Suzanne at the Math Forum

This morning as I was riding the train on my morning commute to the Math Forum office at Drexel in Philly, I took a look at my philosophy paper again and came across this section that describes my experiences of teaching conversational English while living in Dortmund, Germany and later in Barcelona, Spain.

“The Berlitz method is definitely a progressive method. The students come to Berlitz for different reasons but underlying all else is their conscious decision to learn a language. (In my case my students’ choice was American English.) It was the ideal situation for an existentialist-progressive teacher. I was a helper! I was the resource person to provide the information for my students to take if they wanted it. The students were there by choice. The Bertliz method is based on a series of questions and answers using a picture book as a prompt. As the student learns basic questions and answers using only the acquired language, they have a basis for a conversation. It became my belief that if I could get the student to be curious about something enough to spontaneously ask a question then they were on their way to learning English.”

Being trained in the Berlitz method and applying it for 7 years while we lived in Europe had an effect on my classroom approach. I had just one classroom rule for my middle school students. It was:

Facilitate

I had a banner with that one word right next to the clock! Next to the word “Facilitate” I had three smaller banners with a few details:

… means help your teacher.

… means help your classmates.

… means help yourself!

I remember struggling with the idea that public school students were in a situation not of their own choosing. My goal was to create an environment for learning. I was hopeful that my students would choose to learn. I wanted them to make a conscious decision to learn the language of mathematics just like my Berlitz students (most of them adults!) had consciously decided to learn English. I wanted to create situations where the students were asking questions and having mathematical conversations.

At the Math Forum one of our breakthrough ideas in the last couple of years has been to use an activity that we’ve named “Noticing and Wondering.” This activity sets the scene for students to engage in problem solving and mathematical communication. As I think back on my Berlitz training and the environments that I tried so hard to create in my middle school classroom, I see why noticing/wondering seems absolutely perfect to me. I love going into classrooms and using that method with students.

If you find yourself reading this and you are familiar with our Noticing/Wondering idea because of your work with us at the Math Forum, please comment with a short reason why this activity works well with your students.

If you are not familiar with it, you might enjoy reading Marie Hogan’s and my article that was published in the CMC ComMuniCator, the journal of the California Mathematics Council. You can download the PDF here:
http://mathforum.org/articles/communicator2010.html

I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading it.

Last weekend I found myself sorting through some saved papers, books, and magazines and I ran across a paper I had written for a History of Philosophy of Education course that I took as a requirement for my Master’s in Education. Sitting on the floor in our upstairs office I read through the paper and thought, “Wow, I still believe in everything that I wrote even though it was 1989 when I submitted that paper.” Of course, it helps that I wasn’t “young” when I wrote it but was 39 years of age with some classroom experience and my own sons were 10 and 12 years old and so I had had plenty of time to form and also confirm my own personal philosophy. In fact, the title of the paper was “Personal Philosophy Paper.”

Here’s how it started…

“I was a seed. My father thought of me as a lump of clay. The educational system that I work in was formed on the thought that the students are lumps of clay. I work within that system knowing that the students were seeds that have sprouted into a variety of plants. The seed analogy assumes that a unique individual is born into the world to be helped in life in order to grow, learn, and flourish as an individual. The clay analogy assumes that all people are born to be taught and molded into educated adults. I have recognized these two distinct views for a long time but the two analogies are perfect to describe them.”

I thought back to when I had written that paper. I was teaching mathematics at a junior high school in southern California. I remembered thinking that many of my colleagues approached teaching with the thought that a student in their class “didn’t learn” something until they had “taught them.” In contrast, I often wondered if my students had some understanding of a topic before I launched into any section of a unit. What had they already learned about fractions? What conceptual understanding did they have? What misconceptions did they have? What should be the best starting point?

Twenty-two years later … I often find myself working with teachers in their classrooms. Sometimes they don’t start a unit by finding out what their students already know. Is it because they believe that students are “lumps of clay” or is it because they’ve just not developed ideas of how to nurture the seeds of student thinking?