Are You Teaching Thinking Skills to All Your Students?

A recent article on Ideas.ted.com http://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/

predicts the creation of a new ‘unworking’ class. 

It gave a bleak view of the future for students in school today.

This made me think about how we must prepare our students for the future. But we’re not doing this … do you think we are?

The key element of preparation is to develop the thinking skills of every student. Now. Today. That’s a major responsibility of Teachers.

We mean integrating thinking as a discipline into your daily routine.

Most of what students currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40.

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning, followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete.

The only way for your students to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives. They will have to reinvent themselves repeatedly. Many, if not most of the students you are teaching today may be unable to do so.

When you read this Blog, make a decision to expand thinking skills of each of your students. This is the main reason why MathsRepublic was created.

Problem-solving, both individually and by collaboration, is designed to develop thinking skills particularly strategic thinking.

You can start here by registering for a Free Trial on this website.

2017 Must be the Year You Transform to a Mentor

Enormous changes are happening with the Teaching & Learning of maths. It’s the same throughout education globally.

But when you’re in it: you often can’t see it; or feel it. 

Each year seems to be the same … only the faces of this year’s classes have changed from last year's.

A few years ago, I discussed collaborative problem-solving in mathematics with Professor Tom Seidenberg from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, US. Every subject is taught there collaboratively by a teacher/mentor around a Harkness oval table.

The Harkness method has been the Exeter pedagogy for 87 years. It’s also been a model for many other very progressive schools.

The maths faculty has written hundreds of problems which you can access on the Exeter website (www.exeter.edu). These problems are the basis for the collaborative lessons.

I was inspired by Professor Seidenberg and Harkness. So much so that I started MathsRepublic for teachers to connect with their students through collaborative problem-solving.

You can support the vision by trialling MathsRepublic FREE and then being invited to subscribe. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is breaking through that resistance to change … a characteristic shared by all humans when change is happening all around them.

But this is the time when Real Teachers emerge. These are teachers who recognise that T&L is an evolution but now accelerated by technology or EduTech to reach warp speed.

Real teachers know that it’s the students that matter. They acknowledge that students today were all born into the Web World…that they interact from an early age with the web and social connections.

There surely must be a new model of teacher/student connectivity for learning.

We believe that putting Harkness in the Cloud through MathsRepublic will introduce all Teachers to collaborative problem-solving.

And to then engage in Real Teaching with your amazing students.

We're Inviting You to be a Guest Blogger

You Must Have Something You'd Like to Say!

We have (finally) added a Blog to the navigation bar at the top of the home-page of MathsRepublic. I will be busy each week writing about whatever comes to mind ... mainly about teaching & learning.

I would like to invite you (teachers as well as students) to send me your Guest Blog to mail@MathsRepublic.com.au

Of course I will have to review it before posting ... but I won't be some kind of censor in that your views on education have to align with mine. No way.

Let's get some healthy discussions going.

I look forward to reading your guest blogs.

Alan Power, MathsRepublic

How Do Students Learn Best?

When I reflect on schools, teaching & learning in my maturing years, I am always amazed by the conservative attitudes of the majority of teachers to that vital dynamic of learning.

I lay the blame on the reactionary Education systems. Australia is a good example. The system nutures and mirrors the same attitudes within teachers. And they, in turn, reflect these in their reluctance to explore the many advances in learning available in our digital age.

Who's strung out to dry ... well, the students of course. Did we forget that teaching is only about the students?

Let me give you a personal example ... when I started teaching I also taught science. Now I thought that the standard methodology then was a nonsense ie use of a graph book (lined on the LH side and graph page on the RH side).

The rigid process of an experiment was to follow a write-up template of Aim, Apparatus, Method and Conclusion. Diagrams were drawn on the graph page. Any of you remember this?

So I changed this process to ruling the pages vertically into halves and documenting each step with a short description on the LH box and a relevant diagram in the RH box. So the science experiment report became a series of small steps each with a brief description and a visual.

