Phoenix Park - Breaking the "Rules"

Openness, choice, freedom, independence; characteristics that many would agree are conducive to a successful classroom, a classroom which promotes learning and encourages students to meet their full potential. Why then were these characteristics so obviously noticeable at Phoenix Park and so obviously missing at Amber Hill? One thing is certain, both schools were concerned with the success of their students in mathematics, yet the schools used remarkably different approaches in an attempt to bring about this success.

Phoenix Park, remarkably different from Amber Hill, and perhaps if we were to investigate we would find that the approach to learning was in fact very different from much of what is presently happening in our own schools.

Michelle raised some interesting questions in her presentation, of particular interest is the question, is this possible here? The question is raised in reference to the freedom and openness experienced at Phoenix Park which is unlike most school settings. The obvious answer is yes, of course it is possible, Boaler has shown that it was possible to achieve this learning style in a school in a working class neighbourhood, with students who had previously been exposed to more traditional methods of instruction, schools much like our own! The evidence in Boaler’s study clearly indicates that such an approach CAN work and CAN be successful for ALL students, how then can be incorporate these ideas into our own classrooms? Surely we cannot be expected to make an overnight switch from a method that we have become accustomed to over many years, but even small changes will help our students start to develop a deeper level of mathematical understanding.

Our current classroom situation is much like Amber Hill’s, and we are heavily influenced by “higher powers” and CRT achievement. This HAS to change; the driving force of classroom instruction needs to be the students, and not the numbers that show how a group of students performed on a series of test questions. As we have discussed in class many numbers, the interpretation of these results is driving our instruction, but the results are not being interpreted in a way that makes sense. Schools are comparing results from one year to the next as opposed to comparing a group of students in Grade 3 and then following up in Grade 6 and 9 and comparing them to their own achievement and growth. However, if the idea of following up involves drilling our students with more “practice” exercises and “practice” tests in areas that were deemed to be areas of weakness in the test, then I see no need to even look at the results if we are not going to look at our teaching methods as well. We need to take a serious look at not just WHAT we are teaching, but HOW we are teaching it.

Michelle also raised the question of “What is structure?” I think we can all agree that structure is necessary for a successful classroom environment, but what does structure consist of? Is it merely the physical arrangement of the classroom? Does it include the teachers role within the classroom, the students and their actions? If we are to include all of these elements then we can clearly see that the “structure” at Phoenix Park and Amber Hill were again, remarkably different. Amber Hill relied on the teacher to maintain structure, and we know from Boaler’s findings that this so called structure did not necessarily indicate that students were spending any more time on task than at Phoenix Park, though students at Amber Hill were very well trained in playing the game, in looking like they were working.

To an outsider (or even to a teacher from Amber Hill) Phoenix Park’s math classrooms may have looked like they were lacking structure, but that is not necessarily the case. The classrooms were arranged in such a way that students were able to work on their own or in groups to work on the assigned projects, and although the teacher did not direct the entire lesson, they did provide guidance to students as they needed it, although they did not “make” students work, but really, are we actually able to do this? Can we force students to think? At Phoenix Park students were very much aware of their responsibilities and aware of the consequences that would follow if they did not complete the assigned tasks, some still wasted class time, yet this is a likely scenario in any class, despite our best efforts to “structure” the learning experience. Phoenix Park did a much better job of providing for students at a range of abilities, and all within the one classroom/lesson; something Amber Hill couldn’t accomplish even when they divided their students in sets according to ability, students still complained that they were either over loaded with work or not sufficiently challenged.

I would have loved to have been a student at Phoenix Park, to have been afforded the opportunity to make sense of mathematical ideas on my own, to make connections and develop an understanding which would have stuck with me long past the unit tests (who am I kidding, I never even understood most things then, but I could remember enough of the rules for the tests.) My past experience with math encourages me as a teacher rather than discourages me. I am guilty of having an “unstructured” classroom at times, I don’t mind noise, and mess is my friend, I know I have a long way to come as a math teacher but I feel that I have made great strides in allowing my students to experience greater freedom in mathematics, in allowing them to find the answers the best way they know how as opposed to memorizing my way. Math is not just something that comes from a textbook and there are far more ways to demonstrate understanding than pencil and paper tests, we need to embrace these ideas and put them into practice to provide our students with rich mathematical experiences.