Public Education Under Siege

Chapter 2 Views from the Black of the Math Classroom

Chapter 2 Views from the Black of the Math Classroom Joi A. Spencer It’s hard to forget Donovon (a pseudonym). He sat in the far right corner of his sixth-grade math classroom facing the wall. He was quiet and listened to the teacher’s class discussions and lectures, even though he could not actually see her or engage with her. He was deemed too far behind to work with the other kids and was assigned computation problems out of an old fourthgrade textbook. Published in 1968, Donovon’s tattered textbook was older than I was. On occasion, I would sit next to him and encourage him to work on the problems assigned to his classmates. Like the equation x + 3 = 7. I gave him a series of simpler problems, talking about all the ways one could arrive at 7 when adding, and discussed for what seemed to be the entire class period why the letter x was in the problem in the first place. And then the light went on. He realized not only what x meant, but also why it must equal 4. Through mathematics instructional practices centered on student thinking and sensemaking versus rule-giving and recall, Donovon was able to understand the equation. Donovon’s experience in math class may have been substandard and uninspiring , but he was not missing out on much. Though they worked from a sixth-grade textbook, his classmates often copied long columns of problems from the board, solving them with predetermined steps. On this day they were told to subtract 3 from each side of the equation. No explanation was given for why the method worked, and students spent the entire session completing nearly identical problems by rote. We have all heard the argument that repetition is essential to math success. Yet, only 2 percent of the 22 Joi A. Spencer sixth-graders at Donovon’s school were scoring at or above proficiency on their state math exams. Things were not much different in the Southeast Los Angeles community next to Donovon’s. Driving on the freeway, I couldn’t help noticing that most of the cars were going in the opposite direction. Happy as I was to drive on a virtually empty freeway, I understood that the lack of cars going my way signaled something disturbing about the nature of life and opportunities in these communities. On the route between my freeway exit and the school, the men (both young and old) standing around on sidewalks, wandering the streets, and sometimes stretched out on bus stop benches told the story all too well. Unemployment in this community was among the highest in the nation, and the often resultant ills of poverty, incarceration, and drug abuse had taken their toll. In a school similar to Donovon’s, students sat in rows, faced with computation problems written on their whiteboard. A column of fractions with like denominators, another column with unlike denominators, a column of triple digit by double digit multiplication, and a column of long division problems— with and without decimals. After the work session, students would be called one by one to give their solutions. When a student gave a correct answer, the teacher moved on. When it was incorrect, the teacher called on a different student until the correct answer came. On occasion, a student was called to the board to write down her solution to a problem. Once the session was over, students were free to work on their homework (a set of problems virtually identical to those solved in class). Some worked. Others just waited for the bell. In my role as a mathematics education researcher, I have spent time in lovelier places. In one assignment in the affluent Los Angeles Westside, I conducted more than twenty observations of middle school math classrooms. These observations entailed documenting the rigor of the mathematics being taught, and noting the level and depth of teacher questions. In the majority of these, students had a bounty of resources. They worked from individual upto -date math workbooks instead of wasting time copying problems from the board. They were seated in grouped arrangements, not rows, and they worked to solve problems that pushed them to explore the real world relevance of mathematics. In one classroom, students used math to explore earthquakes and tsunami waves. In another, they investigated and subsequently made arguments about whether there were patterns in the prime numbers between 6:51 GMT) Views from the Black of the Math...