How do you teach math? I, We, You vs. You, Y'all, We

Math is a touchy subject for me. I excelled in math in school -- until I didn't. Our district let students skip ahead a grade in math if we did well, even to the point of busing us to the middle school and the high school when we were in 6th and 8th grades. So when I started floundering as a freshman in what my school called Honors Algebra 3-4, I fell off the honors math track and had trouble landing anywhere. I'll spare you the dull details of my circuitous journey through my school's tracked math courses and just sum up by saying I (and my parents) could not understand why math was a snap for me for nine years, and then I suddenly started failing.

I began piecing together what might have happened nearly 15 years later when I was taking my math pedagogy course. In my late twenties I was finally learning the concepts behind all those algorithms that only got more confusing with each year. The class was amazing and it left me with a lot of big ideas about how I wanted to do things in my classroom once I finally had one. Teaching concepts, then letting the algorithms reveal themselves as students honed their own problem solving strategies.

But when I did finally get a job, the students had already been in school for three days. I had to hit the ground running, so I started from square one with the district curriculum, branching out and adding on little by little as I got more comfortable. When I moved to first grade last year, I did the same. I was essentially winging it in my ELA curriculum by stepping away from our lackluster language arts curriculum and teaching CAFE and Daily 5. So I leaned on the math curriculum once again, which was quite a bit different in the primary grades.

Math became my least favorite time of day. Each lesson was set up with a math meeting/calendar time (which I was able to do my own way), fact practice that ate up a ton of time, a very teacher-centered scripted lesson, and "guided practice" that was a big worksheet we all did together. The students struggled to stay with me through the whole thing as I struggled to differentiate my instruction and cram everything in to the hour or so we had for math each day. That hour fell between lunch and specials (art, music, library, PE) that took us right up to dismissal, so nobody was exactly bursting with energy at that point either.

I am resolving to start anew this year, to teach concepts and to structure my math block like my literacy block: with time for independent and cooperative learning, and for differentiated instruction with strategy groups. I am mining EngageNY and other resources for lesson plans and trying to learn as much as I can about Daily 3 math. If you have experience with either, I'd love to hear about it. I also read this yesterday:

Why Do Americans Stink at Math? By Elizabeth Green for the New York Times.

The headline is a little bit of clickbait, to be sure, but the story is fascinating. A teacher in Japan revamps his instructions based on the recommendations of a consortium of educators in America. It's referred to here as "You, Y'all, We," meaning students are given a problem to grapple with, to give them an opportunity to apply what they already know (You). Then they share their thinking with groups or partners and compare notes (Y'all). Finally the class discusses the solutions as a whole group (We). 

This is contrary to the popular (old-fashioned) method like the one my curriculum uses, referred to as "I, We, You." The teacher demonstrates how to solve a problem (I). The class tries the teacher's methods with support from the teacher or other students (We). The students work independently -- this is a large chunk of the instructional time that mainly boils down to practicing a series of similar problems (You). 

The teacher trying the You, Y'all, We method goes on to get amazing results and trains other teachers who experience similar results. Then he comes to teach in America, only to find that we (American teachers) are using none of these same methods. Why? The sources in the story posit a few ideas: uneven training, turnover, unclear expectations for teachers. The recommendations are from NCTM, or the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which has been busy since the 1980s coming up with these ideas.

Obviously, Common Core State Standards have a much broader reach. Unless you are in one of the two states that haven't adopted them, they are a big part of your professional life right now. I think Common Core, especially the Standards for Mathematical Practice, ought to reinforce this type of teaching. But, as the article point out, it's suffering from some serious implementation issues. Teachers all over the U.S. are being asked to develop their own curriculum with very little guidance. OK. I think we are capable. But if our new curriculum is to represent a serious shift in how we teach, we need to clearly understand what it should look and sound like. Anyone, whether it's a large producer of educational materials or a teacher with a TpT store, can say that their materials are aligned to the Common Core. Slapping that label on it doesn't make it so. Just because a lesson, product, or "activity" touches on some of the ideas in the standards doesn't mean it represents meaningful instruction or creates real opportunities for learning.

How do we shed the skin of teacher-centered, dull lessons and meaningless busy work? What type of support do teachers need to put these practices into action? What has worked for you in your classroom?