Category: Conferences

NCTM 2015 – Reflections

I know I’m a little late but I did want to post my own handouts and talk a little bit about my experiences at NCTM Boston this year.  I want to thank all of the great speakers  that I saw including Robert Kaplinsky, Ron Lancaster, Maria Hernandez, Dan Teague, The Young People’s Project (Bob Moses’ Group), Deborah Ball, Elham Kazemi and of course the inspiring Jo Boaler.  One of the things I thought was great about Jo Boaler’s talk on Thursday night was that even though I had heard a great deal of what she had said before, there was a different tone in the room.  I’ve been a fan of Jo’s since I first read her research in 2001 when I started my doctoral work on girls’ attitudes towards mathematics learning.  What I felt that was different that night was that she was no longer trying to convince people of anything.  There was a different message and that was “join the revolution” and the audience seemed to be on board and excited.  It made me feel very energized and empowered that a huge ballroom full of mathematics educators had bought into her ideas and were enthusiastic to make change happen.

Some of the best times I had were spent just connecting and reconnecting with people – some who I met for the first time (MTBoS folks and other Twitter folks I met F2F which was really nice) and others who were old friends who mean a great deal to me.  I forget how much the mathematical community of professionals enriches my life and makes me proud to do what I do.  Thanks to everyone who reached out to find me and say hi – or tell me a story, talk to me about what they are doing or ask a question about what I am doing.  You are all inspiring to me.

I left the conference with exciting ideas about teacher observation for PD, how teachers can share problems with each other better on the internet (awesome resources at Robert Kaplinsky’s problem-based lesson site), great ideas about agent-based models to add to courses, and ways in which teachers can talk to people about the Common Core and gain respect about the difficult work we do in teaching.  Overall, I felt like it was an amazing time.

I want to thank everyone that came to my session.  Although I had an unfortunate technological snafu and was unable to do an exercise I had planned where we were going to analyze a segment of discourse from my classroom using the framework of the MP standards (which would’ve been great), I felt that at least the resources that I shared were worthwhile for the people that came.  Here is a link to the powerpoint presentation and the handouts I gave.

 

Handout 1 NCTM 2015 Schettino

Weekly Learning Reflection Sheet

Handout 2 Schettino

I’ll just put in one more plug for our PBL Summit from July 16-19 this summer – we still have a few more spots and would love to have anyone interested in attending!

PBL Summit News!

It’s been an extremely busy fall for me, but with the help of my friend Nils Ahbel, I have finally put together an informational flyer and schedule for the Problem-Based Learning Math Teaching Summit for next summer.  As you begin to look for professional development opportunities for yourself, please consider being a part of this great summit where like-minded math teachers can gather and share ideas.  Currently, we are making this information available and registration and final pricing will be available in January.  If you have any questions regarding the summit, please feel free to contact me.

Check out the PBL Math Summit Flyer 2015 here. For further information see the page on the PBL Summit.

The First Followers…how do I get them in the PBL classroom?

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So I have one class this year that is rather frustrating and pretty tough to handle when it comes to buy-in with what I’m doing in the mathematics classroom.  Perhaps it’s because it’s first period, or perhaps it’s the mix of kids (quiet, shy, cynical?) – but I’m having a hard time inspiring them to speak out about their ideas or even be somewhat active in class.  This has made me wonder if I’m doing anything differently?  What’s the difference between first period and second period?  Why would this class be that much different in student make-up and personality than other challenging classes that I’ve had.

These thoughts made me remember a video I saw at a conference talk this summer and how important the “first followers” are.  This video is basically about a guy the narrator calls the “lone nut” who is dancing at a music festival (maybe you’ve seen it, it’s been around for a while) and how his leading becomes a “movement.”

It’s one of my favorites and so true.  But what I am afraid of is that the “first followers” I had in my first period class are not necessarily “followers” but students who realized they better do what I want or they won’t do well in my class.  This is not the same as “buy-in” to PBL.  This led me to think about what I needed to do in order to create first followers who would truly be inspiring and lead to more followers.  I’m not sure about this, but a couple things I tried:

  • talking about the pedagogy and how it’s different with the students
  • discussing the class contribution rubric with them and having them do a self-evaluation of their contributions to class
  • discussing listening skills when learning
  • Being deliberate about asking questions that are more open-ended (not just procedural)
  • Being less “forgiving” that it’s first period and they are tired – keeping my standards up of what I expect from them.
  • Giving praise when students take risks and learn from mistakes at the board
  • Offering a reward (like a Pez Candy) when a student is wrong but has taken a risk

So far my attempts have not been in vain, but I still don’t feel the “movement” as I do in other classes.  This has been an interesting first month with this group and I think many of them are actually learning, but don’t seem to be enjoying themselves.  I think I just need a couple more “first followers” to allow the others to see that what I am asking of them – although harder and requiring more energy and effort on their part – is actually an important part of their journey of learning.  I would love to hear from anyone who has experienced this and what steps can be taken to increase the followers in a “mob” of the whole class!

