Building Resilience in the Classroom
Normalizing Struggle
Life is difficult. Life with math is even more difficult. I try to model a sense of vulnerability and lower stakes in the classroom to encourage students to take risks.
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I help my students to embrace the glory of the struggle by normalizing the idea of not knowing something, and normalizing mistake-making. Due to department resistance against shifting to standard-based grading, I implemented standard-based grading policies into my quizzes and other formative assessments. You can read more about this in my Inquiry Project page.
Building (Classroom) Community and Relationships
Building a sense of community, in and outside of the classroom is crucial in the process of building resilience. In the first three classes of a course, I try not to cover any content, and focus on establishing classroom norms and developing relationships.
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In a sense, I am building trust and relationships within a classroom environment such that “the rigorous doing of science became a context for developing ethical interpersonal relationships” (Krist, 2020, p.276).
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You can read more about how I build communities in general here:
Intentionally Being Less Helpful
One of the best pieces of advice I have received is to "intentionally be less helpful" during class. As a new teacher, I definitely struggled with the temptation of wanting to answer every question and help every student as fast as I can. This often leads to students overly relying on my help, not spending enough time being uncomfortable and thinking through a difficult concept, and ultimately dismissing the expertise of their peers.
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I have to intentionally be less helpful, especially during group work time, and remember "to answer only group questions, because this is vital to fostering interdependence”(Horn, 2012, p.74).
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Interestingly enough, I have found that physically removing myself from the classroom leads to much more interdependent collaboration among students. Even when students know that I am right outside and watching them, they feel more comfortable talking with each other and asking for help when they are unsure about a problem.
Groupworthy Tasks
Groupworthy tasks are my best friends that I have discovered since I started teaching. They are essential to the work of building resilience. They teach students not just things we know, but also have them play with math and figure out why it works. By implementing these tasks into my classroom, the content is centered more around students, and we turn “Ready-made mathematics" into "mathematics in the making” (Horn, 2012, p.35).
Furthermore, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2014) argues that teachers should create groupworthy tasks with an understanding of culture and context that would allow students to use their prior knowledge and experiences. When these groupworthy tasks are relevant models of the real world,“Students’ engagement in solving these tasks is more strongly connected with their sense of identity, leading to increased engagement and motivation in mathematics” (p.17).
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You can read more about groupworthy tasks and my work with mathematical modeling here:
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Some Survey Data
Ultimately, it seems that being intentionally less helpful in the classroom and building student resilience is well-appreciated by students. On the right, you will see some Wellington Dot data that our school as a whole collects periodically. My two classes this semester are on the top, while the departmental data and the 11th grade data (the median grade of my students) are on the bottom for comparison.
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To read more about my research findings in the inquiry project, click here: