RTG Episode 8 Transcription: 

00;00;01;26 - 00;01;45;00

Joanie

Today's episode is a continuation of our student conversations. Curtis and I spoke with several middle and high school students about their experiences learning math, and in this episode, we unpack ideas around questioning and homework with the thread throughout on classroom culture. There's some really good stuff here, so let's get growing. Well, Joanie, I am really excited to come back, together with you again and record another episode of the Room to Grow podcast. We are continuing our conversation, about our student conversations that we recorded, earlier this summer with several students, that we were able to sit down and chat with them about their experiences learning math and, really their experiences in school all together, just, thinking about, the ways that they learn and how they think about learning. And we had a series of questions, sort of a laundry list of questions that we asked them. And, we already released one episode, of that. As a matter of fact, if we are telling the truth, we, had it drop today. And so, the time we're recording this podcast, the, first episode of our student interviews is live. And so I would encourage any of our, listeners who maybe haven't heard that episode to go back and look, listen to that episode. The Student Interviews, part one. Before you jump into this one. That way you'll have a little bit of perspective, but if you don't feel like doing that, hopefully you can, jump right in and we'll have a good conversation today. About our the rest of our, conversations with the students.

00;01;45;00 - 00;03;07;16

Joanie

The rest of our conversation. Yeah. This was such a it was such a fun format, Curtis. And I'm, I'm excited again to go back to this today. And, you know, for us, reliving the conversations that we had with the students over the summer, just for some context, for those that maybe didn't listen to part one yet.  Curtis and I interviewed six different students, two at a time, in three different settings. They range in age from having just finished seventh grade to having just finished senior year in high school and they had some really interesting things to share. And I think one of the things that actually surprised me that came out in episode one, and I think we'll come out here as well, is how different their perspectives are, their needs, what they, you know, appreciated and wanted from their teachers. We saw some themes, for sure, but it wasn't like every, all six of them were just telling us the same thing over and over again. So, I think it would make sense to, replay the student introductions. At the beginning of each conversation, we asked the kids to introduce themselves. We asked them to say what grade they were in, and we were talking about this school year. So what grade they were going into and what school they went to. And, and then we asked some of them to share, like, what's your favorite thing about math class? We asked some of them to share. What's an interest that you have outside of math class? So let's just, take another listen to their introductions.

00;03;07;16 - 00;03;16;15

Hannah

I'm Hannah. I'm an eighth grader. Arbor Creek and probably my fifth grade math teacher. The last time I really enjoyed learning math.

00;03;16;23 - 00;03;28;13

Andrew

My name is Andrew. I'm an eighth grade and I don't have any favorites. But one thing I like about math is that you always have to do something to get an answer.

00;03;28;27 - 00;03;39;00

Riya

My name is Riya. I'm in ninth grade and I go to Clark. And I actually also have a podcast called Ria's Ramblings, which can be listened to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other platform.

00;03;39;12 - 00;03;48;26

Witt

Hi, my name is Witt. I go to Peirce High School. And I'm in 10th grade. One of my favorite hobbies is golf. I love golfing every single day.

00;03;49;03 - 00;03;57;11

Riley

My name is Riley. I'm going to be a junior at Chaparral High School. And my favorite thing about math is that there's always a definite answer.

00;03;57;18 - 00;04;33;23

Naomi

Well, my name is Naomi. I am a freshman at Texas A&M University, and I think one of the most amusing stories I have with math is, whenever I'm stuck on a piece of homework, I'll go over to my mom and just start talking and then suddenly realize the answer. So, I was taking a test and I couldn't figure out an answer. And I was like, okay, imagine there's like a mini mom on your shoulder. Have a talk with her in your head and I. And then I had my. And so we just talk that she's, you know, with me in the class helping me out with answers.

00;04;34;04 - 00;04;53;15

Curtis

I love that, and I really appreciate the, interviews that, that we were able to do and get these students to introduce themselves, get to know them a little bit better. So I'm really looking forward to this. Do you want to just set us up for the first, set here of questions related to our questions about class?

00;04;53;15 - 00;05;36;01

Joanie

Yeah. So we, we asked them to, I mean, like you said at the beginning, or we had this list of questions that we shared with the kids ahead of time. We sort of loosely, you know, tried to hit on the themes of each of those questions, but we really let the conversations develop, naturally as we were having them. So, there was a couple of kids talked about what it's like to be asking questions of the teacher in class, or even the teacher asking students, you know, if they have questions. So this whole idea about being able to get clarification from the teacher during class, so, let's maybe pull up one of these clips from Riley to hear what she had to say about that.

00;05;36;16 - 00;05;40;15

Riley

You know, it's hard to learn without being able to ask questions about what you're trying to learn.

