Differentiated Coaching for Educators

Last week, I led a team of mathematics teachers through a problem from the wonderful site, www.nrich.maths.org, designed to help students develop mathematical conversations skills and value cooperative work. The problem asked participants to solve equations such as 19*24; 227 + 198; 57.6/2; 101*16*4, and so on, and then work as a group to agree on the most efficient method for each problem. For the first one, all but the student teacher used the standard algorithm for multiplication. The student teacher looked at the problem, multiplied 20*24 and subtracted 24. Much faster. THEN the rest of the teachers immersed themselves in finding elegant ways to do the rest of the problems. They began playing with the numbers. My favorite method was changing the last problem to 101 * (2 to the 6th power). The teacher said, "It's really not a fast way but I can't recall the last time I was so engaged with an arithmetic problem!"

The ensuing discussion highlighted many dilemmas teachers face, but the fact that they'd all had the common experience of delighting in problems that are usually given to students as rote, procedural tasks created an atmosphere of openness. Instead of defending practice, the teachers seemed to seek tools and solutions. A few discussion points:

--"But sometimes the algorithm is faster. We need to teach them." Yes we do. But the group also agreed that students make careless mistakes because they don't think while calculating. We talked about how a string of two-digit multiplication problems, with some lending themselves to different pathways and others to the algorithm, would help students think about strategies before starting a problem.

--"This would confuse special education students." The team agreed that the task would work for these students if the first set of equations they received involved 2-digit addition, all of which benefited from thinking about the numbers rather than blindly applying the algorithm (such as 18+22). "Mathematicians are lazy" could be a fun frame for helping these students begin to enjoy arithmetic.

--"Some students will just copy from classmates." We talked about the power of asking for justification, since copying won't help in explaining the method used. Since their students hadn't had much experience in cooperative learning or rich all-class discussions, the team eagerly discussed how they could begin with these problems as an all-class activity, reinforce getting students to attempt the problems before beginning the discussion, and using teacher moves that hold all students accountable for participating in the discussion. The teachers quickly shared methods they had used successfully to increase participation.

My real goal was for teachers to see that by turning more of the work of thinking over to students, not only would their students have more fun with math, but they as teachers would hopefully spend less time dragging fact-based answers out of students and more time enjoying discussions. One teacher who had already tried an all-class discussion we designed together said, "It didn't go perfectly--in fact I had to backtrack and have them set rules for discussion. But when we tried again, every student participated. And I was far less tired at the end of the period than on other days with that particular class. It worked--and we did far more math, too!!"

Ready for fun, anyone?

I recently began reading, then frantically flipping through a major education publication on using multiple measures to assess student achievement. Every measure mentioned was basically a test of knowledge. I'm all for objective standards, but as I understand the real world, knowledge is the least important component of what students need to learn in school. Current estimates are that even the children leaving school with the highest test scores will have only 2 percent of the knowledge they need for careers in the 21st century. To attain the other 98 percent requires curiosity, critical thinking, the ability to ask great questions, and an imagination to consider possibilities beyond current reality. To summarize, what has become a trite phrase, "creating lifelong learners," needs to become central to education.

In fact, I think that the most important "multiple measure" might be student engagement--not whether students are superficially entertained in the classroom but whether they are interested enough to ask questions, dig a little deeper, or push to understand the relevance of a lesson to their lives. Why? Because curiosity creates the patterns of discovery that motivate lifelong learning. For many students, school is something they finish, not a place that sets up lifelong patterns. (more…)

I was privileged today to speak with Margueritte Izzo, a recent New York State Teacher of the Year, while at the summer NSDC conference. Margueritte effortlessly deflects any personal praise and instead emphasizes that she must have received the title for a purpose--and at least one of her purposes is advocating for teachers. (more…)

At my daughter's high school graduation party this month, who showed up but her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Haugerud. She had joined Facebook to locate some of her favorite students from past classes and took a 30-mile drive across town to wish her well! (more…)

I recently spent several days in the heart of Washington DC. As I walked to and from the NCTM conference, to restaurants and museums, I watched the seconds tick down on the walk/don't walk clocks at each street corner. The time allotted for pedestrians to cross ranged from 12 seconds at one corner to 60 seconds at another.

I pondered the wide range of times. They weren't related to the width of the street or the average number of people standing there (some corners, especially around Chinatown, were definitely busier than others). Instead, the signals were timed to accommodate the vehicle traffic whizzing through the green lights that corresponded with the walk signals. (more…)

During my differentiation workshops, I often show films of students completing mathematical tasks. In my favorite clip, a little boy starts over three times before successfully making a shape that is 1/4 red and 3/4 yellow. When asked, in every workshop about 80 percent of the participants admit, "I would have stopped him after his second mistake to help him, assuming he couldn't do it on his own. And stopping him would actually have stopped his learning..." (more…)

Last week I conducted a four-day workshop on differentiated instruction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Present were university professors, school administrators, Ministry of Education employees, and teachers from public and private schools. With both men and women in attendance, I had the privilege of learning to work in a partitioned room. We also had two (more…)

Yesterday, during the "live case studies" activity I use in most workshops, the Intuitive/Feeling coaches reported that their initial reaction to the Sensing/Thinking case study was so negative that they had to take a break from the task to process their feelings.

It turned out that several of them had had terrible grade school experiences in a classroom similar to the one described in the case study. Their personal biases--"This classroom is my worst nightmare"--blocked them at first from seeing the teacher's strengths and potential. Even after they started the coaching process again, they found it difficult to be effective because they wanted to fix everything about the fictional teacher at once!!

My aha: Our own hot buttons can interfere with our ability to help a teacher become all they can be! I plan to reflect on my own top worst learning experiences, building self-awareness so that if I see elements of those in a classroom I can filter my own reactions and still discover what the teacher is doing right.