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Everything I had thought about coaching in education changed when I read the article “Personal Best” by Atul Gawande several years ago. In the article, we learn that eight years into his surgical career, the author felt his surgical skills had plateaued as compared to the steady upward growth he experienced during the initial launch into his professional work. And so he asked a former instructor to observe him during surgical procedures and serve as a coach. He shared that the first procedure he did while being observed went incredibly smoothly. Or so he thought. His coach provided two pages of “small things” that, from his coach’s vantage point, affected his work in ways that offered opportunities for improvement. The coach pointed out that shifting his arm or foot position could offer greater stability while working. He noticed how the surgical light moved during the procedure, thus changing the amount of direct light shining on the wound. These “outside eyes,” as Gawande described it, along with several months of continued observations and follow-up conversations, offered Gawande the chance to get better at his job.
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Think of a situation where you felt you belonged. What was that like? What made that happen for you? Consider a time when you sensed that you didn’t belong. How did you feel? What made you uncomfortable? And what do these questions have to do with teaching and learning mathematics? You will find out in this blog.
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During the last two years of our classroom teaching, a lot of what we knew to be true about teaching and learning shifted. Despite all the professional learning, schooling, and teaching experience we had, it hadn’t prepared us for what we continue to face as we work to reacclimate ourselves and our students to a “normal” classroom setting. Facilitating learning is no longer as straightforward as it once was; referring to a curriculum for guidance no longer applies at times because we’re doing more than just designing or teaching units of study that meet particular standards. We’re also being asked to address unfinished learning and to prioritize social and emotional learning (SEL) while ensuring we provide every student access to those grade-level standards.
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I can tell you my first driver’s license number, many of my former and current credit card numbers, the name of my first crush in elementary school, and the secret recipe for our family’s favorite pancakes. That information, encoded long ago, can come to mind with ease. But when I get myself ready to walk out the door to run errands, I’ll find myself standing in a room not knowing what I came in there to do or, once in the car, realizing I left the overdue library books sitting next to the front door. This is my working memory playing tricks on me.
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Removing barriers to learning is fundamental to our work as educators. One way to do this is to approach lesson design through a multidisciplinary lens, taking natural advantage of the variety of skills, dispositions, and individual levels of interests inherent in each one. Planning lessons, units or courses specifically from a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math) approach can open up learning experiences to a range of learners because of both content-driven intersection points and the interdisciplinary impetus for inquiry and investigation.
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Imagine two classrooms. In the first, a general education teacher and a special education teacher work separately. The general education teacher takes the lead on instruction and the special education teacher assists and provides additional support, focusing primarily on students with an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). Communication between the teachers revolves around logistics such as time management. There is little common planning time; each teacher plans independently for their specific students.
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The beginning of the school year is filled with excitement and anticipation. There are materials to prepare and organize, lessons to plan, and classrooms to set up. As teachers, we think carefully about the norms, structures, and routines that we want to establish. Everything from housekeeping to how we communicate with each other to how we move about the classroom contribute to students feeling safe to share their thinking, take risks, and solve problems.
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Summer can be a time for students and teachers alike to take a break from the intense lockstep schedule and pressures of the school year and take a breath. We might be outdoors more often, engage in sports or the arts, and generally do things we don't have time for during the school year. It can also be a time to find joy in the life of the mind, without the usual structures, stresses, and constraints that come with days divided into time slots, subjects, and pacing charts. There may be time to discover what thoughts and theories one is curious about, what one likes to learn about, and what ideas are fun to play with. When children play with math, without expectations of demonstrating achievement or competence, they too may find the fun and the beauty in math, as well as a sense of empowerment in doing so. Developing a positive disposition toward math is likely to lead to learning, both in the summer and in the school year to come.
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Maria is a second-grader who has a lot going for her at school. She is a strong reader and well-liked by her peers. However, sometimes she struggles in math. Long directions and multi-step problems can be challenging; it’s difficult for her to hold on to multiple pieces of information in working memory. Maria is aware of these challenges, as her teacher and parents have had conversations with her about them. From these conversations, she also knows that she has several strengths in math. She has a strong number sense and a good grasp of spatial relationships, which help her to be successful when working on problems involving shapes. Even though she knows that she is a good math student, she is aware that there are also certain areas in math where she might need extra help and that she needs to work on them to make improvements.
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You may ask yourself, “Who in my class has the potential to do well in math?” The resounding response must be that all children can succeed in math and even find pleasure in doing mathematical tasks (Boaler, 2016). Proficiency in mathematical concepts and competency with mathematical skills are not singular to a particular child, nor is there a certain group of children predisposed to be mathematicians (Boaler, 2016). Math is for ALL; it should be inclusive, transcending labels such as gender, classification (i.e., general education and special education) and ethnicity, among others.
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