Exit Slip - Oct 17th

Today's sit spot activity was one of my favorite, specifically because we were asked to speak about the mathematic patterns in the garden in a context of gratitude. This helped to emphasize a departure from the rigid, sterile environment that we generally associate with math. It helped me appreciate how much  math there was to be grateful for. By adding an element of gratitude, I was able to use my 'math' brain in a totally new way. I wrote the following thank you notes: 

"You are a special Tree, in your three-ness. two-two-two, all the way up; Three at the bottom."

"Thank you light! Negative and Positive"

"Thank you leaves, your gradients of green! Letting our circles ease you into a winter slumber. Dots of color on the ground - Thank you."

"4ourness plant - thank you! Thank you for your evermore-ness. Always two more... How do I know your a four?"

"Thank you gradients. Showing me trails often travelled. Showing me your dance, approaching a blossom. Ten steps from the base to the blossom. Thank you! 

"Thank you bush - your thousands of leaves letting in chaotic light. Thank you for showing what is different can the serve the same."

"Thank you former Care-Givers. The centric door is a beautiful attempt to join nature's variability. Thank you for your thoughtfulness cultivating this place. A seed of life in a jungle. Thank you!

"Thank you air and your power to heal". 

I found the body-measurement activity very rich. I had not done this before - it was shocking to see how accurate some of the units were. In particular, the width of my thumb seemed exactly 1", and the length of my half finger was so close to 5.5". 

This activity inspired an idea for a different activity, the goal of which is to help students understand how 2D Area measurements are different from 1D distance measurements. Briefly: it would involve students creating several 'units' of measurement with their  bodies. They would then measure out some 2D plot using two different body units. The result? My patch is... 451 [Jacob] feet-hands. I think this would draw attention to the differences between length and area. 

As a final note... I'm very eager to learn the results of my peer's inquiry projects. Very exciting that everyone seems to have relatively novel ideas!

 

Inquiry Project - Competition in High School Education

 

Define your Question	Search Topic: Competition in High School Education
Analyze your topic into concepts	Concept A	Concept B	Concept C
	How / Why does the current educational system leverage competition?	How does a competitive atmosphere effect student learning?	How can we reduce competitive attitudes in classrooms?
Choose Database(s)
Key Journals / Authors

So much of my academic career has been centered around competition. Comparing marks with friends. Seeing who can finish a test 'first'. Seeing who can finish homework first. Getting the highest mark. Feeling inferior to peers because they seem to understand something you do not. Competing for admittance to prestigious Universities. Racing to build a bridge with popsicle sticks...

For my inquiry project, I plan to better understand the role of competition in high school classrooms. I want to understand both the HOW and WHY of competition in our schools. I am motivated by this because my personal experience has shown me that my capacity as a learner is greatly reduced when I am in competition. I do not enjoy feeling ‘rushed’ to solve a problem. I take no satisfaction from ‘beating’ someone. When I am trying to learn, competition creates stress. When in competition, I am less creative - I am so concerned with achieving some fixed goal that there is no room for novelty or any deviation from expectation. This is all to suggest that, in the context of learning, competition may not be the best tool for all learners. Perhaps some students do learn best in competition - this is a question I plan to explore. 

Although I am interested in the philosophical and psychological components of this inquiry, I am primarily motivated by practical application. I want to know what strategies exist to reduce the feeling of competition in classrooms. I also hope to explore how, if at all, we might use competition responsibly in the classrooms.

Oct 10th - Exit Slip

 Today’s debate was lively! I was a bit disappointed to be a judge initially, but during the debate I very much enjoyed myself. I went in feeling as though I was biased against the ‘pro-grades’ group – I think this encouraged me to listen more closely to what they had to say. A few stand-out ideas that kept me thinking after the fact:

Grades ability to shape community & classroom culture

I felt this was one of the most interesting ideas – both sides were explaining why their respective position was most beneficial for classroom community and culture building. Do grades make it easier for students to find other students ‘on their level’? Is it better to group students such that there is a range of skill, or is it best to group students with similar understanding? Should we be using grades and/or feedback to group students at all? There were good arguments on both sides.

