Note: I am revisiting this post after viewing this completely sad video of students sitting in front of computers day after day, year after year, at something called the “Cornerstone Charter School” in Detroit. What kind of fond memories of learning will they take away? Will they have a single “aha” moment during their years sitting in front of a screen? Will they develop any “soft skills” like compassion, empathy, indignation or imagination? Or is this preparing them for the day when they themselves will occupy their own cubicles and screens, working 8 hour days with nothing to show for it beyond a minimum wage?
Watch the video and consider my thoughts.
I love visiting classrooms as part of my work as a teacher coach and curriculum designer, and one of the great perks is sitting down with students and asking questions while they are working on an assignment. Today was one such day: I was observing a 5th grade class where the teacher was concluding a unit on statistics, and the students were busy making corrections on a quiz they had taken the previous day.
I placed myself next to Julian, a young man whom I had watched for the previous 2 years while he was in the 3rd and 4th grade. Julian tended towards distraction, and on many occasion when I saw him drifting off into free flight, I would tap him on the shoulder as I strolled by, turn towards him and use the Robert DeNiro “I’ve got my eyes on you” signal from “Meet the Parents.” Julian smiled each time I used this little trope, and it became part of our bond.
I looked over Julian’s quiz, made some suggestions for corrections, and then asked him a few questions about the meaning of mean, median, range and mode. My questions moved into the hypothetical “meta” realm, where I asked things like “what if I only knew the median for this data; what would I know? What wouldn’t I know? We chatted for about 15 minutes, during which time I developed a new lesson idea: suppose you had the statistical information about 5 people, including the mean, mode, range and median. What kind of data could you assign to each person to get this set of statistics? Could someone create a completely different set of data which would yield the same set of statistics?
As I stumbled out of school at the end of the day, I was stopped by Julian’s mother. “I just wanted to thank you for the time you spent with Julian today,” she said, “he really appreciated the time you took to explain things to him.” I told her the truth, which was that I hadn’t “explained” much of anything, and that we were just having a little conversation. Nonetheless, she thanked me again.
All of which got me thinking: what makes “teaching” teaching? In between checking the homework, explaining the assignments, creating and grading the exams and all the other elements of teaching mathematics, what it all comes down to is those moments of intellectual intimacy, when two minds co-mingle and understanding emerges.
I don’t know if Singapore Math is any more “effective” than TERC or Chicago Math. I have my doubts that Khan Academy is going to have any staying power, and I am not yet convinced that technology will make kids any better at mathematics. What I do know is that the 5,000 years of history has shown that the most effective form of teaching takes place when someone taking an interest in a child, a conversation takes place, and eventually, understanding develops. It is the intellectual version of the “I and Thou” relationship about which Martin Buber has written. It is what we have all experienced at one time or another, and even though I am not a strong believer in the existence of a supreme being, when those moments take place, God is in the house.
