to the book study facilliators, Devan Smith and Monica Lang.

"Not only are my students actively thinking more, but they are also interacting more with each other. They are surrounded by peer work on a regular basis and can learn more freely from each other" - Lauren Vento

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