Coaching Teachers

When I worked at my high school, I got made fun of for so frequently arriving to school with some new idea, enthusiasm, clarity or vision that was going to "change everything."  People imitated me and found my earnestness charming but unbelievable.  They were right to think so at that time - I was rarely able to apply anything I was so inspired by in any sustainable way.

In my new role as a Mathematics Instructional Specialist with New Visions for Public Schools, I see even more clearly that it is far easier to think about mathematics education, opine and discuss and argue, than to actually enact any measurable reform in a classroom.  Easier said than done pretty much sums it up.

At the same time, I have the support now, and I am the support now, that can turn inspiration into action, ideas into realities and old paradigms into new.  My hope is restored, and I treasure the shifts in my consciousness as they happen.

Tuesday I spent the day at a school where three of the four math teachers are new to the school, one is entirely new to teaching and one is new to teaching in NYC public schools, having taught for two years in Africa as a part of Peace Corps.  The fourth is the sole survivor of her former math department, and while she's familiar with the school and the kids she has a completely new department to support and be supported by.  In addition to the large adjustments all of these teachers are making this year, they have signed on (or been signed on by their principal) to be a part of the awesome project which the reason I'm there in the first place.

Our project, a2i (Accessing Algebra Through Inquiry) is bringing performance tasks, formative assessment and Inquiry (looking at student work to make instructional decisions) to the common core aligned unit.  We are providing a lot of support but we're also asking a lot in the name of student learning that they wouldn't be doing otherwise and they've been overwhelmed just orienting to everything entailed in their new jobs.  Every day I spend with them, they tell me how hard their work is, how much they are expected to do, trying to do, and I hear how unreasonable it is, how truly impossible the job of teaching is.  I see them doing their best, and I know they truly are doing their best with the understanding and resources they have available to them.  I also know that they are capable of far more than they think, far more than they know, and that as they learn and expand their thinking they will realize this potential.

This is why I blogged about two simultaneous truths the other day.  As I watch my teachers teach, I see both realities at the same time: the one in front of me, which is underplanned and overburdened, undersupported and oversimplified, and in which they are nevertheless (I am certain!) working hard and doing their best.  I also see that they could and should plan more, ask for (my) help, and do far more for kids than they are currently.  It's not like they have to teach for another ten years to be better.  They can be better tomorrow.  It might take an hour of planning.  It might take letting go of some idea they have about themselves as teachers or about education in general.

Again, it's easy for me to say as the observing outsider.  I know how imperfect my classroom was.    So how can I get high and mighty just by stepping towards the back of the classroom?  The two truths keep me humble and honest about what I'm seeing.

Teachers are pattern-making-machines just like kids.  They are making connections, doing what they're doing for reasons, and it's important to value where they're coming from and what they're thinking.  Teacher misconceptions come from observing unintended patterns or patterns that were perpetuated by their exemplars who also had misconceptions.  Teachers need to be given experiences in their professional development where the patterns they see assist them in making conclusions that drives their work to be more efficient and effective.  They need to be inspired, as I was, by the patterns they are finding, and then they need to be supported with scaffolding and structure and routine that helps them transfer that understanding into their own classrooms.  Transferring theory into classroom practice is a skill to be taught and developed.

All too often we educators assume that adults don't need the kind of structure that kids do.  Every teacher I know has experienced the irony of the two hour lectures in ed school about how people learn: better in groups and changing points of focus every 10 minutes or so.  When we're learning, adults need the same things that kids do.

So I'm learning as a coach to take my teachers under my wing; it doesn't matter what they don't know when they come to me, it doesn't matter why they didn't learn it before - it has become my task, my charge, to coach them.

On a juicy side note, the team of coaches that I'm working with is amazing, and through them I am learning so much about mathematics education, about coaching, about learning, about reflecting.  Our diversity as a group is always bringing out the perfect balance of multiple perspectives on things that helps us meet our teachers where they are and support them in making the next step.  Through their eyes I am learning better what best my service is and learning to see myself with the appreciation others have for me.  In turn, I see my sincere appreciation of my colleagues permeating them more and more fully.  We tell each other what we do well and it really sinks in.  Then all the stuff we need to do better just feels like a ripe and nourishing challenge.  THANK YOU.

I hope this finds you all appreciating yourselves and your work, which is big and hard and worthy and honorable in whatever manifestation it's taking, as you continue to push your own growth edges.  I hope you are compassionate with yourself as you strive to learn, and that your practice with yourself encompasses your students with the same sweet drive to be huge and the acceptance of wherever they are right now.

