At-Risk Students

After doing this week's readings and, more specifically, completing my chosen article titled "Problem Solving and At-Risk Students: Making Mathematics for All a Classroom Reality", I found myself left with more questions than answers. This article was a personal narrative written by a fifth grade mathematics instructor who found herself teaching in an impoverished rural elementary school that performed significantly below both grade level content expectations and those expectations formerly met by students in her previous teaching position within a prestigious suburban school. On the first day of class, she implemented an activity that had been loved and admired by her former students. However, within the context of her new classroom, this task was deemed as much too difficult and the students became easily frustrated, angry, and humiliated for being proven incompetent. While I understand that this teacher was simply trying to confront her students with an exciting, challenging, and competitive new problem solving task, I cannot help but question her logic and reasons for assuming this activity would be appropriate. Did she not review the student's prior academic records to gain a feel for what the students are capable of doing? Does she not have access to school wide standardized test results? Had she not conversed with the children's prior mathematics instructor to obtain an understanding of the curriculum that they had been exposed to? While all of these sources of information inevitably must be taken with a grain of salt, they can still provide guidance and significant understanding regarding the children's current capabilities. I feel that had the teacher invested the time and energy to perform this research, this entire situation could have been prevented and the students' pride kept in tact. I do, however, think that this teacher took appropriate and helpful measures in order to remedy the situation and establish a classroom of "problem solvers". The teacher quoted a text titled Teaching for Thinking as saying, "If we are to think, we must dare to think. Daring implies confidence in ourselves and in our abilities. When we have confidence, we often succeed in doing tasks far beyond our expectations. When confidence is missing, we fail at tasks that seem well within our grasp. Confidence grows largely as a result of experience" (292). Through rereading this passage, the teacher was able to realize that in order for the students to perform academically, they first needed to feel confident in their ability to do so. The way that she decided to build this confidence was to reevaluate her original lesson plans and break them down into more simplistic tasks. In essence, she decided that it would be most effective to take baby steps in order to gradually build the children's self confidence vs. bombarding them with one large task. I think that these strategies are quite profound and would be especially useful within special education classrooms. So often, students labeled "special ed." begin to associate negative connotations to this term and perceive themselves as incapable of learning or "stupid". When working with these students in the future, it will be so important that I counteract these common stereotypes and build their self esteem so that they are both motivated to complete tasks and confident in their ability to do so. Overall, the most important piece of information that I took away from this article was that " If the activity does not work, if the papers get crumpled, if arguments begin or materials get abused, I may give up on the activity, but I never give up on my students" (295).