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!
