Meaningful University Partnerships

This spring semester lead to a great opportunity to work with a UNC-Charlotte Math Ed Professor Allison McCulloch (Twitter: @awmcculloch) and her Math Ed Technology students. The coursework focuses on the use of free technology such as Desmos and Geogebra to make lessons. Allison's idea was for her students to develop one lesson within the spectrum of our standards using appropriate technology. Once the students had a solid lesson, I would teach it and they would observe and reflect on the process. She provided a lot of support and feedback in the intial creation of the lessons, then a draft was sent to me. I then had the opportunity to provide feedback and the students made edits. Once they addressed all the edits I reviewed it one more time and a date was set for instruction where I taught the lesson. Now that everything is done I'd like to share my thoughts on how the process and lesson went as well as some of the work that came out of it. 

Positive

The first note I want to make is that the reason this process worked so well is because McCulloch made the effort to seek us out with a genuine interest to better the University's program and our own. I often get propositioned by faculty and professors at the University to "do" something with my students. The problem is that these individuals do not let me know what they can do or provide in a partnership. Most of the time I find that they want the benefit of access to our kids for their benefit with no real focus on how the partnership is supporting the teachers and students (future teachers) in our program. The constant question I generally get is "What do you need from us?" or "How can we help?" when I don't often understand the services they could provide or how they intend to get involved at all. I also find that when people have offered these partnerships they do not have a reasonable idea of the work and effort teachers can put in with other things going on. So the reason this partnership worked so well is because McCulloch had a vision of how the process would work, executed it and kept us in the loop when certain stages of the work was being completed. There was a justifiable amount of work for me to get involved and have buy-in to the idea. She had an understandable objective of creating meaningful coursework for her students and providing me with a cohesive lesson within my content standards. 

The second note I want to make is about the quality of the work that came to me. Although I left a ton of feedback. (Just my M.O.) The original draft of the lesson was a quality lesson, that if I had written as an undergrad, I would be really proud of. The final lesson was done on a Geogebra workbook with a set of inquiry based questions written in a google doc. The lesson went over four major discoveries: proportional relationships between chords intersecting in a circle, congruent arcs and chords, equidistant chords and congruency, bisected chords and right angles. Of course there are always after thoughts and things you want to polish, but it was a well written and integrated seamlessly into the way I teach my class. It was so well written that it rivaled a PAID product I use all the time: Gizmos. My kids literally operated it the same way and drew the same conclusion they would have in the Chords and Arcs demo. My students could discuss the work and draw conclusions and summaries from this investigation as well as they could a Gizmo. In fact I've stuck to Geogebra workbooks for my circles to write my inquiries. You can access the Geogebra Workbook here. 

Professionally (and personally) this was incredibly fulfilling. Since I work at Teaching Early College, my main focus is churning out excited and exposed future teachers. I got to do this in my classroom and hopefully contributed to some of that with the undergraduates by participating in a rich and valid practice. There is also potential to try and inspire other teachers to make these partnerships happen in their own professional learning communities. 

Polish

There were a few things that I put into the lesson that I know my kids are used to doing with our inquiries. So one thing I added to lesson was an investigation summary. You can read more about them and see what those normally look like here. So this was a change I made this a day before without discussing the changes, but I knew my kids needed to summarize their findings based on the investigations. I also put together a simple 5 question homework where students looked at some circle problems, solved them and explained how they decided to set up the problem by referencing the investigation that supported their claims. Besides that change I would clarify some of the instructions on the investigation and possibly re-ordered it to help the flow of things. 

There are a few things that I would change about the investigation questions and the way I ran it in class. Since I've been pushed to start my final unit so early, I really think I needed another half a class period to finalize thoughts on new vocabulary, and relationships with inscribed and central angles. I would have also like to revisit content from the earlier semester in Math 2 with similarity and congruence in triangles and angles. It could have gone a long way in making the deep connections my students were struggling to make. 

The last thing I've considered is my delivery. I like that we did the first two questions and discussed our findings to give students the confidence to keep working. I think next time I would set a timer and do check-ins after each inquiry rather than let students work in their partners through it. I feel as though I rushed through a bit of the findings and might have made it less clear. But when I collected my 5 question homework check the next day almost all of my students got the 5/5 with a few exceptions getting 4/5, meaning they could apply the theorems discussed. 

Questions

Finally I want to think about some questions I still have about the partnership and that I'm still thinking about to continue having these genuinely positive experiences. 

1. What else can we do next time? McCulloch offered some other involvements in the semester that excited me, but I didn't do a great job following up on them. One thing that was mentioned was recording a modeling lesson or a three-act-task in my classroom to use for undergraduates. Also, there was some mention of students volunteering to participate in after school opportunities to interact with developing technologies in math that I want to be sure I offer my students next year. 

2. How can I communicate, to other interested university parties, what a successful partnership looks like to me? How can I encourage rich experiences for all parties? It might be sad that the main question I keep asking myself in reference to this question is : "What is in it for me?" But when teachers put in their extra time into these partnerships there needs to be some payoff. I've got to find a friendlier way to word this in order to convey my message clearer to other interested people. 

3. Do I tell my students that the lesson wasn't mine and get feedback on it to pass on? Obviously the feedback from other teachers is totally valuable, but sometimes a fourteen year old has a perspective we haven't visited. I may want to do this tomorrow that way its as fresh as possible. It may just be a follow up blog post. 

