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Mr. Meyer compared the
classroom to a country club and the teacher to the president of that country
club. He then compared those students that were successful in that class or
subject area as members of the country club.
His challenge for the group was what we are doing so that students in
the class want to be members of the country club. This analogy made perfect
sense for me. I remember having those “member” students that arrived everyday
eager to do whatever I told them to do. And I also remember trying to get
more prospective “member” students into my country club. So you might ask,
how does one get more members into the club?
For Mr. Meyer, that is
encouraging student talk/argumentation and providing an environment where
guessing and wrong answers are encouraged. This sounds pretty simple because,
well it is. At the conference, we worked through a problem in which we were
tasked with finding how long it took him to run up and down a set of stairs.
He began by simply showing us two clips of him running up the stairs, nothing
else, no other information. I liked this because as he later explained,
teachers and textbooks give out too much information and don’t allow for
students to develop the question.
During this time we
also began with questions and our initial round of estimates. It was also
interesting to see how he was taking mental notes about our thought processes
and understanding of the problem as he was asking for estimates and wrong
answers. As we progressed, we were provided more information about the
situation, which allowed us to check our estimates and develop more questions
about the scenario. It was interesting to see that even in a room with 30+
math teachers, how many different answers and methods to solve the problem
there were. And for me, that’s how we get more students into the country
club. We need to provide opportunities for students that not only allow for but
encourage guesses and multiple avenues to an answer.
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