00;05;40;15 - 00;05;46;06

Joanie 

So she would just, like, not accept your questions because she didn't want to be challenged.

00;05;46;06 - 00;05;56;20

Riley

she would get mad if you asked a question like, if you're like, I didn't, I'm not sure how to do this. And she's like, why don't you know this? You should know this. And then we're like, well, I obviously don't because I'm asking you,

00;05;57;16 - 00;08;39;28

Curtis

Wow. lSo one one thing that I had just gut reaction as I hear that clip back, and it is interesting listening to these, you know, a month or so, month and a half after, they feel pretty fresh to me. And so it's, Wow, hearing Riley's perception that her teacher was not approachable, to ask a question. Or maybe worse, that there was, sort of a. Hey. Well, how how come you don't know that kind of, reaction to the question? There's a little bit of judgment there. I think one thing that happens and, and you know, I, I feel I find myself guilty. Let me let me start with a true confession here. In my reaction to this, because, I mean, I am I have I hope we've established that this is a safe space to make mistakes and keep learning. And one of the places where I find myself trying to grow as I work with my son, Teagan, and we had intentions to interview him, but, we just ran out of time and and space to do it. But, one of the things that I find myself doing, it feels like I can, I can hear myself maybe sounding like Riley's perception of this teacher. That that there are times when I look at him and I go, dude, you know this. I know you know this, right? And so doing my best to both hold him to a high expectation because I feel like if I just kind of gave in to the I don't get it response or the what do I do now? There's, there's, a level of need to try to hold him up to. Hey, you really can do this. And then when he says, well, I don't I don't know that there's a challenge. And so I am still learning the appropriate response points, language wise to try to balance holding him up and holding him to a high level of standard, which is what I think Riley's teacher probably was trying to do and balancing that with, okay, I understand where you're at right now, today, in this moment at, you know, 12:00 PM on whatever day this is like sometimes recalling things on the spur of a moment, it just isn't there. And so trying to balance those two, is a struggle for me. I just admit that I don't have an answer. I just have I'm just telling you, I'm trying to grow.

00;08;40;07 - 00;11;22;13

Joanie

Well, honestly, I. I appreciate you sharing that. And I appreciate that, you know, specifically specific specificity of that example because I think that really resonates. And I think what you're getting at is, again, the nuance of the complexity of teaching. We can agree that Riley's teacher was not trying to come across as like I'm mad because you have a question like that was her perception, but I doubt that's what the teacher was actually feeling. I think it was just trying to find that balance about  what you described and to just share my own story too, my husband is a self-proclaimed math phobic and I’ve heard so many stories of his math experiences growing up and one of the things he’ll tell over and over again was ya know I would have to work up the nerve to ask the teacher a question and every time the…ya know, I don’t know how to do this example and the teacher would say “oh, that’s an easy one.” And I know the teachers intent of that was like “we can do this Jeff” like rah rah around him. But he said the reaction was “Oh my gosh I’m so stupid I can’t even figure out the easy one. Right? So it’s that…it’s sort of like you can’t get it right as a teacher so maybe we need to like take the permission off. Don’t try to be perfect, you’re not going to be. You’re going to say things that kids interpret in a way you don’t intend for them to and it’s not about saying the right thing every time in the moment but it’s about intentionality and purposefully watching the students response and building the relationship between the student as…if the student knows you believe in them they’re less likely to interpret that as, “I’m mad that you don’t know, I think you’re dumb because you don’t know…oh this a real easy one.” If that really strong belief comes through from the teacher all the time then there’s more flexibility for the student interpretation of those things we might say that we don't mean them. So for me, this comment isn't about, oh, can you believe Riley's teacher gets mad when kids ask questions like, that's definitely not, why? We wanted to include this quote in the in the episode, but really thinking about, gosh, what are ways students might misinterpret things that we say or do? And how can we be sure that our overarching everyday message is, I believe in you, and I want you to ask me your questions, and I want this to be a safe place.

00;11;22;13 - 00;11;32;18

Curtis

That's a really nice reminder. And I think it goes into really the next clip that we're going to hear. Also, from Riley. So I'm going to let this one play.

00;11;32;18 - 00;12;57;05

Riley

I started with a lot of, like, FRQ’s towards the end of the second semester, and they were team effort cuz, and we would just sit there and look at them. But some of, you know, we haven't like had a refresh from, from like the first couple weeks of school or some of that we just learned the day before. And so we were able to talk it out a little bit. But we're put in these randomize groups and there's sometimes there's kids who, are stronger at math than there's kids who aren't. And we had I think like ten kids leave our class after the first semester just because of, you know, their grades weren't reflecting a positive way for them to learn and they dropped down to the next class. But, I felt like people weren't discussing as much as they should, and those were still time to. We had, you know, just as much as time as you would have for a FRQ you'd have 15 minutes. But she just show us the rubric and be like, do you have any questions? But no one's going to say anything because we're like, oh, I kind of see it. But, I think being able to look at a lesson and not only apply it, but just like look around at your peers and be like, how did you figure this out? And a lot of the things, like tips and tricks I had going into the AP exam were ones not taught by my teacher, but by like, my classmates, and then me like, well, this is how it makes sense for me and this is how I learned it and that helps me a lot more kind of creating that our like outer connection.

