Mining For Hidden Gems

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash At first it was just a game to have a brain break and use up the last few minutes of class before going to lunch. But as I observed my fourth graders playing, I saw an opportunity to learn about what makes for a productive conversation, in class or outside; now as ten year olds or later as adults. The object of the game is to count from one to ten in order, as a group, without knowing who goes next. One person will say "one",  another will follow with "two", and on we go untill we reach "ten". If two people talk at the same time, we start over. It is almost impossible but it is fun and when we finally get to ten, there is loud cheering. The first few rounds we couldn't get past one because the same two or three kids wanted to be the first to start. These were the same students that always raised their hands to participate in class discussions, the same ones who initiated the group work. They are proactive and their ...

This has been a hard year for teaching and learning. In the Fall, every week seemed like the first week of school and every teacher felt like a first year teacher. To the normal anxieties of teaching (Am I reaching all of my students? Is there enough time to plan for everything? Have I done all the proper paperwork to get the right kind of help for each kid?) were added some new ones: What if I get sick? What if I bring the virus home to my own family? What do I do with my own kids who are learning remotely when I am asked to teach in person? What about all the kids I cannot reach, physically or emotionally because they are muted behind a black Zoom square on my computer screen?  In the midst of all this, I had a new job. I had gone back to instructional coaching after three years in the classroom. I was excited to be part of offering the dual language program in two of our middle schools for the first time. I had an awesome team of four teachers to work with. But this was not the ...

Photo by  Marc-Olivier Jodoin  on  Unsplash When I was a child, my dentist would give me a tablet to chew on that would turn the plaque a bright purple color. These “disclosing tablets” were helpful in showing kids how to brush their teeth better. The pills tasted horrible, the sight of purple teeth was ugly and the truth about how badly or infrequently I was brushing my teeth was embarrassing. The pandemic has been a disclosing tablet, revealing all the areas that we have left neglected. This realization is not pleasant, the truths we are discovering are ugly and admitting our ignorance and neglect is embarrassing. But much in the same way, this experience can be used to make changes, changes that can go beyond the current moment and help restructure our communities for the better. When our one week Spring Break turned into two and then gradually led to online learning, many of the imperfections and inequities in teaching, learning and the role schools play were exposed....

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her 2009 TED talk titled The Danger of a Single Story explains what happens when what we know of a place or a people (or even a historical event) is shaped by one perspective. What we have is an incomplete story and often an inaccurate one. If we believe that first story on face value and are not diligent in our own truth-seeking, it will settle in our brain and consciousness and claim prime real estate - squatters' rights. Any other story will have to now compete with it. Any new information is filtered through that initial imprinting. And it may take decades to supplant that initial story or add to it. Here is my personal experience with swallowing  incomplete truths: I was fifteen years old when I came to the United States from Iran. My knowledge of Black people and their culture was limited to what I had seen on dubbed TV shows and athletes at Olympic games, i.e very incomplete, twisted and inaccurate. I had very little knowledge of the Civil Right...

It seems to be socially acceptable, even among educators, to admit that we don’t like math or are not good at it.  I know that none of us would say publicly that we are not good at reading.  We may say we don’t like reading but that does not mean that we can’t read or comprehend a text if it were part of our job.  So why is it all right to say “I hate math!” or “I am not a math person”? If math is problem solving, logical thinking, drawing conclusions, providing proofs, checking for reasonableness and justifying an answer, shouldn’t all of us learn to be good at it?   Can anyone go through life not needing these skills?   Can we afford to treat mathematical thinking as the domain of only a few, if we aim to have a democratic society where every member is contributing his or her share? We are lucky enough to live in an age where the computational part of math can be done using machines, much faster and more accurate.   Machines can also remember ...