Dave Klanderman, who recently completed his term as president of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences, wrote a guest blog for the Christian Scholar’s Review. In it he offers a great apologetic for the ACMS that I could not agree with more. I encourage you to check out the blog post and then consider joining the ACMS, either purely as a member or in person at one of our conferences.
AP and the College Board have partnered with WE to bring WE’s internationally recognized service-based learning framework and resources to AP courses, so students can use what they’re learning to tackle real-life social issues and challenges.service-learning to the AP classroom. Microsoft hosted the inaugural AP with WE Service Teacher Summit at their headquarters in Redmond, WA, March 4-5, 2019.
This event was an opportunity for teachers to meet fellow AP teachers, strengthen their implementation of AP with WE Service, learn best practices, and hear from Microsoft staff. A total of 50 teachers were selected to attend.
What follows below is the outline of the presentation I was asked to give at the summit on cultivating student affections through service-learning. I hope to be able to share the video of the presentation soon.
My name is Josh Wilkerson and I teach AP Statistics. I also teach other math courses and as a math teacher there is one big question that I am often asked. You are probably asked it to in your other disciplines, but it is especially prevalent in math. The question usually is accompanied by the student having his kind of expression…
Help me out, what is the big question? (Audience: when am I ever going to use this?)
When am I ever going to use this (said in an exasperated way). It is never “When? When I am going to get to use this!?” (said in an excited way). Rather it is a dismissive question. Since we are at a conference on service-learning you might think you know where this is going. However, I hope to lead you in a slightly different direction. If we are honest with ourselves, how we respond to the student varies based on our mood at the time. In the best of scenarios we can give them a meaningful future application. In other scenarios we respond with how they will need the information for their next course, or more immediately, they’ll need it for the test next Tuesday.
I would like to pose to you that none of those answers are sufficient because, if we are being even more honest with ourselves, we know that the student isn’t really asking a question. The student is making a statement – a statement that they feel validates their disengagement from the lesson. I would also like to pose to you that if you were to translate their statement to an actual question it would be this…
Why should I value this? I would argue that this is the most fundamental question to address in any classroom, even (or especially) mathematics. If we respond to the student’s surface level application question with cognitive information we will always have a disconnect. The student is actually longing for affective formation – however you want to parse that, into motivation or engagement or attitude or something else. The main thing is it is more than just being about what they know.
This is not only true for students. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine a great moment in your teaching career – something where everything was clicking and you were thinking “this is why I got into teaching.” Give me a word or short phrase to describe the mental image you came up with (solicit audience responses).
Notice that none of you told me “pythagorean theorem,” or “Great Gatsby,” or “mitosis.” None of you gave me content. Now, to be sure, the content was still there and was still operating on a high cognitive level I’m sure. My point is to not to dismiss content, but to perhaps reorient us on the primary objective of a classroom.
These aren’t just our feelings. The importance of affect in education has been documented in research.
Not only in research, but also in positional standards. I have here a few in mathematics but I’m sure that you can find something similar for any discipline. So with all this agreement and support, how are we doing?
(Read slide). This quote is from 1992 but it is not dated. I know that it is not dated because, as I mentioned at the beginning, I’m a math teacher. Whenever I introduce myself to anyone and the topic of what I do for a living comes up, these are the number one responses I receive. Math teachers may be second only to priests in the number of confessions they take.
This is what keeps me up at night. This is what I want my classroom to address. How do we do that?
We don’t do it by changing content or even focusing on student beliefs – we do it through rich experiences. The experience of the math classroom needs to change.
THIS is where I think service-learning is powerful. Not as an answer to application, but as an answer to offering rich and meaningful experiences in the math classroom.
How are the affections of the student impacted when we change the experience of math class from this…
To this.
For the past three years my stats students have partnered with a local homeless ministry in Austin for survey research. Here is how they responded to a survey I gave them at the end of the year.
Transition through graphs – point to growth in content knowledge but then also appreciation.
Yes service learning is application – but it is so much more than that. Through service learning we can shift student postures to ones of self-service (when will I use this?) to the service of others. Ultimately their education is not just about them.
Let me close with some words from a student who began the year with a very negative attitude towards mathematics and that improved over the course of the service-learning project. I asked him about it and this is what he said.
(After first bullet) I like this quote because I’m also a realist – I’m not setting out to make everyone always enthusiastic about math. But there are steps we can take and I think this student took them.
(Read rest of slide)
Why should I value this? Because it will benefit me and it will benefit others.
Thank you.
This article first appeared on www.desiringGod.org.
Leslie Schmucker (@LeslieSchmucker) retired from public school teaching to create a special education program at Dayspring Christian Academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She and her husband Steve have three grown children and two grandchildren. She blogs at leslieschmucker.com.
