Like most urban public schools, our building is in a constant state of decay. I’ve learned not to take it personally. We do our best, and our custodians are warriors, but things are definitely not getting firmer or tighter around here.
The ceiling is a patchwork quilt of white acoustic foam tiles with brownish water stains from leaks, and every few squares, there’s a blank space where a tile used to be. I sometimes find one on the floor in the morning, and I like to think it got shaken loose from all the concentrated thinking energy in the room the day before.
Still, the start of the school year reminds me that a school of any kind is a miracle, really, and experienced teachers are alchemists of the imagination within these walls. My classroom may be falling apart, but it’s also humming with energy. That’s true of every teacher’s classroom community. I’ve come to love seeing how some of my colleagues inspire their students to surrender to the mysteries of this journey as we embark on the new school year, and I wanted to invite you to join me on a brief tour.
For me, the secret to supporting students in advanced math is teaching them how to drop into the flow state while they’re doing mathematics. Flow is that profoundly human state of “optimal experience” where time and identity melt into each other, boundaries dissolve, and we feel ourselves propelled forward by raw human curiosity and creativity.
Flow is what many of us feel when we lose ourselves in doing mathematics, and I find that when my students have lots of experiences of immersing themselves in the magic of flow, they become much more receptive to the hard work of learning how to factor polynomials or make sense of how the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds fit together. It takes a lot of skillful means to structure learning experiences so that activities are targeted to that sweet spot where understanding is tantalizingly just out of reach. Day after day, students think they know where something is headed, until they tug on an innocent-looking loose thread and discover it threatens to unravel the whole sweater. That launches its own set of surprising detours into actions and reactions until they arrive at insight about a new idea or tool. Teachers and magicians use the twin arts of distraction and misdirection to trigger delight and wondering.
If we want students to learn to love learning, then we need to guide them into loving the process of discovery.
The achievements I’m most proud of as a teacher are those periods when a student looks up at the clock and exclaims, “oh, my God, class is over.” My peak experience in this regard happened a few years ago, when a few moments after this moment, another student threw back his head and yelled, “I love this class!”
If we want students to learn to love learning, then we need to guide them into loving the process of discovery. When we do that, it is so much more enticing — and more rewarding –— than any form of algorithm-based doomscrolling.
Other teachers use other doorways and on-ramps. In Rori Abernethy’s math classroom at Denman Middle School, she uses her class and club websites to guide her students to ground themselves in their identities and in empathy as portals to excellence. Her website itself is a rocket ship and a masterpiece of teaching craft. In addition to providing the basics for learning, she has also set it up to steer students into asking themselves the big questions, such as, who can you imagine yourself into becoming? Rori’s curriculum is about boldness, though she’s also quite patient with the more hesitant students. Her lunchtime High School Math Club is always packed to the gills, as students come to explore not only the mathematics of human accomplishment but also the human beings who drove it forward. They do a month-long investigation into LGBTQ+ in STEM, exploring who Alan Turing was as they learn about cryptography. They study how Sally Ride became the first woman in space as they explore engineering methodology. Rori drives her middle school students to anchor their imaginations in who they truly are, because for her, that is the secret to using mathematics to build things. In her classroom, students are literally learning how to imagine themselves into being.
The biggest mind-blower for me this fall has been English teacher Julia David’s classroom transformation at George Washington High School. Through a series of grants, Julia has turned her classroom into a Harry Potter-inspired wonderland that feels like entering the wizarding world of Hogwarts. Instead of half-broken desk chairs and wobbly filing cabinets, Julia has created an environment of dark wood library tables and burgundy upholstered squadgy chairs and sofas for sinking into. With fairy lights overhead, Hogwarts House banners, plants, and faux brick paneling on the walls above the computer work stations, it feels more like a sacred and inviting medieval library than a worn-out urban classroom. Her grant became a cause célèbre on Donors Choose, with donors pitching in thousands of dollars from all over the world. When I asked her how she had conceived of the project, she told me, “I just started writing out how I wanted it to make my students feel, and it took on a life of its own.” Student reactions so far have been incredibly positive. Kids can hardly wait to settle into a corner with a good book. Julia views this as an investment in students’ social and emotional learning, drawing them out of their ordinary world and into another dimension of empathy and expressive power and connection.
But we are only three of SFUSD’s 4,000 teachers. Be on the lookout at Back To School Night for the imaginative leaps your own child’s teacher has laid out this year.
Updated: 09/12/24 at 1 p.m. PST
