report on feb 28th meeting

What a great meeting! We really got into some issues that we've been approaching for a few sessions now, and only had time to scratch the surface.

At our previous meeting, we had decided two things:
One was that we wanted to read a little bit from 'A People's History of Science' about racism and the history of science, specifically to do with assertions that a) the Greeks thought of everything themselves and weren't influenced by Egyptians, Alexandrians, etc, and b) the Greeks were white, and c) that science can prove that white folks are smarter than people of color, etc.
The second goal was to talk about facilitating 'difficult discussions' in our math and science classes, discussions that might be controversial, and where racial (and other power/privilege) dynamics would play out.

Thomas and I decided to combine these goals. After a check-in, we discussed the reading briefly, mainly discussing the key points and our reactions to it.

We then devoted the rest of our session to planning for and imagining our way through using this reading to start a class discussion in one of our classes. First, we worked in pairs and talked about how to structure the conversation, with attention to how we would begin the discussion, how we would sustain it, and what we would do if it turned out that a small subset of students were dominating the discussion.

Some ideas that came out about structure were primarily around using writing to get everyone involved in reacting to one another's opinions in ways that may not be possible in a whole-class discussion. Thomas and Peter suggested doing a 'walk-around' where you would post some provocative or central quotes from the reading around the room. Students could then walk around and write reactions to the quotes, and write reactions to one another's reactions. The teacher would participate in this too, but as one voice among many, not as the dominant voice.

Eric and I suggested something similar - having a 'silent discussion' where each student wrote their reaction to a key question on a piece of paper, and then passed it to another student who would read and write a response, and then pass it on, so students are silently reading and responding to one another. We weren't sure exactly how to structure this, though.

After talking about structure, we moved on to plan for the kinds of challenging situations we might face when facilitating a class discussion around this reading. We came up with a list of about 10, and decided to focus on two main challenges we wanted to be ready for.

The first challenge was student apathy - students saying they didn't care about this issue, there was nothing they could do about it, and just not getting engaged. Peter took the lead on discussing how he might react to this. He gave some suggestions for what he might do - primarily to redirect the discussion to get down some reasons why they should or shouldn't care about this. That way, the debate would take place among the students, rather than having the teacher just tell students to care. We actually role-played this, with Peter playing the teacher and Eric, Thomas and I playing the resistant students. Peter did a great job in redirecting the conversation, taking into account students' opinions, even when they didn't fit with his goals, and letting voices be heard.

The second challenge was around how a racially diverse group of students might react - white students getting defensive and angry, students of color asserting that all white folks are stupid and bad, and emotions running high. Eric took the lead on this and talked about how he would want students to see that each person has their own lived experience, part of it coming from their individuality, but partly coming from things they can't control: race, gender, family, upbringing, etc. (Eric, am I getting this right?) We role-played this and it was really challenging. Peter and I played two white students, Thomas a student of color, and Eric the teacher. The students quickly started contradicting each other, pointing out 'reverse racism' and saying that the real problem lay elsewhere, not with racism. At that point we all stopped and took a step back to ponder how to effectively deal with the situation. I don't think we really resolved it - and had so many questions among ourselves that we decided to continue the discussion next time.

In addition, we planned to talk about how to deal with the use of the word N*****, a racially charged word that students sometimes use in the classroom. Some teachers and schools have a strict policy against that word; this ends up letting the white majority decide how people can define and name themselves. We decided we should read something on this and discuss it next time.

So, a lot on our plates. One suggestion about next time is that it may not be advisable to stick to the agenda so strictly - we had so many activities to do in the 2.5 hours that we weren't able to go really deeply into any one. So maybe for next time, there can be more flexibility in the agenda.

next meeting is March 21st. We will gather from 6:15 to 6:45, and then hold the meeting 6:45 - 9:15.
We also scheduled our last three meetings for the year: April 18th, May 9th, and May 23rd.

Feb 7th continued, and planning for Feb 28th

I'm back! Sorry I didn't have the chance to finish what I was saying last time.

