WEBVTT

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SB: Welcome. Hello everyone. 
Today Dan and I are going to be ...

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– let's see if we can get this presentation going...
all right, all right, cool! Ha, ha ... –

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So, above all welcome. Today we're going to 
be talking to you guys about

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changing perceptions, motivation, 
students, efficiency, effectiveness

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DN: Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sean! 
SB: What?

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DN: Do you have any idea how many words 
you just put in the audience...?

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SB: Yeah! Oh!

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DN: Let's clear things up a little bit.

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What are the main ideas
we're going to be talking about today?

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SB: OK, all right, fair enough.

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How about perceptions, students, 
math, themselves...

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Yeah, something like that.
DN: Ok, that clears things [up] a little bit better.

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But can you organise the ideas

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so it is perfectly clear to the audience 
what we are talking about?

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SB: Ok, I'll take care of that. (Laughter) 
Sorry, so, I get a little excited.

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Talk about changing perceptions of math 
by teaching students to teach themselves.

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DN: All right, here we go! Much better.
So, as our title screen just showed you,

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how we organise words affects 
how we understand

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the very meaning those words 
are meant to convey.

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So if we don't take the time 
to organise words,

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we can be very overwhelmed and confused

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by something like this, instead of having...

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yeah, that's overwhelming and confusing.

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Instead of having something clear 
and understandable, like this.

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So the next thing we want to talk to you about,

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is how prior organisation of words

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can affect how we understand 
and perceive new words

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and the ideas those words 
are supposed to represent. So...

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SB: Ok, all right, so you know 
what I want to say?

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Did I tell you that Marcy 
and I are getting a dog?

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DN: Yeah, I don't think this is the proper time 
to talk about that!

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SB: We got the time! 
DN: But I guess we... (Laughter)

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Actually, this is kind of embarrassing, 
but I don't really know what a dog is,

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er, can you explain?

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SB: Dan you're a high-school teacher 
and you don't know what a dog is?

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DN: Hopefully none of our students
are watching. (Laughter)

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SB: Alright. I mean, you guys, 
stay with me on this.

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A dog is, you know, four legs, 
has a head, furry and can lie down.

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I mean we all agree, right? 
That's what a dog is. Dan?

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DN : Don't you guys already have 
already one of those things?

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SB: Oh my, Dan! 
You're blowing this presentation, bud!

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Come on, man, let's get it together.

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What do you think, can you draw a picture 
for this people of what you think it is?

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DN: this.. ugly table with a '70's shag cloth,

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in the middle of you guys' living room, 
that's a dog, right?

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SB: Dan! How can you confuse four legs..? 
I.. You know ... I don't even..

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This is a dog, Dan. It's got four legs, 
it barks, it goes woof...

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DN: Aw! I've seen one of those before.

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SB: All right. Dan you've got 
to fix it for these people!

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They.. you got it. 
How did you confuse a dog into a table?

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DN: Ok, well, you said four legs. 
Furniture has four legs,

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... lies down, folding table, OK?

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Furry, '70s shag carpet, 
you can put that on a table,

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Clearly that's a dog, Sean. 
That's a dog!

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SB: Dan, I'm actually not... 
I'm not even mad, I'm actually impressed.

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How you did that is beyond me.

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Four legs: How about an animal? 
Dan, did you stop to think about that?

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Furry, lies down... THAT is a dog, Dan!

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OK? Got it? All right! So, what this is meant 
to illustrate is dog vs. table.

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This idea is, schema is the very ways 
we organise words in our brain,

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especially the organization of prior words 
affects how we perceive new words.

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in the case of math, where it's even more abstract, 
this gets challenging.

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You know, in this case I could show 
a picture to Dan and be like,

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"Oh this is a dog, got it?" All right! 
But how about in math?

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where we're like, 
"Ok, hey, come here, quadratic formula!

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Come on kids, pet the quadratic formula!"

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Or, "Did you see that pesky quadratic formula 
running across the street yesterday?"

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I didn't think so. All right? 
As ideas get more abstract,

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we ourselves need more set 
and firm schemas.

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Dan's going to talk a little bit 
about how that looks in math.

