Diversity and the MathTwitterBlogoSphere (MTBoS)

I'm catching up on my MTBoS reading after the holiday rush and the post-holiday sluggishness. Today I read Michael Pershan's Year in Review blog post, in which he referred back to a sort of self-reflection from October which I unfortunately missed at that time. If you like Michael's writing, which I do, it's all thought-provoking and engaging, but there's one comment I wanted to highlight and write about:

Michael PershanOctober 19, 2014 at 4:44 PM

A quick note about race: there's no real mystery about how to diversify the MTBoS or TMC. You need to seek out teachers of color and invite them to join your circles.

This can be done bluntly or subtlety, depending on what the situation calls for. But if you're interested in twitter being more diverse, then go actually search for teachers of color to follow and then follow and chat and RT them and such.

It bugs me that people treat this like it's some grand puzzle to be cracked. It's just hard work.

I don't especially know Michael, but I can vouch for him on this: both that he practices what he preaches, and that it made a big difference to me, a 49-year-old white woman who can be a little gun-shy about male-dominated professional spaces. I joined Twitter and started this blog this past summer. I haven't been blogging or even tweeting much lately, but I am fully intending to pick up the pace more in 2015, especially over the summer.

The fact that I have been and will be tweeting and blogging instead of just lurking or wandering away is due more to Michael than any other single individual, and it is from just what he said here: he noticed me, paid attention to what I said, engaged in conversation with me online, was one of my first followers, and recommended others to follow me. This kind of welcome, from him and others in the MTBoS, and the active, lively, respectful conversations among women and men of diverse ages and teaching roles, kept me on Twitter at a time when I easily could have felt there was not much of a place for a 48-year-old woman in this new(ish) space whose most famous citizen (at least to me) was a young white guy. If we want to hear from all kinds of teachers, we should make sure they know they're not tweeting into a vacuum, and the best way to do that is to respond somehow.

One conversation from my first few weeks on Twitter stands out in my memory, enough that I just went back and dug it up to make sure I had it right. It was about one of Michael's posts on feedback. I commented there and, I think, tweeted something early on and was included among the names in the tweets for a few rounds. My name got dropped after a bit, which didn't bother me, but I kept reading the conversation because it was interesting. Then all of a sudden this happened:

I was stunned, in a good way, but I don't think I answered either of those remarks (till now, obviously) because I had no idea what to say. I felt like I didn't understand Twitter culture enough (I still am not quite sure of the etiquette of barging into threads when your name's not on the list, though I do it now anyway); I felt they had nothing to apologize for about dropping me and didn't know how to say that and appreciate the thought at the same time; I worried anything I would say in response would sound patronizing (wow, you're a young white guy and you're aware of sexism? gold star for you!). All of those things are still true, but I'm going ahead and saying something now because it made a big difference to me that they noticed and cared that including me would change it from an all-male conversation.

Within a few weeks, I had found plenty of women and men on Twitter to follow (and others to read frequently even if I didn't follow them), some of them followed me too, and I was hooked. I've been cautious about following too many accounts for fear of getting swamped, but after reflecting on my own experiences, I'm going to try harder next year to seek out and follow teachers who I wish I could hear more from, not just wait till their accounts are full of interesting posts... which might never happen if they are tweeting into the void.

Collaboration

Today, my 7th graders worked on a great activity from nrich.maths.org that combined practice with the distributive property (ostensibly, the content we are learning) with some very important aspects of groupwork that I wanted to highlight and discuss. Thanks to @Veganmathbeagle for tweeting it out a few days ago.

The activity provides 16 cards in which there are 4 sets of 4 equivalent expressions. The four members of a group start out with 4 random cards and the task ends when every member of the group has 4 equivalent cards. Key rules: no talking or non-verbal communication of any sort AND you cannot take a card from anyone else, only give one of your cards to someone. Each member of the group must have at least 2 cards at any time. If there is an extra person in a group, he or she acts as an observer to the process and takes notes on the ways in which the group members helped each other.

The expressions in the activity - the link above has them in an easy, printable version

This was challenging for my students both from a content perspective and due to the emphasis on collaboration. It was amazing to watch how well some groups gelled and how others were brought to a standstill by a disengaged student.