Inspirational colleagues? Wow…

OK, so I’m not really doing the full blog challenge – This weekend was nutso and blogging everyday is really tough – enough with the excuses.  But this question, “Who was or is your most inspirational colleague and why?” just really struck me at my core.  There have been so many, probably for all of us in education, it would be extremely difficult to pinpoint just one who was MOST inspirational.  I continue to be inspired rather regularly by my past professor (now friend) Carol Rodgers (SUNY) who is just one of the most amazing writers, Dewey Scholars and researchers and reflective practice I have ever met.  She is an amazing teacher mentor and has taught me a great deal. Ron Lancaster (OISE – Toronto) continues to show me how to be a true teacher of teachers every time I see him.  Nils Ahbel (Deerfield) and Maria Hernandez (NCSSM) and two of the most passionate mathematics educators I have ever met and every time I speak with them about my practice, I learn something new – period.  If you all ever get a chance to hear any of them speak, I highly recommend it.

I’ve already written about my inspiration and admiration for Rick Parris and the amazing life he led as a an educator, so I won’t go into that again, but I do feel that if I had to name someone who was not only inspiring, a major role model, caring, patient and kind, and truly changed my life, it would have to be Anja Greer.  If there is anyone to whom I have to attribute my work and lifelong love of teaching mathematics with problem-based learning, it would be Anja, mostly because I would not have had the opportunities and the courage to have taken the risks and to work with people who intimidated the heck out of me when I was only 26 years old.  She was a woman at school that had a very male-dominated history and she always spoke up for the students that were underserved and underrepresented.  She gave of herself in every way and gave me a job opportunity in 1996 that changed my life.

In the classroom, she was a teacher, mentor, innovator and amazing administrator.  To watch her handle a room full of very opinionated and argumentative mathematics faculty was amazing – never losing her grace and determination.  She took her time finding the words that she wanted to say and to this day, when I feel that I am pressured to quickly say something I think of her, take a breath, and rethink my words in my head.

The day I met Anja she frankly explained that she had to put a wig on in order to take me to campus because the students hadn’t seen her with her hair so short.  You see, she was battling cancer at the time that she was serving as department chair, implementing a new curriculum and hiring 4 new teachers that year.  The courage she had to “put on that wig” and move through her days for the next few years inspired me so much.  My son was born the year she lost her battle to cancer and she still had the compassion to let me know how happy she was for me that January.

I am so grateful for Anja’s influence on my life and I continue, in her memory, to teach annually at the conference that was named for her.  If I can even remotely come close to influencing another teacher in the way she has for me, I will have just started to repay her.

PBL at NCTM 2014!

One of my major goals in attending the NCTM annual conference this year was to see how widespread PBL had become in terms of mainstream education practices across the US.  I have to say that this year there were quite a few sessions that had PBL in the title or as the central theme and I was excited to see that!  Here were some of the workshops:

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Is More Than Solving Problems – in this session the speakers were giving just a beginner’s view of what PBL is and can be in the classroom.

Change the Classroom, Not the Students – Attaining Equity Using PBL (OK, this one was mine)

Bring Back Problem-Based Learning into Methods Courses! – in this session the speaker makes an argument for using PBL methods in courses for teacher candidates and spoke about the positive experiences of preservice teachers with PBL.

Amplify the Mathematical Practices -this session focused on middle school PBL practices and how they stressed the CCSS MP standards.  This was sponsored by Amplify’s Math projects.

Making Mathematics Culturally Relevant to Students Using Problem-Based Learning – in this session, the speakers gave an example of culturally relevant pedagogy striving for equity in the classroom.  Again arguing that PBL allows for furthering equity in the practice of PBL.

Setting the Scene: Designing Your Problem-Based Classroom – in this session, the great Geoff Krall (emergentmath.com) gave a great talk summarizing a lot of his methods relating to PBL and his protocols in getting students to work through problems in their learning.

The Hidden Message: Micromessaging and Mathematics – I wanted to attend this session so badly, but I had to leave early on Saturday morning.  This session has so much to do with my own research relating to how we talk to each other in mathematics classrooms and how PBL can allow for better communication without the micromessages.  (Tujuana if you read this – get in touch with me!)

Promoting Equity through Teaching for a Growth Mindset (Jo Boaler) – in this Session Prof. Boaler reported on her work in math education with Carol Dweck’s Mindset research.  You should check out her new website youcubed.org if you are interested in all the resources that she has shared freely.

