Supporting and Sustaining the Love of Mathematical Teaching: A Simple Model for Department Chairs
Proposal No:
2171
Proposal Type:
Session
Speakers:
Benjamin Dickman (1)
Institutions:
(1) The Hewitt School, New York, NY
Lead Speaker:
Description of Presentation:
This presentation unpacks a model for chairs to organize department meetings: a ubiquitous leadership position that rarely includes guidelines. The general model orients around efficiently completing tasks to reduce workload, and increasing mathematical joy while decreasing stress. The session will cover specific efforts towards each goal, which includes sharing artifacts to support and elevate teacher voices, and selecting purposeful mathematical tasks that renew and sustain educator wellbeing.
Participant Learning:
Participants will learn about a simple and general model for running department meetings. In particular, each department meeting opens by stating, verbatim, the goals to: 1) efficiently complete tasks to reduce workload, and 2) increase mathematical joy, decrease stress/anxiety/etc. Participants will leave better prepared to accomplish these goals in their own learning sites, or to support other chairs or meeting facilitators in doing so. Organized by time allocation:
~10 minutes: Introduce the chair-speaker and describe current department meetings and their evolution (learn the model)
~20 minutes: Description of "instructional rounds" where teachers share and discuss videos/artifacts (learn about our "problem of practice" format and see question stems and more).
~20 minutes: Description of selecting K-12 engaging math tasks to support early career educators' belongingness and sustain joy for all (learn about and leave with specific, fruitful example tasks)
~10 minutes: Q&A
Focus on Math:
The mathematics content will be captured, in part, by looking at sample video and artifacts from the instructional rounds model used in our department to hone pedagogy. The principal focus, however, will be on low floor, high ceiling math tasks used with success to engage K-12 math educators.
Underlying topics in these tasks include, but are not limited to: number theory in the times table; proper-factor trees; NYT's Connections and combinatorics; NIM-like games; counting squares in an array.
Session Content Level:
Introduction to the Topic
Session Audience:
Coaches/Leaders/Consultants
Strands:
Fostering and Sustaining educators through effective Leadership, Coaching, Advocacy, and Community Building
Calculators (check one)
No Calculators Needed
How does your presentation align with NCTM’s dedication to equity and access?
Limited to 1000 characters
Although not broached in the session description, the content of this presentation is drawn from the speaker's decade of teaching at a girls day school – in which the leaders of the lower, middle, and high school, as well as the entire school, are all women, as is our inaugural Director of Research and Faculty Practice. The principal components of our department meetings – instructional rounds and sharing math problems – were both suggested by women in and out of STEM. In this way, the presentation centers girls' learning and girls' research in proposing a model that can be adopted and adapted more widely by departments of mathematics, thereby shifting the typically male-centric features of too many math spaces in the US. Furthermore, the K-12 organization of our school and department allows us to discuss ways in which age-diversity can be an asset among both students and teachers: Collaborating around pedagogy, topics/scope/sequence, discursive patterns, and flexible understanding.
Have you authored an NCTM book? If so, please list it here or enter n/a.
N/A
Have you written for one of our journals? Check all that apply.
Mathematics Teacher
Will your presentation have a focus on early career teachers?
Yes
If yes, please describe how it does.
We will explicitly discuss how the structure of department meetings can enable new and early career educators to feel a greater sense of belongingness, and, conversely, how meetings that do not elevate their voices can have the opposite impact. Though it is less likely for new or early career educators to be in positions to, for example, chair a department, the hope is that this presentation can empower them to engage chairs/leaders around the model presented: and prepare them as future leaders!
Specify three recent speaking experiences relevant to the proposal topic (provide topic, location, and date).
Minimal or no speaking experience does not disqualify you from submitting. Please choose N/A or first-time speaker if applicable
Do you require special assistance, as defined by the ADA or special scheduling consideration for religious reason(s)?
No
Are you using a classroom video?
Yes
If yes, please describe:
I will likely include a video, with permission, as shared by one of our teachers during a departmental meeting "instructional rounds" presentation. In this format, teachers share a video of themselves along with a proposed problem of practice for feedback from the full department, which proceeds initially with observations and is followed by questions, which include proposed stems, and, finally, a back-and-forth engagement with the educator in a manner intended to support mutual growth and joy.
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