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.