This blog is about trying to design a great math classroom, and all that goes into it. I’ll also share some of my thoughts about the greater struggles facing education in the country.

This is my second year teaching, I spent my first year at an alternative school that gave me many classroom management tools, but did not leave me free to design or plan my ideal classroom. Since this year I’m teaching only two preps, 8th Grade math and Algebra 1, I am going to try to put some of my ideas into practice.

Teaching and learning is of course an intimate experience. And to some extent we all feel like we have opinions about it, since everyone has spent at least 12 years in a classroom looking at all sorts of teaching styles. So I’m going to have lots of influences designing this year. However, primarily I’m trying to build a classroom out of the principles found in the following books:

Teach Like a Champion - Henceforth known as TLC, but with creeping or waterfalls. A fantastic book for first year teachers. Concrete, helpful techniques to help you make your class work like you want it too.

Connecting Mathematical Ideas - Henceforth known as the orange book. More theory based. This book emphasizes the importance of classroom norms in creating good and valuable math discussions. Less practical than some of the other books, but the clips in here show me what I want my class to look like.

Designing Groupwork - The yellow book. Curriculums like CMP and CPM use a lot of groupwork, without ever explaining how to make that successful. Cohen both lays the groundwork for why groupwork is important for equity in classrooms, and give concrete tasks teachers and students can to to help set up positive groupwork norms.

Implementing Standards-Based Mathematics Instruction - The purple book. Another great theory book. It gives a framework to analyze student learning: memorization tasks, procedures without connections, procedures with connections, and doing actual mathematics. Like the orange book, it is more about setting high standards and point new teachers where they should be going, than giving practical advice.

Secondary Algebra Education - the Freudenthal Institute put this book together, they are a research institute in the Nederlands who have done extensive study into Algebra Education, this book is the laymen’s access to that research. It came to my attention because several Professors and grad students at the Portland State math ed department were very excited about it. I think this will probably have the least immediate impact on my class, but just generally increase my understanding, which always helps.

Two packets I got from my classroom management professor, who was great, and is currently working on a book on the same topic. They are designed around getting students to buy in and participate in class. Concrete ways to make productive class communication and problem solving a part of your classroom.

Of course all these texts are just for me to try to determine what my class and classroom looks like. I will be teaching the Connected Math and CPM curriculum.

So if you are interested in someone struggling their way through a new teaching assignment, and seeing all the ideas that pop up, what makes it into class and what lands on the floor, please join me.