OLD DRAFT POST THAT NEVER GOT POSTED.

OAME – 2017 – Kingston

Last year I ‘performed’ three PD sessions.  This year, I only did one.  I was going to tweak OAME 2016’s presentation and use it for 2017 as I thought I got reasonable reviews and I felt pretty good about myself afterwards. 

However, the week prior to my presentation was our annual OSSTF PA Day where staff get to choose what to do for their PD.  Many colleagues, stressed as they are choose to do popular options such as treetop trekking, yoga, dance, or even choose to do marking – each of which are held at different schools allowing us to meet and mingle with our colleagues who have chosen based on similar interests. 

I chose to attend a classroom workshop as suggested by the math consultant at a regional heads meeting 6 months prior.  It was a workshop headed by a university professor Peter Lilljendahl who has had most of his experience in the math classroom.  He is now devoting his full time to doing research on the classroom and what practical things can be done/changed/removed to improve education.

My mind was blown. 

My teaching got turned absolutely upside down by that experience that I immediately changed my own teaching and the upcoming workshop despite being a little overwhelmed with duties as an assistant head and also convenor of the ultimate Frisbee YRDSB league (the biggest sport in YRDSB with over 1500+ students).  I pivoted with how mentored my student teacher, and encouraged her to try the new methods of teaching.

As for my presentation – I had to keep the topics similar to my description – but I IMMEDIATELY switched to the vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) and visible random groupings (VRG) methodology as it was through Peter’s work that these two changes have the biggest effect on the classroom. 

But it didn’t just effect my classroom.  It affected my presentation.  I couldn’t present the old way anymore after seeing the power of both VNPS and VRG.  I had to revamp my whole presentation in under a week.  

Sounds unnerving?  Yup.  Was it unnerving?  Nope.  It puts more of the onus on the people in the classroom.  Less on my prep.  I just have to be able to think on my feet.  

I came in early to try to move all the desks into ideal classroom formation (groups of 4 aligned randomly, allowing room on the edges.  I also put up clingrite sheets vertically.  However, there was no way I could set this all up in time while trying to fiddle setting up my laptop, so I involved the people attending the PD.  I already got people to interact with each other as comments about the Clingrite rolls spread around the room!  =)

I began with a short intro – and as usual my fellow teachers were surprised at how long I have been teaching. 

Not 3 minutes in, I immediately launched into the Tax Man problem.  I asked if anyone had heard of this problem and if they did, to help me facilitate in this great big room.  I gave them random groupings through cards, and off they went.  The room was abuzz with talking, interest, and engagement. 

Within 5 minutes, my presentation was already better than last year’s, just from engagement alone.  Gone was the Pear Deck, the fancy technology that cost me $16.  This was way better. 

I circulated, with the help of the other teacher who knew of this problem, who turned out to be a celebrity math Ontario educator, Alex Overwijk who runs the website ‘slam dunk math’. 

We did a gallery walk to see how groups approached problems differently.  I ‘leveled’ to the bottom with an extension, and the discussion that occurred at the end tended to the approach of the problem itself.  I steered the conversation back to the teaching style and approach; the learning there was absolutely tremendous. 

I repeated the same approach with a 3-act problem to a weaker effect because its process needs to be refined by me….and that there were too many people in the room to get each and every person’s ‘question’.  I should have adjusted by doing a sharing within groups and amalgamated their work that way. 

I did my Knowledgehook plug, spoke some final statements and then I was done.  The amount of people that stayed behind on the second last presentation of the very last day of the conference was amazing.  They thanked me in person, and the discussion in the community that I created was strong.  Emails were exchanged between teachers and I met some wonderful people.  I got tweeted back by a few of my delegates, and my reviews were much stronger than last year:

It turns out that adult learning is similar to teenage learning – VNPS and VRG all the way, mixed in with a very good problem, some leveling to the bottom were all tools that made engagement of my PD session at an all time high.  (for me that is)