Common Core Learning Community – A Vision for Administrative Support pt. 1

We have been talking a great deal about a strategic plan for helping school-based administrators understand how to support mathematics instruction that features a balance of conceptual understanding for procedural knowledge.  The demands of site-based leadership are numerous and, as instructional leaders, they must possess a deep understanding of exemplary instruction for multiple content areas.  With the emergence of the Common Core State Standards, mathematics leaders will have the attention of this leadership group and it will be critically important to make the most of this opportunity.  In this post, I will share some ideas for supporting the professional development of these important stakeholders. 

Supporting mathematics instruction at the secondary level can be challenging considering that we have 32 schools and over 300 teachers.  Even if your school district is smaller, coordinating the vision for mathematics instruction can present challenges.  In Howard County, our first order of business was to establish a district-wide vision for exemplary mathematics instruction.  This vision began with a set of classroom behaviors (standards) for teachers (NCTM’s Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics) and for students  (CCSC Standards for Mathematical Practice).

Our team introduced NCTM’s Professional Standards for Teaching (courtesy of Jon Wray) in 2008.  As a new leader in a new district, I wanted to establish coherence across schools regarding mathematics instruction.  Selfishly, I wanted to know what mathematics teachers and school-based leaders saw in their minds when they tried to respond to, “What does exemplary mathematics instruction look like?”   We asked every secondary mathematics teacher and every school based and central office leader to grapple with this question.  Once we had feedback from the question, we shared the NCTM standards as a consolidation of their ideas and asked for feedback.  The overwhelming response from administrators went something like this, “What does all of the technical language mean?  If you say our responses re reflected in these standards, we’ll believe you, but this language looks different that our ideas.”  The response from teachers was, “Yep, this is what we do already…no changes here.”  The truth is that some standards were evident in every classroom…but the degree of fidelity or effectiveness of implementation varied greatly.  With the NCTM standards in full view, we began a sort of marketing campaign.  We shared these standards obsessively wherever we went.   The standards appeared on the front and back of our look-for documents.  They became the focus of our professional development.  They were on opening slides of every PowerPoint presentations.  Every time we observed a classroom, we would link teacher behaviors to these standards (and identify resulting student actions) in order to build a working knowledge of these expectations. 

            Over time (3 years now), we have branded the NCTM standards as “the” set of teacher behaviors associated with exemplary mathematics instruction at the secondary level in our district.   Now that there exists a heightened awareness of these expectations, administrators began asking for support for classroom observation and ideas for teaching improvement at the school level.  Our team responded by launching the most comprehensive school support initiative in recent times.  

We developed a plan for informally observing every secondary mathematics teacher in our district (300+) over a period of three months.  We invited the mathematics instructional team leader (dept. chair) and school-based administrators to serve on the observation team.  On the day of the visit, the observation team would meet to discuss the visitation schedule and protocols for the days.  Smaller teams of two observers would see each teacher for about 25 minutes, taking time to record teacher and student behaviors on an observation tool that features NCTM’s teaching standards.  Each team member was encouraged to provide individualized feedback  (although our team owned this responsibility for administrators that wanted to learn to use the tool instead of focusing on feedback).  At the end of the day, the team would meet and develop a set of commendations (5-10) and recommendations (no more than 2) that would be shared with the mathematics team.  The results were nothing short of extraordinary.  School-based administrators (we had about 80% participation) reported that this experience helped to sharpen their understanding of mathematics instruction and would serve to inform the school improvement planning process.  They also reported that they would use the feedback to shape goal conferences at the start of the next school year.  Mathematics teams generally appreciated trend feedback (especially the focus on what was been done well) and were charged to develop lesson experiences that featured a balance of conceptual understanding for procedural knowledge.  The team leaders mentioned that the experience provided focus for their dept. professional development planning for next year

With the observations up and running, our team developed a series of experiences that would extend this training.  We used commercial video cases to train administrators.  The process and resources (look-for tools) were the same but the instruction was showcased from teachers around the globe.   This initiative is in its infancy but we plan to extend this practice to focus keenly on student behaviors defined by the Standards for Mathematical Practice.  (See next post) 

School-based administrators have an awesome responsibility as the Common Core approaches.  It is the responsibility of the mathematics leadership community to ensure that these leaders have the tools to help support and improve mathematics instruction.  We also must ensure that they have the tools to communicate this complex change to parents and community.  An instructional shift in the mathematics classroom will result in shifts in expectations for students.  The focus will shift from rote memorization of steps and fact, to critical thinking, innovating, communicating, and problem solving.  This will be uncomfortable for all of us…but school-based leaders will bear a large portion of that burden.  Let’s commit to working together to make this reform a valuable learning experience for all. 

