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from Paul B:

Kids can't do 6 times 7 because they are 'taught' multiple ways to multiply. Then they discover the one they like best (usually involves fingers) and stick to it until somewhere along the way they are given a calculator to expedite things.

They are assessed subjectively. They are promoted without regard to those assessments. And finally, they're never given targeted remediation or practice that is up to the task of keeping them on track.

Other than that there's not much wrong.

I have already confessed my own problems with 6 times 7.

Former Public School Teacher

Non-renewed, forced out.

This means that you are made to feel so uncomfortable in your position that you look for another job and you are unable to even get an interview at another school in one of the 15 largest districts in the country. So you move to another district, lose the "tenure" and then are non-renewed due to budget cuts and mostly disagreement with teaching fuzzy math.

I taught at one of the states way down there on the list of funding. I think it's 49 or 50. I was doing fine until I had a daughter. Then I started looking at every kid like she was my own. I'm not proud of that fact, but at least I finally saw the light. That's when things started going wrong. It also coincided with Everyday Mathematics being adopted by the district. I saw gifted kids in the 6th grade who couldn't multiply and divide. Kids who should have been able to move up to algebra in the 7th grade. I had work to do. I had to re-teach them everything from 4th and 5th grade and do 6th and pre-algebra so they could be where they should be.

When I was anonymous at school I wasn't bothered, but I got so excited by the changes that I started talking about it. The beginning of the end was the first week of October 2006.

I wish that I had quit first instead of them "quitting" me. I am starting to realize that I don't want to work in the system anymore. My daughter does Kumon, because I want other teachers for her besides me. Her Kumon teacher is from India. We will begin ALOHA abacus training, another teacher from India, next month. I hope to begin teaching abacus in the near future.

I know that the emotion and frustration you are reading here are not very productive, but I have been dying inside for a long time.

Signed
Former Public School Teacher

This is an atrocity.

Rich Getzel on teachers & constructivism

The fact is, it would be a lie to say that schools teach "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic" these days. Sounding out words, memorizing 6 x 4 - we're obviously going to lose these kids if we demand that they master these basic skills. This is the kind of thinking that pervades education, and as a new educator, I want to do terrible things to the snake oil salesmen who have peddled this ideology.

But don't lay the fault squarely on the teachers. Many publications often pit parents (who depise EM) against teachers (who unqualifiedly embrace it). But practically every teacher I know (that's a lot) depises the fuzzy math programs to which our schools have subscribed.

I am a new teacher, 23, but I learned mathematics from a traditionalist perspective. I came to my school, as a newly minted educator, and I was horrified by the Impact Math textbook that I was expected to use. It is worse than Everyday Mathematics. It is constructivism on steroids, and I wish more people would talk about this program, because it gets short shrift compared to Everyday Math.

At no point does the textbook spell out any procedure necessary to solve a problem. It is riddled with convoluted "discovery" exercises that theoretically will help students induce the right answer, and the right way (or ways) to get there. There is a dearth of practice problems (i.e. the kind of problems that students will be expected to answer on a standardized test).

So how did I adjust? I simply never used the textbook. It could never work with CTT students who, across the board, were years behind in mathematics. I taught the way I was taught the material. It's a challenge because every night I have to hunt for activities and problems. But I do believe that the students have responded very well. It's a shame, because they don't have a standard reference (textbook) to help them do their homework at night, but even if we used the Impact Textbook, they would not have a reference.

Practically every teacher I know who has had the misfortune of inheriting Impact Mathematics does some variation of what I do. Even my principal is baffled by the textbook, but it was sold as the most widely used textbook out there. The higher-ups (chancellor and his ilk) are gung-ho about constructivist learning, and as a result, teachers, and sometimes even administrators, are slaves to a system they despise.

But hey, it's a change from the old way, and any change is good, right?

undercover

I use white boards with my remedial classes all the time. Even though they are sophomores, they get so excited when they see the boards and markers lying out at the front of the room. It is exhausting because I have boards waving around in the air with everyone saying at the same time, "Is mine right?", "Miss, Miss, look at mine!"

I too, am an undercover direct instruction teacher. I just smile and nod and act like I agree with all the Discover Learning evangelists who come to our school and do professional development. Then I go into my room, shut my door and do what I know is right.

No one can argue with my scores though. I was asked by our principal to take three sections of 10th graders who are on the "bubble" this year because our school did not meet AYP last year based on 10th grade math scores. He's not really sure what I am doing with my classes, but he's smart enough to know it works!

Mrs. H

Red Meat

Here's a little red meat for DI carnivores. The blue bars represent the frequency of occurrence for various point totals scored on a test after 4 weeks of CMP discovery. Pretty sad, eh?

The red bars represent the frequencies on the exact same test after three days of DI remediation on the same topic. Makes me go; hmmmmmm!

I did remediation using a method described on d-edreckoning by Saul Axelrod using whiteboards for choral response. We spent the days doing word problems with kids answering on their own boards. Wrong answers were immediately corrected by pairing up kids who goofed with ones who got it. We only advanced to more complexity when 80% of the room was doing tasks error free and independently.

A funny aside is that I got caught. My VP heard the raucous class and came in to see what was going on. Kids were jumping up and down with excitement over getting correct answers. Kids who were often unresponsive and did no work in discovery mode were begging me to give them harder questions. The VP just smiled and walked out. He's pretty savvy so I was lucky.

My next task is to figure out a way to diguise this horribly boring, discreditied drill and kill instruction so that it looks like discovery. That way, I can keep doing it. Failing that, I'm seriously considering a surveillance system for the corridors. Then I can see who's coming and set up a system with the kids where I can give a high sign and they can hide the whiteboards. I'm going to cut them down so they fit in their binders. We'll set it up so they have a ready made discovery task ready to slap on the desk, just in time.

There's nothing the kids like better than a bit of conspiracy and rule breaking. I just have to make them feel like co-conspirators and they'll step up.