I'll just write a little bit about what the math group came with in our discussion of 'relevance' and then the science group. (Though I don't have good notes.) Then I'll say a little bit about what we decided to do for next time - next week on Tuesday.

Relevance in mathematics teaching:
We talked for quite a while about some specific strategies and came up with a general framework for things we think are important to consider wen trying to make math instruction relevant for students. We had two main thoughts with respect to making content relevant, and then some thoughts on making the learning process relevant.

Content
We do think it's important that students see math as a tool for understanding and hopefully changing the world. So projects or problems that are based in 'real-world' decision-making are important. I have a friend who had students construct their own problems in two different units that she taught - a linear programming unit, and a unit on chi-squared and statistics. She found that although this could be a time for students to really use the mathematics to explore issues that interested them, most of the students ended up doing projects that even they didn't really care about. So they did surveys about whether people preferred chocolate or vanilla, or whether they thought Marilyn Manson was weird. Most students didn't really care about their projects. In retrospect, I can see that while we thought the students were getting a chance to really apply math to their lives, we had never shown them that math could be useful in that way. We just expected them to make the stretch, while we never really did anything to help them understand how math could be relevant. So, while projects like that can be cool, we have to do a lot of work as teachers to help students figure out that math can be useful before we expect them to figure that out for themselves.
Another way to make math more relevant is to know a lot about your students, what interests them, what they care about, and do your best to make connections. So, one of us has a student who likes to build model airplanes. In discussions about similarity and geometry, we can draw on that interest to show how math is used to design those models that the kid likes.

Our second main point about math content was that we should do things that are fun, funny, cool, and irrelevant to real life. Because some kids really want to see math applied to their lives, and some kids really like math for itself. And we'd like to help both of those students enjoy the math class, or get something out of it.

Both of these are related to our social justice goals because we want students to see mathematics as a tool that they can use to 'read and write the world' (a la Freire) and so making math relevant through projects, connections to student interests, and especially to social justice issues in the community, is one way to get there. Also, the more different kinds of mathematics and approaches to mathematics we can take in the classroom, the more likely that all different kinds of students could be successful.

Process
We believed that although we like to try to make the content relevant and interesting, ultimately students will have to be able to persevere and think hard and keep working even when they don't find the content relevant. This is going to happen for students throughout high school, unfortunately, and later in life. So, we want to help students be able to get the support they need to persevere through things they don't necessarily like. One way to do this is by making the learning process more interesting, fun, and enjoyable - and also to make the learning process support students to stay engaged even when times are tough.

Group work is one way to do this - as long as students are supported in their group work - because students usually enjoy working together more than they enjoy working alone, and because students tend to be more successful when working with peers. We also talked about structuring our pedagogy so that student's opinions (thoughts and feelings about the content), and their mathematical reasoning, is valued and respected. So we start from where the students are, and respect all sorts of ways of thinking mathemtically. we saw that as really important especially since we are both white middle-class people, and we want to make sure that in our classrooms, there is more than just a white middle-clas norm for what it means to do mathematics. We didn't have as many concrete suggestions here, but I hope you get the flavor of our discussion.

Science
I don't remember as much about what the science folks did. So maybe one of them can add to this and describe the strategies they came up with. The one thing that I remember the most is their discussion of bringing the news and current events into the classroom. We talked about how this can be really important, but has to be handled well because sometimes in controversial discussions, students can say some pretty hurtful and oppressive things, and it takes a strong and experienced facilitator to make that happen. I gave an example of being in a classroom that was discussing HIV, where a few strong voices in the classrooms kept repeating that they thought people with HIV should all be quarantined somewhere, and that maybe new superstrains aren't so bad because they kill people faster, meaning that HIV positive folks can't infect others. At the time I was really shocked and angry about the things that the students were saying - I also recognize that it was a pretty difficult conversation to facilitate, and I know the teacher was doing her best.