Because that was the way I thought students would learn better.

It all worked beautifully as the students observed, thought and recorded everything in small steps using both words and graphics.

It's not unlike the teaching of maths is it?

The point of this little story is to never give up searching for the Holy Grail of learning ... there is a better way and it's probably not the way you are teaching today. Or told to teach!

Think about your personal schooling, your teachers, your teacher training, your head teacher, your colleagues etc ... then relate all this to your kids. Don't you think there's a huge gap between the way your brain developed compared with those of your kids and their mates in today's world?

Now go into your classroom and keep exploring for the Holy Grail of learning. You'll find it.

Love your comments and views on this ... mail@MathsRepublic.com.au

Make a Difference from within Your Own Classroom

Go into your staffroom and yell Transform Now! Then go into your classroom and start Disruptive Collaboration. Read on …

Teaching & learning in the maths classrooms needs reform. Evolution. Transformation. YOU can make it happen this year.

Yes, just one teacher in one classroom is all it needs … let’s start with YOU.

Some background first: Australia’s maths results in 2015 indicate that the serious decline in performance is continuing. Sure there’s some hotspots but they should not obscure the fact that the transformation must happen.

Couple of facts you may not know … Australian maths students are three years behind those in Shanghai? Or that Australian 15-year olds have similar problem-solving abilities to 12-year old Korean students.

But read all the alarming facts and figures yourself in the Australian education research study published last year by three academics: http://theconversation.com/six-ways-australias-education-system-is-failing-our-kids-32958

While I too was shocked with the data and performance comparisons in the Study (as an ex-maths teacher), my view as to the steps we can take now differ from the report’s authors.

First, it’s curious that in seeking this transformation, we turn to the product of the system rather than the systems themselves. We criticise the egg instead of understanding the chicken. Of course, the bits and pieces of that chicken are complex to the point of obscurity (just like our education bureaucracies and the working of governments). 

This makes self-correction through iteration–the current model for education reform–a challenge.

The education departments in each state, with all their associated experts and consultants, plus the Pollies at both Federal and State levels, get behind the existing machine and PUSH.

We seek approval from the same power holders and institutions that nod their heads Yes or shake their heads No, forgetting it is their way of thinking that got us into this mess. We want transformational change not just from within, but from above.

Teaching is about the three Ps … Preparation, Presentation and Personality. The most important of these is Personality (yes, this is definitely lacking in many maths teachers but you can get around that). I wrote a Blog about this recently. And the quality and teacher-education is already there too.

So we have to stop battling the bureaucracy and start the transformation in your own classroom … right now. If you don’t then we slip further down the world’s comparative maths achievement ladder. If you don’t care about this then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching.

You need to be disruptive even if it’s simply for the sake of disrupting. Make noise. Draw attention. Walk into your staffroom and yell Transform Today because this whole thing isn’t getting anywhere very quickly.

Disruption in general is about unsettling, and is often thought of in terms of chaos. Disruptive collaboration is working together to force change. It’s the artful unsettling of that which has become inartistic. Reconfiguring systems that can no longer see themselves, or replacing them altogether. It’s about shifting the locus of control.

We could talk right now about helping our students collaborate disruptively – and we should – because they are being let-down big time. But most immediately, this is about teaching and learning. 

Now here’s the pitch … You should seek collaboration with your students that torpedoes those industrial-age ideas. Reject the ideas of the education bureaucracies that have shut off their innovation trying to please the Pollies above them.

You should want the product of your collaboration with colleagues and students to be disruptive, too. Existing systems have their own momentum and can’t be changed. They don’t need our hashtags or likes or affection. They’ve yielded the context that necessitates our collaboration to begin with.

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. So let’s build something that offers viable alternatives for everyone–especially those marginalized by the system that exists.

Let’s stop demanding rigor and accountability, and instead create something ourselves that is scalable beyond the walls of your school, or the reach of the concept of “academia” that continues to haunt learning everywhere. 

