Welcome!

To engage with our students as persons is to affirm our own incompleteness, our consciousness of spaces still to be explored, desires still to be tapped, possibilities still to be opened and pursued … We have to find out how to open such spheres, such spaces, where a better state of things can be imagined … I would like to think that this can happen in classrooms, in corridors, in schoolyards, in the streets around. --Maxine Greene, “In Search of a Critical Pedagogy”

“You teach reading?” she asked. “The poster said we could get extra help if we needed it.” … “We sure do,” Sister Shani said. “We got to know how to read. How else we going to know what’s going on in the world? We teach history and math, too. And sewing. You get to make yourself a long dress. And we teach the history of the way black people in this country talk, how it’s a lot like some African languages. And tell your friends we teach karate, too. That ought to bring some of them in.” –Eloise Greenfield, Sister

Do you live? – 2^nd grade student note to a teacher

What’s this course about?

This semester is about taking everything you have learned so far in and out of Arcadia, and thinking through the difficulties of applying it and sorting it out in a particular educational setting. We will be working in collaboration with the F.S. Edmonds Elementary School in Philadelphia to develop interdisciplinary projects that are specifically aimed at facilitating the children’s abilities to think and act mathematically and scientifically. We will give specific attention to how to work with children to identify and explore essential questions and how they connect to “the curriculum;” design and implement strategies for supporting/facilitating student work and learning; and how to inform our teaching through multiple ways of assessing/evaluating this work.

You are asked to think and act like a teacher. Just like your job is to get the Edmonds students to help each other think and act mathematically and scientifically, our job together is to help each other think and act pedagogically. We will wrestle with the job of developing meaningful inquiries that speak to the district concerns about curriculum content and standardized testing goals. In the process, you will respond with your own original pedagogical ideas.

Required Texts:

Available at our bookstore, and on-line.

Burns, Marilyn. 2000. About Teaching Mathematics: A K-8 Resource. Pearson Learning.

Gallas, Karen. 1994. The Languages of Learning: How Children Talk, Write, Dance, Draw, and Sing Their Understanding of the World. NY: Teachers College Press.

Strachota, Bob. 1996. On Their Side: Helping Children Take Charge of Their Learning. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children.

Moon, Jean & Linda Schulman. 1995. Finding the Connections: Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Curriculum in Elementary Mathematics. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Texts from previous mega courses will be valuable resources for your work at Edmonds throughout the semester.

Photocopies of other required readings will be available in class.

**All texts must be read by the assigned day. Please refer to the tentative schedule for these dates.

Assignments and Grading:

Your grade will be based on five parts:

Portfolio of your work throughout the semester

Weekly Audits of your work

Media Project

Expedition

Story of Your Teaching Journey

Portfolio:

As a way of organizing your work and making your process transparent, you will develop a portfolio that will be organized around the following processes and products: Readings and Responses; Edmonds Planning and Assessment; Reflections; Inquiry and Research

This portfolio is described in detail on the Portfolio Specification sheet.

Audits:

We ask that you email us a weekly audit of how your efforts are going. You rummage around in your portfolio, reflect on what you have been doing and hope to do. Please see the handout on Audit specifications.

Media Project:

We need a group of people that reports to us on a regular basis what they see us doing. This is a form of reflection and assessment crucial to effective teaching. Therefore, a small group of you will be in charge of reporting to the larger group what you see happening over a two-session period at Edmonds. The format is up to you. Think of yourselves as “the media.” Do you want to give us a newsletter highlighting particular events or issues that you think are interesting or that you want us to consider? Do you want to document in pictures with captions what transpired, or create a satirical editorial? Upon analyzing your observations with your media group, would it be appropriate to challenge the rest of the class with a set of questions? You will have 10 minutes to do your presentation. You need to document this work in your portfolio, from scribblings to scripts, from drafts to products.

Expeditions:

Teachers are never confined to their classroom. They are constantly on the move, aware of potential resources, human and otherwise, that they can utilize in their teaching. Sometimes they need to plan a time to identifying potential curricular assets, hence the name “Expedition.” In your expeditions for this class, we expect you to be creative in collecting and identifying anything and everything that might be possible for you to use in your work. You will have time in class to share this material with your colleagues. We have planned the first two for you; the third is up to you. Based on the first two, we will develop a rubric for the third expedition in class. All of this work should be documented in your portfolio. Please see tentative schedule for dates.

Story of Your Teaching Journey:

Over the course of the semester, we are reading a series of reflections by teachers about pedagogically important points. Each author presents their ideas as a story of a journey. In the last part of the course, you will be looking back over your portfolio; focusing on your work with children at Edmonds, you will decide what the story of your own journey has been about. The story must develop your own original pedagogical idea. You will paint a portrait in words and support the description of your own original idea through a set of varying events that occurred throughout the semester. You will select events for their power to portray different facets of your main idea. We will publish these pieces in an anthology at the end of the semester. We will also give a public reading of selections from our writing for a larger audience. Everyone will receive a copy. The goal is for your story to influence the work and teaching of others in and out of class.

Tentative Schedule:

Date

Topic(s)

Read before this day:

In-class work

Assignment due today:

Week 1

8/28

Welcome!

