LEARN NORTH CAROLINA SEPTEMBER 2001

Not your mother's math teacher

North Carolina's Teacher of the Year talks about real-world
math and teachers' roles as professionals.
by David Walbert
http://www.learnnc.org/Index.nsf/printView/AE7C314C2B55134085256D7300445B1
4?OpenDocument

When a team of educators visited Carmen Wilson's algebra classroom to evaluate her for
North Carolina Teacher of the Year last Valentine's Day, what they found was a little unusual.
The students were engaged in a lab in which their task was to test Hook's law, the relationship
between the weight on a spring and its extension. Imagine teenagers in groups playing with
slinkies and cups of marbles, talking and laughing - and then imagine a group of well-dressed
visitors taking notes - and you've about got it.
"The teachers down the hall thought I was insane," Wilson says. "You can imagine what went
through my mind when they called and said 'we're coming on Valentine's Day,' and I looked at
my lesson plans and saw what I had planned for that day....You never know what they're
going to think. If they're from the old school, they imagine a math class with all these straight
rows and the students working quietly."
In short, they imagine a class very different from what Carmen Wilson's class looks like most
days. In the end, she decided that her students were more important than the Teacher of the
Year evaluation, and she went ahead with the lesson as planned. That decision may have won
her the award, because what the evaluators saw was a class full of students learning, thinking,
and talking about mathematics, developing an active mathematical understanding more
powerful than they could have found sitting quietly in their seats. They also saw a teacher
behaving as a thoughtful, competent professional, facilitating rather than directing her
students' learning. Apparently, they liked what they saw.

Real-world math in the classroom

Carmen Wilson has taught mathematics and science for twelve years. After graduating from
Appalachian State University, she went to work as an actuarial consultant in Winston-Salem.
But she soon decided that she wanted to be a teacher after all, and she took a job at Beaver

Creek High School in Ashe County in 1989. When the county's high schools merged in 1999,
she moved to the new consolidated Ashe County High School, where she has taught since.
During those twelve years, she has taught every level of math from seventh-grade pre-algebra
to AP Calculus as well as high school chemistry, and she has also taught pre-calculus parttime at Wilkes Community College. Most recently, she taught a combination of Algebra 1A1B - a slowed-down two-semester version of algebra for block scheduling - and AP Calculus.
The lab on Hook's Law was actually a fairly typical day in Carmen Wilson's algebra
classroom, and she finds that the same teaching methods that work at the lower end of the
high school math spectrum work equally well for the most advanced students. Although
measuring the effects of weights on springs sounds more like a science lab than a math lesson,
Hook's Law is a very simple example of a linear relationship, and it made the perfect followup to a unit on linear equations. The students added different numbers of marbles to cups,
hung them from a slinky - which, after all, is really just a big spring - and measured the
distance the marbles stretched out the slinky. Next they made scatter plots of the extension of
the slinky vs. the number of marbles and found a line of best fit. Finally, they used that line of
best fit to predict the extension created by numbers of marbles they couldn't measure - 7.5, for
example. The lab gave the students a concrete, real-world application of the mathematical
concepts they'd been learning. And the fact that it was fun didn't hurt, either.
"When I was in school," Wilson recalls, "algebra was taught all at the blackboard, the teacher
did the problems, we copied them down, and we tried to mimic the steps. It was difficult,
because it was all so abstract. What I do is to start with some kind of problem context, so the
students are motivated - they have a reason for doing this math, they're trying to solve a
problem that they're interested in." Next, they look at number patterns by making ordered
pairs of data, a concept they're familiar with from middle school. Then comes a spatial
approach, which in algebra means graphing, either by hand or with graphing calculators. "So
by the time we get to the part we have always considered the algebra, the analytic side of the
mathematics," she explains , "they already have a problem context they're interested in,
they've already seen number patterns, and they've already seen a picture that they understand,
so they're starting to have some ownership of the problem, and they're more likely to tune in
than when you start with the abstract part."
For example, as a starter problem for an exploration of linear equations, she might give them
a hypothetical problem about a summer job. "You're going to mow somebody's yard as your
summer job. You've decided to charge them $10 to load your equipment on your truck and
drive over to their house, and then you're going to charge them $7 an hour while you're
mowing their yard." The students make a table, showing the number of hours worked and
what the charge is so far, from zero hours on up, going up by $7 each time. "They're seeing

