Hey, Hey, Hey. I’m not done.

So apparently this space is becoming a place for me to just air out my failures. But, just like in math, I’m coming to understand that our failures are the things that make it interesting. They help create the sweet spot where we learn.

At the risk of sounding really cheesy—there’s this:

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.” —Denis Waitley

I have made no qualms about the fact that my biggest goal as an educator is to be a better listener. To truly listen to my students and their ideas. I’ve also claimed to be interested in the long game—this understanding that we don’t have to fix everything in one day.

But, damn, the school day has a way of making those both incredibly difficult. The time and logistic constraints are constantly working against me and those goals.

So, here’s the story...

This week my first-year students were engaging in a three-act task where the students had to determine how many apples were taken from a basket. The video in act one shows a basket of apples on a counter and then three separate kids walk up to the basket and take some apples. We don’t see how many each takes, and it’s not possible to determine how many by looking at the basket. However, in act two students are given the number of apples that were in the basket at the beginning and the number that were there after the kids took some. Here is an image of what students are given.

At the end of our lesson, we were sharing our solution strategies and most students solved this problem in two different ways.

Some students counted the 18 apples before and the 14 apples after and determined that 18–14 was four.

Other students saw that two green apples were taken and two red apples were taken.

The student wrote “On the top, they took two green. On the bottom, they took 2 red.”

And here’s where it gets interesting…

The end of our math time was approaching. And, many students were becoming antsy as we’d shared a number of pieces of student work. We also needed to pack up and prepare for dismissal. But, there was one more student who had asked to share his thinking. He is a student that has come so far this year. He rarely shared out earlier in the year and often felt intimidated by math class. So, I wanted to make sure that he had the chance to share his thinking. Here’s his work.

Here’s how our conversation went:

Student: I drew 18 lines for the apples before and 14 lines for the apples after.

Me: Nice.

Student: Then I counted 14 and crossed out the rest. There were four that I crossed out and so the answer is 4.

Me: Great work! I love it. Okay, friends, we need to…

Student: Hey, Hey, Hey. I’m not done!

Me: Oh, sorry dude. Go ahead.

Student: So, I saw that I didn’t even need to draw the 14 lines below. I could just use the 18.

And that punched me in the gut on so many levels. I was so ready to move on before this student finished that I almost missed the most important part. This kiddo had realized something really big and was showing me that he was ready to move away from a direct modeling strategy. But, in my haste to move forward, I almost missed it. I was playing the short game and not truly listening. 

But, on the brighter side. I’ve convinced this student (and hopefully all my students) to advocate for themselves. To stand up and share their ideas. I hope this is evidence that I’ve communicated to them that I value their voice and that their ideas matter. 

This work we are privileged to do is exceptionally difficult. While I’m so grateful that this student felt empowered in my class to stand up and say what he discovered, I’m also reminded that I have to continue to slow down and let each of my students have the time and space to share their ideas and discoveries. Because it is their ideas that matter.