What a mediocre day. Everything just seems so "stale," as my colleague Darren likes to say. The students were stale, I was stale...it was all stale. After breaking into triads and quads to tackle a problem involving rocket ships and quadratic modeling I encouraged the students to work as mini-teams, working through the problem together, sharing ideas, and showing evidence of their thinking. What I got was silence. I'm not sure if they really know what it looks like to be an effective collaborator. In fact, I'm fairly confident that many of them don't. I need to model it, scaffold it and build it into our routine. When you work with a group of people you contribute. You pose questions to one another. You defend your thinking with evidence. You actively engage in the process of learning alongside one another. These are the things I want...they're not the things I'm getting.
Constantly moving around the room and pushing kids to really work with one another was both tiring and frustrating. "Come on Armando, does Jordy even have a clue what you're working on? Have you shared your thinking with him?" "Why is everyone in this group quiet Benito? Is anyone on the same page? Where's the collaboration?" "LaDon and Torian, how is it going to help you learn a new skill by just watching Iaisha write her work on the poster? Don't you need to involve yourselves in the process?"
After countless reminders, encouragements and suggestions the students finally started to work together. Benitto and Ron showed Angel how to find the a, b, and c values of a quadratic model, y = ax^2 + bx + c. Iaisha coached Torian and LaDon on the process used to get each coefficient as well. Carlos paid close attention as I facilitated his independent work (a success considering that his entire group left him after they became too annoyed by his behavior and attitude). Josh, Jessica and Saul worked alongside one another, trying to decide whose curve of best fit was the highest quality so they could use it as the foundation for deriving their quadratic equation. The students were finally starting to look like a community of learners. The only question is, why did it take us half the class to reach this level of collaboration? How can we make these type of student behaviors the norm without my incessant coaching?
When I look back on it now, maybe the class wasn't so mediocre after all. In fact Jessica demonstrated some beautiful knowledge when she stated that "the reason we work with non-linear data is because everything in the world doesn't follow a linear pattern and if we want to work with real data in real situations we're going to have to get used to other types of equations." As Ladon put it, "we're going to have to leave our comfort zone (linearity)." The class ended strong even though it started weak. Now the big question I'm wondering...How can we start strong, stay strong and finish strong? Maybe I need to give out Power Bars and Redbulls 40 minutes into class, or maybe there's another way. I'll let you know when I figure it out.
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I don't recommend Powerbars - too much sugar, the students will crash (start hyper, finish weak = poor learning environment) I do however recommend Spike over Redbull. No sugar, a bit of caffeine for a boost (ok a lot of caffeine), but the kids will be ripping through quadratic formulas and linear equations like nobody's business. You, David, are a phenomenal instructor, mentor, partner. Keep up the great work; your students likely absorb more than you think, they just need you to give them a friendly shove every once in a while to get their minds churning. Maybe you could have a day where the students must teach the class; change roles. Let them demonstrate what they've learned and maybe you can learn something in the process of how they construct different concepts and come to solutions. Put them in your place and maybe they'll begin to grasp what it takes on a daily basis to instruct; the challenges that one might face; how to come to a conclusion without you there to hold their hand and maybe then they'll understand the importance and value of collaborating.
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