Two weeks ago was my first day of school, for the fiftieth time — my thirty-second as an educator. Twenty-eight of those years I spent teaching in public school, and the last three in the Christian school where my husband and I sent our children.
Unlike many Christian schools, this particular one goes beyond tacking a few Bible classes onto their classical curriculum. Here, the Bible is the heart of the curriculum. Every day, in every subject, in every class, the students are taught that God is the Creator of every bit of information. Teaching at this school goes past merely imparting knowledge. The goal is to use the subjects as vehicles to behold the glory of Christ.
Of course, this is not revolutionary. Martin Luther asserted,
I am much afraid that schools will prove to be great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount.
A century later, on September 26, 1642, the founders of Harvard College in the Rules and Precepts at Harvard stated,
Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2, 3).
Even in our more recent American history, education’s goal was to foster a biblical worldview in its citizens, not only to lay biblical foundations for civic duty, but to educate biblically as a compass to lead children to the true north, Christ.
Noah Webster was named the Founding Father of American Scholarship and Education and “America’s Schoolmaster.” His famous Blue Back Speller was the fundamental reading book used by Colonial American children, along with the Bible, which was the primary textbook. Webster went on to write the incredible American Dictionary of the English Language, which was published in 1828. Webster’s 1828 is a massive and thorough volume of comprehensive definitions of English words and pervaded with Scripture. In it, he defines education this way:
The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.
Luther, Harvard’s founders, and Noah Webster could be so boldly Christ-centered because they knew the sciences existed to display the wonder, majesty, grandeur, minutiae, vastness, intricacy, opulence, and sublimity of creation, and the genius of the Creator. They recognized that history outlines God’s providence throughout the expanse of time. Nothing escapes his notice or his hand. Spurgeon said, “When we read human history, we should read it to see the finger of God in it.” Webster especially understood that studying language scrutinizes God’s primary way of communicating with humans, words (Hebrews 1:1–2). Teaching it should point students to the Word, who is Christ.
But what about math? Until my children went to Christian school, I had long declared a profound devotion to the hatred of math. But I have come to see that math is part of God’s character. There is no getting around it. Nothing you can see or think about is separate from math. God is a God of order, and math is the essence of that order. The day my second-grade daughter brought home an assignment to find a Bible verse pertaining to math was the day I rescinded that lifelong devotion to hating it.
To obtain knowledge of the world around us is to obtain knowledge of the character of God (Romans 1:19–20). To teach is to point our students to God and to lead them to give him the glory he deserves. Why do you think Jesus said that if his disciples kept quiet, even the rocks would cry out (Luke 19:40)? He knew that God’s creation is so spectacular that every inch of it declares his glory. We must show this to our children!
Noah Webster contended that this responsibility falls on the shoulders of parents, and, by extension, teachers. Even parents who send their children to public school are primarily responsible for making sure Christ is exalted in the things their children are learning.
So how do we do it when the amount of images and information that compete for our children’s attention is so staggering? It is practically incomprehensible to my generation. And as a teacher, it is a daunting task to teach my students anything new. There has been an added paradigm to the imparting of new knowledge. We now must teach students how to access and apply the knowledge that is at their fingertips every second. And much of that knowledge has been distorted, perverting the purity and beauty of God’s good creation.
As Christian teachers and parents, we are charged with the formidable task of showing our children that God is infinitely more beautiful than anything of the world. By our own strength — because of the enemy’s insidious, albeit God-sanctioned, rule in the carnal realm — this task is impossible. But as Jeremiah pointed out, nothing is too hard for God (Jeremiah 32:17).
We must pray with intention and deliberation for our children. We must get creative in our teaching, showing them Elohim, the Creator God. We must compel our students to see God’s glory in everything from a bumblebee to a tree to a skyscraper. We must lead them to an understanding of the quintessence of the old hymn,
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small;
all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all!
We must never stop teaching them to give God the glory in all created things.
John Piper says, “The redeemed cosmos will reach its final purpose when the saints enjoy God in it, and through it, and above it, with white-hot admiration.”
So teachers and parents, while your heads swirl with technology woes, scope and sequence charts, lesson plan rubrics, faculty or co-op meetings, state standards, IEPs, differentiated instruction, outcomes-based learning, curriculum changes, seating charts, lunch duty, schedules, standardized testing, and wondering when you’ll get a minute to use the restroom, pause to pray. Ask God to help you cut through the noise of regulations and procedures to the ultimate desired outcome of our teaching: God’s glory.
Pray that God would compel you to be perpetually cognizant of the beauty in his creation and to give you a soul-saturated appreciation of the majesty of the world around you. Then ask him to show you how to teach in such a way that by June your children will have seen the wonder in the knowledge you’ve imparted.
GOD & MATH: Thinking Christianly About Math Education 