This weekend I followed in the footsteps of Lauren Baucom, Daniel
Luevanos, Sam Shah, Carl Oliver, Jay Chow, Sara VanDerWerf, Nick Corley, Jocelyn
Dagenais (of Desmos French translation fame!) and over 100 others that are some
of the most recognizable names in math education, as a Desmos Fellow. This year's fellows would be
working with folks like Mary Bourassa and Christopher Danielson, who literally
wrote the book on Which One Doesn’t Belong? I’m a pretty confident guy, but
Impostor Syndrome set in way before the weekend started. Before we ever met, my Cohort 4 fellows were
making graphs in a potluck to see where our Desmos skills could take us (here’s mine) as a
precursor to our weekend together. I was
blown away by the skill set of the people I was to meet shortly. Our first
activity together upon arrival at HQ was to introduce ourselves (names and
pronouns) and answer the question “What are you bringing with you this weekend?”
in a metaphorical sense. Speaking in front of this amazingly talented group for
the first time was nerve racking. I mumbled something about anxiety and
excitement before highlighting my purpose for attending, working on social
justice and environmentalism. The Desmos team was constantly reassuring us that
we were picked for a reason, unfortunately, in a room of this talent, it’s hard
to feel that way. Like, what do I have to offer Jay Chow? The man is a Desmos
CL genius! But a summary of our responses and the genuine excitement of the
Desmos team to have us all there helped set what would be the theme of the
weekend: humanizing learning.
The intro activity was the start, but far from the end. At
each step of the way, the team worked to ensure it was understood that we, and
our opinions, thoughts, feelings, and well-being, mattered. The norms of the
weekend asked us to
·
Stay strengths-based
·
Stay engaged
·
Embrace our growing edge
·
Attend to self-care throughout
We were constantly reminded of the importance of self-care,
whether that meant standing, taking a walk, getting a snack, changing seats, or
anything else that might make us more comfortable. Choices were provided in so
many different ways, in terms of activities to participate in, topics to discuss,
places to work together, people to collaborate with, or ways to engage with
mathematics. By providing choices, Desmos was attending to my identity (what am
I interested in) and power (getting to choose my own path).
These choices were not only provided as a structure for the
entire weekend, but even within activities. When we were acting as students as
Michael Fenton (not Michael Pershan 😊) led us through the activity Charge! we were invited
to examine practices through a number of lenses: math learner, math teacher,
math leader, or other. We were invited to use any tools we preferred to solve
the activity. Some made tables, some made equations, some made graphs, some
used Desmos, some used paper and pencil.
All pathways were acknowledged and honored. The same was true as Faith Moynihan and Lisa Bejarano led us through the activity of Point
Collector: Lines. Faith and Lisa allowed us to pace through the first 4
screens to help us summarize the rules of the game, before allowing us to pace
through the next 4 screens to attempts some challenges. She invited us to “stay
on one challenge and get really good at it, or try all four challenges, or
anything in between”. This clarification gave permission to us as students to
choose what felt right for us. If we were determined to get the max points on
one screen that was OK. What was important was the learning and the
discussions. Those would happen regardless of the choice that we made. Again, the decision to embed these choices
empowered us as students by building on our identity, acknowledging and
embracing the human element in learning mathematics.
The highlight (which is tough to achieve in a weekend that
is like a SportsCenter Top 10 of professional learning) was the session offered
by Lauren Baucom and Christelle Rocha. “Turning the Diamond on Desmos” built on
the work of Rochelle Gutierrez and Laurie Rubel to help us all process what
aspects of our students we tend to in our classrooms and schools’ structures:
Access, Identity, Power, and Achievement. If you’ve made it this far in the
post, you’ve probably noticed some of that language and that is a direct result
of attending this amazing session. In fact, this session is what allowed me to
make sense of all of the wonderful things that the Desmos staff did in their
professional learning all weekend. While
we were well-tended to as adults all weekend, Lauren and Christelle challenged
us to think about how we can focus more on identity and power in our
classrooms. The conversations started in
this hour will go on for many years, I’m sure.
All in all, I’m amazed at how little time I spent in the
Desmos environment. When I applied, I expected to learn all kinds of new things
about Desmos, spend time coding in CL, building and critiquing activities
builders, but my experience was far more transformative than that. This
unbelievably talented group of educators pushed me to consider ways to humanize
math class that emphasize impact over intent. Desmos is a tool that can help
accomplish that goal, but is not an end, rather the means. For educators, transforming
teaching and learning is the only path to achieving social justice. This
acknowledgement by the company itself, their investment in the teaching
profession, their desire to learn from the community, gives me hope. I will be
forever grateful for this opportunity because of the relationships that were
built and strengthened with like-minded educators! I’m looking forward to seeing the work of my
amazing Cohort 4 colleagues!
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