In Just Eight Days

I have been in my fourth grade math classroom for eight days and I have already been humbled by dice, by chairs, and by a nine-year-old.

I started the semester with almost two decades in schools, a doctorate in progress, and most recently, a summer course in cognitive psychology. I have spent years watching teachers through the door, through evaluations, through the lens of someone whose job is to see what's working. I came equipped with a framework from Neel, Johnson, and Neal for ambitious teaching: task, tools, talk, and participant structures. I know this stuff. I have said this stuff out loud to other people in rooms where they took notes.

And then I tried to teach volume with place value blocks that wouldn't snap together.

The kids weren't thinking about dimensions. They were wrestling with plastic. So I tried regular dice. They tipped and slipped. Then I found a bag of foam dice that weren't made for this at all, and they stacked, and they stayed, and the room came back to the math. That was day two.

The desks took longer. I have always loved pods. Four together, everybody facing each other, collaboration by design. I set the classroom up that way, and then I spent most of a week frustrated by side chatter before it occurred to me—I built conversation tables. Of course they're talking. Also our desks are huge, so in fours the kids are far enough apart that they have to be loud just to hear each other. Also half of them had their backs to the board in a class that is mostly worked problems.

So I flipped them. Two by two, angled. Everybody has a buddy. Everybody can see the board. It got better that afternoon.

None of that is about math. It's about this room, these desks, these kids, and me. You can't plan your way past it. You have to be in it.

And then the nine-year-old. We were deep in a problem together as a class about volume, layer after layer, and I had the thought, gosh, this feels really complex for where we are. Right then a sweet boy in the middle of the room raised his hand and said, "Mrs. Vaughn, I don't think that's what the question is asking."

He was right. We stopped. We laughed. We talked about how teachers get it wrong too and what you do next. Ten minutes later I drew a square and turned it into a cube on the board and you would have thought I'd done a magic trick. Fine. I'll take it.

As I reflect this weekend on this new beginning, I am confident that everything I brought with me was real. The research is real. The framework is real. The years of observing are real. And yet, every bit of it had to meet a room and get adjusted inside of a week. 

Eight days. A hundred and seventy to go.

Somewhere in there I keep thinking about the people who have been watching me the way I'm watching these kids. Boards. Teachers. Everyone I've ever evaluated, and everyone who has evaluated me. Are we giving people a chance to practice before we assess? Are we asking whether it's the task or the tool before we decide it's the person?

I don't know yet, but I do know I have a bag of foam dice on my desk and a room that looks nothing like it did on Monday.