Installation 1

8/30

Reorienting ourselves to teaching and learning in context

Strachota Ch 1-3

Installation 2

Prep for 9/4

Come with materials/questions for Installation 2

Week 2 9/4	Scope & Sequence Getting to know your students	Philadelphia Scope & Sequence handouts	Expedition 1 How to interview Interpreting Scope & Sequence	Audit due
9/6	Scope & Sequence Finding youth’s real questions	10 Funda-mental truths about learning handout Philadelphia Scope & Sequence handouts	Planning for Edmonds Expedition Reports Further interview planning	Expedition 1 reports
Week 3 9/9 Edmonds Day	Understanding our School		Meet the teachers/ observations Neighborhood Expedition 2 Design room	Come prepared to document your expedition Audit due
9/11	What is a math/science question?	Gallas, Part II Manchester handout	Expedition 2 reports	Expedition 2 report
9/13	Moving from question to inquiry	Gallas, Part III & Ch. 1	Planning for Edmonds	Take the reading and think of specific ideas for how to begin working with the students
Week 4 ~~9/16~~	NO CLASS			Audit due
9/18 Edmonds Day	Meeting the students		Identifying math/science questions with students	Come prepared with materials to facilitate an authentic meeting
9/20	Learning with children	Strachota Ch. 4-6	Connect Strachota to your meeting at Edmonds	Your meeting should be documented in your portfolio – bring your portfolio to class, as always
Week 5 9/23 Edmonds Day	Using student interests to create the issue		Media grp 1	Audit due
9/25	Project guidelines/criteria	Parker handout (ch.4)	Creating guidelines & criteria for effective inquiries
9/27	Workshopping the issue/inquiry		Planning for Edmonds Information on student teaching	Portfolio due
Week 6 9/30 Edmonds Day	Creating the issue with students		Media grp. 1	Audit due
10/2	Horizon: toward 12/11	Moon & Schulman 7 & 8
10/4	The futility of trying to teach everything Resisting/utilizing scope & sequence	Wiggins handout 1	Edmonds Planning I/R swapping	Bring copies of I/R work to share

Week 7 10/7 Edmonds Day	Design project		Media grp. 2	Media 1 presentation Audit due
10/9	Assessment	Moon & Schulman 4,5
10/11	Return of the scope and sequence	Burns, About Teaching Mathematics	Edmonds Planning	Come prepared to make Burns relevant to your inquiry
Week 8 10/14 – at Arcadia (Edmonds closed)	Responding to assessment	Strachota, Ch. 7; Sapon-Shavin, Ch. 5	Minilessons, workshop, clinics	What do your students need and want to learn? Come prepared to discuss this. Audit due
10/16	How are your students talking & working mathematically/ scientifically?	Moon & Schulman Ch 6; Wiggins handout 2	Planning for the 18^th	Come prepared with documentation/examples of your students talking/working mathematically/ scientifically
10/18	Student initiated class		Edmonds Planning	Portfolio due
Week 9 10/21 Edmonds Day	Doing the Project		Media grp 2 Minilessons, workshops, clinics	Audit due
10/23 Edmonds Day	Doing the Project		Media grp3
10/25 Not meeting as a class	Expedition day		Personal Choice Expedition Out of Class Edmonds Planning for Monday
Week 10 10/28 Edmonds Day	Doing the Project		Media grp 3 Minilessons, workshops, clinics	Media 2 presentation due Audit due
10/30 Edmonds Day	Doing the Project		Media grp 4 Minilessons, workshops, clinics
11/1	Looking back and looking forward to how to perform what we are learning	Performance Handout	Edmonds Planning Share personal choice expeditions I/R swapping	Bring copies of I/R work to share Bring in a one-pager on how you used personal choice expedition for the Edmonds Students’ inquiry
Week 11 11/4 Edmonds Day	Create performance		Media grp.4 Minilessons, workshop, clinics	Media grp 3 presentation due Audit due
11/6	How are your students talking & working mathematically/ scientifically? 2	Moon & Schulman Ch 9 & 10	Planning for 11/8
11/8	Student initiated class		Edmonds Planning	Portfolio due

Week 12 11/11 Edmonds Day	Create Performance		Media grp. 5 Minilessons, workshops, clinics	Media grp. 4 presentation due Audit due
11/13 Edmonds Day	Create Performance		Media grp. 5
11/15 .	Your intellectual/ pedagogical journey through this course 1	Armstrong handout	Edmonds Planning	How do Armstrong, Strachota, Gallas, and Parker construct their stories?
Week 13 Edmonds Day	The Performance!			Audit due
11/20 Edmonds Day	Student/Performer Assessment		Plan with students for audience debrief	Come prepared to facilitate this assessment event
11/22	Your intellectual/ pedagogical journey 2	Osborne handout	Edmonds Planning: preparing for debriefing Workshop for working draft of story Conversation on what would have been better guidelines/criteria?	Bring in a working draft, with copies, to workshop
Week 14 11/25 Edmonds Day	Archaeology		Audience Debrief	Media grp. 5 presentation due Audit due
~~11/27 and 11/29~~	Thanksgiving		Edmonds Planning
Week 15 12/2 Last Edmonds Day	Archaeology			Audit due Come prepared to say goodbye and thank you
12/4	Your intellectual/ pedagogical journey 3	Duckworth handout	Workshop on story of the journey: clarifying variations on your theme	Bring a working draft, with copies, of your journey Bring I/R requests
12/6	Student initiated class		I/R swapping	Portfolio due Come with copies of I/R work for swapping
Week 16 12/9	Envisioning the future (Student Teaching and beyond)			Final Course audit due
TBA	Performance to be scheduled
12/11 or 12/13	Exam Period			Portfolio due Journey due