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DN: So, based on dog vs. table,

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what is the key component to correctly 
perceiving and learning mathematics?

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Developing proficiency with number use 
seems pretty important,

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memorization of processes 
seems pretty important,

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cognitive organization of math words 
seems pretty important,

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but Sean, I realize you didn't know 
what I put in D there.

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I'm sure the entire audience wants 
to talk about spaceships. So...

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SB: Don't... Just stop! 
He's going to try to show you

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through a schema how 
he can connect perceiving and learning

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all the way to spaceships 
and now you're gonna let him do it.

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DN : All right, all right! 
SB: Dan please, let's get to the point.

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DN: Ok. So the real answer's actually C.

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Based on this, Sean and I wondered:

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what are the math words 
that students actually have to organise

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as they're going through their education?

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Well, what we did is we went through 
the common core standards.

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Now if you're not familiar with them, 
these are a set of standards

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that are sweeping across 
the entire United States,

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almost every state has begun 
adopting them in some way.

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These are the words that a kindergartener 
is expected to know,

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at least to have in their vocabulary 
based on the concepts in those standards.

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OK? Then we move on to first grade. 
Now we realize you'll never

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be able to read all these, 
but I just want you to get the big picture.

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OK? Let me move on to second grade.

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And we're just going to jump up 
to sixth grade for you.

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You'll notice a similarity 
between this and our title screen.

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It's pretty overwhelming as you can see, 
why some students

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get to sixth grade math and go, 
"I'm done, can't do this anymore."

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So, what we wondered was, 
is it possible to organise these?

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Well, not only is it possible, 
we've actually done it.

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So, instead of having a confusing 
mess of words,

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you can cognitively organise them 
based on definition.

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Right, so when a student is 
on the first grade

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instead of having a bunch 
of words strewing around,

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they start connecting them 
to everything else.

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Now we're going to jump up to sixth grade again 
for the second time,

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now we realize you can't see 
everything on there.

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However, things are now organised. 
So they can perceive and understand

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all this information in a proper manner.

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The observation that Sean 
and I had from this was:

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well, what if they don't know 
any of these words?

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what if they don't have one 
of these connections?

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What if one of these connections is connected 
in a not-so-efficient way?

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So, what we thought was, 
not only will it affect their success,

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but if they're overwhelmed 
by all this information,

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it's going to affect their confidence 
in mathematics

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and it's going to affect their motivation 
to even try mathematics.

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So Sean, do you want to give a little context to that ?

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SB: Yes, I will try to give you guys some context.

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So stop, think for a moment:

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what is an activity, a job or an interest 
that you are personally doing right now

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that you feel very confident in? 
I would imagine that if I asked you to list

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a whole series of words 
that were related to that,

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you could give me a long list,

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you could even describe to me 
how they were connected.

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Imagine when you first started that. 
What if Dan and myself gave you a map?

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What if we showed you 
how those words were connected?

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How would that have affected your perceptions?

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How would that have affected your motivation?

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How much quicker could you've gotten 
to the level you're at now?

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With that, we're going to show you 
how this works in our class:

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all critical terms plus organization 
leads to effective perceptions

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which help to drive 
motivation and success.

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DN: So, as Sean just said, 
we are going to talk about

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how we created an experience 
in our classrooms

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where students can now cognitively 
organise information,

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effectively perceive information

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and have an overall clear 
understanding of mathematics.

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Now, just like this basic outline here,

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what we do is we get our students to move 
from something that's scary and messy

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– this is like kindergarten information –

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into something that's organised 
and understandable like this.

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So, as you said before, 
we start off with vocabulary.

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Ok, we'll show just a few terms up here, 
in just a moment,

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that you've probably seen before.

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We're not going to test you, don't worry!

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You're after TEDxHonolulu stuff, 
it's not going to be dependent on passing a test,

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but from gaining to go through and build
their vocabulary in literacy with these,

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we then have them start mapping them out, 
based on definition.

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In kindergarten, 
the starting point is normally numbers.

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And then from there, 
we have our students go through

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word by word and look at the definition,

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and you can actually see connections 
in those definitions:

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Whole Numbers, Counting, Place Values, 
all have numbers in the definitions.

