I'm Back!
Hello, internet! You might have noticed my hiatus from blogging for the last few months. I promise it was not wasted time. I began my internship in my teaching placement, which was quickly followed by my first teaching block. With the help of my lovely associate teacher, I gained rich experience teaching primarily math and music throughout the many weeks of my block. Who would have thought the girl recovering from a bad relationship with math for most of her adolescent life would end up teaching it every single day in her first block? Talk about break away from your comfort zone!
A Short Update:
After successfully completing my teaching block, I went back to classes for a semester. After that, I got a fantastic summer job working at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre as a Program Assistant. I spent the summer organizing tours for little kids, designing and facilitating activities for events, and most importantly, I created a huge teacher resource! My partner and I redeveloped the museum’s Education Kits. These are rented out by teachers for 12 days, complete with lessons and materials. The kit was less than ideal when we got out hands on it. Activities were loosely connected to the curriculum, if at all, and provided little education background. The materials were old or needed to be expanded to be properly used. By the end of the summer, we created 64 new lesson plans for grades 1-8, covering an 8-day unit plan. We also designed, made, and coded all the materials! The documents look official and I’m very excited to see what it looks like when it comes back from the printers. The process of unit planning for multiple grades, and creating all the corresponding materials is going to be so beneficial when I begin unit planning for this year’s classes and teaching blocks.
Year Two: Building Bridges
Classes began last week and boy, are we hitting the ground running this year! And yes, I am once again thrown into the gladiator ring with my old nemesis, Mathematics. As I’ve stated above, last year we began to build the broken bridge brick by brick. Each brick contained a base of Growth Mindset, with additives of New Experiences, Research, Determination, and a dash of Fun. The bridge is basic but solid. I can cross it easily with little to fear. But it isn’t anything grand or expansive. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself though. It will take many years to build a masterpiece with Math. This year, I will just work to make some upgrades to further support this bridge with Math.
I was a little unsure on how to approach these upgrades during the first Mathematics class this semester. I came in with the ingredients that had worked last year, prepped and ready to go. My professor started the class with a card trick and tasked us to figure out why it works, and alternative solutions to continue to make it work. My group struggled to figure out the basic mechanics of the trick, forfeiting and asking for help from another group. Now we had to find the next number that would also allow the trick to work. This is where all my ingredients went stale, and it all started with the deterioration of Growth Mindset.
The professor had stated at the beginning of the trick that it was the “simplest card trick”. Yet, we couldn’t even figure out how to do the trick on our own, never mind how to break down the patterning. Already, I felt like Math was beginning its old tricks again, working me up with an overwhelming challenge that I was just too stupid to understand, yet it was supposed to be “simple”. I barely understood what the next step was supposed to be. "Find the next number that would work." I began to rack my brain for mathematical formulas or solutions to find the number. Would fractions work? No, the deck wasn’t confirmed to be accurately divided during the trick, so it wasn’t a case of fractions. Addition and subtraction would also need to be determined by an equally divided deck. What about multiples of 3? Did it have to do with prime numbers? It became more and more overwhelming as the options flooded my mind with to only hit a wall and crash together in a confusing whirlpool. Once that happened, I just gave up. Someone would tell us the answer in a minute. But we didn’t. The worst part is I still don’t know the answer because we never discussed the problem. I don’t know how to problem solve for next time!
And thus, the Growth Mindset I honed all last year disappeared in a flash. The bridge with Math began to crack and crumble. It’s still intact, but it is not as strong as it was when I walked into the classroom. How could my efforts give way so quickly?
Too Good to be True…
This experience is something I want to remember when teaching my future students. I want to remember the confidence I thought was strongly assembled from the year before yielded so easily at the first sign of a challenge. I want to remember how the idea that a task was “simple” made me feel like I was stupid because I didn’t understand it. I want to remember how I gave up on myself and my determination to keep trying because it was just “too hard”. I was never good at math anyway. Why bother trying again? Clearly, I hadn’t learned as much as I thought I did last year.
It was that easy to lose my growth mindset and confidence. Math and I were fighting again after we had worked so hair to repair our relationship. It was easier for me to fall back into my belief that I was not a “math person”, a myth I have internalized for a very long time. And when we didn’t discuss the solution, I was left with the feeling that everyone else had gotten the answer, so it wasn’t taken up. I felt ostracized by math! I want to remember this will happen to my students too.
The Fine Art of Criticism….
We work with students to build their confidence, giving them opportunities for positive learning experiences and encouraging them to foster a growth mindset. But it’s just like criticism, you need three to five positive comments to outweigh one negative comment. One negative experience with math is going to take at least twice if not three times as many positive experiences to reaffirm confidence and secure a strong growth mindset. Positive experiences don’t need to mean that there is no challenge and the student understands the concept easily. Positive experiences mean the student is given the support they need to find the solution. They need to feel safe enough to explore their options. It will give them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and do better in a similar situation.
To provide positive learning experiences for our students, we need to be careful how we phrase our questions, avoiding stating something is “simple”. We need to model the tools students might need to solve similar problems. We need to provide encouragement during mistakes and during each step in the problem-solving process. We need to be transparent in discussing the solution and emphasize the strategy of learning from mistakes.
My goal for this year is to find more positive experiences with math to outweigh the negative experiences. I want to upgrade the bridging relationship I have worked so hard to mend over the last year. My goal is to build a bridge strong enough to support my students who might be struggling to build their own crumbling bridge with math too.
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