Saturday, October 22, 2016

Productive Struggle

When I was in middle school, I struggled with math. I didn't catch on quickly and the pace of the lessons always felt too fast for me. Math was presented in only one way and I had to try to follow along and make meaning, but I remember feeling stupid and started saying "I can't do math" as a result. My parents got me a tutor who helped me to see math in different ways and gave me the opportunity to talk through my thinking. It turns out, I could do math, but I needed to be able to make meaning and I needed to be able to talk through my misconceptions.

So, what is the difference between struggling in mathematics and productive struggle?

The shifts in the common core require that the students do the majority of the thinking and the work - that they are the ones productively struggling with the problem solving, questioning, thinking, and explaining.
It really comes down to conceptual understanding. Conceptual understanding is how we make meaning of what we are learning - it's the mental models and images that we create to help us understanding what we are doing. 

Prior to common core, learning math was largely about about procedures. It was up to us to make our own meaning and find ways to understand the concepts behind the procedures if we did not immediately "get it." Twenty years ago, we didn't provide students with manipulatives to make meaning - we gave them procedures and expected them to figure it out. As a result, many students continued to feel like they didn't "get" math.

What is the lesson here for teachers of common core mathematics? 

Think about how long it took you to make meaning of mathematical concepts. Now think about how long you give kids to really make meaning of mathematical concepts. If you give students two days with manipulatives, have you really just substituted different procedures and students still don't have enough time to make meaning?


Lucy plays an online math game. She scored 100,000 more points on Level 2 than on Level 3. If she scored 349,867 points on Level 2, what was her score on Level 3? Use pictures, words, or numbers to explain your thinking.

Struggling would mean that you would give this problem to students and let them try to figure it out., Productive struggle means that you woud read through this problem with your students, giving them an opportunity to discuss what strategies they might use to solve the problem and what information they see as critical to understanding what the problem is asking. 

In order to do teach in this way, you have to plan differently. First of all, you need to do the math. You have to understand what students are going to do when they first approach this problem. You have to plan for an ideal student response and also plan for misconceptions that students are going to have. If you don't do the math, you are merely teaching to procedures and not to conceptual understanding. 

Secondly, you need to plan for students to productively struggle. Again, that means that they have to have some information to use before they begin to problem solve. In this problem, you might talk about the numbers that are important in the problem, and you might even brainstorm strategies that students could use to solve the problem, but in order to ensure that students would be doing the thinking, you would not set up a tape diagram for them. Productive struggle means that students have to have an idea about the work they are going to engage in and they would be able to explain the reasons that they chose the approach that they did. Do you provide students with manipulatives or do you have them get their own? Do you encourage them to use their white board? How do you help guide students toward potential strategies that will help them make meaning without telling them how to think?

Students also need time to do the math. Too often, this time is cut significantly short because teachers have not taught students to productively struggle. You have to have an idea of what you expect to see while kids are working in order to plan effective questions, redirections, or next steps. Your job during this phase is really to facilitate thinking. Students have to have a starting point and they have to be able to determine which strategies are most efficient.  As you gather information from students, you have to be able to really listen to them in order to understand their thinking and plan for next steps in moving them forward. Students should be encouraged to work together if it helps to facilitate their thinking - think about what you would do if you had to solve a problem. Chances are, you would at least talk it through with someone before you decided what steps made the msot sense to you. 

The real impact comes in the student discourse - where students explain their thinking whether they have a right or a wrong answer. The confident practitioner will embrace the questions that help move other students toward understanding during this part and will not get nervous about students modeling incorrect answers or divergent thinking. If student discourse sounds just like students filling in the blanks in your classroom, it is not getting to real understanding and it is certainly not moving students toward proficiency. Students should be able to think through their understanding and simply snot encouraged to find a friend if it takes them longer than 15 seconds to answer or explain their thinking. Classrooms that really understand that every child makes meaning about mathematics in their own way are classrooms that will celebrate divergent thinking, will build on other students' responses, and will ultimately see the greatest growth in mathematical understanding. 