We all agreed that we'd like more experience facilitating classes of students in conversations that could get that controversial, and we decided to make that the focus of next week's meeting.
We have a few pages of assigned reading from the book 'A People's History of Science' (that I mentioned a few posts ago) and then we'll head into that discussion about facilitating controversial and potentially oppressive discussions in our classrooms. I'm really looking forward to this!

February 7th meeting of JAMS

The February 7th meeting was a chance for us to delve more deeply into issues that came up in the January meeting. At that time, we had talked about what strategies people might have for working with non-learners or not-learners in their classrooms. One thing that came up over and over was that we might try to make the content more relevant to students. We didn't get into a big discussion of what 'relevant' might mean, or how we might try to do it, or what that would look like in the constraints of our current teaching situations.

So, thomas and I decided to do an activity to allow us more time to reflect on what 'relevant' might mean, and how it relates to social justice issues.

We started with a check-in about people's high and low points of the last week.
Then, Thomas gave us an example of an activity that might be considered relevant. He showed us how he had a giant garbage bag hooked up to a vacuum cleaner, and coaxed Abby to get inside. When he fastened the garbage bag tightly around Abby's body and closed it up around her neck (leaving her face free to breathe - an important point if you want to try this at home!) and then turned the vacuum cleaner on, the air quickly got sucked out of the bag, plastering it to Abby's body. He asked her to move her arms and legs, and she found that she couldn't move them at all.

Thomas explained this to us as a way to start learning about atmospheric pressure, to get into some of the issues, and a place to return to in subsequent discussions with students. We talked about this activity and its positive aspects and negative aspects.

Positively, we thought this was a nice example of a physical demonstration that students could refer back to when they think about more abstract concepts in the unit on pressure. We also thought it was great to have students share a common experience that could then be used in the classroom. You can develop a common language out of it (kind of like in the algebra project by Bob Moses et al.)

Negatively, we worried that students might get some wrong ideas about pressure because of the demonstration, and that if this was the only way to make things relevant, it might be hard to find similar activities for every unit, or for every day in every unit. Somehow, we'd have to combine this strategy (for a fun, hands-on activity) with other strategies to help students get through some tough thinking.

We then split into content-area groups - math people in one group, and science people in another - and talked about strategies for making things relevant. For each strategy we came up with, we had to articulate why that strategy was relevant, what might make this strategy difficult to ipmlement, brainstorm ways to overcome those difficulties, and to explain how the strategy related to our overarching social justice goals.

I don't have good notes on what we came up with - maybe I'll be able to add more later.

One thing that we talked about was bringing controversial issues into the classroom, and how careful one has to be in facilitating discussions around those controversies. This is the topic we're going to take up in the next meeting - next week! I'll say more about this in a bit, for now i'm late for a meeting and have to run!

January JAMS meeting

At our January meeting, we had to modify our agenda slightly again, because unfortunately Peter was sick and couldn't make it! He had planned to take on part of the agenda for that week. What I present below is our modified agenda, and the ideas that we came up with.

Agenda
1. Go over agenda
2. Icebreaker - write down a question that you would like someone to answer. We all picked questions and answered them.
3. Reading for this week - short excerpt from 'I won't learn from you' by Herb Kohl. Focus of the reading was a student named Rick who chose not to learn algebra.
4. Brainstorm - why might people become non-learners in our math and science classes?
5. Individual reflection: Think of a student you've known who was a non-learner. Describe the student as much as you can. What did you do?
6. Why is this a social justice issue? Whole group discussion.
7. Generate strategies for working with non-learners. Be explicit about the connection to our social justice goals for each strategy. Each person had a chance to report one strategy, and then we had a whole group discussion, adding more, talking about one another's ideas.
8. One volunteer (Eric) described the student he thought of in the individual reflection, what he did at the time, and what he might do now. Then we all discussed ways that we might consider working with students like Eric's.
9. Peter wasn't present, but Eric volunteered to raise an issue he's been thinking about - how to end up his teaching placement, say goodbye to his students, and have them evaluate his teaching practice. We shared ideas and suggestions about what he could do.
10. Plan for next meeting: Peter will present. Thomas will facilitate and bring food. It will be at Thomas' place.
11. Written reflection
12. Appreciations

Below, i've included the type-up version of our suggested strategies for working with non-learners. Anyone have any more to add, or further reflections? Eric, how did your end of semester go?

