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| Mr. Robert Hood (1958-2004) |
My first recollection of enjoying a book was in my 11th
grade AP English class with Mr. Hood (z’’l), whom I would consider the best English teacher to
ever address students. Mr. Hood not only believed in me as a reader and writer
(I will venture to say most teachers believe in their students) but Mr. Hood
made me
believe that I was a reader, a writer – even though it would be a few
years until I would read a novel cover to cover and over a decade before I
would openly and willingly allow others to read my writing. Mr. Hood, had the ability to make The Scarlet
Letter seem relevant to our lives, The Sound and Fury comprehendible, and Their
Eyes Were Watching God thought provoking.
He held me to standards and expectations other teachers had not,
highlighting my strengths while refusing to allow me to make excuses about and
ignore my challenges. Mr. Hood’s class weakened my resistance and aversion to
reading and writing through his ability to build my literary understanding and
confidence. He provided me a new lens to view and interact with the world
around me.
As a math teacher, I am constantly confronted with a
classroom of students adverse and resistant to engaging with content. It is my education goal to create a learning
environment that breaks those barriers and expose the inner mathematician. In hindsight, it only seems appropriate
that the tool that has begun to help me cultivate such a classroom has been by
way of literacy through a teaching pedagogy known as Learning Cultures (LC) and format
called Cooperative
Unison Reading® (UR).
(In future posts, I hope to share more about my turbulent but ultimately affirming journey with LC, but for the purpose of this post, I will focus on UR and
literacy’s place in a math classroom.)
At both Manley Career Academy and UAGC the English
departments have joked around that I was/am a honorary member of their
departments; always inquiring and trying to incorporate the literacy skills and
strategies into my classes. I hold the expectation that my students use what they learn in English class as a way to improve their own understanding and communication of mathematical concepts. It is not enough for me that my students can regurgitate the information I might demonstrate on the board, but that they must, as
my dad says, own the knowledge. I believe this
ownership of knowledge only exists through ones active engagement with the material. My challenge, was in knowing how to successfully facilitate that engagement and build student literacy in math. I soon realized Unison Reading was a vehicle in which my students and I could begin.
UR did not allow my students to be passive
learners of the information they were presented with. It provided my students with
purpose and challenged them to actively engage with the text or problem, causing them to breach for new and deeper understandings.
For example, when students attempted to read what seemed to
be a simple expression, 5(x+4), it only lead to a deeper discussion of order of
operations. Of the 5 students in the group, there were 3 interpretations
of how to read the expression:
Interpretation #1: “5 times x plus 4”
Interpretation #2: “5 parenthesis x plus 4”
Interpretation #2: “5 times the quantity of x plus 4”
Before continuing on the group needed to come to a unanimous
consensus of how to read the expression with the most accuracy. The group was forced to engage in a
discussion about the different implications of each of the three phrases. They involved themselves in a discussion about why one was more accurate than the other, which eventually provided them with a
greater understanding and importance of order of operations. In my 6 previous years of teaching this type of conversation never happened, but not because I didn’t want it to, I just didn’t
have a platform in which to create the space for it to occur.
Though I still have much to learn and improve upon, for the
first time in my teaching career, my students were consistently active and
organically engaged in the learning and understanding of math. My classroom no longer was a classroom of doing, rather a classroom of students striving to understand. I contribute this to
the structures of UR and the overall increase in math literacy. This year, I was no
longer the only math “teacher” in the room, as all my students became
mathematicians. There no longer can be excuses for the lack of math literacy and ability among students. It is time, in our country,
that we begin to see literacy in math the same way we view English literacy.
Essential. Non-negotiable.