Submitted by: Pat Higgisotn

The substance of our last meeting of the year was a check-in where each member of the department shared one hope for next year and one challenge they anticipated. We discussed these together, and planned to attend or watch one online PD relevant to our concerns on our own time and be ready to report back on it. Some opportunities shared with the group are copied below.

We also celebrated Debra Rawlins, the departing Lower School Math Coordinator.

 1) NCTM 100 Days of Professional Learning: This is so much good stuff! A whole chunk of the cancelled NCTM annual conference put online, easily accessible if you missed the time for the webinar. These are generally NOT specified to online teaching/learning, but now is a good time to think outside the box. They continue through August. I’d point out a few that I’m excited about but like there are a lot!

2) Problem-Based Learning K-12 Virtual Summit: Passed on to me by former LREI math teacher Chris Vicevich, this is tomorrow and is quite long but you can attend just one or two parts and access recordings later. Also free! I’ve signed up already. If we’re online-only next year(?), it might be a good time to explore the kind of work students can do independently and then report back on.

3) Virtual STEM Forum on Remote Learning: More geared to the moment, these are free recordings posted during Teacher Appreciation Week.

4) YouCubed’s 21st Century Teaching and Learning: Pass on by our very own Michelle Boehm, a six lesson course on data science and its application/integration to math ed. Relevant to our mutual interests! 

5) Desmos Webinars: A variety of trainings on using Desmos, some of which are geared to remote learning (but all of which are relevant to it, since Desmos is a digital tool so many students are already familiar with).

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

We started with a discussion about motivation based around a blog post, and folks shared their classroom practices relating to problem solving and sharing and learning from errors. Debra caught us up on information about the lower school program.

We discussed our audit of data literacy across the curriculum, and planned how to do that, building on the work we’ve done already. Then we discussed short and long term goals for a  school visit. From prior conversations, we had planned to look at data literacy and differentiation, but our interest seems to expand more broadly to general progressive practice in math, and how schools navigate the tension between values, practices, and institutional priorities. There seem to be some opportunities for trips to institutions like Francis Parker and the Laboratory School, but since we’re so far into the year, we’ve considered closer visits to placed like Calhoun, Avenues, or a project-based school. Inspired by the English department’s writing professional day, we wondered about the possibilities of working on math for a professional development day, perhaps at New York Math Circles.

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

At this meeting, our newest member Ramsey introduced himself and asked great questions about the program. Welcome to LREI, Ramsey!

Before the meeting, I shared this survey to understand the kinds of questions the members of the math department were considering in the midst of their work this fall, and what work seemed most productive to continue going into next year. Once everyone contributed, I shared the results to form the basis of the conversation.

At the meeting, we split into cross-divisional groups to explore different aspects of our practice: 1) pedagogical practice, 2) the math program, and 3) the paradigm of school mathematics in general, and our relationship to it at LREI. Each group was charged with discussing any themes that came up in the survey results.

Many themes were familiar (in practice, differentiation assessment; in program, the question of tracking and how we align/compete with other schools, especially in the middle school years when transfers and applications are frequent; in paradigm, the versions of progressivism and our broad goals for our students across 14 years and beyond). An urgency emerged in the conversation about finding where data literacy was found in our curriculum.

As for the activity focus of the year, the department was most interested in two approaches: 1) exploring conceptual through lines across the program, and 2) planning and reflecting around a big school visit for the whole department, like the visit to the Park School a few years ago. (There was also moderate interest in reviewing/streamlining/reforming the curriculum).

Taken together, the department decided that it would be worthwhile to focus on the two aspects of our practice. 1) Data literacy in our curriculum: we would consider the conceptual through-lines in each division for data literacy (probability and statistics), how we align with peer institutions that our students come from (or go to) in the middle years, and ultimately how we align with curricular standards like the Common Core. We would also explore 2) planning and reflecting around a school visit to a K-12 progressive school. Our intention is to study how they integrate a) data literacy across the curriculum, and b) how they differentiate in classes and how their structure affects how they think about differentiation (class selection and tracking). It was suggested that a list of past NIPEN schools might provide a good list of possible locations.

I will follow up with the department to plan next steps.

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

We checked in to start the school year, sharing one math-related thing we did or encountered during the summer. This ranged from professional conferences, to new insights into our school-wide math curriculum, to unique encounters with math in our day-to-day lives — and opened a conversation about a controversy about mathematical notation that took hold of Twitter over the summer, and touched on the way we talk about school math with our students and the ways that context influences our work.

We then briefly reviewed the previous years’ work, led by my predecessor, Michelle Boehm, and discussed what the coming year could look like and how we could best use our time. I committed to sending around a survey to gauge the kinds of questions the members of the department were asking themselves about their math practice now.

We also discussed the possibility of doing a kind of survey of our students’ shared work in classes, based loosely on the NY Times’ photos and essay about blackboards at university campuses.