00;12;57;22 - 00;13;10;14

Curtis

So I want to play the next clip really quick also. And then react to this because I think, I think there's some things we can, we can talk about here.

00;13;11;03 - 00;13;48;19

Riley

When we were reviewing for the AP exam there was a group of us that met up at a little coffee shop, and we just sat there for like three hours during testing week because we didn't have school to do, like and half of the day. And we sat there and we just talked through and we had one of my friends, her mom, teaches calc three at our school. And so she came in for like the last 20 minutes and answered our questions and things like that. So I'm probably going to focus more on, before those big tests, like having a little study session and trying to hear other people's ideas on how to learn things and kind of connect those dots instead of just waiting and hoping I kind of figure it out.

00;13;49;11 - 00;15;24;13

Curtis

So I love, I love that she brought up two things there. One, it's really hard to be a single student having to, in the middle of class, be the one to, like, raise my hand and be bold to ask the questions. So I think there's a culture thing there. And then two, And I love it that she took the act, sort of took the initiative to go and create these work study things. I wonder if there's a way that we as teachers, along in that classroom culture thing can kind of, kind of prompt that, encourage that. Are there ways that we can say, hey, and be humble enough to say, hey, listen, I'm going to do the best I can, but at the end of the day, you guys have resources all around you. There are other people in this classroom who are learning this stuff, and they're going to be able to say things and explain things in ways that I haven't. These are resources for you too and try to encourage that cross collaboration, that study group formation. And I realize we're probably talking to older students when we say these kinds of things. I don't know how many first graders are out creating study groups, but, Hey, mom, can you drive me to the library? I mean, that'd be awesome. But the reality is, we're probably talking to older students. Those are two culture things that I think are worthy of mentioning as we hear this comment.

00;15;24;18 - 00;18;26;17

Joanie

Yeah, I agree, and I love I love how Riley worked this out for herself. That, like, this thing that we did was really effective because it was, you know, time with my friends to make sense of it together. And then the way she described the friend's mom coming in at the end, like they could be really strategic about the questions they asked because they had like, worked through trying to figure it out themselves already. And that's different than what she was describing earlier in the clip where she was saying, then the teacher comes back and says, what questions do you have? And nobody really has anything like you. The kids almost haven't had chance to process the information enough to know what their questions are. And combined with the fact that, oh, I'm going to be the only kid to raise my hand here and act like you know, and be the one that says, I don't really know what I'm doing. But that resonates with me, too. Like, I, I remember seeing that on kids spaces where I would be like, oh, I can tell by the look on your face that you're struggling to understand this. And when I would, you know, maybe kneel down to the desk next to them and ask one on one, how can I help you? Like they didn't, they couldn't even formulate their question yet. So that idea of giving kids the time to try and make sense and help them come up with better questions, I, I want to come back to to the culture piece, because I think you really hit the nail on the head, and it reminds me of an article I read. I'm going to see if I can dig it out, and I will link it in the show notes. If I can. But it was Danielle Willingham I want to say was the researcher, and it was something about, an under the black box of assessment or something like this. But there was a study about, underrepresented populations, students of color in college, and they believed that they were in they had to be independent in their study habits and their success in college and it was causing, like, these big drop out rates among black and Brown students in particular. And what the researchers dug into was finding that the Asian students who were the most successful academically were actually forming study groups outside of class and working together to learn the material. And just by making that explicit to the students from these underrepresented populations, like you're not supposed to be able to figure this all out on your own, like working together with other students to make sense of what you're learning and get better at. It is an expectation like, that's a great learning strategy. It's not a sign of weakness. And so I just felt like that ties really closely to what we were trying to capture here around creating that culture within your class. Like assure your students that they're you're not expecting them to hear you say the magic words and then instantly understand these concepts, like learning math concepts takes time, and you have to process, and you have to talk with different people in different ways. And, so I just think there's not only a lot of power in that culturally, there's, there's research to back up that that supports learning.

00;18;27;04 - 00;18;31;17

Curtis

For sure. I think that's, I think that's really good. Really good.

