As I’ve gotten back into the routine of school, I’ve found myself to be reflecting a lot on my Kenan Fellows experience, and the snapshot I got into the life of a professional in the mathematics field. My school and school district is focusing on the Understanding by Design structure for unit and lesson planning this year, which requires the teacher to go through three stages of planning. Stage 1 is breaking down the content standards to the core understandings and skills, stage 2 is determining the assessment that will measure mastery of those understandings and skills, and stage 3 is designing the learning activities that will lead up to the assessment. Many have called this “backward design,” but the challenging part for many teachers is not starting with the question, “How am I going to teach this?” but rather, “How will I know when kids have learned it?” We tend to be much more comfortable swapping stages 2 and 3!
I ramble on about all of this because one of the things I have challenged myself to do within this framework is a direct result of my Kenan Fellows experience last summer. I designed ONE curriculum unit in which students mimic a process that a professional in the field does. What if every time I’m in Stage 2 planning, designing assessments, I could create something authentic that replicates job skills and tasks of careers in math and science? I learned firsthand this summer something I think I’ve always kind of known–school mathematics does not look like mathematics done in careers. School math lives in a vacuum, in a contrived context of farmers selling too many watermelons, and hypothetical train travel. In the meantime, there are real professionals out there using mathematics to model and solve real, important, interesting problems. Kids in school learning math should be doing this too. I think that my summer externship experience has caused me to be much more aware of this, and I’ve challenged myself to make assessments that are authentic and interesting, but most important that model the skills needed for a career in math or science!