things that have made me cry this week

• digging into Sherman Alexie's Indian Education with this summer's math pilot lab teachers, and reflecting later on the implications for our work with students
• hearing story after story at this week's AAPI staff summit, and being humbled by the strength and diversity of the group
• feeling the power of this group of people having the courage to share deeply personal experiences and directly critical feedback with senior leaders in our organization-- while knowing that we wouldn't say these things if we didn't care enough to hope and want desperately enough for it to be better
• affirmation from the leader of my team that I can be and am a leader whose voice is appreciated on our team, despite not being a charismatic, loud, out-in-front visionary
• a kind and thoughtful facebook post from a former student-- and it being the impetus for reconnecting with another one (who I thought would never forgive me for leaving the classroom)
• photos of the Pride of 2009 my first class of students graduating from Duke, ECU, and UNCG
• getting up before 6:30 AM for ten days in a row (not really, but it made me want to cry... this is one of the few things I don't miss about teaching)

I am not a crier. It has been an emotional week. 

lesson patterns: mocked up

As per my previous post, I'm toying with the idea of developing lesson "structures" that novice teachers can learn and apply to their lesson planning and execution rather than being overwhelmed by theory and templates. I took some time to mock up a few examples, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether/how helpful this would be to brand new teachers. The idea is that they would watch a video of an experienced teacher teaching a lesson using one of these patterns, discuss and analyze why the lesson worked and the purpose of each part of the pattern, and learn the specific strategies referenced within the pattern. Then, they would mimic, rehearse, and teach the lesson themselves, and have this pattern to build on when they start writing their own lessons. Of course, as they gain experience, they'd modify the patterns, build on them, extend them, develop their own patterns, etc., but I'm hoping this will be a very concrete and useful starting point.

The previous post gave the example of a lesson pattern based on pattern recognition, and this mockup includes lesson patterns based on applying previously mastered content, exploring a novel task, and direct instruction. It also includes the criteria that I'm using to develop them, and examples of how they might be applied to math objectives. So without further ado:



What do you think? I'm sure this needs a LOT of development and refinement before I actually attempt to use it with new teachers or to design training around it, but I'm hoping that having something concrete will help gauge whether this is even a direction worth pursuing.

personal/public rebellion

When I find that something makes me uncomfortable, I often just find ways to avoid it-- let's call this my personal rebellion, although it's probably more defensive and resistant than political, and comes from a place of self-protection (and wanting to maintain my integrity as best as I can in an environment in which I feel I cannot) rather than a place of action or change. These are often very little things: using the language of "teachers" rather than the language of "corps members," because I find the latter to create what I consider unnecessary and unproductive distinctions that alienate our novice teachers from the profession of teaching, or avoiding the language of "the achievement gap" in my own speaking and writing, because I don't think the math education that most upper-middle class suburban white students are getting is all that great either. And sometimes I make concessions so as not to cause a ruckus: when I'm writing an "official" document that demands particular word choices in order to remain consistent with organizational language, or when it's convenient shorthand for speaking to someone with whom I don't want to engage around why I don't like this language (which is probably more people than it should be).

Of course, this assumes that I would be able to explain my discomfort, which is particularly difficult when I often don't even recognize and acknowledge it until someone else points it out. I spent some time reading classragespeaks.tumblr.com last week, and in several moments thought "wait, I've felt this way, but have always attributed it to my own ignorance or unbelonging-- you mean to tell me that this may actually be related to my class background and the way our society responds to class, and not just about me being dumb?" And even when I recognize it, as with the achievement gap example above, I don't know how to problematize it clearly and compellingly, without hedging that this is just my personal opinion, I just feel like it's icky, and I don't really have sources or logic to back it up (whereas I can provide a rational argument why it's perfectly appropriate, even though that rational argument doesn't sit well in my stomach).

Language, here, is the easy and concrete example, but moments like this arise in ways of operating, communication styles, choice of work to pursue, etc., and obviously can have significant consequences. Here's a concrete example of a choice I've recently framed as being between personal/public rebellion: a colleague recently forwarded my team this report about STEM teachers (92% of high school math teachers in this country are white? that is a big number no matter how you slice it), and despite extensive scouring, I couldn't find any explanation for why "non-Asian minority" is used as a demographic category for both teachers and students throughout the report-- are we meant to assume that Asian-American students are getting an equal education to their majority peers?  Or that Asian-Americans are proportionally represented in the teaching force (the district next door to where I live is 18% Asian students, 0.5% Asian teachers, and 0% Asian school leaders and/or administrators)? Or that Asian-American students simply don't need teachers and role models who look like them? Or that Asian-American students and teachers don't need special attention because the US has done such a great job limiting Asian immigration and marriage rights over the past two centuries that Asian-Americans are now considered the model minority?

