November 2024 Teacher Voice

Implement "Just One Thing"

Jennifer Holland

It’s the beginning of a new month, three months of the school year are done, and I realized that I have not implemented any of the fun things that I learned about during our CCTM Summer Institute, Empowering Students Through Productive Struggle with Kevin Dykema.  I tell myself that it's because I switched schools and that it has been crazy taking over as the only high school math teacher at my new school.  But then I tell myself that so many of the things I learned at the convening  are simple enough that I should implement at least one or two. 

So I have decided to implement just one thing over the next month.  I am committing to highlighting one mathematician a week.  It is important for students to see that anyone and everyone can do math.  I want students to understand that math was not all thought up over 2000 years ago by a bunch of “old white dudes,” (to use their words).  As part of this I will have students look up a “mathematician” each week and write a short little biography of them, where they grew up, their contributions to mathematics, and hopefully at least one interesting fact not related to math.

I feel this will be a useful activity for students to complete because hopefully they will be able to relate to one of the highlighted mathematicians.  They will see that not everyone has to be great at all areas of math to be able to contribute.  An added bonus, one that my students will of course complain about, is they will be communicating about mathematics, through writing.  Yes, this is not English class, but I do not recall students complaining about writing out answers in other courses so now it's time to get comfortable writing in math class.

A couple of other fun things that I would like to start implementing throughout the rest of the school year include short, not math heavy, bell ringers from websites like estimation180.com or visualpatterns.org to get kids talking, and quick little check-ins with emojis for students to let me know how that day’s lesson went. Was it easy, difficult but do-able, or too confusing to get very far? 

What have you implemented already this year?  What are you willing to commit to trying out this month?  It’s never too late!  I challenge you to implement “just one thing” over the course of the next month. Need ideas, CCTM Members can access Kevin’s resources here.