How Do You “Try Stuff?”

Posted: August 2nd, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 2 Comments »

Most curriculum writers are not full-time curriculum writers.  They’re full-time teachers, and part of their job is to create lesson plans, classwork, etc.

This has its challenges.  Millions of teachers are re-creating the wheel: many spending a few hours each day creating yet another lesson on, say, how to find area of a triangle.  It’s inefficient.

This has its benefits.  Curriculum is created with specific kids in mind, and with an eye towards “teacher reality.”  A lot of published curriculum feels “unnatural” to teachers.

Full-time curriculum writers have more time to think about what lessons should look and sound like.  What kids should do.  What teachers should do.  So one would think a lesson that took 10 hours to plan might > a lesson about the same topic which took 2 hours.

However….

It’s easy to get “stuck” in a theoretical world.  The full-time curriculum writer is not usually around kids all day.  She makes up stuff in her head.  Makes sense to her.  Then the curriculum hits real life, and all kinds of unpredictable “little things” happen.

So how does this apply to our team?

Sean, our math curriculum director, has an idea.  Could be good.  Could be bad.  How does he find out before essentially sending it out to hundreds of math teachers?

Obvious answer would be – try it with real kiddos.  This presents many logistical challenges.  He’s usually in Boston.  But last week, in Kenya, he tried out an idea.

The idea?

Imagine a normal math class that you had growing up.  Typically the teacher explains something by solving a problem on the chalkboard.  How to find area of triangle.  How to find the slope of a line.

Next, the teacher works through an example problem (or several) while calling on kids to answer questions.

Finally, kids get their own problems to work on.

I do, we do, you do.

Sean wants to try a different “template” for class.  The “I Do” in a lot of developing nations goes on waaaaay too long.

So instead of allowing the teacher to explain stuff — which can go a long time — kids independently read how to do example problems.  These are math problems where the steps are clearly explained.  The teacher doesn’t stand in the front and explain.  Instead, she circulates and looks over kids’ shoulders.  Gives feedback, encourages, corrects.  All while kids bang out some practice problems.

The format essentially becomes: I Do, We Do, You Do.  “You” = Kids.

So Sean tried this lesson format at the Bridge Academy in Ongata Rongai (outside Nairobi) last week.  Seemed to work well.  Our colleague Alex gave his some suggestions on how to improve, and it went even better.

But now Sean is back in Boston.  How to try stuff?

 

We have a plan.  We’ll have a single school or two which we designate to try out things like this.  Remember, teachers try new things all the time.  All teachers.  Those that attack researchers for “experimenting on the kids” are often silly…..if “trying something new” equals “experimenting on the kids” than all teachers are guilty.

Our plan, though, is not teachers are asked to try things on their own.  We’ll have a dedicated staffer (Innovation Manager) whose sole job is to help other teachers try new things, and also to measure if those “new things” work well.  We want to fail fast.

I haven’t hired that person yet, but soon.

That’s not good enough for Sean.  He’s impatient to learn more about what happens with his lesson plan structure.

So Sean got his brother Dan to try his lesson format.  Dan teaches in New York City, at a high-poverty, open-admissions inner-city high school.

Now Dan adjusted the experiment.  We’ve noticed that Kenyan kids tend to “try harder” than American kids in our tiny little foray.  We may be wrong about that, that generalization may be wrong, but that was our impression, and collectively our team has spent time in Houston, Denver, Chicago, NYC, Providence, Boston and beyond.

So Dan chose New York City students who were “unusually good at concentrating,” to best approximate our Bridge experience.  Then Dan taught a lesson similar to Sean’s.  He gave almost no lecture on math, immediately tasked students with reading step-by-step example problems instead, and then circulated and gave feedback as they banged out practice problems.

Dan’s reaction? “Wow!  Worked well!”

That was a clever way to “try stuff.”  Get your brother involved.  Nice.

Next step?  Sean will meet with Jon Star, a Harvard scholar who’s an advocate of this teaching approach.  We want to refine the idea, and then test it more.

Final thought.  An unusual challenge for us?  Printing costs.  Remember, Kenyan parents at Bridge Academies pay $5 per month tuition.  That’s the whole funding stream.  No fundraising.  No gov’t subsidy.

We could raise price.  But if we raise price, then we’re imposing costs on the same poor families we’re trying to help in the first place.  It’s not like their choice is cable TV bill or school.  It’s food or school.  We’re reluctant to raise the price to pay for more materials.

So every penny (literally) matters.  We use most of the $5 per month to pay teacher salaries.  80% actually.  We pay teachers more than most private schools serving the very poor (though by US standards it’s very low).  As a result, there’s little money left for books and paper.  And this form of math teaching uses up more paper, less chalkboard.

As someone who’s been running a charter school in Boston, where charters get roughly $15,000 per pupil per year (and the district spends roughly $18,000 per pupil per year), I am struggling to get my mind around $60 per pupil per year.

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