I could have simply ignored it. But after nearly 4 hours of drafting, revising, rewriting, and deliberating (including sleeping on it for a night), I finally sent a two-paragraph response to my team, simply sharing that reading something like this makes me feel hurt and frustrated, and thanking them for listening. Was it "my place" to say something, or is it presumptuous of me to think that I'm allowed to feel hurt and frustrated, and allowed to voice that opinion?*

As unsure as I am of the former, it seems outrageous to me that I should feel like I'm being presumptuous. Part of my challenge, then, in addition to finding the voice for public rebellion (and managing my anxiety around being shamed or rejected for it, as I mentioned in my earlier post), is in finding forgiveness for myself for not speaking up sooner.

*I won't share the response I received, because despite what I think are good intentions, it's put me back in the same place of deciding whether I should speak up or let something uncomfortable slide for the sake of workplace harmony, and I don't yet know how I'm going to proceed.

on giving myself (and others) a chance

This post veers into territory I've been wanting to write about for some time-- topics and questions that have felt bottled up inside me-- but have been afraid to, because writing about math is much "safer" than writing about issues of race and identity. My posting pace over the past few months, however, is probably an indication of the extent to which I'm wrestling with math vs. race and identity, and I need to start/practice confronting my fears about being ridiculed or rejected for communicating my thoughts race and identity, so here goes:

This article has been the most recent trigger. It provides representative profiles of how pre-service teachers understand their Asian-American identity in a California teacher ed program focused on preparing teachers to work in urban schools with predominantly African-American and Latino students.

My first reaction was personal; I was very much like Brook throughout high school and most of college, denying that I was different, refusing to acknowledge that others saw me as different, pretending that my Asianness mattered only about as much as my fondness for ice cream or my residence in Ohio. Teaching made me more like Sherri: aware of, but anxious about, my identity and difference, in part due to formative negative experiences like this one. Consequently, I created a classroom culture that, while open to conversations about race and identity, replicated what I'd learned about how to be accepted (I use accepted instead of successful because what I really knew, and what I was really teaching my kids, was how to be successful by other people's definitions-- not their own): you have to play the game, you have to play it without attracting undue attention, you have to play it better than anyone else, and you still might not get an equal shot. I'd like to say that I'm getting closer to Marissa now, which may be true at least in what I believe about what it means to be Asian-American working with primarily African-American and Latino students, and how I understand role, responsibility, and identity in this work, but I still don't always know what to do with that.

And then my thoughts turned professional. I recently heard a colleague-- who incidentally does not share my background-- reflect that she was raised not to ask questions and to be grateful when others listen to her, and so it was a huge adjustment to join an organization where we are surrounded by people who grew up expecting to be heard. Similarly, I've felt that expecting the organizations, institutions, and people around me to consider how I feel and be sensitive to my experience is such a selfish thing to ask; I'm hugely appreciative when it happens, but it's business-as-usual when it doesn't. To me, using my voice has felt like a privilege I don't necessarily deserve-- and I observe this in action as I remain silent or apologize for my comments in meetings or situations when I actually feel confident in my opinions, or when I feel like my colleagues are doing me a favor by not interrupting me when I share an idea-- which stands in stark contrast to those around me who see using their voices as a right.

Why? My Brook-like self would have chalked this up to personality and preference; I'm an introvert, and I don't like to talk. Plus, I'm judgmental and it's easier to think someone's not very thoughtful than to try to convince them why I'm right. My Sherri-like self may have attributed this to the intersectionality of culture/family, age, and gender, since young Asian women should be seen and not heard. These days, however, I increasingly wonder about the extent to which this is a legacy of internalized racism (or, phrased more politely, an overzealousness for assimilation), learned when my parents told me to speak only English outside our house and packed me PB&J lunches (among other experiences), and reinforced over the many instances where I saw them-- and other people who looked like me-- be patronized, ridiculed, ignored, or worse (I was going to include a link to some recent incidence of anti-Asian violence, but there were too many to choose from) for being different.

