**Long Post Alert**
If you think of the word interview and the words ‘nervous’, ‘scary’, ‘dread’, ‘boring’ or any of those come to your mind, it is clear that you have probably not had an interview at Sparkling Mindz Global School. At SM, we have a learning area called ‘LIFE’, short for Learning Is Forever and Everywhere, and we take that very seriously. Even an interview is a learning experience for both, the interviewer and the interviewee. In the beginning of April, we had an interview which led to the resolution of deep-seated beliefs about the learning of math for one of the facilitators who was part of the interview team. It was also a refreshing experience for the interviewee, S, who saw math and math anxiety in a whole new light. As if this was not enough, all the people involved in the interview also had an ‘aha’ moment about maths during the interview!
The interviewee, S, writes:
Expect the Unexpected
“Expect the unexpected” that’s exactly what you should expect in Sparkling Mindz. And I had my first such experience in my Interview itself!!!
I had to do a demo session on Parallel lines for 4-6th graders... After the 1st demo session, I had a few comments as the areas of improvement and then the very next day I had to redo the session.
All the feedback was explained well with examples and the need for making the specific changes. I was able to relate to them and understood how to implement the same. With all those inputs and a quick connect with one of the facilitators helped me to gather my thoughts and structure my day 2.
All Set!!
My session was now on an overarching umbrella - Lines... the students were a mix of those liking math, those not liking, some knowing some of the topic, some not knowing much of it......But when I started, each one of them was enthused and excited, because I asked them to draw their favourite imaginary toy!!
That’s how we started “the lines” After putting their imaginary toys on the paper, talking about them a little.... It was the moment I introduced the lines – vertical, horizontal, slanting...
Then I brought in the second line!!
So while explaining the parallel lines, One of them called out-
“Ma’am are all HORIZONTAL LINES Parallel lines?
Woooohhhhhhoooo!!! that was the Aahaaaaa moment!!
It was exciting... the student discovered something so did I... And so did my interviewer who was silently watching all that was happening in the session!!
All VERTICAL LINES are PARALLEL lines too!!! The joy and the pride on the face of the student for being able to say something so important was satisfying and is unexplainable in words for me.......It was not a part of my script....
While there will be those difficult questions that the I would not have thought thru during the preps and may throw me completely off track, I realised at that moment, there will also be THESE moments when I will discover many the wonderful things with children!!!And that’s what all the hard work will be worth for!
The Facilitator, P, writes:
The Class in which I found math (and the ball found it’s lines)
As I sat for the second math class of my adult life, I was not sure if history was going to repeat itself. Well, it had already repeated itself yesterday, when in the middle of the class a veil fell upon me. The old familiar veil of ‘I can never get this’. Now this is a transparent veil, and it is difficult to spot it. Also this is a layered veil. It is made up of many emotions and thoughts, like: ‘I hate this’, ‘I am not getting this so this must not be worth getting’, ‘But the others are getting it so maybe it is worth getting but I lack the ability to get it’. Between all of these though, and the most difficult one to spot, is ‘I want to get this!’
This veil has often been the reason I have had a strange relationship with math. As I write ‘have had’ in the past tense, I realize that an opening has been made and I have a chance to open the veil and look through in some way.
So, what made the unimaginable happen?
This was a repeat of the class on parallel lines conducted by one of the interviewees, S at SM. Just yesterday, I thought parallel lines are a farce, an illusionary concept that does not exist in life. I gave a lot of feedback during and after class to the interviewee with the view that another child shouldn’t ever sit through a math class and feel anxious like I did, another child shouldn’t have to face the veil and be helpless about it and if I could do anything to change how a child might feel in a math class I’d do it. So, today again, despite my meltdown and math anxiety, I went with an open mind. Let me give the person a chance, let the person use the feedback that was given by us to account for the emotions of students, look at the big picture of a concept and not just narrowly look at parallel lines, define and establish purpose and connect for the students etc. - I went to try and understand what lines are, what line segments are. I told myself let me not be that student in the English class who, in the middle of a very evocative poem, asks,“but how can the moon talk!?”...It can’t, but the poem does not mean to say the moon is talking literally, it is a representation, a symbol, a form. So I thought let me not break apart the form of mathematics. Let me stick to the piece of paper, to line segments and see what unfolds. Little did I know that a lot was going to unfold.
The interviewee had taken the feedback well and planned a very different class. At the outset, we were asked to draw an imaginary toy and I drew a ball. Why did I draw a ball when I could have easily drawn something with straightforward lines on it? Well, partly to test mathematics, and partly because well: I think it was just to test mathematics.
