Budapest, Hungary (1/2/08) - The Power of 17

There I was in a small Hungarian bistro waiting for my bowl of Goulash soup to come out when I left my vacation and traveled back to my classroom. It's amazing how easily teachers can leave their classroom, their school, or even their country, but never escape their profession. The upcoming semester was coming with some substantial changes and I really hadn't spent time digesting how the changes would affect my teaching and the school as a whole.

Finishing our first semester in the newly re-opened Manual High School a group of us realized that we just weren't meeting the needs of our students. The epic question of how wide of a spectrum can be differentiated for in the secondary math classroom was driving us crazy. Students with ability levels ranging from 4th through 9th grade in the same classroom is a daunting task...no question about it. As an experiment and as an effort to meet the needs of our kids we decided to make some changes (using the work of the Denver School of Science and Technology as a model to start from). The major changes were as follows.

1.) A separate class made up of a small group of students would be put together to support kids who just weren't ready for Algebra. These students had been constantly struggling because of the compound number of foundation skills missing from their math background. We wanted to give them a math opportunity where they could feel success and equip themselves with the tools necessary for completion of a rigorous secondary math program.

2.) An elective "frontloading" class would be developed for students who felt like they just need more time to digest the Algebra they're learning. This class would be offered twice a week and would introduce students to upcoming major math concepts before they see them in their Algebra classes. This would mean that students would have their regular Algebra class 85 minutes everyday in addition to two more 85 minute periods of "frontloading." Amazingly, 29 of my 80 students had volunteered for this elective citing that they loved the idea of getting "smarter at mathematics and feeling more confident with the work."

3.) A group of students, as determined by anecdotal evidence and quantitative data, would be placed in an Algebra-X class. Made up of a healthy mix of male, female, Hispanic and Black students (there are no white students on my team), this class would set a higher bar for student learning. Working harder, going deeper and moving faster, this class would challenge a group of 17 to rise to a new level of mathematics learning.

This 3rd change, the creation of the Algebra-X class, is what my mind focused on the most. "The Power of 17" just kept ringing in my head. Over and over and over. "The Power of 17." What could these 17 kids accomplish together. How could they epitomize the mission of our inner city school and act as a model for our beliefs? How could we create a sub-culture of 17 kids who embody what learning looks like in the new Manual High School? So many questions posed and only 5 more days before the start of our journey to answers begins.