Regardless of the root, I feel increasingly compelled to say something and do something: partly to actually learn how to use my voice, partly so that other people can have a different experience, partly because if I don't, I'm not giving anyone the chance to listen. And even if that comes from a place of not believing I'm worth listening to, or not trusting that others will listen, isn't that selfish and judgmental too?

plan b: lesson patterns

I'm taking another shot at how to teach novice teachers to teach, since the previous foray down the instructional practices/activities/routines path was ultimately unproductive. This time, rather than bite-size routines, I'm aiming at the level of lesson patterns: a generalized skeleton, outline, or "type" of lesson that can be modeled, analyzed, internalized, mimicked, and rehearsed until novice teachers grow comfortable with the foundations of teaching. While a "lesson pattern" could conceivably take less than one class period or more than one class period depending on the meatiness of the topic, student skill level, and length of class period, it could also provide a meaningful cycle of learning in one class period. Again, I'd love your input on whether these lesson patterns might be the right way to go (with the very concrete goal of redesigning our preservice programming from scratch, starting in summer 2014, because it's currently vague and overwhelming and not as effective as we believe, from research and small-scale pilots and common sense, it could be).

Here are the criteria with which I tried to develop these patterns:

• Learnable and Coachable: These patterns are executable protocols that novice teachers can learn, rehearse, and mimic, and provide a coherent framework and language with which coaches and teachers can work together on improving both planning and execution
• Relevant: These patterns can be generalized to various topics, grade-levels, and objectives within secondary mathematics (rather than being specific to certain concepts or ideas)
• Clear and Concrete: Each pattern has a clearly defined and instructional purpose that is easy for novice teachers to understand and remember, such that it's unlikely that teachers might try to apply patterns interchangeably or for lessons where they don't make sense
• Containers: These patterns are neither single strategies (e.g. think-pair-share) nor broad principles (e.g. frequent formative assessment), but rather daily-lesson-level containers that demonstrate general principles and "house" specific strategies 
• Flexible/improvable: There is room for customization within each pattern, even for brand new teachers (for example, "choice points" could include teachers selecting from a set of specific strategies for a particular portion of the lesson, adding other instructional or behavioral routines such as mental math drills or a class cheer, structuring a portion of the lesson as groupwork or independent work , etc.). In the training, we would provide some guidance about considering factors such as class culture, teacher preference, novelty of the concept, etc., when making these choices. More advanced teachers will be able to build on these patterns as they expand their repertoires of strategies, instincts, and skills, while still following the basic pattern.

And here's one example of a lesson pattern and the "protocol" it might follow, with some of the "choice points" indicated as well:

Exploring and formalizing a concept through pattern recognition (examples of this lesson pattern include the classic-derive-sum-of-angles-in-a-polygon-formula-from-number-of-interior-triangles lesson, or pretty much any lesson from Fawn Nguyen's visualpatterns.org):

1. INTRO: Teacher introduces the task by posing a question that is likely to pique students' interest, and then presenting clear and explicit academic and behavioral instructions 
2. EXPLORING: Students (small groups | pairs | independently; by following questions on a worksheet | by following questions presented orally by the teacher) examine a pattern and describe the pattern in words. Then, they attempt to describe the pattern algebraically, geometrically, graphically, or in a representation different from the original. Then, they test their description by using it to make a prediction and determining whether that prediction makes sense and/or passes a teacher-generated "test" (for example, if students have been trying to write an equation to represent the number of squares in a pattern, they might now be asked to predict how many squares would be in the 100th term in the pattern, or they might be told that there are 114 squares in the 100th term and asked whether their equation generates that solution). 
3. SOLUTION SHARING: Students share their solutions with their classmates (whiteboards | pairs come together as groups of four | gallery walk | presentations) and respond to their classmates' solutions by asking clarifying questions, noting points of agreement, and noting points of disagreement (classroom Congress | post-it notes | thumbs-up thumbs-down). 
4. FORMALIZING: Teacher validates student effort, explicitly highlights instances of creative/innovative mathematical thinking and/or instances of multiple methods, and determines whether there is consensus among the class. Teacher builds on students' solutions to identify one or more correct solutions, and explain or ask students to explain why this solution is ultimately correct. 
5. APPLYING: Students solve similar problems and extension problems in order to reinforce and further formatively assess their understanding.
6. CONCLUDING: Students summarize the lesson using a synthesis activity.

Another lesson pattern might be something like using a previous lesson's ideas or themes to learn something new (examples of this lesson pattern include multiplying binomials by making a connection to distribution of monomials, writing triangle similarity proofs by building on triangle congruence proofs, solving proportions using skip counting). There might be a lesson pattern built around more direct instruction.

What do you think? Learnable coachable relevant clear concrete containers flexible improvable? Worth further prototyping? If so, which lesson patterns should I add next?