that repeated addition, even before they know that in mathematics repeated addition means a
linear relationship. And that builds the pattern for later, when we're ready to move into
exponential equations, to talk about repeated multiplication."

I see myself as a facilitator, helping the groups as they get stuck, listening to the conversation, trying to
prod them in the right direction, to finish the task and draw the conclusions that I want them to draw.

Group work is important in lessons like these, because it allows students to communicate
what they're learning. "When I was in school, communication meant you were passing a note
to your best friend two aisles away," Wilson recalls, laughing. "But we do cooperative
learning every day. I find that when they're trying to explain it to each other, or to ask each
other questions because they don't understand, then their understanding is so much deeper and
more meaningful to them than if they were watching me work problems and trying to mimic
what I was doing."
The lesson on Hook's Law was also typical of Wilson's approach to teaching math in that it
applied mathematical concepts to other curriculum areas rather than treating math as an
isolated subject. The connections to real-world problems make math seem more valuable to
students, and are just as important as the connections teachers usually make between simpler
and more complex mathematical concepts. "The students see connections between the algebra
and what they've done before, and between the algebra and what's coming next. But I also
make it a point to make connections between the algebra and the science, or even social
studies or another area, so they can see that all of this learning is not individualized, in
separate containers."

Making connections with technology

Often, she uses new technologies to make math labs practical in the time she has available,
because time for experimentation is limited, even in a block schedule. Data-collecting devices
allow students to measure movement, light, pH, heart rate, or temperature, generating original
data, and still leave time for analysis. The Texas Instruments Calculator-Based Ranger, or
CBR, for example, is essentially a motion detector, which students can use to measure the
distance between themselves and a fixed object. That helps them study positive and negative
rates of change and the slope of a line; they can see the steepness of the line changing
depending on how fast they are walking. As a result, Wilson explains, "They get into the
concept of rate of change before they've even heard the word slope. And it carries over into

calculus, because in calculus 'slope' is just one word for rate of change, which is a much
bigger concept."
This approach to teaching creates a different role for Wilson in the classroom, that of
facilitator. "That's how I like to run my classroom. I don't like to be talking all the time. I like
for my students to be talking to me, talking to each other, and doing the mathematics." Instead
of explaining concepts and modeling solutions, she lets her students come to their own
conclusions, and she spends the class period "helping the groups as they get stuck, listening to
the conversations, trying to prod them in the right direction, to finish the task and draw the
conclusions that I want them to draw." And as the semester goes on, the students increasingly
do draw the right conclusions on their own. At the beginning of the semester, she says, "they
think I'm joking" when she asks them why something is true. They expect to answer
mathematical questions with numbers or, at most, with a word or two. "To expect them to
write sentences or paragraphs blows their mind. ... The first two weeks are a struggle." But
once they realize that she really does want them to write out their explanations, they start to
open up, "and with a little help, a lot of facilitating, leading them in the right direction, telling
them what kinds of reasoning I'm after, then they start to do it on their own."
Her exams take a similar approach: She gives the students collected data; they use calculators
to do scatter plots, perform analysis, and make predictions. But she also uses less traditional
means of assessment. "I might just as soon give them a lab instead of a test, and you have to
give them a score not just on the math that they do but also on their cooperative effort within
the group. And that's good too, because you're teaching them to be team players. ... Employers
want someone who's been trained to work with other people and to be able to collaborate with
others and share participation on a project and communicate well, and I think those are good
job skills to teach them at the same time you're teaching them the mathematics." Again, it's a
strategy that links mathematical concepts to the real world.
For Wilson, this approach to teaching has opened the door to a new world of professional
growth. Her interest in technology has led her to work with Appalachian State University
during the summers, leading workshops connected with a project called T-Cubed, short for
Teachers Teaching with Technology. Teachers from all over the United States attend for for
one to four weeks, learning about how to integrate technology into classroom instruction in a
range of math subjects, from algebra to geometry to AP statistics. These summer workshops
are a great experience for the teachers who take them and for her as well. Sometimes, she
says, "It's hard to convince new teachers until they've actually been through it once, but
attending those summer institutes is the time that you actually get refreshed, because you
learn new things, you get to share your frustrations with other teachers, share ideas, and make

