There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills!

“I want a better narrative. I want some that goes emeffing POW at the end. I want something that makes it about story arc instead of: “Ok, well you guys did a great job investigating torque, let’s do momentum now.”

They acquiesce easily, but is that what I want?”

–Shawn Cornally, ThinkThankThunk

Of course not, Shawn. You didn’t go into teaching to help America’s youth learn to follow you mindlessly down some deserted mineshaft. You wanted them to explore new places, true. But you also wanted them to stop for a moment before rushing in to ask “How stable are these walls, Cornally?” To scratch their heads and continue: “Should we be worried about toxic gasses? How about bears?” Then, once they know the exploration isn’t going to kill them, they’ll head into the depths to bring back to the surface whatever they can chip away from the rocks.

You want your students to question authority, not just because it’s there and, well, someone’s got to stick it to the man, but because the questions should be asked. You and me both. We want our students to observe the world around them, look at the way things are and say, “Yeah, but what would happen if…”

We want them to be curious. To wade through the jungle, fighting off snakes and poisonous spiders, because they must know what treasures are hidden in the ancient temple. To keep pushing forward, because they want to know what happens next.

This is the magic of a good narrative. You keep moving forward. You keep turning the page. Why? Because you can’t possibly go to sleep not knowing whether the hero will make it out safely, or whether the evil villain will prevail. [Okay, reality check: you know that the hero makes it out just fine, but you must know HOW he does it this time]. The suspense is killing you.

School is not structured around a compelling story line. As a teacher, you expend a lot of energy creating a dramatic hook, you raise the stakes, you build up the tension. Then, just as kids are getting excited, when they are eager to follow you into the mine, it’s time to scrap it all and move on to the next unit.

You start over from scratch trying to get your students excited about this new idea. Meanwhile, all of your kids are throwing down their pickaxes in disgust, saying to themselves: “Why can’t we go into this mine? The one I was finally starting to get.” Do this over and over again for 10 or 11 years or so and students get the picture. Don’t get too invested in this crap, because we’re just going to move on in three weeks anyways.

I yearn for something better. I want a curriculum that builds upon itself naturally. That twists and turns throughout various ideas while still maintaining the narrative thread that ties everything neatly together.

I want a plot. I want subplots. I want intrigue and mystery. I think my students want it too. If anyone finds this, please, PLEASE, let me know.

That’s Cheating

Well, the Escape from the Textbook conference last weekend was fun. I always like having the excuse to see all of my nerdy math friends and former colleagues. The conference was pretty good. The speakers were great, and I hear Avery put on a good workshop…

Jo Boaler was the first speaker, and pretty much everything she talks about is interesting. I like how she talks about things that I know are true, but that she has the research data to back that sh*t up. She was talking about a research study that she had done at Stanford for the summer school program that is run there. Cool, constructivist education stuff. She showed us interview statements from students, video, and test scores. As expected, students preferred the engaging, problem-solving, more challenging teaching to their traditional classes during the school year. And they did better…but anyways.

One thing in particular that I found interesting–a little tidbit–was the idea that students shared about one of the new methods they were learning: solving a simpler problem first.

No, the students declared. You can’t do that–it’s cheating.

Wow! One of the best methods for solving problems with multiple cases, one of the best methods for developing pattern sniffing, and the students believe that using it is cheating. That is a failure of mathematics education right there.

The “Real” SBG

 

It seems to me that SBG is in danger of falling into the trap of over-simplification that plagues most educational reform systems. This makes things easier to implement, but far less effective than doing the heavy-lifting of figuring out what’s broke and then fixing it. Those of you who attended Lucy West’s talk on academic discourse at Asilomar last year (or those of you who committed my post on said-talk to memory) may recall her warnings about this phenomenon.

It seems that every time I turn around on the inter-webs these days there is another post about SBG. [Here I am…growing the pile a little larger…] This isn’t a bad thing, but there are aspects that make me stop and wonder whether I should be getting concerned. Is SBG getting watered down?

I see SBG described as:

• Skill lists
• Multiple quizzes on each skill
• Grades are based on a standardized rubric (usually on either 4 to 5 point scale)
• Homework (i.e. practice) isn’t graded
• Re-assessment opportunities for students

…and I wonder, is that all? I don’t believe that it is.

The way I see SBG is this:

• Assessing students on content rather than behaviors (e.g. doing homework every night)
• Transparency in grading
  • clear explanation of what a “point” means (and what it doesn’t mean)
  • increased communication about what grades represent (and what they don’t represent)

• Increased levels of feedback
  • so students know what next steps need to happen in order to improve their understanding (which will in turn improve their grade)
  • so students know what they are doing well in order to make sure they keep doing those things
• Re-assessment opportunities for students

The problem with my list as compared to the previous one is that there isn’t a clear plan for what to do. There isn’t a checklist that someone can go through to determine whether or not SBG has “been implemented”. There is no road map for how to get there.

Now, I admit that I’m trimming down to bare bones in this ‘what I see’ list. I think the majority of people in the blogosphere who have started doing SBG have done an awesome job and are rocking it out. But I think these people have spent a lot of time thinking about what each of these practices actually means before they started doing them. And I wonder, like Lucy West did, whether this thought process is an essential component of effectively implementing something like SBG. For me I believe it is.

Personally, I have backed off of SBG this trimester. I implemented it (in a self-admittedly half-assed way) in the fall and I initially intended to continue on this winter, but I decided not to. The reasoning behind my decision was that I needed to grapple with what SBG means to me before I can find a way to work it into my practice in a way that is effective for my students and also works for me. I had a Lucy West realization, that I hadn’t done enough of the thinking about what I needed/wanted before I started taking on this new project. I hope to be ready to re-implement in March for the spring trimester. We’ll see.

I think I’m already doing a great job on the first item on my list, an okay job on the last two (a lot of my assessments involve written work which is cumbersome to reassess). The transparency part is what is most difficult for me. Part of the issue is that I would really rather not give grades at all. Sadly, that’s not in the cards for me right now. So I need to find better ways of communicating with students what their points and grades mean in terms of their understanding.

Only then will I become a true SBG Jedi Master.