Connection: a fundamental path to engagement and learning in the Middles
Last week I was given the opportunity to attend the AISNE DEI Conference. Every session I went to was fantastic and I’m still processing. On the second morning, I went to a storytelling session. We were given 5 minutes to think of a story to share with another person in the session. This felt like an impossible task to me until I started thinking about pivotal moments in my teaching career. While this story is not polished, here is what I shared:
It’s November 2nd during my first year of being a full-time classroom teacher. I was feeling overwhelmed by everything and teaching math was just about the only thing I felt confident in. Except there was one student that just wasn’t participating in math. They would take breaks from the classroom, hide in corners, or just simply refuse to pick up a pencil and write down a number.
With report writing on the horizon, I decided to reach out to this student’s parents and ask for some help. Their parent was a teacher so I was pretty sure that she would be sympathetic to my case. So on a Wednesday afternoon, I wrote an email asking the student’s parent if they had any idea how I could support their child in engaging in math. Their parent responded almost immediately and asked if we could have a phone call.
We played a little bit of phone tag, and when we finally connected I was in my car. My palms were sweating as I answered. This was my first time (ever) talking to a parent on the phone about their child. Again, this parent was a teacher so I was pretty sure this was going to be a straightforward conversation.
I answered their call and dove into some of the behaviors we were seeing. I finished by asking if they had any ideas about how I could get their child to engage in math class. I think I was expecting the parent to say something like, “I’ll talk to them and let them know they have to participate and listen to their teachers”. Instead, they responded with, “Thanks for sharing. I talked with my child about this and they said that you’re a little bit scary and they’re intimidated by you. I wonder if you’ve considered spending some time getting to know them? I think that will help them feel comfortable engaging in math with you”
I was floored. I was angry, and sad, and hurt. I thanked them for the feedback and got off the phone as quickly as possible. I made a quick right into the Walgreens parking lot on Federal Street and started sobbing. How could they not see how hard I was trying? How could they expect me to do more when I was already so overwhelmed by all of the work?
After a solid 15 minutes of crying, I drove home feeling defeated. While driving, my thoughts slowly turned from “how could they?” to “Okay maybe they’re onto something”... And of course they were. It’s sometimes easy to forget that relationships are the most important part of teaching. It wasn’t my conversation with a parent that inspired this student to engage in math. It was the building of a relationship with them, the trust that grows with time. Incorporating this student's favorite number, 444, into our math warm-ups, helped them see themself as a math learner. Our hands-on, manipulative-rich work with fractions sparked their curiosity in mathematical representations. Chatting with them about philosophy, media exposure, and our mutual love of stories during Woods time allowed us to know each other outside of the classroom. All of these moments worked together to build a comfort that allowed this student to not only engage in math, but also enjoy it and enthusiastically participate in math class.
Over the next two years, some of my best mathematical conversations were with this student. My favorite was the time they were so excited to talk math with me that we didn’t even make it into the classroom. They taught me how a base 7 number system works while standing in the hallway.
Today I feel a deep sense of gratitude toward the parent who stuck up for their child and helped remind me that relationships always come before learning.
