This is one of my first posts of the 2022-23 school year, so it should be pretty insightful, right? Or maybe it’s just the same old advice.

So teachers, if things aren’t going your way, try to be reflective. PSU Professor Charlie Cornwall always said we must continually explicate the obvious for young people, so here I go again. The three things students must do in math are (or in any cognitively intense subject area):

1. Plug in,
2. Practice, and
3. Persevere

I call them the three P’s. Let’s dive deeper!

1. Plug in.

The school day is long. Students are in chairs for 7 1/2 hours. Excluding lunch, they are “on” 7 of those hours. But is 7 hours any longer than students will have to be “on” once they start adulting?

It has been said that the Pennsylvania curricula are a mile wide and an inch deep; mathematics is certainly no exception. So for around 40 of those minutes of math class are very important! In fact, the stakes for tested subjects like math, science, and language arts are intense. Because each school year begins with an administrative thrubbing of teachers via state test score results, class time is just as intense (if not more) for teachers.

Convincing students to pay attention in our major subjects can be a tall order. Are they talking when the teacher is teaching? (Which BTW is disrespectful wherever you’re from!) Are they “secretly” texting? (They’re not as sly as they think.) Are they engaged? Plugging in to these subjects is key.

Let’s be honest with ourselves… Adolescents are quick to blame others for their woes when it is they who are doing themselves in. But it all starts with classroom engagement.

We need to be as creative as we can be while covering the essential content. But in the end, we are not entertainers. We’re educators.

2. Practice.

Author Malcolm Gladwell famously detailed the need for deliberate practice to achieve mastery in his best-selling book Outliers. His research reveals the number one thing that differentiates masters in a discipline from those who languish is the total number of hours of deliberate practice. If one student is doing better in Algebra than a another students, you better believe the former has practiced more than the latter.

Truly, doing assignments is the “secret sauce” to achievement. And be on guard for the “one-and-done-willy.” The answers are in the back of the book. Encourage checking them. When an answer is wrong, encourage trying it again, checking the notes, caucusing with a classmate, etc. Learning does not occur by just changing the answer. Copying isn’t learning, and it’s a recipe for failure. Learning will not occur without cognitive engagement. Learning is a verb; it’s something students do. It doesn’t happen to them by being present in a classroom.

3. Persevere.

In the 21st century, most teachers allow students to have access to their Artifact Portfolio – your notebook – during tests. Unfortunately, to the vast majority of struggling students, this equates to “no need to study.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. When an advanced student who is allowed to use notes can’t finish a test in one class period (that the teacher made a key for in five minutes), you better believe that the students doesn’t study his or her notes on a regular basis. Students cannot teach themselves the content during the test; they’ll run out of time.

Having said that, doing every problem every day on every assignment (Reason #2) eliminates much of the need to even need the security blanket of the notebook, but that’s another post.

When students aren’t “given” the grade they think they deserve, they run the risk of quitting. Earning There are now all sorts of formulas that suggest which students are at risk of dropping out.

Until next time…

Remember that success is a planned event. Believe in yourself.

Pay attention, do the work, and don’t give up!

And don’t forget to check out my new YouTube channel!

www.youtube.com/@PlanetNumeracy

Remember that success is a planned event. Believe in yourself.

Pay attention, do the work, and don’t give up!

And don’t forget to check out my new YouTube channel!

www.youtube.com/@PlanetNumeracy