I will be @ UC Berkeley all day

In a California Writing Project event celebrated 35 years and reading research.

A small snippet of Twitter last night, though, left me wondering:

My response:

The "no Friday Night Life" is purely by choice. I'd rather be watching a movie with my 9 year old son and, when he sleeps, I slip onto the Internet for a while.

I love teaching. I love writing. Hence, I love to write about teaching. At any rate, I should have plenty of data for my professional inquiry project.

The value of mistakes:

“The value of action is that we make mistakes; 

mistakes show us what we need to learn.” 

~ Peter McWilliams

Today was a challenging teaching day. My last double period of the day, from 1:45 to 3:15, is with a group of noticeably distracted 7th graders. They are happy and sociable, but almost half of them have some serious issues with paying attention and understanding the underlying concepts.

There is a girl in this group who is particularly distracted and lethargic. Her attitude is fine, her dealings with me all sweet, but I find myself calling her attention many, many times during a given class. It is starting to wear on her.

Once, about a month ago, I was talking to her about lethargy because her general state of health was concerned. She assured me that of all her class, mine was her favorite. This struck me as odd as I often see her looking out the window.

It has always been difficult for me figure out what to do with exceedingly slow and unmotivated learners. I find that I spend a lot of time noticing their behaviors, trying to find a pattern to help them come "back into class." For some my technique works. For others, though, I have come to believe it is Chinese water torture, drop by drop. This year  I vowed to change that.

However, I found myself really noticing how little attention this girl was paying to my class. I saw that saw that she was visibly miffed.

After a little while passed, I called her out to the hall. At this point my own patience was thin due to the difficulties of moving this lesson forward with the other students. I told her that I saw she once again had not brought her notebook with math homework. Two days earlier, she had not done the homework, but did not have the parent signature  I want to see.

This girl did not want my attention, which seemed to cause me to insist more.

Finally, when I saw there was not where else to be going, I let her go. But I was disturbed. Had my insistence gone to far? Was I causing a negative impression of math take over? If so, how could I make it up to her without giving in on the homework and responsibility front.

I decided to a call home this Friday evening to talk with her mother. Her mother was very appreciative of my call and explained that her daughter has been fighting her influence as a mother. The mother also said  of all her daughter's teacher, I was her favorite (something she found surprising due to math in general and my reputation in particular).

I realized that a little communication goes a long, long way.

I hope that this student and I can have a good, productive week.

Student writing about what he learned in algebra

If you have students write, they will make great connections. I find this student's writing particularly clear and it is obvious to me that he "gets" the bigger picture of different ways to solve systems of equations:

I learned a lot in Chapter 6. We learned about all the different ways of solving a system of equations. We reviewed the equal values method, where you make each equation equal to the same thing, make them equal, and then solve for the variables. We learned about the substitution method, where, for instance, if you had one equation in a y=mx+b form, you replace y in the other equation with whatever mx+b is. Then, finally, we learned about the elimination method, where you try to get rid of one of the variables. For instance, if you have two equations: x+2y=1, and 3x+5y=8, you would want to multiply the first equation by 3 so you would have 2 "3x's" and then subtract the second equation from the first equation. This method is very useful because it is quick and easy. I think my favorite method is the substitution method. The substitution method can almost always be used and it is also very easy and pretty simple. I don't like he equal values method because it takes a really long time for me and it seems a little more complicated than the others. The elimination method isn't bad, it works pretty well but it is less useful than the substitution method in my opinion.

A nice student comment about how math class is going.

Last night I learned how to make a Google Docs survey form. I loved the simplicity of it and the immediacy for my project of collecting more student feedback on how the class is going. I imbedded the form on a special math blog I keep for these types of forms, then had my students access the website and complete the survey. It took them about 15 minutes total to do this (we have student laptops available for each student at my school). The questions I used were the following:


1. What is going well for you in math?
2. What is difficult for you in math class?
3. Rate your participation in class (options: more, same or less than other students)
4. When you have a question in class, what do you do? Does it work?
5. When you have a question about homework, what do you do? Does it work?
6. When you have a question during a test/quiz, what do you do? Does it work?
7. If you could change one thing about class, what would it be?


The feedback was very positive: my students are hearing my earnest desire to maintain their homework life doable and meaningful ("not busy work" said one of them) and that I should be a resource of last resort after talking with peers and thinking about the math (I don't want to be the omnipresent, know-it-all teacher).

There was one particular comment that I wasn't expecting, but enjoyed reading and consider:


Everything is going well for me in math this year. 


I understand the concepts how you explain them and the homework seems like a good amount that helps me understand the classwork. 


The homework usually isn't busywork. :) 


We have math class as the last period on Friday and I like how you understand that we might get restless. 


Some teachers wouldn't realize that.



The reason I like this comment is that it tells me that this student hears my compassion for their school life complications and try to deal with them in positive ways. Even naming these frustrations seems to make some students feel more understood.


My ultimate goal is to be a compassionate, realistic math teacher with high academic standards. Sometimes it seems that these three adjectives are contradictory, especially when applied to the MATH TEACHER as a stereotype. At least with this group of students, I am winning the battle to receive the "benefit of doubt" that I wrote about earlier.