00;18;32;02 - 00;20;21;29

Naomi

I'm neither one way or the other because it's a very important mix. I don't need to feel like the teacher is my friend. And in order to do the class, I don't need a personal connection with them per se. For classes that I didn't enjoy in the past, having a good teacher would like make more motivation and good, as in having a very relaxed relationship in between. I think that having a teacher who, who knows what they're doing, because that was a hard bit this year. In calculus was him. If you asked a question beyond the scope of what were just beyond the lecture that he was giving, he wouldn't know the answer and he would complain about us asking questions. Which, you know, it was interesting. It was an experience you had. I got to do a lot of other types of learning, but I think that, if you want to build investment in the students, it's important to have, a relationship with them. And I think if you want your students to succeed, with the content, it's it's important to both have that relationship and that kind of trust that I can go to you. We can talk and also know what you're doing, and it's okay to not know. I've had plenty of teachers who wouldn't know the answer to a question and would be like, let me go collaborate with so-and-so. And they would just be open about it. And to have that trust, I think, is really important, both like from the student to the teacher and then the teachers trusting the students as well, having that two-way street, you know.

00;20;22;17 - 00;20;23;25

Joanie

That was great.

00;20;23;25 - 00;21;10;12

Curtis

That was great. My response to that. I mean, I mean, it goes back. We've had this conversation a couple of times, I think, around you know, classroom culture, rapport, the importance of trust. And I think Naomi hit that on the head when she mentions that two-way trust, that two-way street of, you know, teacher trusting student to, be willing to ask and student trusting teacher to be, willing to respond and, each, each seeking the other's benefit. And, and I think is, is an important establishment of safe space.

00;21;10;12 - 00;21;21;12

End of segment Music break

00;21;21;12 - 00;22;21;15

Joanie

All right Curt. So that was those were some great comments. I want to shift us a little bit because we did ask the students some specific questions about homework we really wanted to get at. Like, what's the best way a teacher can assign homework? What are some of the things that work and don't work for you around homework? And I would just say, you know, reflecting back on the three different conversations and the six different students, there is a lot of variation in their own perception and their own value, maybe around homework like, well, we'll hear these in their clips. But some of them were like, I needed to do the homework all the time. And others were like, 1 or 2 problems and I had it and then it just felt like busywork. So, let's get into this next section where we unpack a little bit about their perceptions on homework. And this first set of clips, was really around the idea of homework as feedback and the students really craving that. Am I doing it right as they're going through their practice. So let's listen.

00;22;21;15 - 00;24;47;21

Rylie

So, over the past year, my homework experience has been a little bit different than, it has in the past. Normally, you do it like a homework assignment, and your teacher checks it off the next day, and then, we've even, like, take them together and then do a homework quiz. And over the past year, we would just collect all of our homework assignments and you staple them to a homework quiz, and then you take the quiz using your homework. But half my class wouldn't do the homework, and they would just come in and take the homework quizzes. And some of them are just geniuses and we get 100% on them. But the one thing I noticed is that we didn't always like it wasn't the same problems. It would be like refer to, lesson nine, problem A and so it gave you the like a problem similar and that you can kind of like work off of. But you didn't have that like assurance along the way on what you were kind of getting right and what you were good at. And some of our, like, answer keys would be just the answer. And some of them would have like, their step by step process. And the step by step process definitely helped. But I would get, assignments with like, let's say it was 15 questions, but they're all like A through E. And so it was like 50 questions by the end of the night. That didn't really help me understand, because I would rather have, you know, ten long problems that have, you know, the similar process than a whole bunch of different points kind of scattered everywhere. And so one thing that definitely helped me like getting that, like instant feedback and kind of what I was getting right in was, wasn't was actually using Delta math. Because it really does explain things and it shows you those other problems and things like that, and definitely gets frustrating because you're trying to finish it and you have eight problems and you keep going back. But, it definitely helped me because I wasn't able to see really where I was lacking until I was getting a quiz. And so for a lot of the homework assignments, it was really great in on completion. And so that didn't really and actually it wasn't graded. If you didn't have it was just checked off, you didn't have it. And you could use that as a resource. But if you're not doing it right on the homework, it's not really going to help you. And like the homework quiz or on the test and things like that.

00;24;47;21 - 00;24;57;18

Naomi

Regardless of what the homework was, so long as you had sources to go to to help you at least get started, because that was always the hardest bit for me, was, can I get the momentum? Because once you have momentum, you can find outlets and avenues to go down. So if you wanted to try to, I don't know, improve homework, I would just do something that helps a kid build momentum.

00;25;12;06 - 00;25;49;28

Andrew

So last year, homework went like this. You would learn the subject in one class, 45 minutes of very fast talk that I normally did not understand. And then next thing you know, you would have a practice test and a quiz for your homework. On the practice test, you could click a button that says help me in over show you how to do it on the quiz. You can't do that and it doesn't tell you if the answer was right or wrong. It tells you like great job of the answer was. And then if you get an answer wrong on that practice, it is like “here's a tip” which I like. I like that.

