Miss Bennett in the Bay

How do you know if your child is being educated by an excellent teacher? A mediocre one? A poor one?

According to a new study by The New Teacher Project, the only reliable way to tell is by word of mouth from other parents.

But wait, you say. Teachers are evaluated by their administrators, right? Well, yes, but those ratings are pretty much useless, according to this study. In districts where teachers can be rated either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory”, a whopping 99% of teachers are rated satisfactory. In districts where teachers can receive a broader range of ratings, 94% of teachers are rated in the top two categories with only 1% being rated unsatisfactory.

These results highlight the uselessness of teacher rating systems, and bemoan the fact that not only are we unable to determine who the great teachers are, we are also unable to determine who the poor teachers are.

That part is the scariest of all to me, and I think it underscores a greater problem in education. There are a wide range of teachers in every school. Teachers know which of their colleagues are effective and which ones are not. I’d like to think that some administrators would admit who their weakest teachers are. And yet, these teachers continue to receive tenure and satisfactory ratings. This is doing our nation’s children a great disservice.

The authors of the article put forth several ideas to counteract this problem. They advocate for an overhaul of the teacher evaluation system by putting in place a comprehensive set of standards for teachers, and then evaluating teachers on these standards. Then, based on evaluations, administrators should determine the professional development needs of their teachers and provide them with support. (Wow, what a concept!) Exceptional teachers should be rewarded while exceptionally poor teachers should be given an opportunity to improve. If they do not, they should be removed from the classroom.

I think all of these sound like great ideas. My experience with teacher evaluations gave me the distinct impression that they are a big joke. After one 30-minute observation in November, my entire worth as a teacher for that year was summed up in 2 sentences. What if I had a particularly great lesson that day, or a particularly poor one? How does 30 minutes even give you a sliver of an idea of what I’m like as a professional? Apparently, this type of evaluation practice is commonplace all over the country.

This is actually one of the reasons I decided to move to a charter school. At my new school, I will be evaluated on a weekly basis. The point of this is not to highlight my failures but instead to help me develop as a professional. This is what I want. I’m tired of people telling me how great I’m doing when the reality is that I’m still a young teacher and there is always room for improvement. I applaud The New Teacher Project for this study. Maybe at least some districts (the ones in the study perhaps?) will take their suggestions to heart and work for real change. One can always hope.

Every summer (or, more accurately, each summer I’ve been associated with TFA) I find myself stepping back from the day-to-day grind of a classroom teacher and start thinking about the education problem on a much broader scale. I think about what it would take to finally close the achievement gap permanently. I think about the major players in this problem, and all of the things stacked against true reform. I think about the long history of discrimination in this country, and how the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think about my own role in this mission.

This line of thinking is dangerous. Whenever I have one of these thought sessions, I always come out of it more cynical and depressed than before. “Changing things?” I think. “We’re not changing anything. This problem will never be solved.”

Of course, one cannot believe that and have this job. Think what you may about the naivete and idealism of TFA corps members, there is something about drinking the TFA kool-aid that keeps you going in the face of this reality. It’s pretty easy to start believing that we actually are doing something when you hear success story after success story at a TFA conference. I’m able to jump on board with TFA’s mission when I see 200+ 2009 Bay Area corps members walk into a hotel ballroom ready to close the gap, equipped with little more than their own convictions about this injustice. And I am reminded that I actually did help close that gap myself when those same new corps members hear my own stories and look at me with awe in their eyes. It gives me goosebumps to think about it.

So, while I recognize that we’ve still got a very long way to go to fully realize true independence in this country, particularly for those who are the most marginalized, I can also see that there are plenty of people out there who are making a difference. My friends and colleagues around the Bay who fight the status quo, leaders who around the nation create change.

Independence Day always makes me a little sappy. When I hear “Born in the USA” or “God Bless the USA” I get a little teary-eyed, not gonna lie. I am proud to be an American. Being proud doesn’t mean that I blindly follow whatever somebody says. Being proud means that I strive for the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and I fight for those freedoms for my students. After all, they deserve the same freedoms that I have had, and if these Truths are really self-evident, then change can’t be too far behind. What an amazing thing to celebrate this Independence Day.

In an effort to Continuously Increase my Effectiveness, I have spent quite a bit of time this summer reading various books and articles about teaching. I recognize that I am by no means an expert teacher; part of the reason I wanted to move to a charter school was that I knew that they would help me develop in my profession in a meaningful way. I can’t help close the achievement gap if I just stay as effective as I am now. As a teacher, there’s always more you can do, and so here I am, spending my summer working. (And I love it, by the way!)

I was sent A Mathematician’s Lament through a TFA-Bay Area listserv that I am a member of. Since I’m only going to be teaching math to second graders next year, I figured it was highly relevant to me. What I read humbled me.

The author, Paul Lockhart, starts with a hypothetical situation about a musician trapped in a world without music. Children are being taught to write music in sheet form, but they are never allowed to hear music or taught to play it. The beauty and art has been sucked out of music. This, Lockhart claims, is exactly what has happened to math in our public schools.