And that was just to name a few!  So much wonderful information out there to learn and share.  The variety and number of sessions that connected to the pedagogy, content or philosophy of PBL was overwhelming and honestly very invigorating for me as someone who has taught with PBL for over 20 years.  Seeing the interest and enthusiasm for this type of classroom practice has given me renewed energy to get me through the rest of the year!

What I learned over my NCTM break!: Part 1

Wow!  What an amazing three days I spent at the NCTM annual conference in New Orleans!  I can’t believe how much I learned (which actually never amazes me and always humbles me – one of the many reasons I love going to these conferences.)  I also hate leaving and knowing that I missed at least 20 sessions that conflicted with ones that I did go to, so now I’m catching up and trying to email the speakers that I didn’t quite get to see or get in contact with while there.

One of my major a-ha moments was in Gail Burrill’s session on logarithms.  You’d think that after 25 years of teaching that you’d understand how much you understand about logs right? Oh, no!  So she had us all have a very large number and we were doing an exercise where we had to put a post it note with that number (mine was 72, 753) on a scale of powers of 10 {10, 10^2, 10^3, 10^4, 10^5…}, her argument being that one of the main reasons to teach logs is to have a different scale for very large numbers.  So after all of these teachers did this, we analyzed where all of our numbers were on the scale – particularly between these numbers.  Since my number should’ve been between 10^4 and 10^5, I knew I put it in the right place – but oh no, I had it in the wrong place relative to the middle.  She asked us to calculate the middle of those two – 10^4.5 which was 31,622 and yes, I admit that’s very close to where I put my post-it.  I could blame the person who put their’s up first which said 75,289 and I just put mine by there’s but I won’t.  I just didn’t really think.  But I know this was a light bulb moment for many of the teachers in the room.  Students don’t really understand how a logarithm is an exponent in the first place and we were doing this exercise without even using the word “logarithm.”

Then we went down to the section below that was between 10^3 and 10^4 and checked some of those numbers.  They were very off too and Gail asked us what number we expected to be in the middle.  At this point, some of us pulled out our calculator (yes, I admit, I did) but some of the smartees in the room just said “3,162” and I finally got it.  By just dividing by 10 and looking at the scale in this nonlinear way, students would be able to make the connection between the algebraic properties of exponents and what a logarithm was.  I thought this was an amazing way to introduce logs.  Has anyone done this before?  Thanks so much Gail!!  I think I’m going to write a problem for my curriculum about this, it’s such an insightful experience.

More reflections to come – just can’t do it all at once – catching up on school work!

Handouts – Front and Center

I always try to make it easy for people to find both my slides and handouts when I give a talk – so Here’s my powerpoint presentation from my talk entitled, “Change the Classroom, Not the Students: Creating Equity with PBL”  which I’m giving today at the NCTM Annual Conference in New Orleans – great to be here.  I also have 2 handouts which include my framework for a relational PBL class and the results of my qualitative dissertation – I’d love to hear any comments and questions and start a discussion with PBL teachers. (I do not include the videos I used in this public version of the powerpoint, sorry)

[slideshare id=33364598&doc=changetheclassroomschettino-140410070229-phpapp02]

Schettino Framework Handout

Schettino Sample Problems Handout NCTM2014

There are actually a few talks here today that I would highly recommend and seem to be related to this topic of creating a classroom that allows for discussion and interaction at the level of creating equity.  One of them is on Friday, and is entitled “The Hidden Message: Micromessaging and Mathematics” and it seems to be about managing the way we talk to each other in the classroom and making sure all voices are heard.  I’m definitely going to that one!  Unfortunately, Jo Boaler is presenting at the exact same time as me!  I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment that I was put as the same time or not 🙁

Well, hope everyone has a great time!  Enjoy the conference!

Being Inspired & About Intuition

In early January, I had the good fortune to go down to the NCSSM Teaching Contemporary Mathematics Conference in Durham, NC.  There were many wonderful speakers there including Dan Teague, Maria Hernandez, Gloria Barrett and the Key Note Speaker on Saturday morning, Gail Burrill.  Gail spoke about making up tasks and lessons that actually allowed students to ask good questions that made them think mathematically.  She gave many wonderful examples and talked a lot about the responsibility of the teacher to probe and use the following pedagogical strategies:

The tasks we give and questions we pose should ensure that students:

  1.  are actively involved in choosing and evaluating strategies, considering assumptions, and receiving feedback.
  2.  encounter contrasting cases- notice new features and identify important ones.
  3. struggle with a concept before they are given a lecture
  4.  develop both conceptual understandings and procedural skills
(National Research Council, Adding it Up (2001) and How People Learn (1999) From Burrill’s Presentation)
She also gave this wonderful rubric for Inquiry Math Tasks

It made me realize that because I use a PBL curriculum very few of the problems that we look at are actually full inquiry (or student-generated). Although what happens in class is that students will create questions that I think are wonderful and a lot of discussion stems from those questions.