00;26;07;21 - 00;27;18;01

Joanie

So I, I really like the commonality, but differences between what these three kids talked about. Like, you know, Riley was explaining, which was explaining her homework quiz format. I was like, oh, that's what I did when I was last in the classroom was, you know, not trying to check homework every single day, but give a quiz that was similar to a homework problem, thinking if they had done the homework, that gives them the advantage. I also really loved Naomi's comment about helping kids get momentum. Like, Naomi was just such an incredibly self-reflective kid and under understanding her, you know, what she needs and to, like, get, get going. And I just thought that was such a great way to say, you know, if the structure of the homework allows me to feel success early on, then I feel that like I have the energy to keep me going. And then Andrew reinforce both of those things like I really liked when there's a help me button so I can get an explanation when I don't understand. And, you know, again, Andrew's my nephew and I worked with him really closely and he didn't push the help me button every single time. It was just his ability to be strategic about getting help when he needed it and I that I think he really valued.

00;27;18;20 - 00;27;43;00

Curtis

Yeah. For sure. I. I thought those were really helpful perspectives from a student. As we look at what's the best way homework can be helpful to them Yes. As an AP teacher, I certainly, related to, Riley's comments. So, certainly made sense to me.

00;27;43;00 - 00;27;43;00

Joanie

And really from the teacher perspective, homework is a really big conundrum, I think.

00;27;48;12 - 00;27;50;20

Curtis

It's hard. It's so hard.

00;27;50;20 - 00;27;57;25

Unknown

I can even remember one of my students. This was a long time ago. This will date me, for sure. Did you ever see the movie Office Space?

00;27;58;17 - 00;27;59;09

Unknown

I did.

00;27;59;09 - 00;28;03;13

Unknown

So do you remember the Jennifer Aniston character she works in like a Bennigan’s, I don’t even think this this restaurant is around anymore. Anyway, all the employees had to wear the flare. They had to have little buttons or stickers or something on their uniform and there was this comment about 15 pieces of flare is the minimum and there were some people that would go way over that, right, so, I had a kid tell me once; “Miss Funderberg, if you’re not grading our homework, we’re not gonna do it.” It’s like the minimum pieces of flare. 

00;28;38;07 - 00;28;39;04

Curtis

I mean. 

00;28;39;04 - 00;28;39;04

Joannie

Like why should I do my homework if you’re not gonna grade it? So I was constantly in this struggle of like, I want homework to be practiced, I want them to be able to say…I want them to recognize; Hey I don’t need to do 20 problems tonight in this lesson, I really understand…I only need to do 3.  Or like “I’m realy struggling with the. Even thought Funderberg only assigned 5, I’m going to do 15.”

00;29;03;00 - 00;29;56;16

Curtis & Joaine

There's a level of maturity, though, that, My my 13 year old did. I mean, the Yes. I want him to have that realization, too, but I'm looking at him going. Bro, If I don't assign you 15 problems, you're not doing any of them. So where’s that? So maybe this is our lead-in to go to the next sections of clips from the kids here. And how do you…it almost goes back to my comment earlier, this is maybe an impossible tak again. I think it is. Yeah. So how do you think about assigning the right amount of homework when what every kid needs is potentially different. Let’s listen to a clip, and I think we actually use this quote from Hannah in episode 1 but I want to replay it again Yeah. I think this is a great quote.

00;29;57;16 - 00;30;40;01

Hannah

It's like 20 questions a day or for like Fridays you turn it in by Sunday, like 15 to 20 questions a day. I feel like at that point it's just repetitive and boring and too much, and it's like I could learn the same thing, with only two homework practices instead of all of them. And like my math teacher, like in seventh grade, he would say stuff along the lines of like, I can tell when you don't like who the that's their homework and who doesn't do their homework based off of test scores. And I'm like, no, you can tell who understands the material and who doesn't understand the material, not whether somebody did their homework or not.