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SB: So, you can start to do as you saw 
with operations as expressions,

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– I'll just go back real quick – 
kinda show you what that looks like.

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We can even start to hit them 
with more terms

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and they start to know where to place them.

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What we've categorized 
in this slide is a tipping point:

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you can see that as you get more and more, 
it starts to become more and more clear,

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without even showing them math, 
how these ideas relate.

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The best part is that they can do this 
on their very own.

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Dan now is going to show you what it looks like 
when we show them math content.

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DN: So, notice, we haven't done 
any math problems yet.

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Our students now 
have a big picture understanding

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of how everything is related. 
They are not quite as overwelmed

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when we start presenting them with activities, 
labs, examples that they go through on their own.

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So, we do a thing in our class where essentially

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when I go through this content, 
they make a tweet.

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Now if you're not familiar with Twitter, 
and hopefully all of you are now,

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essentially it's just a quick 
little visual and a phrase

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that attaches to that word.

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So for example with numbers, 
they might say something like,

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"How many? Give a few examples."
OK?

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And then they run the whole numbers 
and an observation they might make is,

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"Zero, count up by one." 
I give a quick little example.

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This continues on and on, 
but we realize sometimes

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two things can come up at once.

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Now that they have a structure in place,

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they can now handle working with multiple ideas 
at the same time,

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and know how this content fits together 
to create an overall big picture understanding.

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So, we move from something 
that's kinda scary like this

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into something that's organised 
and makes sense like this.

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Now some of the effects 
this has had on our students is,

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they now have this perception 
in their mind of –

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"Ok, well, if I see this word, I know 
what content's connected to it from my tweet.

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If I see this word I know 
what other words it's connected to

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and the content that's connected to those,

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instead of this disorganised mess 
that's in their heads sometimes

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when they are doing things high-pressured 
like taking a test,

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ACT, PSAT, things like that.

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So, Sean is going to show us 
some more results.

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SB: So, what does this afford us 
in our classroom?

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As far as performance goes, 
we've completely and entirely

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started getting our students 
to teach themselves, OK?

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Stop and think about that: 
actually teaching themselves,

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that can go on to any other class. 
So we've created a lasting student achievement,

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regardless of whether they connect 
with the next year's or following years' teacher

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or then they go off to college 
where it's lecture blaze, hands-on –

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they can actually have the confidence 
to teach themselves.

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The most amazing part is: we've managed 
to do this without lecturing.

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That's right! 
Not one day of standing up like this

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towards you guys right now, lecturing.

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In fact, if we had it our ways, 
we would have just given you

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the list of words of how to do this 
and we would've had you start building the map, all right?

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But for you non-teachers, 
our students come in every day.

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They sit down, they start working 
in collaborative groups,

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they're on their own and they start 
working with the words.

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They make their own connections 
and they start to start problem solving

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creatively, entirely on their own!

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So Dan's going to share a little with you 
how this has affected his algebra class.

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DN: So, this kind of the mess 
I can hear of teaching:

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I'm an emergency hire, which means 
I've no formal teacher training whatsoever.

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Last year in my freshman algebra class, 
my passing rate was only 52%.

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Now, after implementing this,

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I have moved from a 52% passing rate 
all the way up to an 86% passing rate.

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(Cheers) 
(Applause)

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(Laughter)

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SB: I've been teaching geometry now 
for five years.

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I originally came over with Teach for America,

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for those of you that are familiar with that,

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I came over in 2006, 
the first quarter I actually came to Hawaii.

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I was placed to Waipahu, 
I did my two years, I stayed longer

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'cause I enjoy the students here 
in Hawaii so much.

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They're great kids out here!

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For those of you who haven't had an opportunity 
to be in a classroom,

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they're amazing!

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I've never been able to break 60% pass rate 
in my geometry class,

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which has driven me nuts! 
Last year I actually almost quit!

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I had applied, took my LSAT, 
I was looking at law-school and then

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Dan and I started thinking 
about these ideas 


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and I've been able to move 
them from 58 to 89%.

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(Cheers) 
(Applause)

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DN: So, the next class we're going to talk 
to you about is statistics and probability.

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It's a new course at the school 
that we started,

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so there is no previous statistics on it.