Moving forward, I personally might use my understanding of student proficiency to AVOID some situations – for example, pairing very weak and strong students - but generally I don’t think I would want to lean on grades too heavily for community building.

My favorite argument from those not in favor of grades came from Saiya:

If we were being graded right now, in this debate, would you be acting in the same way? Would you want to be acting in a different way?

This reflective idea helped me realize how damaging grades can be for personal creativity. In this debate, the absence of explicit assessment was liberating. I was comfortable taking risks and was focused on MY learning, rather than demonstrating that I understood some specific learning goal.

After hearing this, I thought we had a clear winner. However, Mark’s closing statement offered a perspective that has kept me thinking:

Grades are not the issue – it is our relationship to them.

Mark supported this idea with an example – a student who discusses his assessments with both teacher and parents. The teacher is very pleased with the student – they are putting in effort and improving. They are proficient and striving towards extending. In contrast, the student’s parents see ‘proficient’ as ‘not extending’ – they feel he ‘could be doing better’, and so leverage this assessment in a menacing way.

This example was eye opening. It brings my attention to the fact that our relationship with grades is the most important element. Instead of asking ‘Should we use grades?’, we should be asking ‘What is a useful way to think about grades?’. Only if we cannot find a satisfactory answer to this question should we disband grades altogether.

Oct 10th - Entrance Slip

I agree whole-heartedly with the findings suggested by this study. Using grades (and more specifically testing) to motivate students is a largely detrimental practice that must be stopped as soon as possible.  

My first ‘stop’ in this article relates about the role of competition and grades. Specifically, this article notes that grades offer a concrete way for students to understand themselves relative to others. Although this may (temporarily) motivate those who thrive on competition, I suspect there are many students who are disadvantaged by this atmosphere. I personally feel a strong urge to step out of competition, especially in the context of testing. When taking a test, I do not like competing against my peers – regardless of whether I ‘win’ or ‘lose’, there is no glory, no motivation. I prefer to enjoy the problem solving and to see a test as an opportunity to discover what I know.

I think of my time as an engineering student. Although I am critical of this program in hind-sight, I loved the complete lack of competition in (at least my) social circles. Everyone shared resources because we all wanted each other to succeed. To us, tests and grades were evils to be fought together. In this way, tests and grades were a common enemy that united as and enhanced our learning.

The other ‘stop’ I had in this article was the emphasize on student autonomy. It is unsurprising to me that autonomy lead to greater intrinsic motivation. It also highlights the most sinister consequence of a rigid, content-based grade system: that we are depriving students of opportunities to engage in their own, authentic intellectual pursuits. I might argue that the opportunity cost of forcing students to learn specific curriculum (that they did not define) is even more detrimental than the stress this type of assessment is causing. 

I am strongly in favor of increase student autonomy. I am interested in how we might leverage the new BC curriculum to better assess a classroom of students who may, in theory, all pursue different topics. Of course I don't think this is appropriate for all classes - there are some skills that we as teachers can agree are valuable for most students. That being said, opportunities for autonomy are necessary if we want our students to 

 

Oct 3rd - Exit Slip

 I was faced with a strong awareness of Truth and Reconciliation in my sit-spot today. On Monday, I visited the Musqueam garden on campus. It is a practice that on Truth and Reconciliation day, the visitors to the garden symbolically place bamboo chutes with orange ribbon throughout the garden. Each chute represents children lost to the horrors of the Canadian Residential School system. Everyone who places a chute is grounding a child – the chute will stay there for one year. After this time, the chutes are burned. I cannot speak generally to the care expected of each person who places a chute, however I know that it is encouraged to visit the chute you place – in this way, you are bringing awareness to these children, caring for them, caring for future generations. After speaking with a caretaker of the garden, I received permission to bring a chute to the Orchard Garden. I was uncertain to how this would be received generally, and so have placed it near my sit spot. It is not hidden, however I do see that I placed it so as keep these children in my mind.

