Be Where Your Students Are
In my experience, a quick way to summarize how to be an effective teacher is this: Be where your students are. For three years, I taught math to English learners in 6th through 8th grade who started the year at the beginning level of proficiency in the language of instruction. In addition, my students came from many different countries with widely varying background knowledge in math. To be effective, I had to give my student the foundational skills – both English language skills and math skills - they needed first.
We started out the year learning how to say numbers in English. That’s not part of the 6th, 7th or 8th grade math curriculum in Virginia. But while few of my students knew how to say numbers correctly in English, they all knew there was a correct way. Without this ability, they were reluctant to speak and therefore could not participate meaningfully in the partner and small group work that is essential for developing both language and math skills. Not taking the time to help my students feel comfortable talking in math class would have handicapped them for the rest of the school year – and beyond!
One of the goals of middle school math classes - whether acknowledged or not – is to prepare students for algebra. I shared this goal for my students but I knew I had to follow a different path. After helping my students learn to say whole numbers correctly, we moved on to fractions and decimals. I taught the vocabulary of math operations (words like addend, product and quotient) in the context of fractions. This served a dual purpose – to learn the language of math operations and to review a core competency needed for later success in algebra – operations with fractions.
Another decision I made was to spend significantly more time on integer operations than the pacing guide for each grade recommended. The reason was the same – fluency with integer operations is a prerequisite for success in algebra. I knew that my English learners would need to use manipulatives (red and yellow integer tiles) and visual models to master integer operations. As I introduced these tools, I realized that students needed lots of time to learn how to use the tiles and later how to “read” the visual models. All too often, in the regular math classes I co-taught, the pacing guide pushed teachers to move on before many students were comfortable with these tools. The test problems with visual models were no easier for the students because they never became truly proficient in understanding and interpreting the images.
Under pressure from the pacing guide, teachers often try to substitute formulas for proficiency. In the case of integer operations, I had a number of students tell me that two negatives make a positive. While that’s true for multiplication, it’s not true for addition – and that’s where many students tried to apply it. Giving students a shortcut without the deep understanding that would allow them to apply it correctly is simply educational malpractice.
English learners truly face twice the work. They have to learn the subject as well as the language of that subject. Do educators truly expect students to do twice the work in the same amount of time? In our hearts, we know this is just not possible. I chose to be where my students were, taking the time to give my students the deepest possible understanding of a smaller number of important topics. I feel like all my students benefited from this approach. In addition, I did have a number of admittedly hard-working students go directly and successfully to algebra after one year of learning English. But to get these students to algebra, I had to start where they were!