00;30;40;01 - 00;34;30;25

Curtis & Joanie

I, I know we use that in the last one. It was Hannah’s mic drop moment. But it's worth it. It was definitely a mic drop moment. And, I mean, I, Teagan and I were doing math homework, night before last, together, and he had this paper, that we were grouping numbers. And, you know, the number system is an irrational and rational numbers and whole numbers and natural numbers. And, just first of all, as a math nerd, I love the concepts of, like, thinking about irrational numbers and all of that. I, I wrestled with, like, I'm like, for real, natural numbers versus, whole numbers. And the only ones, you know, they were supposed to color a box by the smallest, portion of the Venn diagram that they could, put those numbers in. And so the only, the only ones, the only things that were, going to be colored as the, whole numbers or whatever are, are we're going to be zeros because the natural numbers are a little bit, a little bit smaller group. Right. And so, it just it was one of those like, come on, man. And, and he had this paper and I don't know, there's probably 100, maybe 150 of these things in this gigantic grid. He was just colored is supposed to be for fun. And and this is one of the things that actually, I kind of sorry. This is going to be a soap box for a minute, but, like, we we do these things sometimes, we assign them, to students and we give them as a homework problem. And the intent as teacher I know it because I did it. The intent was it's a fun assignment. It should not take you, you know, hours to do. It's just let me get it, you know, have a little fun coloring pencil, you know, make sure you can classify the numbers and just remember what these are. My son, sees 150 problems on this. And the squares were, you know, half an inch. Half an inch inside, you know, half an inch square. And the number in there and it was so overwhelming a task for him. It was so overwhelming a task for him. I sat next to him, and at first I wasn't saying anything. I was just kind of encouraging him, hey, keep going buddy. And I was kind of trying to stay disengaged a little bit because I didn't want to, like, do it for him. But that, you know, he would get 1 or 2 done and three done in 20 minutes. And I'm like, and this is not like, this is not how this is supposed to be going. It's not being effective for you. And so then I just turned it into a little bit more of a game. And we just started going through each one. And I took two of the colors and he took two of the colors. And okay, so which you know who gets the color. This one who gets to color this one. And as we did it together, I was able to take that from a three hour homework assignment down to like 20 minutes because of 20 or 30 minutes, and even that was too much time doing it, frankly. But at minimum, he was able to kind of get it moving. But I just fear for the kid who one doesn't have access to someone, who can help them doing that. And to the UN-intentionality of his teacher. You know, she didn't mean for that to take him three hours. She had no intent. It was supposed to be for fun. And so I think there's times when we make things required for students. That we really shouldn't. And it's not on purpose. We're not trying to torture these kids with homework. We're just trying to do what's best for them. Give them some practice but at the same time we got to remember that these are students with other, other things outside of our own class.

00;34;30;25 - 00;36;51;22

Joanie

For sure. I, I just so much of what you just said is so spot on and I want to again think about how can we be intentional. Because like you said, his teacher wasn't intending for that to be a three hour homework assignment. And I don't believe any teachers are intending for homework to be the only thing that kids have time to do after between, you know, leaving school and coming back the next day. But I think sometimes we get a little bit lost in our habits and don't think bigger picture. And I'm remembering back to a situation that I had with a student who was on an IEP. So I had lots of contact with the parents and lots of, you know, feedback constantly on what was working and wasn't working for this kid. And one of the things was about homework. And, you know, I just they it was for sure like there were processing issues. So things took this student more time. And I remember working with the, IEP case person and the student and the family and saying, hey, don't spend more than 30 minutes a night on homework for math class. If the homework isn't done in 30 minutes, then that's okay. It doesn't have to be complete. Like my point in giving homework was to spend time each day thinking about the math that we had learned that day in previous days, not to complete these eight problems, right? It was. It was. Think about math for a while. And I just think about the freedom that that gave that kid to say, hey, it's okay that if you don't get every single problem done, if you spent at least 30 minutes on this, you're okay. So just being intentional about what is our purpose for giving homework, and are we communicating that purpose to students and families so that in, as I described with Teagan, the parent can make the right call for the kid and help the kid not feel like they're doing something wrong by not completing the homework. Like, hey, your teacher wants you. Remember, your teacher wants you to spend 30 minutes a day thinking about math. You've done that. So let's put it away now. You know, week one, we want to give families the opportunity to have dinner together and, you know, maybe go toss the baseball in the yard after dinner. Like, this isn't about homework. Should be all that kids can do between, after school and coming back the next day.

00;36;51;22 - 00;37;03;29

Curtis

Right. Right. I think Riya’s comment actually coming up is going to kind of play nicely into what you just said. So, let's let's listen to this one.

00;37;03;29 - 00;37;44;25

Riya

I will say that some of the platforms we use this year got me really frustrated, because some of them weren't as simple. One of them was called HR, W, and I don't know, it was just it would make me so mad because it wasn't easy to put in the answers. And you like when you graph something, it had to be so exact. Route counted wrong. So this past year has been definitely more frustrations and homework because it's been longer or it's been harder. And I've also noticed that sometimes the teachers will teach something in class, and then the homework will be very different because they expect you to make the connection. But it's not always as easy to make that connection in my opinion. And I have to get help from my older brother, my parents, because again, like something we learned in class was just very different.

00;37;44;27 - 00;38;01;20

Curtis

When you're doing the homework online or when you're doing it as a sort of a computer based response, do you find yourself writing out your work any way on paper and then just putting your answer in? Or like, what does that look like for you? Or are you doing it in your head?