And so, when I went to my sit-spot today, an orange ribbon greeted me, frozen in the chilly air. It reminded me of the children frozen, those who never had opportunities to grow and live enriching lives. I feel a responsibility to disrupt the system that propagated these horrors. The realities of this system are still so entrenched in our ways of living. I wrote this (Fibonacci) poem:

Truth

Reconciliation

Dead Children

Canada, the Corporation

Safe Haven, Surrounded by Machines

Empires that Stupefy, Silence, and Sterilize our Authenticity

 Frankly I don’t think I’m very poetic. Lyrically I’m not very clever… I don’t generally communicate through metaphor. This doesn’t bother me – music is my creative outlet and I’ve learned to share much more authentically with this medium. Perhaps I will play music in the garden someday.

I did enjoy our conversation today in the garden. I liked the exercise of expressing the contrived binaries Western culture places on us. Personally, I find it useful to think of these binaries as ‘drawing lines’ – for instance, in western culture, it seems natural to draw a very bold line between the masculine and feminine. While I don’t agree with many of the lines drawn by western culture, I do feel that drawing lines is a necessary practice for us to make sense of the world. With this in mind, I recall Teij’s question: What do we mean by alternate ways of knowing? Personally, I think alternate ways of knowing correlate with how you draw your lines. Instead of a line between Masculine / Feminine, why not draw lines that delineate the dominant energies we channel? Our society has Warriors, Magicians, Healers, Leaders, Teachers… to name only a few. I do not know how to draw lines, but I do feel strongly that the binaries we acknowledged on the chalkboard were all reflective of one way of knowing. Different ways of knowing will draw different lines. At a minimum, it is our responsibility as teachers to show students that there are lines and that they do NOT need to be there. At best, I hope one day we can offer students advice when drawing their own lines. 

Oct 2nd - Entrance Slip

 This excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass reminds me of the importance of names. I remember this teaching the first time I read this book - it is powerful to reflect on how this teaching has permeated my life since then. As more and more unique people come into my life, I find myself needing to make a deliberate effort to remember names. While volunteering in high school classrooms, I realized that my mentor teacher spends the first 2 weeks actively memorizing everyone’s name. There is an enormous advantage to those who remember names – particularly when you meet someone for the first time, remembering a name indicates that you are listening. You are able to speak with them more intimately… In my experience, if you forget someone’s name, it becomes nearly impossible to build a meaningful connection. I’ve been taught that when someone shares their name, it is a sacred act that should not be taken lightly.

I recently saw Robin Kimmerer speak, during which time she told us that in the language of her ancestors, Potawatomi, the names of plants were names that the plants had given themselves. With this in mind, it is easy to understand the effort she has made to learn and preserve this language.

When one understands that all plants, creatures, and aspects of the natural world are alive and our kin, it is absurd and cruel to name them as we please. This is a deeply western practice – an ideology that views the natural world as something to be used and exploited. Slave masters name their slaves.

In exactly the same way a student tells you their name, everything in the natural world can also speak their name. We should be again learning how to listen to the natural world, to hear the names the plants have for themselves. 

One final (slightly unrelated) thought... in the context of math (and western sciences generally), it seem ridiculous that we name important theorems after the individuals that discovered them. Specifically in math, I would prefer that the names of theorems be self-descriptive. For example, 'Pythagoras Theorem' should be 'Right-Angle Theorem'. Or the 'Triangle-Square Theorem'.  The Boltzmann Constant might be named the 'Gas Energy Capacity (GEC) constant'... I'm not the best with names, but having the names of people permeate our science serves little purpose other than to make our subject less accessible for someone learning. Naming our theorems in self-descriptive ways is to help bring the magic of western science to the world. 

Food for thought: I feel as though there is an argument here to suggest that math is invented, not discovered.