On Monday I had the opportunity to see Dan Meyer present at a PDNGKC event in Blue Springs. While the event was geared towards mathematics, I took away a couple of things that could easily be relatable to any subject area. Mr. Meyer compared the classroom to a country club and the teacher to the president of that country club. He then compared those students that were successful in that class or subject area as members of the country club. His challenge for the group was what we are doing so that students in the class want to be members of the country club. This analogy made perfect sense for me. I remember having those “member” students that arrived everyday eager to do whatever I told them to do. And I also remember trying to get more prospective “member” students into my country club. So you might ask, how does one get more members into the club?
For Mr. Meyer, that is encouraging student talk/argumentation and providing an environment where guessing and wrong answers are encouraged. This sounds pretty simple because, well it is. At the conference, we worked through a problem in which we were tasked with finding how long it took him to run up and down a set of stairs. He began by simply showing us two clips of him running up the stairs, nothing else, no other information. I liked this because as he later explained, teachers and textbooks give out too much information and don’t allow for students to develop the question. During this time we also began with questions and our initial round of estimates. It was also interesting to see how he was taking mental notes about our thought processes and understanding of the problem as he was asking for estimates and wrong answers. As we progressed, we were provided more information about the situation, which allowed us to check our estimates and develop more questions about the scenario. It was interesting to see that even in a room with 30+ math teachers, how many different answers and methods to solve the problem there were. And for me, that’s how we get more students into the country club. We need to provide opportunities for students that not only allow for but encourage guesses and multiple avenues to an answer.