{"id":12083,"date":"2017-03-09T16:27:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T00:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=12083"},"modified":"2019-03-17T18:28:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T01:28:04","slug":"how-playing-with-math-helps-teachers-better-empathize-with-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/how-playing-with-math-helps-teachers-better-empathize-with-students\/","title":{"rendered":"How Playing With Math Helps Teachers Better Empathize With Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Math Teachers Circles create a space for educators to connect with the joys of discovery and collaborative problem-solving, creating lessons that inform their classroom practice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Michelle Manes has taught math in almost every setting. She taught public high school students, deaf elementary school students, and middle school girls at a single-sex school. But eventually, she couldn\u2019t fight the feeling that as much as she loved teaching math, she also loved doing math, so she went back to get her Ph.D. in mathematics and is now a professor at the University of Hawaii.<\/p>\n

Although she has settled into a life of teaching undergraduate students and working on her own research, Manes still cares deeply about K-12 education. To stay connected to teachers in that world she helped start a National Association of Math Circles<\/a>. The circle meets once a month and invites math teachers from all grade levels to get together and work on fun, challenging math alongside research mathematicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to bring that creativity and joy and excitement and discovery piece into the Math Teachers\u2019 Circle and hope it trickles into the classroom,\u201d Manes said. Unlike other professional development opportunities, the focus of these circles is not on lesson plans or pedagogy. Most of the time is spent working on and discussing a problem that the facilitators bring, with the hope that teachers will rediscover what they love about math and how it feels to be a learner.<\/p>\n

This issue is personal to Manes, who wanted to be a scientist as a kid precisely because she likes solving problems. Stories about how science had improved the world were exciting to her, even if the science they were doing in school wasn\u2019t. That wasn\u2019t true of her math classes. She grew up thinking math was about procedures applied correctly to get a right answer \u2014 something she was good at \u2014 but she didn\u2019t associate the discipline with discovery. It was only when she got to college and took higher level mathematics that she realized how exciting it could be.<\/p>\n

Manes hopes Math Teachers\u2019 Circles can help K-12 classroom teachers experience the fun of working on a challenging problem collaboratively, of being confused but continuing to struggle through, of ultimately having that feeling of discovery.<\/p>\n

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Teachers at the Crooked River Math Teachers\u2019 Circle grapple with a problem during a week-long summer institute. (Sara Good)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn the end we do want to transform their experience and their students\u2019 experiences,\u201d Manes said. The Honolulu circle is just one of over a hundred all over the United States. Every circle runs a little differently depending on its context, but in Honolulu, where weeknight traffic is terrible, Manes has found that Saturday mornings work best. Teachers and mathematicians get together and work on math for several hours and then spend some time discussing the experience and how it might apply to the classroom. Manes has arranged it so teachers can get professional development credit for participating.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s a lot of listening, wandering around seeing what people are doing, having a sense of the room and then knowing what I want people to get out of the session,\u201d Manes said. While groups are often working on the task from different directions or entering at different levels of understanding, Manes will often stop work if there\u2019s something she wants to make sure all participants notice before the time is up.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I\u2019ve learned from Math Teachers\u2019 Circles is watching mathematicians who I have tremendous respect for make errors and be corrected and be OK with that,\u201d said Heather Danforth. She\u2019s co-director of curriculum at Helios School, an independent school for gifted kids in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has always thought of herself as a reader and a writer, not a math person, but when she started teaching elementary school she decided to take some classes to brush up on her math skills. That\u2019s when she found Math Teachers\u2019 Circles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was this opportunity to engage with math in this really engaging, exciting endeavor of trying to figure out problems and maybe not always reach a solution,\u201d Danforth said. Participating helped her revise the narrative she held about her math abilities, which was largely based on her experience of being slow with multiplication tables in third grade.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost mathematicians don\u2019t really care how fast you can do your multiplication tables,\u201d Danforth said. And more importantly, identifying herself as a mathematician and experiencing what that means, helped her think of math as primarily about problem solving. \u201cThat new definition of math allows more people to be good at it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Danforth now leads the math teachers at her school in math circles as part of their regular professional development and they also carve out time on Fridays for students to engage in circles as well. \u201cA well run math circle leaves everyone feeling capable,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that everyone finishes at the same place, because you don\u2019t. But everyone has something they can engage with in a meaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danforth thinks of math circles as an opportunity to experience what it means to be a mathematician, whereas math class is more learning about math. She compares it to learning scales versus playing music. The scales are important, but the music is what people love, and what motivates them to continue to work at the scales. She believes that if students never experience the fun, exciting side of math problem solving, free of pressures to get the right answer in a specific amount of time, then they may never choose to pursue math in the future.<\/p>\n

