An Inch Deep and a Mile Wide

For the first ten years in my math class 30% of my students would fail my algebra unit test. Every year.

And what did I do after?

I taught the next unit. Where algebra was necessary. Which meant that the same students would fail that unit too.

I didn't know what else to do.

I would race through the year trying to "cover" the curriculum. I wasn't so much teaching as throwing things at students and hoping stuff would stick. If students were ready it would work. If they weren't they were out of luck.

Fortunately, the school I work at has been challenging us to think differently.

A few years ago I started experimenting with the "Flipped Classroom" format. I've blogged about this here and here.

So now I spend my days teaching like this:

We get a lot less "work" done. In fact, many of my students walk out of my classroom having only "covered" half of the official math curriculum. Which does lead to some potential problems and questions.

• What if the next year's teacher doesn't follow the same philosophy?
• What happens when the student leaves our school and goes to another school?
• Some of these students need more than a year to actually learn all the material, how do we make that happen given that no one fails?

Despite all these questions and challenges, for which I do not have answers, I will not switch back.

You see, no one has failed my algebra unit test for the past three years. 

What kind of teacher do you want to be?

There are two teachers that I look back on in high school as an example of the kind of teacher I want to be.

First, Mr. Afari.

Mr. Afari came from Nigeria to teach us Calculus.

I always got A's in math class without even trying. Oh, I often made little mistakes here and there, but the teachers would only take off a single point and re-work the rest of the problem to see if I got the idea right. I always got the idea, so I could easily get an almost perfect score without any effort.

That's not how Mr. Afari marked. One single mistake meant a zero. The answer was wrong. Therefore you got no points. At midterm I had a D!

Second, Ms. Iwonttellyouhername.

She taught exactly what was in the textbook word for word. The only thing I remember about her teaching is that if I sat down the night before the test and read the chapter I would get perfect. There are other things about her class I remember, but I'm too embarrassed to tell you them here. I got an A.

What were the results of these two teachers? I stopped going to Ms. Whatshername's class. I just showed up for the tests and still got an A. In Mr. Afari's class? I earned a B-. You see, after that midterm I never made another mistake. Not one. I checked everything twice, or three times. That was the only way I could earn a B-. I had to get perfect scores to average out all the terrible ones from the first half of the term.

If I have to choose what kind of teacher I will be I choose Mr. Afari.

And Mr. Afari, wherever you are, thank you. I still check everything two or three times.