“Now, go “think” about it!”
I was in a school a few weeks ago and heard this phrase being repeated by a math teacher after discussing a difficult concept with her students. I woke up the next morning at 5:30am—partly because there was a large truck backing up and beeping loudly—but mostly because that phrase had reminded me of a student I had named Reggie. This blog is about one of the students who inspired me to “think about it.”
It was my first day in an urban school that had great diversity and many challenges. I was the new math resource teacher who ran the math lab for grades K-6. I opened the door for my first class of 5th graders. There, standing right next to his teacher, was the young man who had called me names just a few minutes before when he passed me on his way to homeroom. His teacher led the rest of the class inside, then introduced me to Reggie.
I had heard about Reggie during new teacher training that summer. He had a reputation for making teachers cry. Rumor had it that two teachers quit the profession after having him as a student. And, there he was, one of my first students to teach how to “think critically and creatively about mathematics.”
He looked at me, eye-to-eye since I’m only a little over 5’ tall, and said, “So, you’re the new math teacher.”
I smiled and answered, “So, you’re Reggie. I’ve heard so many incredible things about you and how creatively you think. I have been dying to meet you. Welcome to the class that is going to change your life.”
It took me just one class period to figure out that Reggie was one of those students who doesn’t learn sitting down. I know this may come as a shock to some teachers…
…there are millions of people around the world, who are not sitting silently in a chair with their eyes on the teacher, who are busy LEARNING WHILE MOVING!
I placed Reggie at the back of the room with a desk and chair that were quite sturdy. When he was really paying attention to what was going on in the classroom, he often perched his entire body on the desk and rocked back and forth. It didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention the movement, for him, actually meant he was paying attention.
I also put two, long, masking tape lines at the very back of the room. Any student who needed to move while they thought or worked could walk the lines. Reggie used these lines on a regular basis. Now that I’d made a physical environment that was best for Reggie, I had to find a way to engage him in a thoughtful environment.
I decided to use a set of books called, 20 Thinking Questions from Creative Publications. The students were grouped in mixed-readiness pairs and were given a bag of 50 centimeter cubes for the first problem solving session. The question was, “If one cube represents one horse and it takes 8 cubes to build a corral to go around it, how many cubes will it take to build a corral for 100 horses?” They had 90 minutes to find a way to solve the problem. No one had enough cubes to build the actual corral.
There were an odd number of students, so Reggie and I were partners. (The class didn’t mind my being part of a pair since I never looked at the answer pages.) Reggie and I started to work. We got stumped several times and decided to walk the masking tape lines to help us think. After a couple of minutes, we sat down and agreed that there must be a pattern to finding the answer. If we could find the pattern, we’d solve the problem.
We created several charts but still couldn’t see a clear pattern. Then, Reggie pointed to the relationship between two of the columns. We worked on the equation for the pattern. Five minutes later, Reggie and I were jumping up and down yelling, “We got the answer! We got the answer!”
I’ll never forget the look on Reggie’s face as he explained to the class how he had found the pattern (he did this while moving back and forth in the front of the room, of course). As he spoke, several of the students were whispering that they couldn’t believe Reggie solved the problem first since he wasn’t one of the “smart” students. Reggie overheard this and just grinned.
As the discussion ended, one of students asked Reggie if he cheated. Instead of being angry, he simply replied, “I didn’t have to, man, all you had to do was think about it!”
When Reggie returned to his seat I asked him how he felt. He looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “It’s weird, Mrs. Tabor, I have this quivering feeling inside me and I think I have tears in my eyes. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“That’s what happens when you accomplish something. That’s what it feels like. Sometimes people tear up because of the emotions that are inside them because they are proud of themselves. This problem today wasn’t for a grade or for a prize. The work you did today was because you wanted to prove you could do it—and you did!”
Those moments, the ones when a student’s “light turns on,” are the priceless moments in teaching. Thanks to all the students with whom I’ve worked, I’m addicted to students’ thinking!
“There is virtually no problem you cannot solve, no goal you cannot achieve, no obstacle you cannot overcome if you know how to apply the creative powers of your mind, like a laser beam, to cut through every difficulty in your life and your work.” -Brian Tracy
Why not try some action research of your own? Give your students a handful of centimeter cubes and have them “think about” how many cubes it will take to build a corral for 100 horses. What happens? Write me and let me know!
I’m off to central Texas for the rest of the week to help schools create Tabor Rotation Lesson Plans for the rest of the year. Check in on Wednesday for more about Differentiated Instruction/Tabor Rotation and Friday for Games!