Strategies for working with students who choose to 'not-learn'

Strategies:
Giving students their choice of content for a project
Giving students opportunities to share individual ideas in a safe environment
Relation to social justice goals:
Making it personally relevant

Strategies:
Talk to the student and find out more about them – elicit their background, desires, and goals
Work with student to determine how/if class/subject works in terms of the student's goals
Counsel student on options – drop out, different subject/class, faster or slower, referrals, jobs, etc
Check back with the student – progress report on feeling/s thoughts as well as actual progress in the course
Relation to social justice goals:
Respect for the individual student and their needs
Recognize different life paths

Strategies:
Give students more autonomy so they can be individuals and let their ideas be heard
Get to know your students better – e.g. their home life, what they find important, why they are non-learning by choice
Relation to social justice goals:
Students can relate ideas to what is relevant to them, not just societal norms

Strategy:
Build relationships with all students and as many families as possible so you can get more info about what's going on
Relation to social justice goals:
Can help to learn more about the real situation, why this is happening, so how you choose to work with the student fits the situation they are in

Strategy:
For a student like Rick – if he is interested in the material and just doesn't want to be compared with others, can have alternative assessments. He just has to show that he knows how to do it, is not competing with the rest of the class.
Relation to social justice goals:
Trying to build alternative ways of doing schooling so it's more about learning and not competing. Creating schools where there is not just one acceptable way of showing what you know.

Strategy:
Respect the student's decision not to learn, but also try to find out what their other goals are, see if I can be a resource to the student.
Relation to social justice goals:
Respect their autonomy but help them understand the system so they can make informed decisions.

Long overdue: report on December JAMS meeting

It's been a crazy month and I'm only now finding the time to report on our meeting of December 6th, 2005.

Our agenda was:
1. Review agenda
2. Icebreaker - a pivotal moment in your life
3. Reading and discussion re race and teaching
4. Brainstorming re next meetings, and organize details of next meeting
5. Written reflection
6. Appreciations

We had intended to spend half of the meeting doing a joint problem-solving effort with a classroom dilemma brought in by one of the teachers, but she was not able to make it to the meeting.

We began with a period of open sharing, where people just chatted a bit about things going on in their lives, things they were thinking about, etc. Peter raised an interesting dilemma that a friend of his had encountered. The friend is a white man teaching in a school with mainly youth of color - I think Peter said they were mainly African American. In a conversation about hip hop, the teacher made a comment that a particular rapper known for misogynistic lyrics deserved to have been killed. Later, the teacher felt really bad for saying that, when he was from a different cultural background from the students, but also felt like the rapper's lyrics were not acceptable. (Peter am I describing this right?) Peter asked us what we would have done in that situation. We decided to talk about this later, as a part of our reading activity, because the readings directly address how race is discussed and not discussed with teachers and students.

For the icebreaker, we took a few minutes to draw a pivotal moment of our lives, one that helped to make us who we are today. We then had about 5 minutes each to show our pictures and describe them to the rest of the group. This was really interesting and helped me to get to know the other members of the group more - and I think it will be crucial for our joint work this year. Thanks to everyone for being so open with us all!

We then moved on to the day's main task - reading a review of three books that deal with race and racism in teaching. The book review can be found here and is called 'Schooling Race Talk' by Audrey Thompson. We broke up the reading into three sections and each took a part of it, then reported back to the others about what we had read. We tried to answer the following questions:

1. What are the main points the author of the book is making?
   
2. What are the main comments or critiques made by the reviewer?
   
3. What lessons from the review apply to math and or science teaching?
   
4. Does this shed any light on Peter's question about cultural difference between students and teachers (specifically, white teachers and black students)
   

Thomas took notes during our report-back - there were lots of very interesting ideas. Thomas, maybe you could post those notes?