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However, the book that we're using 
is a college textbook,

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the students are currently 
teaching themselves college material,

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and I have all of my students passing 
my class right now.

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Dramatic! 
(Applause)

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The next group, I'm most proud of, 
as for the reason I joined Teach For America,

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for those of you who're not familiar with them,

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you leave your undergraduate

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and you go to schools 
where students face many challenges.

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Many of my students face things 
from teen pregnancy to domestic violence,

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homelessness, health care issues,

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the list is long and very long.

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Because of this, we've had to come up 
with new ways of teaching.

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There's a lot of teachers doing great things

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but one thing we're proud of is, 
because we don't lecture,

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we can actually work 
with each student one-on-one.

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So instead of asking, 
"Hey, how is that math problem going?"

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we move beyond that 
and we can now ask students,

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"Hey, how is everything in your life going? 
Everything all right at home?".

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And now that students instead of walking 
in our class going, "Oh, God, math!",

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they're like, "Oh, hey, I know 
Mr. Briel and Mr. Nash care." All right.

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Just that simple question has allowed me 
to move from 12%

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to 65% and these 
are students that had failed math 2, 3 –

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I have actually quite a handful 
of 4th time in algebra!

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And now they at least come to class 
and they feel that they can learn.

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(Applause)

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DN: So, what does this actually afford us?

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Well, by organizing ideas, 
we've been able to change and shift

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our perceptions of what learning actually is.

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So, from this, we've actually been able 
to create a classroom experience

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that allows our students to organise ideas

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and change their perceptions of learning,

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and now we have a class where our students 
are learning how to do things like

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critically think, creatively problem-solve, 
all on their own, instead of listening to me talk.

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And thank you for all listening. 
I know I'm kind of boring.

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On top of that, we as teachers 
have also been able to re-establish

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our value in the classroom.

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Instead of just our content-area expertise, 
we can now create an experience

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for our students 
where it's completely them doing everything

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and we're just there to help them through it.

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So, and on top of that, what's kind of even more 
impressive to us is

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now we have students who are seeing 
the value of learning and education.

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Next two quotes 
we're going to show to you are quotes

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directly from our students 
about their experience in their classroom.

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First one says, 
"Now, since I had this class,

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I think smart is just organised.

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If everyone had a mental map 
and organised every idea,

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then everyone will be as smart as the other."

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This is from a student who is currently 
taking algebra 1 for the third time.

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So, the next quote:

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"The day we are born, we pick things up, 
learn, and we adapt.

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We understand things based on the ideas 
we have learned.

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Our understanding of new ideas changes 
based on the way

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we organised past experiences and ideas.

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If one of our experiences 
or ideas is a bad one,

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then it will affect how we perceive 
new ideas or experiences.

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We can use maps to change 
the way we organise things in our mind

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to see all the possibilities in our lives."

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This is from a second-time student in algebra 1

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based on the experiences 
they've had in our classroom.

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So, what has this afforded us?

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Well, we believe we've been able 
to actually start developing critical thinkers

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by teaching our students to organise ideas, 
recognise how they organise these ideas

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affects their perceptions. 
And this goes way beyond the classroom.

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Imagine: thinkers that understand 
and recognise the very ideas and the power

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and how they organise them

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will affect the possibilities 
they see in their very lives.

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Think of the impact 
this would have on individuals:

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individuals would recognise 
that all they needed to reach

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the possibilities in their lives 
would be the critical terms,

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the time to organise them 
and just the time to see it all materialise.

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Imagine the impact 
that would have on communities:

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communities can come together 
when individuals meet!

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They will recognise that, 
"Hey we don't disagree,

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these are just perceptual differences!

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We can take the time to collect the words 
from everyone's maps

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and come up with powerful solutions.

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They're not just to address just one perception 
but many perceptions."

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What impact would this have on society?

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Think about that: a whole society 
where everyone's coming together.

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It's because of this 
that we think developing critical thinkers

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is not only necessary for our children,

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but ourselves as well!

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The most important part is – 
we believe developing critical thinkers

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is the lifeline for individuals, 
communities, to society

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to become what they want, 
can, dream and should be.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause) 
(Cheers)