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Key points:
When I sat down with educators at the recent ISTE conference, our conversations were vibrant and enlightening. Instead of asking for the usual feedback on curriculum, I posed a different question.
Here are the passionate and clear responses educators provided when I asked, “What does your ideal math curriculum look like?”
1. It empowers teachers to facilitate collaborative learning.
Every teacher and administrator I spoke with mentioned the idea that, in the ideal math classroom, the teacher sets clear expectations and acts as the facilitator while the students collaboratively engage in hands-on activities and games. The challenge is to create resources that foster this kind of environment naturally. You see this ideal at work when students go to college and suddenly enjoy learning more, because college classrooms are more likely to be collaborative environments. Collaboration is a natural way to learn, and I heard from many teachers who are seeking support in creating this kind of atmosphere.
2. It inspires problem-solving and productive struggle.
Problem-solving is a critical part of the learning process, but too often, math curriculum asks students to learn procedures first and then problem-solve–making them separate processes. Problem-solving and learning are the most important life skills that students learn from math, and are so intimately connected that it was surprising that so few educators I spoke with could talk about the difference between productive and unproductive struggle. The difference is the story students tell themselves. When they are telling themselves they can do it, they are struggling productively, and when they are telling themselves they can’t, they are struggling unproductively. Different kinds of problems are more or less encouraging of productive struggle, so the content teachers give students plays a role in the stories they tell themselves.
3. By engaging students, it improves classroom management.
What was surprising about this takeaway is that the responsibility for classroom management often falls entirely on the teacher, with little consideration that the curriculum could support them in this area. Student engagement and classroom management are intimately linked, so leveraging a curriculum designed to naturally engage students can significantly ease management challenges. For instance, asking questions that spark wonder and curiosity or allowing students to figure out what they are supposed to do as the first step in an activity can lead to improved engagement and smoother classroom management.
4. It enhances a teacher’s flexibility and creativity.
Most teachers want to feel some level of creativity in their teaching. They chose their profession for the opportunity to create those moments when a student “gets it” and the learning just explodes out of them. They don’t want to feel stifled by the standards, assessments, or state and district mandates. The question we’re left with is this: Is there a way a curriculum could amplify teachers’ flexibility and creativity, while also helping them cover all the standards they need to meet by the end of the year?
5. It’s student-centered and flexible.
Teachers want a curriculum that focuses on student needs and personalized learning by including open-ended questions that help students understand the process and the “why” behind the math.
To see an example of people not knowing the “why” behind math, ask an adult why subtracting a negative is adding a positive. They’ll tell you it’s because two negatives make a positive. The truth, however, is that subtracting gives you the inverse of whatever comes after it. If you teach students that “why” when you teach them subtraction, when they get to subtracting negative numbers later, they’ll intuitively understand that subtracting a negative is adding a positive.
Every teacher I spoke with agreed that all curriculum claims or aims should be student-centered. But adults are the ones who decide which curriculum to buy, so often curriculum creators design their products to sell to those adults rather than to meet students’ needs. Ironically, a truly student-centered curriculum will produce better student outcomes, but it may be more difficult to sell.
A thread that runs through all these top five takeaways is that teachers want a curriculum to help them teach better–and they don’t want to have to take a lot of PD to get started. As we continue these conversations, the question we are left to answer is, “How can we create curricula that foster natural learning environments for both teachers and students?”
