Honoring Mr. Hood: Literacy & Unison Reading's Place in a Math Classroom

Mr. Robert Hood (1958-2004)

My first recollection of enjoying a book was in my 11^th 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.

 

Facilitating Educational Success: Exploring Beyond the Classroom

At the end of August, I will begin a long awaited Masters Program in Urban Education.  I hope you will join me on this journey and engage in a dialogue and exchanging of ideas that will continue to promote and push the improvement of success for ALL students within public education. 

Facilitating Educational Success: Exploring Beyond the Classroom 
(Personal Statement January 2013: Grad School Application) 

I believe that all individuals have the ability to be empowered to inspire positive change in the their own lives and the world that surrounds them.  I believe this empowerment begins with education, cultivating students’ intellectual curiosity, confidence to learn, and strengthening their ability to think and act critically. As an educator, my responsibility is to promote the most favorable academic, social, and emotional development for students regardless of the color of their skin, the language they speak, the community in which they live, or the circumstances into which they have been born.  Education, to me, goes beyond information presented in textbooks; it is the facilitation and encouragement of individual growth and discovery for the promotion of inspired changes and opportunities of success.

At the beginning of every school year, I reflect on years past and recommit to striving to empower my students who are disenfranchised or marginalized, especially within the institution of school.  As an example, when a student named Rolando, asked me why I have yet to give up on him and others in his class, I responded: “Despite your (sometimes) defiance and self-sabotage to learn or follow directions, I believe in your potential to make a positive difference in your own life, the lives of others, and your ability to succeed. So my job as a teacher, your teacher, is not to give up, but to believe, and to help provide you with the skills, tools, and opportunities you need to do whatever it is you want to do and be in life.”  My commitment to my students is clear to them and to anyone who has ever walked into my classroom.  Unfortunately, despite my honest intentions, I continuously face the challenge of meeting the needs of my students, like Rolando, who are chronically under achieving and seemingly disengaged from class and school.  I have witnessed many of my students “slip through the cracks,” – either because they’ve been left behind or because they lacked the self-confidence and identity necessary to persist through difficulty.  In spite of this great challenge, I refuse to back down from the fight.

As a young white woman raised in an upper middle class home, teaching high school math to a predominantly low income Latino and Black population can pose some significant challenges.  One recurrent major challenge I face with my students is dismantling their nihilistic belief that math is irrelevant to their lives.  I work daily with my students to foster their desire and willingness to engage with math and reframing their negative self-perceptions that math is not something they can be successful at. To create an encouraging environment, I must first format an atmosphere of trust and student self-confidence.  I also have to be aware of the preconceived cultural notions and biases I bring into the classroom, how to balance equality and equity in terms of my students’ diverse learning values, and how all of those factors impact my educational practices and teacher moves.  The importance of my continual growth to become more aware of the inequitable circumstances of my students’ lives is integral to my ability to overcome my challenges posed by race and provide my students with a greater opportunity to define experience success.During my first year of teaching, I reached out in frustration about what I viewed as my students’ lack of academic success to a mentor and former professor of mine.  His suggestion: reframe my thinking from what my students "should" know to what they "do" know, and begin there.  This seemingly obvious and simple advice changed how I approach education, teaching, learning, my students, and my role as their teacher. I constantly remind myself to evaluate and meet my students where they are while still where I expect them to be, and use instruction and learning tasks to move them forward so they can reach rigorous course expectations.

In addition to reframing how I think about student prior knowledge and experience, I have also been pushed by school leadership to expand my thinking in both grading and curriculum.  While teaching in Chicago, I began to employ a grading system known as Outcomes Based Assessment (OBA), a philosophy that moves away from a traditional 100-point average-based grading policy and towards rating students on their proficiency on set course outcomes.  OBA allows for my students to learn at their own pace and encourages them to take chances in their pursuit to understanding, without fearing penalization for mistakes or misunderstandings along the way. Furthermore, it requires tight alignment between outcomes and tasks, so that what I assess is what I teach.  I have also experimented with problem-base learning, as a way to enhance relevancy, engagement, and educational ownership.  To further push my practice, actualize my beliefs, and to better support my students’ learning, I am currently facilitating a curriculum known as Learning Cultures; a comprehensive curriculum with a primary goal to help students become their own agents of learning through various formats. I believe that all of these practices work in concert to increase student performance, and have helped transform my classroom from a place of “doing,” where students just complete work, into one of learning, where students demonstrate understanding of concepts through the work they produce.

Despite these positive changes in my practices, I continue to watch my lower third struggle.  I believe this continued challenge is due to the lack of focus on the specific students we are trying to help, and the multifaceted relationships that exist between race, society, and school. The role of school should not be limited to the teaching of academic standards, but for teacher and student to explore together the social contract, which for many on my students is broken and unjust. Schools should be places of empowerment, helping students develop skills and a knowledge base that will promote new definitions of success and establish the ability to demand and pursue those opportunities of success.

It is with this belief that I will temporarily hang up my lanyard of classroom keys, to pursue a M.A. in Urban Education at Florida International University. I hope the year of exploration will provide me with the next steps in building my overall growth and understanding as an educator. I believe it will allow me to explore the scholarship and theory that is connected to what I have already begun to experience and question as a classroom teacher in an urban environment.  The advice my mentor gave me in my first year of teaching, I’ve now learned, is so much more than changing my perspective on students’ prior knowledge.  It is a call for me to really know my students beyond the classroom. It takes more than a curriculum, a grading system, and an inspired speech about believing in my students to help facilitate change. As an educator, I must not be blind to who my students are, their educational histories, and the societal context in which they are growing up, and how these factors play into their future success. As James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time, “in order to change a situation one has first to see it for what it is.” My goal for this program is to continue broadening my knowledge base, belief system, and conceptions of differences within society, and to further develop my skill set and capacity to bring “the student” into the conversation for the benefit of all the players in schooling: teachers, leadership, and most importantly the students.