Happy almost Friday.

Simultaneous Truths

It turns out, I believe, that two things are true at the same time:
1) Everyone is doing their best with the understanding that they have available to them.
2) Everyone is capable of far more than they realize, most if not all of the time. 

My new job and an insight

Last Friday night I had the pleasure of talking about my new job with friends over Ethiopian food in Brooklyn. I am now a Mathematics Instructional Specialist with New Visions for Public Schools, currently in the process of wrapping my head around the many departments and projects that will influence my work in the next months.

So far my job mostly looks like me and my four colleagues discussing, reflecting, debating, often clarifying and sometimes presenting the big ideas we have around our work as coaches for math teachers in the Bronx. This is extremely fun and so far I really love this job – something I’ve never said before! When September rolls around my time will be spent traveling to six different schools, supporting the Algebra teachers develop their inquiry practices (looking at student work and making curricular decisions based on student needs they observe in the student work) and use performance tasks (sophisticated and rich problem solving activities) as their diagnostics, formative and summative assessments. For all of you math educators, there’s a whole lot more to say about all that, and I plan to return to this blog to say it. But for now, my dinner.

Once I started talking about my job, it took a long time – about 45 seconds – for my friends to begin reminiscing about how bad they were at math and how difficult it was for them in high school, even though they’re smart and had tutors and went to good schools. They commiserated for a few minutes while I experienced a familiar pang of frustration and intolerance that so many people are willing to publicly admit complacency with such a negative relationship to mathematics. I was especially annoyed because just a few hours before I had been disappointed to hear the same basic attitudes expressed at work by our non-math colleagues.

Painful though this moment was, the intensity of my emotion struck a chord in me, and my curiosity was piqued: people that I respect – educators that I admire and friends that I love – must be saying this to me for a reason, and it’s not to annoy me or invalidate my career. I’m humbled to say I think this was the first time I have ever been sincerely curious about the pervasiveness of this attitude in my adult communities. I have come to expect it to some extent in adolescents, who are developmentally designed to resist everything adults present to them, but theoretically ripe for transformation. But up until now I have always dismissed and been frustrated by this attitude in adults.

My friends and colleagues are bright, successful, beautiful and powerful people. I like and respect them each immensely. They are all well educated, capable, self-sufficient, and successful, each with degrees beyond college and multiple artistic talents outside of their careers. They have been highly successful in their work in hospitals, corporate banking, MTV and schools. In addition, I believe that everything I hear has some benefit: maybe there’s a new idea for me to integrate, or maybe I need to hear an old idea again. I finally wondered – which is it for me? Why is it that people keep saying this to me?

My first thought was that this is our large scale feedback and inspiration for the work we do. We all know that math education in this country needs work, and that’s why we’re all so excited to be doing it. I hope one day that my friends and colleagues will be excited to do math with me, and interested in the actual content of the math I’m teaching. Right now, I’m happy to be just a bit more interested in really listening to people as they tell me their experiences, trusting that there is more for me to learn about just how bad math education has been for people.

A few days ago began the resurgence of another familiar conversation in response to the NYTImes “Is Algebra Necessary?” oped. I feel like the NYTimes publishes an article like this every year or so, and each time we get pissed and feisty, quick to lash out with a slew of offended and defensive responses. For a second time in a week, I felt clear about this old dynamic: our more global community is simply acknowledging the imperfection of math education that is the reason most of us are math educators in the first place. Why is anyone surprised? Our job isn't to defend ourselves (we're working hard, doing great) but to be curious about what new insights we can gather from their testimonies, which can’t help but illuminate the experience of students in general.

On a side note, my boss Russell West, Jr. has a quotable response to the article which I’ll paraphrase here because it’s so awesome: “We agree with Andrew Hacker and will respond as Daniel Wilingham suggests: must kill school algebra to save school mathematics.”  That’s our internal tagline for the work we’re doing in schools.  Shhh!  It’s a secret.

I have so many revelations and insights and a deep longing to spread the good word about all of them, or at least get them "on paper" here. I hope my use of this real estate will contribute to the enjoyment and satisfaction of its readers.

Great to be back ya’ll.  Happy August!

Yantra in Math Class

Today was our first pop quiz.  If you've read anything here in the last year, you know that means meditation and cookies.  I have been itching to meditate for the last 6 days with these kids, just waiting for an excuse, not feeling quite ready, finally caving and just resting in the structure from last year.

But this year I wanted to be a bit more thoughtful about it.  Here was the lesson...