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In
fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.

Well, I certainly agree that most math classes are boring. In fact, I’m pretty sure I slept through much of my high school math education. I remember often feeling like my teachers were kidding me when they tried to convince me that “I would need to know this later.” Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure that I use the quadratic equation every single day- thank goodness I spent all that time learning it!

To be fair, though, I can’t remember much of my lower elementary math education. I remember doing multiplication tables in third grade and hating every second of it. Is it possible I enjoyed first and second grade math?

Lockhart continues by explaining to us that the reason nobody sees math as an art is because nobody understands what mathematicians do. He claims, “[M]athematicians sit around making patterns of ideas. […] If there is anything like a unifying aesthetic principle in mathematics, it is this: simple is beautiful. Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.”

O…k. So, I’m supposed to teach my students about imaginary things? Right. It’s hard enough to get some of them to stop daydreaming about fairies and princesses as it is. But, maybe I’m missing some key piece of information about math. It’s not, after all, my favorite subject. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now and accept that math is about imaginary things.

Lockhart takes us through a discussion of how to derive the formula for discovering the area of a triangle: A=1/2BH. (Yep, I remember that from my geometry days.) He has chopped a triangle inscribed in a rectangle in half, thereby discovering that the triangle fills exactly half of the rectangle. He says, ” But it’s not the factthat triangles take up half their box that matters. What matters is the beautiful idea of chopping it with the line, and how that might inspire other beautiful ideas and lead to creative breakthroughs in other problems— something a mere statement of fact can never give you.”

Ok, fair enough, I see his point. He’s arguing for more of a self-discovery process of math- of appreciating its beauty and using your own natural curiosity to learn about the mathematical world. It’s similar to making a painting- children should be given artistic freedom to create something beautiful on their own. I can appreciate this point of view.

But, here’s my problem with it. When I place myself back in my younger self’s shoes, sitting in a desk in a classroom in front of a math teacher, I remember that I never once cared what the answer to a math problem was. I would do the work and find the answer, but I never thought that it was fun or beautiful. Maybe this is a result of the fact that I was simply handed all the formulas I ever needed and told to use them. There was no self-discovery process for me. Is it possible that if I had had a teacher who showed me a triangle inscribed in a rectangle and asked me, “How much of the box does the triangle take up?” that I would have found that interesting? I’d have to say probably not. I (and I’d be willing to bet, most of my classmates) would have responded, “Who cares?” I simply fail to see the beauty in this problem.

Lockhart uses the rest of his article to give a scathing report on how horrible everyone involved with mathematics education is, from the top of the government right down to the classroom teacher. Nobody gets math, he claims, so of course we are failing to teach it to our kids. The very establishment designed to impart math knowledge has, in essence, killed it. “There is surely no more reliable way to kill enthusiasm and interest in a subject than to make it a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Include it as a major component of standardized testing and you virtually guarantee that the education establishment will suck the life out of it.”

Now there is a statement I can get on board with! I may not have ever seen the fun or beauty in math, but I have always loved reading. I think this statement applies to all subject areas- we have become so focused on the results of some meaningless test that we just force our students to test prep all day long. In the end, what have we taught them? How to fill in bubbles? Awesome. I’m sure that will help them in life.

Anyway, Lockhart does go on to suggest improvements to math instruction.

So how do we teach our students to do mathematics? By choosing engaging and natural
problems suitable to their tastes, personalities, and level of experience. By giving them time to make discoveries and formulate conjectures. By helping them to refine their arguments and creating an atmosphere of healthy and vibrant mathematical criticism. By being flexible and open to sudden changes in direction to which their curiosity may lead. In short, by having an honest intellectual relationship with our students and our subject.

Certainly, that’s a great ideal to strive towards. But I think it sort of makes the assumption that, as the math teacher, you see math as beautiful and artistic. Since the education establishment is so horrible, how many teachers out there really see it this way? Everyone in my life who actually does see math this way absolutely did not go into teaching. They went into engineering. Who is left to do the teaching? People who were brought up by and buy into the very system that Lockhart condemns.

So, Mr. Lockhart, I will do my best to see math as an art from now on, to push my students to reach their own mathematical conclusions, and to discover the beauty of it on their own. But I don’t think that any of us should be surprised if I’m not successful in every single unit. Tell me, where is the beauty in subtraction with borrowing? I can see the beauty in 3-D shapes or in multiplication. But subtraction? It’s pretty ugly, if you ask me.

It would be awesome if I could get my students to see math in this way. How much fun would they have, and how much more would they actually learn? I am sure the possibilities are limitless. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned during the past two years, it’s that you have to believe what you are teaching. If I lacked the artistic mathematical instruction from my education, how am I going to bring that to my students?

Frankly, articles like these make me feel hopeless. If seeing math as art is truly the way to go (though I’m not convinced it is) then how are we supposed to get there? The problem is so systemic that unless all those mathematicians who do see math that way come out of their high-paying jobs to teach, the problem will persist.

There must be another way.