April 20, 2018

There are some days where we struggle so much as teachers to find the light. When the nation devalues your craft, when the world is riddled with difficulties that you try to overcome in your classroom, or when you lose faith in yourself because of ineffective lesson, or when the people who you work for/with can not find a supportive way to hear/give feedback. That was NOT today.

TODAY WAS A DAY THAT CONFIRMED THE IMPACT I AM MAKING AS A TEACHER FOR FUTURE TEACHERS. TODAY WAS A DAY THAT I CAN REFLECT AND GAIN STRENGTH ON FOREVER.

Let me explain how April 20, 2018 was a day that I will forever mark. Today we also changed the schedule for National Walkout Day to protest Gun Violence. Student Council brought it to me a month ago that they wanted to participate. We made a plan and they decided an open dialogue about gun violence would be a good use of the time. They wrote questions and lead the discussion with the 30 or so (out of 46) that participated. All students listened and opened up about their thoughts and feelings on the issues. Myself and a coworker also contributed and before long kids were asking questions to each other about things they felt and offer advice and suggestions of how to ensure we make CTEC a safe space. At the end I thanked them and they all clapped for each other's candidness and maturity. I got emotional right near the end and just offered our willingness to continue to hear their concerns. 

Strange thing happened as we exited the building and entered the building at UNC-Charlotte. I caught a glimpse of a guy etching names on the monument. I realized a previous coworker Patti Norris was supposed to be on there soon after passing with a long battle with cancer a year prior. Sure enough her name was being put in as I was there. I sent it to previous coworkers at Central Cabarrus in hopes that they would see the impact they made in her memory. They sent it out to the school and made sure it brought some grieving teachers joy. I explained to some of my students who she was and why I was stopping to take a picture and they really empathized with the gravity of it.

In third period a college professor and two future math teachers came to watch me carry out an amazing lesson that they wrote. I got to put into action an inquiry based technology lesson after several levels of feedback from myself and the professor. I plan on writing an entire blog post later on this experience so look for more details about that. I don't want to give away too many details yet. 

As I mentioned our schedule was altered. The other reason why is because we generally take kids to lunch on campus and get them outside to play for part of their PE fitness logs. At lunch I talked to three boys about their families, their life, and their plans to become teachers. It was amazing just connecting and talking to them. For PE time I usually play soccer with a specific group of kids, but today we played capture the flag with the few cones I have. It was spectacular fun. Running around and playing with these kids. All the teachers played this time and more of the students joined in than ever before. 

After exhausting myself I came home to a wonderful message on remind: "I wanted to send you the pictures because you look so beautiful in them sooo here you go I hope they send !!" (You know this is a real text because of the run on sentence and lack of punctuation.) Then attached was a picture of me with five of our kids on the steps of the Union. My heart melted and I thanked the student. 

The last random thing I saw that made me realize the fun I bring and impact I have was a picture and video in my time hop from my Calculus class two years ago. I took them to Calculus the Musical after school one day (on UNCC's campus of course!) and we had the best time. There is a hilarious video when EJ goes on stage with the performers and I laugh every time I watch it. I took a picture of the kids after the show as well. I remember the names and personalities and great people they are as well as the great people they will grow into. 

The last thing I want to say is that today was in no way perfect. I had to scold students for stealing out of lunches and forced them to replace items out of their own money. I had to punish a student for forging signatures on progress reports by having her call home. I had to tell two boys over and over not to slide down rails and one almost severely hurt himself. But these are still wins in character and safety. And although they were exhausting efforts and negative in nature, they don't take away from the whole purpose of the day. 

The maturity, the empathy, the care, the effort, the heart of these kids is working hard on me today. The joy of teaching is beaming out of me with every moment. My passion is ignited by these kids.

Gizmo's Investigation Summaries

So, let me first start off by saying that I am lucky enough to have a subscription to Gizmo's (www.explorelearning.com) paid for by my school. (#notsponsored) I split a single subscription log in with 2 other teachers so that it stretches more. If you haven't ever tried it, I highly recommend creating a free 30 day account and seeing what its about. Its simply a way for students to experiemnt with specific math and science topics while making conjectures about patterns and things. Some people make incredibly similar things on Desmos and Geogebra with the same success, but the ease and depth of the content available really lends itself to the Math 1, 2, and 3 that I teach. I'm a big fan and think that if you have multiple teachers willing to share an account its hard not to justify the cost. The content is already built in with lots of great features like: vocabulary sheets, exploration sheets, keys, and quick assessments. All that can be edited to best suit your kids. 

With that being said, sometimes my students are mindlessly filling in the Gizmo exploration sheets without connecting the big ideas and coming up with take-aways that I really want from them. So I started making "Investigation Summary" sheets to partner with pre-made exploration sheets. My students complete a specific activity, then they summarize their findings within that activity. These investigation summary sheets essentially become my kids notes and/or the take-aways I really want them to hone in on. I have really seen major growth in what my kiddos take away from the Gizmo's and the connections seem deeper. 

Here are some examples of ones that I've used thus far and some links to the content on Gizmo that I partner it with. Be aware that a free account gives you much more ability to really peruse this and see the connections between the documents. I will continue to drop my Investigation Summary sidekicks in this folder. Feel free to use and explore, or just have them as lesson summaries for your students.