This year, as I contemplate the beginning of a new school year, I am in totally different surroundings. I am sitting on a big deck in a small town in rural Manitoba. I have a big backyard; I have more than one bedroom, and more than one floor. But not only that, I have a whole new professional challenge ahead of me. Not only am I changing provinces, and curriculums and school boards, I am also changing positions. This year, I have the very big responsibility of beginning a new program, a program for some of the students in my school who very much need a place to call home, a place to come and learn and be safe. This doesn’t mean that I’m not still me. I’m still the ‘dean of math’; passionate about excellence in mathematics education at all levels and for all students. I’m still spending great deals of time thinking about assessment, about student voice and about community and collaborative learning. Indeed, those last two things are the aspects of my program that I am most focused on right now. My first challenge will be to build that community, in a small group that is based on collaborative learning, and not competition. In fact, that is the learning goal of one my first math lessons: That learning is not a competition. And yet, so often, we make it into one. Test scores and timed activities and prizes and points and reward systems to reinforce good behaviour. In my mind, all of these things set students against each other, or at least the system. Learning, I believe, is inherently social. We do our best learning together — even those of us who are proud introverts. At some point, we need to talk to each other, to discuss and debate and ask questions, and give and get answers. Therefore, the first learning norm I am going to aim to establish in my classroom is that learning is not a competition.
How do I do this?
Well, I’ll be honest. This is not easy. It’s not something that happens over night — that easy sense of students learning from and with each other without being threatened by one another. I was blessed to spend two years with my past students, and by the second year, the collaborative community in my room was one of the things I am most proud of over the course of my teaching career. But now, I’m starting again, with a smaller group, who don’t know me at all. Here are five fundamentals that I think are key:
- Engage students regularly and routinely in oral mathematics activities that are open-ended and varied. Which One Doesn’t Belong, Estimation 180, and Notice/Wonder pictures are brilliant for this. Start your learning blocks with these tasks that get kids talking.
- Write down every kid’s answer when recording ideas and questions, even if it is off the wall, or completely wrong. Everyone’s voice is respected.
- Randomly group students together.
- Challenge your students with big problems, even ones you know that they aren’t going to find a final answer for. This builds productive struggle. Remember, if you are only ever posing problems you know they can do, you aren’t doing them any favours. And this struggle time helps ‘level the playing field’ — no one just ‘knows’ the answers.
- Use Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces as much as possible. Everyone can see everyone else’s work and ideas. No one’s work is a secret. We are all learning from each other.
This is just a starting point and certainly these ideas are not just my own. These are things that I have worked through — that have been tried and tested by me in both big Grade 8 classes of 36 students that contain multiple exceptionalities, down to small groups of students who are withdrawn for mathematics programming. This is a place to start. All of our classrooms, regardless of the age, or discipline, need to be places of collaboration and collective learning, and not competing against each other.
The Learning Lab 