To: Wissahickon School District Director of Teaching and Learning
From: Jesse Dannin
September 9, 2021
Re: Innovation Proposal for Secondary Mathematics
Dear (Blank),
Over the last two school years education as we know it has been flipped upside down. The COVID-19 pandemic, while putting students and teachers alike in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar position, has shown what we are capable of when backed in a corner. As the world slowly approaches normalcy, we cannot let ourselves simply forget all the new strategies we implemented over the past two years, whether synchronous, asynchronous, virtual, or hybrid. Wissahickon is widely known across the Delaware Valley as forward thinking; and as a one-to-one district, we must take advantage of the resources we have available to us.
Our recent curriculum review and new textbook choices have us teaching a rigid and traditional way of secondary mathematics, ranging from Algebra 1 to Calculus. As a department we consistently work to maintain the rigor of our instruction while developing the problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills of our students. However, too often it is not feasible to appropriately develop these skills due to the strict deadlines we follow of summative assessments, midterm exams, and final exams.
I am proposing we adopt a blended learning model for mathematics at the secondary level. An overlying theme that we discuss at district in-services is meeting students where they are. This is particularly important with the anticipated deficits that we assume we will be seeing as students return to the classroom after the inconsistencies of the last two years. The blended learning model will provide students with the flexibility of developing the prerequisite skills appropriately prior to moving on to new concepts. Additionally, the flexibility will allow for students to work in smaller groups more consistently with one another as well as with the teacher, thus developing collaboration skills. A shift to a deeper understanding of content rather than simply being able to replicate a procedure will come as students have more opportunities to apply concepts to real-life scenarios with web-based projects as assessments rather than formal summative assessments.
Our students and teachers at Wissahickon are well versed with our course management system, Schoology, which will allow teachers to push out necessary materials to our students in a blended learning model. Our staff is made up of open-minded teachers who are willing to face a challenge head on. As a district, we are no stranger to piloting new things and have seen the impact some of these have had on education in our schools. There are countless resources available on the internet that will avoid teachers having to reinvent the wheel and will allow more time to be spent interacting with authentic learning with our students. In a station rotation model, two familiar websites such Khan Academy, which has revolutionized student driven mathematics education, and Desmos, which provides visuals/manipulatives we never could have imaged five years ago, can change the way students learn/see mathematics.
Michael B. Horn and Heather Straker discuss in their book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools the opportunities that teachers are provided with in a blended learning setting to both motivate and give students the keys to drive their instruction. Again, we are in a rare position where we can take the previous two years of education and use them to our benefit. From March to June of the 2019-2020 school year, we were forced to teach all our lessons asynchronously and students were expected to move through the remaining content at their own pace. Both students and teachers adapted. During the 2020-2021 school year we taught synchronous lessons, but roughly a third of students were in school, a third were hybrid, and third were fully virtual, and again, we adapted.
The Wissahickon community has shown what it is capable of, and we owe it to our staff and students to ensure we are keeping up with where education is going. The traditional approach to teaching will soon be obsolete and the blending learning model is the next step in the evolution. I look forward to discussing this further and determining what piloting paths would be most appropriate. Please let me know when you are available to meet.
Thank you,
Jesse Dannin
Wissahickon High School
Mathematics Teacher
References:
Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2017). Blended: using disruptive innovation to improve schools. Jossey-Bass.
