The Teacher As Mover and Shaper: A Guest Blog Post by Jen Hawkins
Make sure to listen to Episode 85: Zooming In on Math Teacher Talk with Jen Hawkins.
I wanted to use a pun to title this blog, that is an adjacent partner with the podcast episode I recorded with Melissa, for a couple of reasons. First, because puns amuse me. Secondly, they can make for an attention grabbing title. But mostly I am asking us to consider the teacher as a “mover and shaper” because the role of a teacher in the mathematics classroom has changed a great deal over the decades since I began teaching. I know this from experience, I have evolved as a teacher: I no longer seek to be the “benevolent dictator”, controlling a strict math classroom, instead I’m striving to be a “mover and a shaper”, encouraging student confidence with the right moves and shaping students into becoming independent thinkers.
In the last decade or so, we’ve learned that some of the most effective math teaching occurs when the teacher sees herself more as a guide to assist and support students, rather than as a leader for students to follow. The sort of teacher I am now is light years away from the math teacher I was when I first began teaching. This new role incorporates ‘moves’ (read strategies) that teachers can employ to develop students that think as opposed to copy. The “I do, We do, You do” sequence, so traditional in mathematics education not only when I was a student but when I began teaching in the 1990s, has changed to be more of a “You do, We do, I do” model.
Let me say more….
In our new role as teachers, we consider the impact of students being empowered to tackle new content by thinking things through, using their existing or developing skills, and problem solving independently, instead of mimicking teacher examples. When students are encouraged to struggle with new ideas and solve problems they learn to persevere through difficulty, to search their own store of knowledge for tools, and when they succeed the confidence they gain is immeasurable!
One of the best ways to create mathematical thinkers is to use a standards aligned, coherent, problem-based math curriculum. By using a problem based lesson structure in mathematics students are introduced to a challenge, or problem, to figure out. Teachers provide an introduction or launch into the problem, then students work either independently or in partnerships to try to work out the problem at hand. Meanwhile, the teacher is using moves, very often specific questions that promote rather than stop thinking, and she is intentionally collecting important ideas about strategies, or details of “Ah Ha!” moments from the students, to organize a purposeful synthesis of the learning for the whole group as the lesson’s conclusion.
Some of the resources that I’ve learned from in my work to change myself from a strict leader of a math teacher into a kinder, gentler facilitator of learning are the following:
SERP Institute work on Student Vital Actions and Supporting Teacher moves
https://www.serpinstitute.org/5x8-card/vital-student-actions
This resource identifies the important actions that engaged, thinking students display and the associated teacher moves that promote those actions.
Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl
https://buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/
I’ve not finished reading this book yet, by my goodness the ideas are fascinating! So far I have tried the vertical space approach, the “math huddle” for introducing a problem solving activity launch, and I’m reconsidering the types of questions that a teacher should answer, and ask!
The 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discourse
by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein
In much of my work with teachers we explore and use the 5 Practices in our lesson planning and delivery. I still feel like a novice with this technique, but the feedback from students when the 5 practices are put into play is pretty rewarding…I’ve heard more than once, and from students as young as 1st grade, that they had just experienced “the best math class ever!” Comments like that mean I’m going to work to get better and better with the techniques that promote discourse.
A problem-based math curriculum that embeds the 5 practices into many of its lessons, and includes reflections about and promotion of Teacher Moves, is the Illustrative Mathematics K-5 program. You can access the open-educational resource math curriculum by Illustrative Mathematics here: https://im.kendallhunt.com/ or learn more about IM and current math pedagogy in blogs linked here: https://illustrativemathematics.blog/
It’s been a pleasure to chat with Melissa and share here as a follow-up some of the ideas that are making teaching mathematics a rewarding, dynamic, growing experience for myself and for so many other teachers. I hope readers are interested in becoming a math “mover and shaper” too!