contacts. ... Just a week in the summer can give you that energy you need to start the school
year."

At Ashe County High School, students who learned math with a technology-based discovery approach
learned more than those who did not -- and performed better on end-of-course tests.

She has also written grants to obtain more technology for her own school, which has led her
into an exploration of the effect of technology on student learning. Ashe County wanted to
buy TI-92 graphing calculators for high school geometry classes, which are mini-computers
with the ability to run software such as Geometer's Sketchpad, allowing students to draw
figures and take measurements. "It's dynamic," Wilson explains. "They can take the mouse
and move a figure around and watch what changes and what stays constant and draw their
own conclusions, and then try to prove them the traditional way." So she wrote a grant for
Appalachian State University's partnership program, arguing that students could learn
geometry better and understand the concepts more fully if they had the opportunity to
discover it on their own. Traditionally, discovery-based learning in geometry meant making
sketches with a straight-edge and compass, but block scheduling doesn't allow time for that
approach. The new technology would allow for discovery-based learning in a more timeefficient way. Her arguments worked; the high school received $5,000 to buy a classroom set
of the calculators with software.
The grant required, however, that they study test scores of students who used the technologybased discovery method and compare them to those who did not. It was an important
question, because, of course, students couldn't use the calculators on end-of-course tests; what
mattered was how well they learned the mathematical concepts, not the tools themselves.
"Now, this is not a scientific study," she admits. "There are a lot of confounding factors. But
overall, what we saw was that students who used the discovery method, even though they
couldn't use the calculators on the test ... remembered the activities that they had done and
were able to use that information more efficiently than students who had not discovered it on
their own. And their test scores were higher." Although the highest-performing students did
not do significantly better with the discovery method, she says, "those students will learn in
spite of what you do. It really helped the students who were middle-of-the-road or who
struggled. That was where we saw the biggest gain." The informal study helped to confirm
what she and her colleagues believed, that technology could help students learn without
making them dependent on specific technological tools.

Teachers as professionals
Other math teachers at Ashe County High School take a similar approach to teaching, which
Wilson says facilitates professional collaboration within the department. "In our department,
there are so many sections of Algebra 1A-1B that every teacher gets one," so unlike in
departments where different teachers all teach different levels of math courses, "we have
something to talk about. That camaraderie is already there, so if one of us goes to a workshop
or a summer institute and learns something new about how to use technology in the classroom
or about ways to do cooperative learning, other teachers are anxious to try that."
That kind of professional camaraderie, she believes, is vital to helping new teachers stay in
the field -- one of her primary interests as Teacher of the Year. Projections that the state will
need 80,000 teachers over the next few years are "scary," and she wants to help new teachers
stay in the profession. "All of the things we're doing in North Carolina for recruitment and
retention are important, but one of the biggest, I think, has to do with the climate of the
school, and especially the climate of the department. The more sharing you have, the more
collaboration, the more support ILTs will feel, and the more successful they're going to be,
and the more likely they're going to be to stay for the long haul."
But new teachers can also take matters into their own hands. "You have to take advantage of
your mentor teacher," she says. "Ask that person for assistance. Don't be afraid to show
ignorance. That's what they're there for, to try to help you." Being active in the teaching
profession is also important. "They need to find out about professional organizations to which
they can belong, because they'll draw support from those people as well. They need to take
advantage of workshops that are offered, and summer institutes. ... That's another source of
support for you."
"I think it's important new teachers go into the profession realizing that teaching is not the
dead-end job people used to think it was. There is room for advancement ... They need to
begin as initially licensed teachers, looking at their process and finishing their product and
becoming fully licensed. Then they need to think about getting their master's degree if they've
not done that, because that type of continual growth and learning will also energize them. And
I'd like for them to think about getting National Board Certification after that. That's another
step up. ... And later becoming a mentor teacher for another initially licensed teacher. So
there's opportunity for growth now, where maybe there wasn't -- or at least there was a
perception that there wasn't -- before."