00;38;01;20 - 00;38;23;01

Riya

It kind of depends on the problem. If it's something that I've gotten down easy, I'll do it in my head. But I have noticed that using paper pencil just makes it easier. And I can check my work because if I do mental math, I'm trying to go fast and I make those silly mistakes like addition, addition and subtraction. Whereas if I use paper and pencil, it does take me a couple minutes longer. But I've noticed that like I can also just get the problems right quicker.

00;38;23;28 - 00;40;06;21

Curtis

So I think there's something there for me just thinking about, you know, again, this the homework, sort of experience for students when we're looking at, you know, how students experience this, this, idea of homework and thinking about, you know, three comments here. Frustrations with digital input and, you know, really preferring the paper pencil, even though it takes longer to find out if I got it right or wrong. You know, I think there's there's a lot of variability across the students that we heard, heard from from them. And I think this is, you know, it just continues to kind of encourage that, you know. Yes. This is an impossible task. Yes, We need to be listening as much as we can to our students. And and reacting and responding to, hey, and planning for what we think is going to be best, for them. But ultimately, this is I mean, we're going to be making decisions and continuing to try to make decisions, and the pendulum is going to swing one way and the other, you know, based on the trends and the wins and whatever. But at the end of the day, we're human beings and, and, there's so much variability, among how people respond to things and, how people their situations are different and, you know, all of the expectations are different. And so we're just trying to do this and trying to continue to do the best we can. We'll continue to always, require, relationship rapport, connection. It's all the things that we've just, kind of been talking about.

00;40;06;21 - 00;40;32;04

Joanie

for sure. I would agree. And I think again just back to that intentionality and, and back to giving ourselves grace as teachers. Right. Like it's never going to be perfect. You're never going to find you're never going to find the solution. You're never going to find the right answer. You're never going to find the thing that works for every single kid. So, just continuing to try to be responsive to those needs. Like you said, Kurt, just prioritizing the relationships. That's the key.

00;40;32;04 - 00;40;49;23

Curtis

Yeah. I don't I don't want it to sound like there's no possible solution. So don't don't try to do anything. Yeah. Just don't do that. Hopefully that's not the message we're sending. We're trying to also send like, hey, you can do this. And it's okay if it isn't perfect.

00;40;49;23 - 00;41;18;27

Joanie

So, Curtis, as we move into kind of the last clip that we're going to respond to here, this this was a question about homework. We were asking about how the teacher dealt with homework, and which shared this concept of a teacher requiring kids to do presentations of homework problems. And it actually kind of turned into a slightly different conversation.  So let's listen a little bit to, the in the moment conversation we had in Witt's comments about homework. Did you want to add something about homework? Did your teachers go over it? 

00;41;18;27 - 00;42;22;22

Witt / Curtis / Joanie 

I mean, it's my teacher did a lot of these things called presentations where someone would just, like, bring up a problem and present, and most of the time it was people presenting problems that they were fairly confident on. Okay. Because they were like, I don't want to be embarrassed. Yeah, that's what you want to do, right? Like, if I have to do this for a grade, I'm going to make myself look, I don't want to. Yeah, yeah. Like, is there a scenario where you would be willing to take that risk? I would say maybe small groups like our groups splitting the class into five groups or whatever, so that might be more helpful. But I think 30 kids is a lot of like that's, that's standing in front of the whole class. It's like giving a speech, man. Yeah, exactly. Putting your paper on the projector. It's it's a lot of pressure. It's like, I don't know what to do. I mean, there's statistics about, public speaking and. Oh, for sure of public speaking being greater than fear of dying, dying or other things. Literally. Right. So, yeah. What about you? Could you imagine a scenario where you'd like. Oh, yeah, I'd actually, like, be vulnerable in front of my classmates.

00;42;22;22 - 00;42;44;06

Riya

I agree with the small group thing, because there's less students to be scared of. Yeah, right. But also, I think if the whole class is collectively confused  about a topic makes me feel a little bit better. Like I'm not the only one who doesn't understand. And then I think I'll be a little more willing to kind of go up there and be vulnerable like that, because I know that they're all confused just as I am. But I know that if I was someone who was struggling and everyone else got it, I would not go up there because that's just yeah, that's embarrassing.

00;42;44;06 - 00;42;46;06

Joanie

Yeah, I, I can understand that.