Until next time, take care!

Bill

(William_barnes@hcpss.org, Follow me on Twitter @bill

Common Core Learning Community – A Vision for Student Involvement

In my last post I began sharing some of our initial ideas for developing a comprehensive and collaborative resource design projects for mathematics teachers, students, and other stakeholders.  I want to give the community time to reflect, respond, and improve upon those initial ideas before adding an additional layer to the project.  (Please share with stakeholders that you represent and encourage them to post feedback to the blog or via email to me)

In this post, I want to talk about an untapped resource for curriculum design and resource development; students.  The project design team (growing as we type) feels strongly that our measure of success for this endeavor will be the utilization and contributions of our students.  Imagine a time when students serve as an equal partner in the development of lesson experiences that elicit learning behaviors defined by the Standards for Mathematical Practice.  Imagine student submitting worthwhile tasks that they would be interested in solving themselves.  Imagine students designing exemplary criteria for mathematics instruction.  (Who would know better about the realized value of a lesson than the student?) Imagine a learning community that promotes student-to-student tutoring, mentoring, and coaching that begins with the successful acquisition of mathematics content, but later extends to mentoring and coaching in a social capacity.   Talk about worthwhile service learning. 

I recognize that this vision may seem a little Utopian, OK, a great deal Utopian, but I strongly believe that another set of resources developed without the student voice is a mark against our ability to innovate as educational leaders in the 21^st Century. 

I am curious about how students are used throughout the nation in terms of curriculum development.  Please check out the reflection questions below and consider posting responses. 

1)   How are students involved in the curriculum development process at your school or district?

2)   How are students involved in the effectiveness of implementation or teacher evaluation process?

3)   What are some of your concerns about student involvement in the curriculum process?

Until next time, Dream Big!

Bill

(William_barnes@hcpss.org, Follow me on Twitter @billjbarnes)

Common Core Learning Community – A Vision Emerges pt 2

In my last post, I spent some time outlining a vision that colleague Jon Wray and I have began to develop regarding collaborative resource development. In a nutshell, we believe that the solution to America’s mathematics crisis lies within the collective passion and expertise of the entire mathematics community.  If every student, teacher, mathematician, teacher leader, STEM professional…everyone submitted one great idea, and that idea were aligned to a Common Core standard, and those collective ideas could be rate by teachers and improved upon by the community at large, then we would have achieved something we have never been able to achieve.  We will have provided students, teachers, and stakeholder with all of the resources necessary to effectively design lessons that build a deep relational understanding of mathematics.

In this post, I’d like to explore some of the categories of resources that we would challenge the community to build.   We have spent a great deal of time meeting with teachers and students to ask them to define exactly what they would need to successfully balance conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge.  But we are sure that we are leaving out critical ideas.  This is where we will need your help.  Please follow up in the discussion area to add your ideas for supports.

Learning Object Category #1:  “Y-Casts” (Still looking to coin a name for this object)

These professional development resources will be submitted as short videos, Livescribe pencasts, recordings from document cameras, or podcasts.  These resources are designed to demonstrate (in 10 minutes or less) how to develop conceptual understanding for a given standard.  Think Khan Academy but with a focus on conceptual understanding.  (or “Khan”-ceptual understanding)  We have been working with groups of teachers to develop these resources as a professional development experience.  This category represents a non-negotiable for our vision.  There are loads of resources to support procedural fluency, particularly at the secondary level, but resources of this nature are virtually non-existent.  (Those that exist are scattered among websites)  An example of a pencast can be found here. The draft rubric that we have designed to provide guideline for submission can be found below this post.