It is vital, she argues, that teachers think of themselves as professionals -- and that others
think of them as professionals as well. "I try to tell college students and teaching fellows,
when I go to talk to them, all the wonderful things about teaching that they're imagining, all
the rewards ... But at the same time I try to give them a reality check, because when they
come to me as student teachers, they're always so shocked that there's so much work involved.
The public perception of teachers, I think, is, 'Oh, they have it so easy -- they go to school
from 8 to 3:30 and that's their day, and they have all those vacations.' And they don't see,
unless they're married to a teacher or have one in their family, behind the scenes, all the work
that goes into that. For that reason it's been hard to get teachers the respect as professionals
that they deserve, but I think that's improving some. It's so important for us to tout ourselves
as professionals. We need to be spokespeople for the profession and to talk about it in a
positive, proactive way. To recognize the problems and limitations, but try to improve them."
Unlike many teachers, who see the requirements of end-of-grade/end-of-course tests as a
damper on their professional freedom, Wilson believes that the ABCs can help to improve the
professional standing of teachers. "We realize it's not perfect," she says, "but we're working
on it and we're sticking to it, which is so much better than when I started back in 1989. That
was the year of something called Senate Bill 2. I can remember sitting in that faculty meeting
and the principal saying, 'This is something that came from the legislators over the summer,
it's called Senate Bill 2, and this is how we're going to improve our school,' and we had a
plan, and everybody in the school had a part to play. And the next year, that was gone: this
something new is what it is this year. And the first three to five years were like that." It was
enough to make even the most idealistic young teacher cynical. But this time, with the ABCs,
it's different. "We're sticking to it, we're making adjustments each year, we're trying to make it
better all the time -- but we're staying with this to try to make it work." And it is working, she
says. "To see the progress that our students are making ... that's exciting."
"I think that we should let people know that yes, we think the ABCs is working, and yes, I
want to be held accountable for what I do, because we can be our own worst enemy -- if
teachers say, 'I don't want to do this,' because of the testing, it's like saying, I want to go do
my job, but I don't want you to see what I'm doing. ... I tell my teaching fellows [that] you've
got to constantly manage and monitor your classroom. You've got to do something and then
watch how it's working or not working and make adjustments accordingly. In business, they're
not going to start something and then never check profits to see if it's successful ... I think
accountability is important, it can be a good thing. It gives the teachers ownership, it gives
them pride in what they're doing, it can give the students ownership, and if you involve the

parents and take time to help them understand what they can do to help their students, it
involves the parents and the community as well."
And the more people take ownership of public education, she says, the better it will be for
students. "I really feel that the biggest factor determining the quality of education in North
Carolina, the reason we're making the progress that we are, is the quality of teaching taking
place in the classroom." But at the same time, a successful school is about more than just the
teacher and student; the whole community needs to play a part. And that, she says, is what she
would like to accomplish during her year as Teacher of the Year -- to encourage teachers,
administrators, and the public to see teaching as an important and vital profession and to see
public education as a vital institution in which everyone can and should play a role. "When
the teacher and the administrators are working in collaboration with the parents and the
community, and they're all working together to try to help students be successful," she says,
"then that's going to benefit everybody."