Missing the point.

We spend a lot of time talking about how to teach math.

But I think we’re missing the point. Or at least, I think we’re missing the bigger picture.

What math are we teaching?

This idea, this question, sort of leaves me speechless. What math are we teaching? What math am I teaching? And does it make a difference?

Well, if it didn’t, I don’t think it would bother me so much to think about. I might be teaching it in a great way, but what about that content that I’m teaching in that way. Does it deserve to be taught? Should it be taught? Am I missing out on the actual content that should be taught? How do we decide what the content is? And can we really separate the what from the how? Can I be a great teacher of the wrong content?

I’m about to start teaching about the multiplication of polynomials. Why am I teaching this? Well, because my curriculum document says it’s an outcome expected for Grade 9 math in the province where I live. But really….why am I teaching this? Is there an inherent beauty and wonder that comes with this mathematics? Is there a why beyond the standard answers? Is this math that matters? One of my favourite teaching memories comes from the first time I let students wander down the rabbit hole about Zero and it’s history. We were learning about something else entirely — I don’t even remember the lesson I was in the middle of — when someone secretly asked a peer, “Is zero even a number?”, and then we were off. We spent the rest of the lesson wondering, asking questions, doing research, and asking more questions. We consulted experts that we’d met in the year. We drew conclusions and reasoned and justified our way through the mathematics of our questions. And it was brilliant. It was one of favourite moments as a math teacher — as a teacher of any content, really. And this is what I want to capture in my classroom on a regular basis: this questioning, this joy, this wonder, this vulnerability, this real authentic, messy learning. But how do we get there? How do I take something like multiplying polynomials and make it into something wonderous? Is that even possible? Should every day have something of wonder? I think yes. I think it should. I think we should be able to turn each lesson to wonder in some way. But we have to ask the right questions. We need to consider the right content — not that I know for sure what that even means.

All this is to say that sometimes, in all our debating and discussing, that I think we miss the point. We spend so much time focused on the how of our teaching that we let the what of our teaching slide. But we must be just a diligent about the what as we are about the how. Otherwise we do our students a double disservice.