“Oh! You say lines are everywhere. This is my ball, where are your lines?”
“A circle is a curved line.”
Okay, I melt a little bit.
If you think of the word interview and the words ‘nervous’, ‘scary’, ‘dread’, ‘boring’ or any of those come to your mind, it is clear that you have probably not had an interview at Sparkling Mindz Global School. At SM, we have a learning area called ‘LIFE’, short for Learning Is Forever and Everywhere, and we take that very seriously. Even an interview is a learning experience for both, the interviewer and the interviewee. In the beginning of April, we had an interview which led to the resolution of deep-seated beliefs about the learning of math for one of the facilitators who was part of the interview team. It was also a refreshing experience for the interviewee, S, who saw math and math anxiety in a whole new light. As if this was not enough, all the people involved in the interview also had an ‘aha’ moment about maths during the interview!
The interviewee, S, writes:
Expect the Unexpected
“Expect the unexpected” that’s exactly what you should expect in Sparkling Mindz. And I had my first such experience in my Interview itself!!!
I had to do a demo session on Parallel lines for 4-6th graders... After the 1st demo session, I had a few comments as the areas of improvement and then the very next day I had to redo the session.
All the feedback was explained well with examples and the need for making the specific changes. I was able to relate to them and understood how to implement the same. With all those inputs and a quick connect with one of the facilitators helped me to gather my thoughts and structure my day 2.
All Set!!
My session was now on an overarching umbrella - Lines... the students were a mix of those liking math, those not liking, some knowing some of the topic, some not knowing much of it......But when I started, each one of them was enthused and excited, because I asked them to draw their favourite imaginary toy!!
That’s how we started “the lines” After putting their imaginary toys on the paper, talking about them a little.... It was the moment I introduced the lines – vertical, horizontal, slanting...
Then I brought in the second line!!
So while explaining the parallel lines, One of them called out-
“Ma’am are all HORIZONTAL LINES Parallel lines?
Woooohhhhhhoooo!!! that was the Aahaaaaa moment!!
It was exciting... the student discovered something so did I... And so did my interviewer who was silently watching all that was happening in the session!!
All VERTICAL LINES are PARALLEL lines too!!! The joy and the pride on the face of the student for being able to say something so important was satisfying and is unexplainable in words for me.......It was not a part of my script....
While there will be those difficult questions that the I would not have thought thru during the preps and may throw me completely off track, I realised at that moment, there will also be THESE moments when I will discover many the wonderful things with children!!!And that’s what all the hard work will be worth for!
The Facilitator, P, writes:
The Class in which I found math (and the ball found it’s lines)
As I sat for the second math class of my adult life, I was not sure if history was going to repeat itself. Well, it had already repeated itself yesterday, when in the middle of the class a veil fell upon me. The old familiar veil of ‘I can never get this’. Now this is a transparent veil, and it is difficult to spot it. Also this is a layered veil. It is made up of many emotions and thoughts, like: ‘I hate this’, ‘I am not getting this so this must not be worth getting’, ‘But the others are getting it so maybe it is worth getting but I lack the ability to get it’. Between all of these though, and the most difficult one to spot, is ‘I want to get this!’
This veil has often been the reason I have had a strange relationship with math. As I write ‘have had’ in the past tense, I realize that an opening has been made and I have a chance to open the veil and look through in some way.
So, what made the unimaginable happen?
This was a repeat of the class on parallel lines conducted by one of the interviewees, S at SM. Just yesterday, I thought parallel lines are a farce, an illusionary concept that does not exist in life. I gave a lot of feedback during and after class to the interviewee with the view that another child shouldn’t ever sit through a math class and feel anxious like I did, another child shouldn’t have to face the veil and be helpless about it and if I could do anything to change how a child might feel in a math class I’d do it. So, today again, despite my meltdown and math anxiety, I went with an open mind. Let me give the person a chance, let the person use the feedback that was given by us to account for the emotions of students, look at the big picture of a concept and not just narrowly look at parallel lines, define and establish purpose and connect for the students etc. - I went to try and understand what lines are, what line segments are. I told myself let me not be that student in the English class who, in the middle of a very evocative poem, asks,“but how can the moon talk!?”...It can’t, but the poem does not mean to say the moon is talking literally, it is a representation, a symbol, a form. So I thought let me not break apart the form of mathematics. Let me stick to the piece of paper, to line segments and see what unfolds. Little did I know that a lot was going to unfold.
The interviewee had taken the feedback well and planned a very different class. At the outset, we were asked to draw an imaginary toy and I drew a ball. Why did I draw a ball when I could have easily drawn something with straightforward lines on it? Well, partly to test mathematics, and partly because well: I think it was just to test mathematics.