Something that thinks not in a pattern of school->curriculum–>content–>proficiency, but instead person–>learning–>knowledge–>lots of people–>lots of learning–>social capacity–>wisdom.

Let’s connect and build something that doesn’t serve you or the past or what’s already here but others plus the here and now and the future. Let’s build something we’ve never had –and do so by empowering everyone that’s a part of this.

Something that isn’t built to make your school or classroom spin faster. But rather is built for the real work of understanding something as beautiful as mathematics.

Year 10 Can Be the New Year 12

The daily newspapers picked up on the number of student dropouts to lead their news coverage of the Educational Opportunity in Australia 2015 report released the week of October 26.

Twenty-six per cent of 19 year-olds or 81,199 people are not finishing school which is taken to be Year 12. What do you think about that? In the US, it's much, much higher.

Probably more important though was that the Report highlighted Year 7 as a sort of benchmark of a middle point in education. This showed that 71.6% of students met the milestones meaning that 28.4% didn't. Do you think that is high? And girls were higher achievers than boys (no surprise there).

However, these reports while full of tables and information, nearly always stay clear of strong, unequivocal comments. Sort of a self-protection mechanism. Don't rock the boat syndrome. Maybe only the authors are satisfied!

And they are difficult to read. Presentation style anyone!!

But the key questions are never answered:

• Dropout rates ... so what? How important are these when there's a wide world out there and schools generally don't provide the answers for a working family with a couple of kids in school. What's really acceptable? Not 100% for sure.
• Learning Mix. Are we providing the mix of learning that compels students to stay at school longer? Definitely not. Have you views on this?
• Less that 12 years?. And can we provide the necessary knowledge to students in less than 12 years. I think we can when the full power of tech-integrated learning is unleashed. We talk all the time about the maturity of students at ages lower than when we were at school don't we?
• Year 10 not Year 12? I believe the transition to Tertiary education should and can occur from Year 10 not Year 12. Learning can be accelerated.

The report can be downloaded from www.mitchellinstitute.org.au

MathsRepublican Alan Power

It's the 3Ps Which Make Good Teachers

I've been mystified over the years why our educational bureaucrats don't get it (to this add most Principals and Head Teachers). Get what makes a good teacher.

Well I can now let you in on the secret (it must be a secret because everyone seems to spend their time looking all over the place for something else!).

My Maths tutor at a Melbourne Teachers' College told my group that a good teacher emerged from a complete understanding of the 3Ps ... Preparation, Presentation and Personality but of the three, Personality was the most important. By the way, the tutor's name was Lloyd Senior and he should be revered in the manuals of good teaching.

Let's focus on Personality and what is meant. Throughout your life you meet and interact with people who attract, connect and engage you. It starts in early school days when you were drawn to those classmates who had something special. I bet you can recall teachers you had who were also special throughout all of your schooling years. They had Personality.

Of course this all begs the question as to whether Personality can be learned!! But Lloyd said it could be learned and I believed him.

We all had poor learning experiences when we had a teacher who may have had the best degree yet he/she couldn't manage a chook raffle let alone a lively class. The same goes for those of us with career experiences where natural leaders emerged with Personality. Those who didn't have it didn't make it to the higher levels. We all referred to them as backroom boys etc because although they may have had great thinking skills and were achievers in their more restricted worlds, they lacked Personality.

Here's what I would do:

• Focus on developing Personality with all teacher-graduates (it's too late for those currently teaching). How this is done is for others to decide but hopefully they will get started.
• In all supervised teaching of graduates stress with them the key elements of Personality in connecting with students
• When a graduate starts teaching, assign a mentor who actually does something ... one who has most of the Personality traits (difficult I know because many don't) with which to communicate the key elements
• Take Professional Development seriously and provide in-school and outside workshops far more frequently. Many schools pay only lip service to it.

That's enough for you to absorb in this Blog. How about joining the movement to provide learning of Personality with all our new teachers? Then our students might stand a chance.