00;42;46;08 - 00;47;01;18

Curtis

So I feel like that last comment is so revealing. By re, I mean, and and with alluded to it to that, you know, nobody was going to get up there and do a problem that they didn't understand because of the fear of the grade or the fear of not wanting to look like they didn't know what they were talking about in front of their classroom. I think I mean, that's just reality. I loved the suggestions, that they had around small groups and trying to do this in smaller groups. I think that does help alleviate some of the things. And I apologize for the length of that clip. I know that we kind of played about five minutes worth of, content there of our interview with, the students, but I think it was worth it to get, some context about the, the just the discussion and the you know, sort of the back and forth responses that Riya and Witt had with us around this idea of presenting in class. You know, I love it. I think this is such I mean, this is something that I don't want to say. I came, I, I did the same thing, because I don't think I had this quite this version of it, but many of us probably have some version of, you know, having our students present to the class and have a conversation and that's a great soft skill to learn. And, and, you know, just presenting in front of people. But I think there's something about it. And, I, it sounds like this is probably needs to be the title of the episode, but it's there's something about classroom culture and hearing classroom culture from students’ perspective. That's powerful to me as I listen back through these, commentaries that you know, we hear it, we go to professional development and, you know, things about it. We learn about it, we read about it, there's articles written and it's important to talk about culture and classroom culture and creating safe spaces. But I think it's even more impactful when we hear from actual students who sit down and, and who experience our classroom cultures. And I know just thinking back through the conversations, with several with, these students, and thinking about their responses to things classroom culture matters so much. I mean, I heard I heard the expectations and the burden, that Andrew and Hannah had and, and you just you heard it. I could feel it when we listened back to these. It isn't just that they had some, some challenging, experiences, but the classroom cultures played such a big part of their learning experience. It wasn't. Hey, this problem didn't relate to something I knew or understood. It wasn't. It wasn't those big things that sometimes make it to the top line articles, classroom culture and connecting to students as individuals and creating safe spaces just matters so much more than we really understand. As teachers and so I just, I want to encourage folks, who are sometimes maybe struggling for grasp, you know, struggling. Okay, what am I going to do? How am I going to handle, this situation or that situation? I think focusing on and going back to, the humanity of it all and the relationships and the, rapport in the classroom culture, in the safe spaces, and, and having people, having students feel like they belong. Students feel like the expectations, of the teacher and the, thoughts of the teacher and their classmates are that, hey, we're we're in this together. We're working together. We're going to be successful together. Hey, if we try and we fail, we fail together. But we're going to get up and we're going to keep going. I think there's just something so critical to that, that all of these other little practices and organizations and all these other little things, are great, but those can only come after.

00;47;01;18 - 00;49;55;08

Joanie

yeah, it's the, It's the necessary but not sufficient prerequisite to have your classroom culture. Yeah, I, I so appreciate that you kind of went off on a little rant there, but it was such a good one. Kind of bringing us back full circle to what we said, kind of in response to almost every clip I fell like in these last two episodes has been how important the role of the teacher is in setting up the classroom culture. I want to maybe go back into this like students being vulnerable and being willing to stand up and talk about a problem they don’t understand because I’m actually thinking, a couple of things pop into my mind like, I wish I had thought to ask this in the moment with Witt and Riya but, I want to know; does the teacher talk about what they don’t understand in front of the kids? That goes a long way into building that culture, there’s safety in not understanding if even the teacher doesn't understand some things. You know, I, I just I'm curious if that ever happened or if that would make a difference. It feels to me like it would to create like, gosh, not understanding is just a normal part of learning math, even for the teacher who, you know, is has much better content knowledge than any anybody else in the room, there's still going to be things that they struggle to understand. And I think creating that culture. And then the other silly just thing I want to tie back to maybe not silly, but very practical thing is, was Riley's comment about, you know, getting together and studying with her friends before asking question. And I'm just thinking about that, you know, homework presentation strategy, that which teacher was using if you really wanted to get at, you know, what were the things that gave, you know, the most kids in the class trouble, you know, hey, get into groups and go through your homework and pick one as a group that you didn't feel 100% comfortable with and that be the one that your group presents. I wonder if that would create a little bit more of the safety and practicality to get at what, you know, we were trying to say, like, we expect your teacher wants this to be a chance for you to learn where you don't understand, but creating some safety around that. And again, it it all ties back to what you said before of culture is everything. And again, I think that's such a great reminder. So often as a teacher, you're caught up in, you know, all of the things that we have to do. I got to get my grades in. I have to get through content. I have to prepare kids for the state assessments like all of that feels like pressure and and things that we're obligated to do that are hard to do in the classroom. But for most of us that connect with our students, let our students know we care, you know, create a safe space where we can enjoy being together and learning together. That's the satisfying part of the job. And I think, you just so gracefully reminded us all that that's really the important part of the job too.

00;49;57;11 - 00;50;15;17

Joanie close

Well, that's it for this time. Be sure to check the show notes for the resources we mentioned and others you might want to explore. We would love to hear your feedback and your suggestions for future topics. And if you're enjoying learning with us, consider leaving a review to help others find us and share the podcast with a fellow math educator. See you next time!