No STEAM ahead without Maths

After a lovely Sunday breakfast, an apologetic cashier informed me that the till wasn't working, called out the two totals, $18.30 and $17.20, and proceeded to grab pen and paper to use vertical addition. I died a little inside while I renamed it as 20.30 + 15.20. This lovely young person would be the same age as my child and a product of the same maths system, and I know the struggles they faced for years to make sense of maths and believe they were any good at it.

A few days later our local coffee shop cashier was working out my 10% discount (they give us a discount for being teachers- we love them all!), and dutifully took out the calculator to flawlessly use the algorithm to work out 10% of 12.30 and subtract it. The following comment rang in my ears for a long time: "This is probably really easy to do but I just can't do it without a calculator. I get so nervous!" Another lovely young person who has been robbed of their maths potential.

I know teachers want to do better. But we need the tools. The how. We thought- and we were told- we had it in the form of the Numeracy Project. But I don't believe we've got there yet. The results don't lie.

After reading 'Mathematical Mindsets' by Prof. Jo Boaler on the value of visual maths and the detriment of ability grouping, I also chanced across Dr. Nicola Ward Petty who asks if the project has really met the goals it was supposed to in this blog post. In turn that led me to this great blog post by Mandy Bradshaw explaining some of the flaws - and value- of the Numeracy Project. The Numeracy Project is fifteen years old, after all.

All these new ideas were tough to digest. My teaching instinct had been frustrated for years with what I was doing in maths, but still, there's a lot of invested energy and emotional commitment when one perfects a system, hence changing is a challenge. Knowing that I'd spent the good part of ten years teaching, instead of one algorithm, five, was hard to admit. The reality was that the methodology I was expected to follow was confusing, labour intensive (aka, the great maths carousel of group rotation), harmed children's belief in their maths potential through ability grouping, and the results flatlined no matter how hard I worked with that 'tail end'. I knew that it wasn't a great system but it's all we had.

But doing the same over and over and expecting different results is a fool's journey.  I have high expectations of my teaching and settling for what places a barrier for students to achieve does not stay in my repertoire once I know better.  I had to progress and move forward so I stopped doing what I was doing. I had to. I began to question everything and look for alternatives. And lucky for me and my students, they're out there!

Fast forward to today (and thanks to highly supportive leadership who could see the rationale behind my quest and said "Go for it"):

- Multilevel maths: I would not ability group students for maths ever again. There is enough research now that shows how much this harms and how little benefit it has.

- Make brain plasticity part of the curriculum: I share with my students about the importance of challenge and mistakes to make our brains grow strong connections. This free course by youcubed.org is a must for anyone of any age, and I use it with my students at the beginning of every single year. We need to break free from the shackles of thinking mathematics is only for the 'gifted' few.

- Make maths visual: I use Number Talks. I love number talks and my students love number talks. We are creating a mathematical community of inquiry by sharing ideas. Results? Outstanding - moderated even.

With my co-teacher @amybrt5, we design rich mathematical tasks for all strands of the curriculum; low-floor high-ceiling, with real life contexts.

I can say that this is the most I have ever enjoyed teaching maths. Maths is fun in our hub; it is also challenging and engaging.

But what worries me is that all of this has been self-initiated. I joined a MOOC through Stanford University and Prof. Jo Boaler (and now a second one) to upskill in more multilevel, visual maths teaching. I've watched hours of Youtube looking for ways to apply UDL principles to maths, joined twitter chats, read blogs and published papers. Connected with like minded folk. Was I not a highly driven perfectionist, I'd still be doing the same old and there would be another group of learners underperforming or underwhelmed about maths and their own potential. I admit that what I did before now feels boring, dull as well as so much of it pointless.

My dream right now is nation-wide conversation about where we're going with maths education in New Zealand. Visual maths concepts, logic and reasoning, are at the core of STEAM, PBL, the digital curriculum, and any future focused economic initiative that may come our way. They are at the core of the problem-solving skills our students will need for them to tackle any local or global issue of today and tomorrow through STEAM.

There are so many better ways to teach maths than what I spent years doing, but then this is only available to those who know where to find alternatives and can afford to tap into the resources. There are pockets of schools moving forward but no real cohesive strategy to deliver quality across our country in an area that is critical for all students to be able to thrive in. I firmly believe that this is possible and achievable. Mathematical literacy is a must.

The very wise king of Bhutan has made it a priority for his country to develop better maths teaching so all Bhutanese are mathematically literate. They've involved experts from the UK and aim to make all Bhutanese fluent in maths "... because this is the language that will allow them to navigate the universe and to plan for an uncertain future.”

I'd like Aotearoa to aspire and work towards the same for our tamariki. All of them. Today.