Learning Object Category #2:  Worthwhile Mathematical Tasks

Peg Smith, et. al. have literally written the book on the critical component of effective mathematics instruction.  When I do a search for these exemplary items, there are very few samples to choose from.  We are aware of the Illustrative Mathematics Project being spearheaded by Bill McCallum, but those will represent just the first 400 tasks that we will need to support instruction.  Peg Smith has illuminated the difficulties with developing truly worthwhile tasks and have explained how teachers tend to leach the rigor from the task upon implementation.  We believe in the power of the development of tasks and endeavor to create the repository for such tasks.  A link to a primitive rubric, refined from NCTM Teaching Standards  and Problem Solving Brief can be found here.  We believe that teachers and students can begin lending their best ideas immediately.  We’d like to perpetuate the challenge set forth by folks like Dan Meyer and capture the true creativity of the entire community.  We want to take it one step further…we’d like to use aforementioned technologies to annotate the task with samples of student work, anticipated student misconceptions, and higher-order thinking questions that could be used to enhance classroom discourse. 

Learning Object Category #3:  Annotated Lesson Plans or Lesson Seeds

Sample lesson plans or lesson seeds are certainly not a new idea.  One can find tens of thousands of such lessons on the Internet right now.  What we would like to create is a repository of annotated lesson plans created with tablets, Livescribe Pens, or other recording devices.  Imagine watching and listening to a Presidential Award winning math teacher develop an exemplary lesson plan.  Think about the potential of this resource to be used to train educators, capturing the metacognition featured in the before, during, and after sates of lesson development.    Further, think about issues of equity if every student, teacher, and district has access to world-class instruction.  Video cases of these lesson activities feel like a natural extension of this resource but could be unwieldy given FERPA.

That’s plenty to chew on for now.  In the next set of posts, I will provide some additional ideas.  What is really needed is to begin putting experts sets of eyes on the project to make sure that we can be comprehensive and strategic in our approach. 

Until next time, dream big!

Bill

(William_barnes@hcpss.org, Follow me on Twitter @billjbarnes) 

Resource to Review…

“Y-Cast” Rubric

To what degree does your contribution…

• Help teachers understand mathematical concepts using abstract reasoning, concrete and pictorial representations, paying careful attention to the use of appropriate mathematical language, vocabulary, and notation.  (Help teachers understand the meaning behind the mathematics, balancing procedures with conceptual understanding.)
• Demonstrate how various representations connect with each other, are similar/different, and are useful for different purposes.  When appropriate, make teachers aware that each representation only partially captures the essence of a definition most of the time.  (Help teachers understand that there are multiple ways to represent concepts and the connection among those methods are critical for deepening understanding.)
• Help teachers develop an understanding of alternative approaches and diverse strategies for doing mathematics and solving problems.  Provide examples that serve to clarify common student understandings as well as identifying potential student errors with suggestions for addressing misunderstandings.  (Help teachers understand how to take advantage of teachable moments when alternative approaches and/or common misunderstandings present themselves.)
• Help teachers promote student thinking about mathematical ideas by providing sample questions such as:  Why?  How do you know? What does this mean? Who uses these concepts and for what situations?

Common Core Learning Community – A Vision Emerges

Jon Wray (@jonathanwray) and I have been working diligently over the past two months focused primarily on this question, “How will our nation emerge from the transition to the Common Core State Standards – Mathematics?  Further, how can we ensure that, as a nation, we are better suited to prepare students with a conceptual understanding of mathematics?”  It did not take us long to realize that we will not emerge in a better place if we simply try to repackage or retrofit our current habits of mathematics instruction.   So the big question is, “How do we help a nation of educators learn how to provide real-world experiences that help to develop a relational understanding of mathematics? “ (Adding it Up, 2000)   Further, how do develop resources to support teacher development while also provide resources that can enhance classroom experiences?

The answer may be simpler that you realize.  (A task that has been initiated by myself, Jon Wray, and a developing firm located in Silver Spring, MD.  (ClassFive))  The key resides with us…ALL OF US!!!  Rather than wait for states departments of education, district curriculum offices, or commercial publishers to slowly develop sets of resources to accommodate our needs, we should begin contributing to a social community of practitioners immediately.  (well, in a few weeks anyway) 

The idea is for each vested stakeholder (students, parents, community members, teachers, teacher leaders…EVERYONE) to challenge himself or herself to contribute just one exemplary idea to the community.  These ideas will be guided by research-informed rubrics to ensure that the quality of the submission meets expectations.  Community members will rate each resource (videos explaining how to develop ideas conceptually, lesson sample, worthwhile math tasks, essential understandings, etc) with resources being organized by Common Core Standard.  The beauty of the design rest with the review process.  Similar to sites like www.amazon.com or www.ebay.com, users will access those resources that rate the highest.  (Not sure about you but I never buy the “One out of Five Stars” seller on Amazon) 