I.  Writing prompt: What do you know about stress?  They write for about a minute.

II.  Class conversation: Raise your hand if you've ever felt stressed.  Raise your hand if you've felt stressed today.  Raise your hand if you get stressed out about friendships.  About school.  About math class.  What happens when you get stressed, what does it feel like?  What does it look like?  What do people do about it?

III.  Introduce Jesse as a stress-reduction (I didn't actually use the word meditate) instructor: In addition to teaching math, I also teach adults and my students to techniques to manage and reduce their stress so that they can feel better and focus on whatever it is they want to do.  When people get stressed, as you guys described, at best it's uncomfortable and distracting.  Sometimes stress about a test can cause a kind of panic that makes us forget everything we've learned.  So in this class, we'll experiment with some different techniques to help us focus and relax at the same time.

IV.  Pop quiz announcement: We're starting this today because we have a pop quiz, and I want you to experiment with not being stressed about it.

V.  Introduce the yantra: There's a picture of a yantra up on the smartboard.  I explain: in India, people have been making these kinds of geometric images for thousands of years, and using them to relax and concentrate.  Today I'm going to tell you a kind of story about the yantra while you look at it, and you can just see what happens to your body and mind.  There's no pressure, just see what happens.  Keep your eyes open and look at the yantra.  Listen without speaking as I tell you the story...

VI.  The story: The dot in the very center, called the Bindu, represents unity, our connectedness to each other, our families, our neighbors, the whole of the universe.  It's small and hard to see, but see if you can just focus your eyes on that one small point.  (wait time...)  Now let your vision expand so that you can see all the red triangles.  They say that the triangles that point up represent the masculine or male energies in the universe, and the triangles that point down represent the feminine or female energies.  (wait...)  Now look at the circles around those triangles.  These circles symbolize that which is constant, infinite, cyclic in our lives; time, which has no beginning and no end, our breath which pulses in and out, 60,000 times a day without our effort, gravity which pulls on us all the time, the universe which is infinite in it's vastness, always expanding, no starting point, no end point.  (...)  Now look at the petals of the lotus flower around the circles. The lotus flower is so important in India, and in this yantra it represents your understanding, your knowledge, which is opening, always expanding, growing.  (...)  Finally, let your eyes see the squares at the outside of the yantra.  These squares are your identity, your separateness, your individuality, which enclose everything else.  (...)  Look at the Bindu again, that point in the middle.  Relax your eyes, so that you can focus on the Bindu but see the whole yantra at the same time.  (...)  Close your eyes and see the after image on the lids of your eyes.  (...)  Open your eyes and see the yantra again.  (...)  Close your eyes again.  Just see how much of the yantra is still visible to you.

VII.  Debrief: Write for one minute about what you experienced.  What did you feel, what did you notice?

VIII.  Pop quiz:  ...And if you feel stressed, experiment with seeing the yantra in your mind's eye and just see what happens.  See if it helps you relax and focus.  And if it's not quite enough, there will be cookies.

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It was awesome to do a meditation with kids that doesn't require them to close their eyes.  I hadn't planned this part, but as it turned out it was so much easier to get them to do this practice than any closed eyed meditations I've done in the past.  It was awesome to introduce meditation to kids with such a high voltage geometric image.  They had cool experiences with it.  I want to get them to make their own and put them on their binders so they can remember and keep that intention of focused relaxation, relaxed attention, anytime they're in math class (and beyond!)

2) My incredibly brilliant co-teacher found himself somewhere between lazy and curious, and when it came time to teach his lesson (which we usually share) he began...

"So this isn't really my thing.  This is really Jesse's thing, and she's really crazy.  So it's ok if you think this is weird, because I do, but we'll try it and then we'll decide if we ever want to do it again.  We'll wait to talk about how weird it is til after she's gone."

He did the whole thing.  I happened to walk in when he was introducing the yantra, and he asked me to lead the storytelling part, but he was totally prepared to do it himself.  Amazing.  We are learning so much from each other.  Which I will continue to tell you about...

first day of year six

Today was the first day, and the two things I want to share are about my new coteacher/department cofacilitator.


1- He regularly counts how often I say awesome.  Or maybe how often I say awesome and amazing.  In meetings and I think maybe in class too.  Then he gives me responsibilities because I'm awesome. 
2- I'm so excited about our curricular collaboration, and want to say right now, whatever comes after, that what we're up to seems to be somewhere between strictly awesome and downright revolutionary.  Always.  


We make a strange and really good team, I think.  I'm curious how it will develop and excited to share our work with you!