A common theme among teachers who have participated in Math Teachers\u2019 Circles is that by placing themselves in the position of learner they are able to empathize with their students more. Many teachers felt initially intimidated to do math with professional mathematicians, as well as other K-12 teachers who may have more advanced skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt the entire range of emotions because I was with other teachers who had different background experiences,\u201d said Sara Good, a seventh grade math teacher outside of Cleveland, Ohio. She said she fell in and out of confidence throughout her first circle, an interesting experience since so many math teachers love the subject because it\u2019s easy for them.<\/p>\n

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Teachers at the Crooked River Math Teachers\u2019 Circle Summer Institute grapple with a problem. (Sara Good)<\/p><\/div>\n

Good used to be a district math coach before cost cutting in her district landed her back in the classroom this year. She is struggling to create the vibrant community of problem solvers that she knows would be best for student learning and finds that attending Math Teachers\u2019 Circles rejuvenates her. Participating reminds her of effective questioning strategies and helps connect her with other math teachers who want to bring a sense of wonder and discovery back to math classrooms.<\/p>\n

Good says it\u2019s \u201ceasy to feel like you\u2019re off in your own pedagogical corner\u201d a lot of the time, but the math circles remind her she\u2019s part of a community and that playing with math is fun if it\u2019s set up right. She also knows many of her students think math is far from fun, largely because of the way it has been presented to them in school.<\/p>\n

Math Teachers\u2019 Circles have become more popular in the past five years as teachers in states that have adopted the Common Core work to understand the Mathematical Practices that undergird the math they teach.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of teachers weren\u2019t familiar with thinking about math that way,\u201d said Brianna Donaldson, Director of Special Projects at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). Her organization supported the first Math Teachers\u2019 Circle in 2006 and has helped educators around the country as they start their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach circle is intended to be a real partnership between teachers and mathematicians,\u201d Donaldson said. And while it may seem like research mathematicians wouldn\u2019t want to do math with K-12 teachers, the reality is that often they learn a lot about how to teach undergraduates through these circles. Everyone participating in the circle is learning the difficult lesson to \u201chelp less.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning how to be less helpful can be really challenging, but a lot of times facilitators say it has a big effect on their teaching,\u201d Donaldson said. \u201cIt really changes how they see what the learners in whatever environment can do and what they\u2019re capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her research, Manes often works on the same problem for years, methodically trying different problem solving strategies to a thorny challenge that no one in the world has solved yet. That process can sometimes shake her confidence and she likes interacting with other math-lovers around fun problems as a way to remind her of her capabilities and passion for the subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would not want one of these research-only jobs where you never teach,\u201d Manes said. \u201cWhen I get stuck in research and I can go into a class and lead activities and answer questions and guide people to help them understand things, I feel really reenergized. It gives me confidence to go back to my research.\u201d Engaging in this way reminds her that getting stuck is part of the process, and coaching other people through those emotions serve the dual purpose of reminding herself to stick with it too.<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s hard to draw a straight line between the experiences teachers get in Math Teachers\u2019 Circles and their approaches to the classroom, Manes said that many of her participants do report that it has changed how they think about teaching. They say that they\u2019ve realized they need to give students more think time, that they focus on discourse around the mathematics more, that they assign groups to work on open-ended problems, and that they\u2019re more open to trying new things in the classroom.<\/p>\n

The American Institute of Mathematics is excited about how popular Math Teachers\u2019 Circles have become and hope that soon there will be a circle within driving distance of every teacher in the country. They also hope that within five years, between five and ten percent of math teachers will be participating in a circle. They\u2019re already supporting the creation of Math Teachers\u2019 Circle networks within states, with Montana and Ohio closest to achieving statewide coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found is the more teachers go to Math Teachers Circles the more they see math is about problem solving,\u201d Donaldson said. \u201cAnd this problem solving view of math is highly predictive of really productive mindsets, like growth mindset and belief in grit, that if you persist at something you\u2019re going to make progress. And that\u2019s an important part of doing well at something.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Katrina Schwartz
\nOriginally Published at KQED Mindshift<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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