Guiding Quote for my 2009 Teacher Inquiry Project

"You never find yourself until you face the truth." ~ Pearl Bailey

Student Comments on teacher evaluation...part 2

Glenn tries to help you to speak up and be active in the class.


This is a particularly interesting question for me. The best gift I have received recently were two comments from parents of extremely shy and quiet students who say they feel very supported and comfortable in my class. Since I am a big, white man, I would say this is a great event.


Some comments:


I don't like to talk in class and Glenn wants to help me do this better


I think that Glenn does a very good job of encouraging kids to speak up and be active in class


Lately Glenn has been encouraging questions and saying not just myself but also other people.


But an interesting type of comments arose:


We don't have many class discussions, so it's hard.


We rarely do activities that involves the whole class and if we do he only picks people who are raising their hands. but if those people have gone already then he either picks them again if they want to go up or he'l just randomly pick sombody else


This is a truth: I don't have much whole group discussion. In fact, I try to limit the whole class discussion to less than 10 minutes out of the hour or so of class. Most of our class time is devoted to math work in groups, partners or individual.


A couple of other comments:


He calls on me when I have no idea what the answer is but not when I am raising my hand and I know the answer. I would like to be called on when I know the answer not just when I don't know and the whole class laughs.


You get kids back on task if they are being distracted :p


These last two comments encapsulate a typical day in middle school math classroom. I wish parents understood this better.

Comments from the student evaluation...

 Glenn knows math well and is prepared and organized when he teaches it.


Almost 90% of the students gave me credit for knowing my math and being organized in how I present it.


Typical student comments:


You are almost always prepared in class


Glenn does know math well but sometimes when he writes on the board it is not that neat and it can be hard to understand.


Glenn knows what he is teaching us and uses the SmartBoard effectively to teach us.


But I detect a little stress behind these numbers:


Glenn knows math really well but he doesnt teach us how to solve it the best way. he does the problem but he doesnt go into detail to show you how to do it.


He knows math well and has an organized way of teaching different concepts but a lot of the time we just have to learn things from the math book which is not always helpful.


I know that Glenn knows how to do math well but sometimes he won't explain his way of thinking so that we can get a better understanding of how to do a problem.


Sometimes he switches the schedule up and the original plan wasn't that organized either.


 These last comments reflect a very common tension in my math classes. I try to lead students to their own discoveries. I want them to wrestle with the problems we deal with. I avoid giving direct answers to problems until I feel my students are truly lost.


Nevertheless, it is a very common perception that math should be learned in an environment of direct instruction where methods are taught by the expert (teacher) and practiced by the student in carefully measured segments.


I resist telling my student "how" to do a problem, but I feel I could improve the way I explain my philosophy to my students and their families.

As student grades and report cards come upon us...

I set up a survey on www.surveymonkey.com for my students to evaluate my performance as their math teacher. It seems fair that they get to have a say in explaining their experiences in school. The survey was entirely anonymous and only took about 10 minutes for the whole class to fill out. I included spaces for comments. Later on I will post some of the more salient comments, but this is the initial results of the class according to the rating system I gave them:

The number rating stands for the following:

1 = rarely

2 = once in a while

3 = sometimes

4 = most of the time

5 = almost always

Glenn understands math and is prepared and organized when he teaches it.

87% rated this as a 4 or 5

Glenn listens to your point of view, even if he does not always agree with it.

60% rates this as a 4 or 5

Glenn tries to help you to speak up and be active in the class.

48% rates this as a 4 or 5

Glenn is flexible with your needs as a student (i.e. homework, schedules, classwork, groupings, extra help).

67% rate this as a 4 or 5

Glenn is wants to learn from students and change things to make them work better.

59% rate this as a 4 or 5

I have an overall positive impression of these statistics. When I separate out the 7th grades from the 8th grades, I find the 7th far more positive overall, but since there are only about 30 students at each level, there are may not be enough data to accurately say more, at least numerically (remember: I am the math teacher).

The statistic I am happiest with is the one on flexibility because it has been a professional goal of mine to help my students make good, reasonable and logical choices about how to meet their class requirements. I also don't believe that HOMEWORK should be used as a policing tool on kids and especially on their families, at least at the Middle School level.

The statistic I want to examine more closely is the participation one. There were many comments of students feeling left out or pressured to give correct answers when they don't have them. I want to address that perception, but need to consider the sources and collect further data on this one. I suspect that many math teachers can relate to students feeling this way.

Teacher Action Research

This year I will be conducting an inquiry into my teaching practices. I will be part of a group of teachers working together at UC Berkeley. 

The topic of my research is to describe the characteristics of math discourse in my classes.

This is a definition of Teacher Action Research that I particularly like:

Action research is systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers, principals, school counselors, or other stakeholders in the teaching/learning environment to gather information about how their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. This information is gathered with the goals of gaining insights, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment, and improving student outcomes and the lives of those involved.

http://www.nefstem.org/teacher_guide/intro/definition.htm