Comments from my students (roughly paraphrased) when I asked them to reflect on what made this task hard:

"If one person wasn't trying, the whole group got stuck."

"You couldn't do the work for anyone else."

"Some of them were hard and I just wanted to do the easy ones that I knew I could get and leave the hard ones for someone else. But sometimes, everyone left the hard ones for someone else and there was no someone else."

"It made me do more work than I usually do because my group was depending on me."

These are real issues that happen in groups, but are often concealed because other members do pick up the slack. They are really hard to solve in most situations because we do want students discussing and creating a single group product, which means that students who choose to do the bare minimum often can do so. Of course, I do try to build in individual accountability into group tasks, asking a random member of the group to explain the group's work or asking an individual follow-up question that each person must answer on their own. I have done "group quizzes" in order to give feedback to students on their collaborative skills. But this was definitely the most aware and open that I've ever seen my students in discussing the disparity in the level of effort that often takes place when working in groups. I'm hoping that in future tasks, we can refer back to this activity and students will have a better sense of their need to work with more parity and engagement. If you know of any other activities or ways to improve individual accountability in group tasks, please do share.

Some ways that I modified the activity: half-way through, I allowed students to use scratch paper. This reduced the cognitive load a great deal and allowed them to work more productively. In one class that was really struggling, I allowed the groups to talk to each other for a few minutes at the end. Different groups may need more or less of the restrictions in order to create the right level of challenge.

#MTBoSChallenge - Weekly Challenge - Week 17

Welcome to the #MTBoSChallenge! 

Each week there are two options:

• On Saturdays, you can choose to blog on a weekly prompt.  Go check out the awesome and amazing posts submitted this week at Middle School Math Rules.  No worries if you didn't blog yesterday, you can still submit your post using the linky at the bottom of her post.
• On Sundays, you can choose to blog a Sunday Summary of your week.  The idea for the Summary is to provide you a way to reflect on the past week and share what you are looking forward to this coming week.

Feel free to choose either option (or BOTH!), add it to the linky on the host page and don't forget to tweet it with the hashtag #MTBoSChallenge as well!

Now on to my post for the day...

My Sunday 3-2-1 Summary

3 recent purchases I've loved:

• Tights!  My wardrobe currently consists of way more dresses/skirts than pants.  I haven't worn "hose" since I was a kid with my church dresses, but I have to say that I am loving tights this year!  (Bonus.. there's a 30% off coupon on Cartwheel this week!)
• Ramen Noodle Cooker!  I honestly thought my dad was crazy when he told me about this invention.  Pretty much it's a rectangular pan that you put a brick of ramen noodles in, fill it up to the water line, cook for 4 minutes in the microwave, and you're done.  Yay for easy school lunches!
• Camis!  We've had a pretty chilly fall and I stocked up on cotton camis from Walmart for $2.97 each.  It's crazy how much warmth can come from a thin little tanktop thing!  I now wear them under every outfit! :)
  

2 things I accomplished this week:

• Lots of grading!  Grading is the bane of any teacher's existence, but I was able to whittle down my pile to where I just have a few projects left to go.  yay!
• My yearly observation!  My principal came in this week to observe me.  It wasn't my favorite lesson of all time, but it was okay.  :)   

1 goodbye:

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to our baby girl.  We got "Sasha" when she was 5 weeks old and hubby and I were newlyweds.  I was teaching 7th grade at the time and as every teacher knows, there are some names that you never want to name a child because of the memories it brings.  Sasha is one of those names for me, so the only people that knew her as Sasha were the people in the vet's office.  Her real name was ******** (Censored because this a family-friendly blog *grin*).  She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism 2 years ago, so we knew her time would be limited, but when we took her to the vet yesterday, we were not prepared for the vet to tell us she had a huge mass in her abdomen.  As a result, we had to make a decision about what to do.  My baby girl wasn't a pretty kitty, but she was an amazing snuggler.  I'll miss her sleeping on my pillow with her deep purr that could put me to sleep within minutes.