I have come to look at mathematics instruction so differently than when I was a student. Our children are ready, willing, and absolutely able to master the mathematical concepts and skills that are a part of our common core curriculum. Teachers must look at teaching as more than simply covering the lesson and must do the math in order to be able to facilitate conceptual understanding for students and build on their questions in order to secure foundational skills. Our students must have more time with manipulatives and making meaning in order to build conceptual understanding. 

Making math matter in classrooms requires teachers that believe in the power of making meaning, building conceptual understanding with tools and manipulatives, and the ability of our children to conceptualize how different parts of mathematics align and connect. Adults must engage in productive struggle with that kind of planning in order to create clasrooms where students can productively struggle with concepts in mathematics. 






Saturday, October 15, 2016

Celebrating Diversity

I grew up in a small town. Diversity was not a part of the fabric of our community. I grew up knowing that there was much about other cultures that I didn't understand or even know about, and I chose to move away from the community that I love and to relocate in a place where there was greater diversity.

It may sound like a sound bite, but diversity is our greatest strenth. It is truly amazing to think how different people from different cultural backgrounds have all found themselves drawn to the liberties, freedoms, and opportunities that this country offers its people. I am not hugely political or patriotic, however, I believe that people deserve the "certain unalienable rights" that our forefathers wrote about and I believe that the people referred to in the Declaration of Independence rmeans all people. 

Friday we celebrated International Day at my school. It was absolutely amazing to see students dressed in their traditional cultural dress. Parents and families brought in traditional dishes to share with students in the class so everyone could have a "taste" of the different cultures that we represent. Classes read stories, learned cultural dances, made different foods, played games, and shared history from around the world as they learned to truly celebrate the diversity that lives in my school. I was so proud to be the leader of a school where there is so much diversity and so many cultures represented.
Providing opportunities for students to share their stories is essential in giving them a voice. In this day and age when some people feel that their voice should matter more than others, it is important for us to remember that public education exists to provide access, opportunity, and a level playing field for all - that means that all people, from all kinds of diverse backgrounds. Look at these kids - don't they deserve the very best we can give them every, single day?






Monday, October 10, 2016

Drive Decisions with Open Air Data

We are about six weeks into the school year. We had some initial data from last school year and summer that could inform the initial steps we took, but now it is time to get serious about planning for the students that we have in front of us and moving them toward proficiency.

I take this part of turnaround leadership very seriously. We do not have a single moment that can be wasted in classrooms in order to ensure that our students make the growth that is necessary for them to have the future that they deserve. To be able to immediately respond to the needs of our individual students requires knowing our students, understanding how they learn and where their gaps are, and believing in where they can be with our help. Teacher preparation programs do not train teachers to think this way - to plan in such a way that they can modify and adapt the standards to meet the needs of every individual child in the classroom - but it is necessary in order to move our students that we develop the skills to plan in this way.

Here is an example of our September data based on the STAR Reading Assessment.

What do you notice? As a school building leader, what would your first step be? As a teacher leader, how would you begin to look differently at the needs of your students? As a classroom teacher, what would you immediately begin to consider in order to plan for the students in your classrooms? 

I have a colleague who has her teachers create individualized plans for every student across their grade level team so that they can have a strong plan for moving each student toward proficiency. That is a powerful way to drive decisions based with the data. Whateer your approach to owning, sharing, and planning based on your data, it is essential to name the students at each proficiency level and have a clear plan for moving those students. There must be as strong of a plan for the students who are in green (at proficiency) as there is for the students who are in red. 

My plan is to meet with each grade level team and ask them to name the students performing at each level of proficiency, as well as information about each student in order to round out our understanding of what each child needs. Each grade level team will create a data wall that will track the interventions and progress for our students. This adds a level of accountability for the data. It also makes us constantly aware of where students are performing and our obligation to providing them what they need to move toward proficiency with grade level standards. 


Driving decisions with data is an essential component of school turnaround. The model above, which builds on a key quote from Peter Senge, supports the assertion that without the use of data to drive decisions, the underlying structures and mental models will not be significantly impacted. As Senge stated in The Fifth Discipline, "In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning." Turnaround leaders must own their data and be able to lead the next steps for changing the events, patterns, structures, and mental models underlying the practice in classrooms. Making significant change requires that we have a clear plan for moving our students toward proficiency. Every moment counts.