In fact, we went way over on the amount of time we dedicated to this portion of the meeting.

When we brainstormed ideas about next steps for the group, what we want to do together over the long term, we quickly came to consensus that the reading is useful, but we can use our time more wisely if we have the short readings in advance, and come prepared to discuss them. We also talked about the idea of doing case studies - presenting ourselves with dilemmas similar to what Peter had brought up in the beginining of the meeting, and talking about what we would do in those situations. These case studies can be a way of focusing our discussion and keeping us on topic.

So, that's our plan for next time - we will do a short reading (probably from Kohl's book 'I won't learn from you') and some case studies. Also, Peter will take about an hour to present us with a dilemma he is facing in his work.

We set the next few meeting dates:
January 17th
Feb 7th
Feb 28th
March 21st
These will probably all be in the East Bay (thanks Christine for being so good about coming over the bridge!)
Indigo will provide food for the next one. I can't remember but I think someone volunteered to do an icebreaker... maybe Peter?

That's it for now... any comments, reflections, questions?

Two books that address social justice issues in math and science

In the interest of sharing the resources we've got in the group, here are two books that i think are helpful for addressing social justice issues that have to do with math and science.

The first is called Rethinking Mathematics and it contains lots of ideas for classroom activities that teachers can use. I'd highly recommend it. I know of several teachers who have used some of the activities and really liked them.

The second book I haven't read, and it's not a curriculum guide. It's some background reading that could be brought into the classroom, I think. If anyone's read it, and wants to say more about it, you should comment below because I'd love to hear it. I've ordered it and can't wait to see what it has to offer. It's called A People's History of Science and talks about how historically, science has been built on the knowledge and discoveries of working people. I'm interested to see the evidence to this argument. Has anyone read it?

If you've got other resources to share, let me know. I have a few others, but nothing like an exhaustive list.

Report and reflections on second JAMS meeting

Last week, November 22nd, we had our second JAMS meeting. I've posted the agenda below, as well as the outcome of some of the activities. It was a great meeting, though we were sad to be missing so many of the folks who had come to the first one! If you were at the first and would like to keep joining us, it's still possible! You can also take part in the blog discussion as we will discuss this year's activities.

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
5:30-6:00 - dinner!
6-8:30 - meeting

AGENDA
1. Introductions and icebreaker
2. Pairs and then group discussion of community norms
3. Silent brainstorm of issues related to social justice in mathematics and science teaching
We brainstormed about three questions:
What are the most pressing social justice issues related to math and science teaching?
What are the more socially just alternatives to these issues?
What would it take to get to the socially just alternatives?
4. We grouped the items people came up with for the brainstorm, and then prioritized which ones we wanted to work on.
5. We planned for the next meeting.
6. Written reflection


I think I got it all, not sure!

The results of the prioritization were that we came up with three themes to pursue for this year.
1. Conscious Race-aware Teaching
2. Difference and Resources
3. Curriculum and Pedagogy

We also decided to try an interesting format for our meetings. About half of the meeting will consist of activities that help us work on the three issues we named above. In the second half of each meeting, one of the group members will have the chance to present a problem or issue that they are struggling with, and to get feedback from the group. Colleen volunteered to go first (yay Colleen!). I'm excited to see what she comes up with and how we can use all of our varied experience and skills to work on some of these tough problems.

So, for next week we've got a few things on tap.
1. A Life Maps activity since so many new folks came at the second meeting, who couldn't make it to the first.
2. An activity to help us get into the issues we want to work with. We decided we'd like to do a collective reading and discussion for this first activity.
3. Colleen will present us with a problem and we'll all work on it together.

Sounds exciting! If anyone has any reflections on the meeting, or suggestions for activities we could/should do this year, leave a comment and maybe we can discuss it some on the blog as well as face-to-face.