Birth of a Blog... Chapter Zero...

I thought I would briefly sketch how this blog came to be. Educators tend to live in cloistered environments where no one but their students know what they really do in the classroom on a daily basis. I can recall many times that school districts would talk about peer observations and sharing/co-planning of lessons (aka 'lesson study' in Japanese schools), but this never seemed to get off the ground. I began to reach out to others by attending conferences and doing presentations to math teachers in the late 80's and 90's. With the advent of the WorldWide Web, when electronic discussion groups, forums, message boards and the like took off in the 90's, my sphere of contacts increased dramatically. Now my views were being critiqued mercifully and mercilessly by hundreds! I began by replying to questions posed by other math educators and then progressed to sharing instructional strategies I'd used in the classroom and my philosophy about education in general. I learned to be more selective in my posts and to become a better listener (still learning!). I lurked and entered dialogues only when I felt I had something meaningful to contribute. I also posed my own questions, seeking new ways of introducing a math topic, then sharing these ideas with my colleagues. I was an active contributor to a few math listserves, most notably the AP-Calc listserv, but also math-teach, math-learn, and more recently Math Talk. A couple of years ago I decided to create a new Yahoo! group, called MathShare, which is still in existence, although it is not nearly as active as it once was. My intent was to invite middle school and high school math teachers to share ideas and have a place to find new resources for their classrooms. A place to discuss the real issues we face every day and not get bogged down in rhetoric or philosophical conflicts.

However, I began to realize that my perspective was changing. I was becoming more concerned with national math issues such as standards, curriculum and assessment. I began to have serious concerns about what students were expected to 'know and be able to do', the buzz phrase of the 90's. I became involved in the development of my state's math content standards, curriculum frameworks and assessments at that time. I started challenging some of the directions being taken by math leaders in my state and on the national stage. I saw confusion among teachers about maintaining a balance between conceptual understanding and developing and maintaining skills. I argued in every venue that success in mathematical problem-solving is not only a result of discovery and communication, but also a result of having a strong foundation of skill and knowledge of content. At the mere mention of skills, others recoiled and I began to feel I was a stranger in my own land, but I relentlessly voiced my message that we were headed on a dangerous course because the balance between knowledge and discovery was tilting too far in one direction. This past summer I decided to make a stand regarding a movement toward a national math curriculum and posted an appeal for support to math educators everywhere on MathShare. Some leading educators and moderators of similar discussion groups expressed grave reservations about my ideas, but I had to do what I believed was right. I sent many impassioned emails to the newly appointed National Math Panel and received some kind replies and some boilerplate responses as well. I suggested that if voices like mine could not be heard directly, then someone else would listen, perhaps education journalists.
To be continued...