It will be a whole other blogpost for me to detail how problem-based learning fosters every one of those in a meaningful way.  It really blew my mind when I was sitting there listening to her.  I was thinking,”This is an amazing framework to describe to people what PBL is like.”  In fact, at one point she said that she believe that all mathematical tasks should be done where students “work alone a bit, and then they share.”  I thought that is exactly the pattern of grappling with problems for homework and then sharing ideas the next day in class.  Gail never prescribed any methods or told anyone to follow any specific guidelines, but just stated these general ideas.  It was a wonderful talk.

Later on that morning, I gave a talk on teaching BC Calculus with problem-based learning.  Perhaps I made a comment too many about how I was against “teaching to the test” and a young man asked a question in defense of the AP Calculus exam itself.  He felt that the multiple choice section allowed students to learn or develop intuition about questions and problem solving and that the benefits of practicing such repetitive type questions was to gain that type of intuition for those topics and those questions.  Well, I hope I am remembering this question well enough, but I would argue that intuition for problem solving and intuition for problems is two different things.  There have been many mathematicians and mathematics educators throughout time from Polya to Alan Schoenfeld who have attempted to structure problem solving or how to teach problem solving to anyone.  From my readings, there is always a “reflection” step where you compare your ideas in the “novel” problem solving process (novel being the key word here, being something that you have not yet seen).  My argument being that repeating the same type of problem definitely ensure that on a test with the same type of problems you may be able, under pressure, to answer those problems correctly.  Does it show that you have developed an intuition on what to do in those types of problems?  Perhaps.  It might show that you have differentiated between the different types of outcomes of those problems.  Does it show that you understand that concept or that you understand what the question is asking?  I am not sure.  I have worked with enough students who have mastered the art of eliminating answers in a multiple choice scenario to know that it does now show understanding, but intuition about answering the question.

However, I do think that having a student practice problem solving in a way where you are faced with a novel problem on a regular basis (perhaps nightly – along with other problems that they have seen before) where they are asked to try something new and reach into their prior knowledge and write down what they think they might be able to do allows them to practice creativity, risk-taking, connection and sharing those ideas.  After a long period of time of doing this, it would seem that some type of intuition becomes habit and they develop more knowledge about mathematics overall. More importantly, “Students are thus engaged in the creation of mathematics, allowing them to see mathematics as a part of human activity, not apart from it.”  I believe that’s why PBL in mathematics is even more important than in other disciplines and that we need to change the culture of the classroom before asking more from our teachers and students.

Sharing in Chicago! PME-NA 2013

So tomorrow I’m off to PME-NA 2013 in Chicago which is one of my most favorite conferences for mathematics education research.  I will be presenting my research findings from my dissertation on Saturday morning and I’m so lucky to be going.  I’ve posted my PMENA handout  for anyone interested in having it.  I’m also posting  the powerpoint on my slideshare site.

30-Year-Old Wisdom, Not Recent Rhetoric

Recently, the Exeter Bulletin published an amazing Memorial Minute in honor of Rick Parris just this past week which I believe was wonderfully written.  In it they use a quote that Rick stated back in 1984 which shows his wisdom and insight into student learning of mathematics and the basis of my interest in PBL.

“My interest in such problems is due in part to the pleasure I get from working them myself, but it also stems from my belief that the only students who really learn mathematics well are the ones who develop the staying power and imagination that it takes to be problem-solvers. Such students will have thus learned that being accomplished in mathematics is not simply a matter of learning enough formulas to pass tests; that creative, original thought requires living with some questions for extended periods of time, and that academic adventure can be found in the pursuit and discovery of patterns, more so than in the mere mastery of known formulas.”

In this one paragraph is the whole of what you can find in so many blogposts, writings of so-called “experts” and “thought-leaders” in education nowadays.  I’m not so sure that the recent trend of promoting curiosity, innovation, creativity, perseverance and ‘grit’ are such original ideas.  It just has taken a long time to catch on in any type of mainstream educational jargon.

Rick Parris knew the truth over 30 years ago and led the charge in curriculum writing, pedagogical study, and leadership in student learning.  Always humble, but deeply interested in discussion, he would never shy away from the chance to discuss teaching mathematics and so I was lucky enough to have him as a colleague in the early years of my career.  He helped form my teaching philosophy and I owe a huge debt to the wisdom he imparted to me.  I seek to help students “live with some questions” every day in my classroom and I join them daily on the “academic adventure” of problem-based learning.  I can only hope that the mathematics community and society as a whole in the U.S. can catch up with his wisdom and we can eventually change the way we view learning mathematics.