Numeracy Class

My classroom culture in my numeracy class was almost too good to be true until late October when I started to notice students showing a lack of respect for each other and me, as well as some behavior issues. I wrote about this experience in my journal entry on October 31, 2016:

“Last week I went through a rough patch with my numeracy class. I’m beginning to realize that teaching is a whole lot of ups and downs, and no matter how prepared you are, you just can’t prevent all the downs. When I was discussing the turbulence with Kate, she brought up the fact that this was the first heavily skills-based unit I had taught them without providing any context. She suggested showing them that the math (the distributive property) had a purpose in the real world. The next day, I gave them a starter that talked about Kenzie buying her favorite rapper’s new CD and having to take into account the tax for each purchase. I set up the expression for them using the distributive property, and they were beyond excited to solve it. They stayed much more engaged for the rest of the class. The next day, I gave them another contextualized starter, this time involving Danni selling candy. I got Danni hooked completely for the first half of class, and even though he wasn’t as productive in the second half, he wasn’t disruptive like he had been the previous week.”

In addition to bringing in real-world contexts for my students, I also had them create and sign a class social contract: 

Since the beginning of January, we spent the first part of class every Monday doing an activity I called “Team Love” : We each randomly chose a name out of a container, wrote a nice note or compliment to the person whose name we chose, exchanged notes, and then read the note we received out loud. My students eagerly asked me each Monday if we were going to do the activity, and I definitely think that it helped connect us as a classroom community.

Integrated Math Class

By January, I felt like I had much more control of my integrated math class and was seeing a positive development in student behavior and mathematical practices. At the same time, I was struck with the feeling that I wasn’t doing anything meaningful with them. I explored these feelings in my journal entry on January 25, 2017:

“What does it mean for something to be meaningful and worthwhile? For the past few weeks, this question has been at the forefront of my mind, mostly because I’ve been struck with the unshakeable feeling that I’m not making math class meaningful or worthwhile for my 7^th period students. I know that I’ve come a long way from when I first took over the class at the beginning of last quarter. I finally feel like I have more control and can actually get most of them to engage with math and do their work. But what am I actually celebrating in that last sentence? That I’ve gotten them to “do” school, to conform to the hegemonic idea of schooling that positions students as subservient beings? I know that gaining respect and authority in the classroom is necessary in order to create a safe learning environment in which those power dynamics can then be disrupted, but in focusing on that battle, I lost sight of the math and the meaning behind it. I’m finding myself trying to move them along through systems of equations without asking myself why I think it’s important that they learn about systems. How can I expect my students to invest in the subject if I don’t have a clear idea of why I should be teaching it to them? Also, why have I begun to think of it as “moving them along”?”

For a starter later that week, I actually asked my students to reflect on the following questions about our class:

1. Is this class meaningful to you? Why or why not?
2. What can Miss Cramer do to make this class meaningful for you?
3. What can you and your classmates do to make this class meaningful?

Click here to read some of my students’ responses.

In response to their comments, I designed a project that was tailored to their individual needs and allowed them to be creative. I split students into groups based on their interests and assigned them a business scenario involving real-world systems of equations. They needed to use math to make the smartest business decision and present their findings in a commercial. They were by far the most engaged I had ever seen and many of them really took ownership over their work. For details and video of the project, check out the February portion of my Student Growth section. For my reflections on the project, read about my second round in February. 

Throughout the rest of the year my students and I still struggled to come together to make class meaningful, but my initial breaching of the subject in January and my continual transparency with them helped establish the classroom as a space in which that sort of dialogue was welcome.