“Oh! You say lines are everywhere. This is my ball, where are your lines?”
“A circle is a curved line.”
Okay, I melt a little bit.
But where are there parallel lines on the circle? She turns this time and addresses my question. I tell her that my lines meet. They are not parallel. She shows me how that is a point of intersection. I’m wowed! I opened up a new word in the class. That felt good. So, while everybody else was busy coloring their parallel lines red and their perpendicular lines blue I introduced points of intersections because of my drawing and everyone started looking for them in theirs too.
Aah! There you go! Isn’t there a point of intersection on your circle? The point on top where all the circles meet. Yes! So I get to colour a little blue dot on my drawing as well. It’s not a lot, but to the thirsty even a drop will do. A dot will do. I will stay. I will listen further. I will try. I will give you another chance.
“But Ma’am, where are the lines (parallel, perpendicular or any other) on my circle!?”
Hmmm…
The teacher tries to show me how the curved lines on my ball are a part of a circle in 3D (but she parks it saying we will open it in another class. I let it go too). But, I insist on seeing parallel lines in my circle and she draws two circles - one within the other and says that concentric circles can be considered to be parallel. I’m even more wowed now.
Another student M (this one seems to get math like the back of his palm), draws an out of the world toy with parallel lines thrown all over! This line to that, that line to this!
The vertical lines, in green, are parallel to each other. The horizontal lines, in purple, are parallel to each other.
Then, someone spots two lines far away from each other which are seemingly parallel. We all join all the line segments by stretching them further on both sides. They all seem to be parallel to each other. It was just not visible before! I am glued. This can be the moment when math will fall on its face. And I have this mixed impulse. If it falls I will be happy, in a very narrow, limited unresourceful way. I think I want it to fall on its face and embarrass itself. Because, if math falls then I can safely believe that “oh, so it was not me that was stupid’. But, what I do not accept or even perhaps see fully in the moment, is this -
What I really want is for math to fly! Not fall, but take off from that page and fly. Where I want to be is on math’s side, and under its wing. The other side of the impulse is actually to fly. And I am suspended, waiting for math to give me the cue and for my teacher to pick it up.
And it does! And she does!
We join all these lines and see how all the vertical lines are parallel and all the horizontal lines and parallel and all the slanting lines are parallel. And then it happens! I utter the words: “So, ALL horizontal lines are parallel!?” And the teacher, she flies along, she does not want to bring us back to this paper, this line segment, this class, this objective, this girl who doesn’t know, that boy who is acting smart. No. She does none of it. She takes my invitation and says, ‘Oh yes! Poorva! All horizontal lines are parallel”. And she and me and all the other students are now suspended together, under math’s wing! It feels extraordinary. I push even further, “So, ALL horizontal lines are parallel, ALL vertical lines are parallel and ALL slanting lines are parallel”. However, in my eagerness to fly I have lost a little bit of grounding. The teacher steps in: ALL horizontal lines are parallel, yes. ALL vertical lines are parallel, yes. But all slanting lines are not parallel. WHAT! I feel that small anger coming back. Please don’t take this away.
Picture of slanting lines
But she shows how all slanting lines cannot be parallel.
Yes, I accept. And it is okay. I remember, to fly doesn’t mean you have to leave all connections to the ground. Yes, there is creative liberty but words are still words and a poem is still a poem and the moon can talk but its words better have the right spellings. That is important too. I respect my teacher for holding that ground without taking away the flight.
After the class is over, everyone feels like they discovered something about math today, including S, the interviewee. As for me, I think I altered my stance with math after this class. I changed my question from, “Where are your lines?” to “Where can I find lines?”
But she shows how all slanting lines cannot be parallel.
Yes, I accept. And it is okay. I remember, to fly doesn’t mean you have to leave all connections to the ground. Yes, there is creative liberty but words are still words and a poem is still a poem and the moon can talk but its words better have the right spellings. That is important too. I respect my teacher for holding that ground without taking away the flight.
After the class is over, everyone feels like they discovered something about math today, including S, the interviewee. As for me, I think I altered my stance with math after this class. I changed my question from, “Where are your lines?” to “Where can I find lines?”
My take home
And the ball? Well it found its lines too!
#sparklingmindzglobalpreschool
#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#youngachieversacademy
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#21stcenturylearning
#everychildcan
Contributed by Poorva Agarwal, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global School.
And the ball? Well it found its lines too!
#sparklingmindzglobalpreschool
#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#youngachieversacademy
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#21stcenturylearning
#everychildcan
Contributed by Poorva Agarwal, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global School.
RSS Feed