There are a number of issues related to this rather simple idea.  First, the content management system has to be refined to accommodate multiple platforms and mobile devices ($$$...Classfive is on the case but we are always looking for help here).  Second, we need to come to some consensus as to the resources that will be open for submission.  We are nonnegotiable with one resource…we will definitely be addressing the big elephant in the room…the fact that American math teachers (particularly at the secondary level) have never been taught how to and have never been accountable for the development of deep understanding in mathematics.  So, resources (pencasts, video samples, etc) to help teachers learn to teach conceptually with are being developed.  In regards to other resources, we have some ideas but are looking for input from stakeholders.  Finally, we have to get the word out.  We believe that this initiative could be viral in nature.  What is more American that solving our own crisis by working together to present solutions? 

In the coming posts (posted weekly from here on out), I will share out some of the ideas that are emerging from this project.  I am also looking for help from the community to share ideas, refine process, and to contribute content.  Seriously, we all have at least one great idea to share!

Until next time, take care.

Bill

(William_barnes@hcpss.org, @billjbarnes)

Common Core Learning Community (Twilight or Renaissance) part 3

In my last post, I described some of the curriculum and resource development challenges we face as a mathematics education community.  In this edition, I will share some trends that emerged from our team’s 330+ informal observations.  This information reinforced and, in some cases, reshaped our ideas about resource development. 

Our team, two central office administrators and two central office resource teachers, made a bold decision just after winter break 2010.  We decided that we would visit every single secondary mathematics educator in the district.  Our rationale was multiple…  Selfishly, as a third year district leader, there were simply some teachers (of the 335) whose classrooms I had not visited.  There is a certain lack of trust that central office staff have earned over the years and I was not about to lead a district through complex change without reaching out to each and every teacher to help them understanding that 1) we had a plan, 2) the plan would result in a better future for teachers and students, and 3) that they would play a critical role throughout the change…namely, I would need their feedback at each and every phase of implementation.   As a team, we knew that we needed to gain a deep understanding of the CCSC’s Standards for Mathematical Practice. (SFMP)  (pps 6-8 of the mathematics core curriculum)  We decided that we would take data on each of the practices in classrooms where students exhibited these learning behaviors.  Finally, we requested that school-based administrators (hopefully the principal) and department chairs join us for our visits.  We wanted to help school-based leaders develop an understanding of the changes that would accompany the emergence of the CCSC.  We knew that the majority of the burden for implementation would fall on the shoulders of teachers and administrators…and we want them to have the tools for successful transition.

Our work with school-based teams was nothing short of the very best work that we have done in my years on the team.  We were able to collaboratively brainstorm plans for mathematics team improvement in each of our 32 secondary schools.  What we learned affirms this statement from page 8 of the CCSC, “In short, a lack of (conceptual) understanding effectively prevents a student from engaging in the mathematical practices.”  In classrooms where teachers designed lesson experiences that featured the integration of worthwhile math tasks or skillful development of classroom discourse, the SFMP behaviors blossomed.  In classes that were designed with an overemphasis on procedural knowledge, the behaviors defined by the SFMP were suppressed.  It wasn’t even close.  In 90% of our visits, teachers designed experiences that elicited at least one of the SFMP…in 10% of our visits; none of the behaviors were evident.   Armed with this knowledge, we are able to work with teachers to focus systematically on instructional improvement by focusing on Standards 3 and 5 of NCTM Standards for Teaching. 

The Common Core Curriculum is not a silver bullet.  The standards alone will not move us from 25^th in the world to number 1.  Unless we focus on how mathematics is taught, we will find ourselves in the year 2020, reflecting on the same gaps in achievement, the same sets of frustrations, and mired in the same cycle of mediocrity as we face now. 

We have spent some time sharing this feedback with educators.  Teachers and students have identified the following (not comprehensive) list of resources that they would need to teach with a balance of conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge.  As you review the list…I challenge you to add your needs to the pile.  In the next post, I will begin to outline a vision for providing teachers with all that is needed in time for implementation.  Until next time, take care.

Bill

(William_barnes@hcpss.org, @billjbarnes)

Teacher Identified Resources Needed:  Sample Lesson Plans/Seeds, Sample Worthwhile Math Tasks, “Just in Time” professional development embedded in the curriculum (using 21^st century tools), teacher testimonials, video support, social networking for development of learning community, video cases of exemplary practice, resource to connect math to other disciplines