Episode 198: Kids that were behind caught up by TWO YEARS! - How to help strugglers to fly

Welcome back. It's another episode of the School of School podcast. It's a really far flung episode today. And by that, we've got the North American residents and Andy and Robin. How are you both today? Yeah, you're in attendance. This is This is good news and exciting all the way being in from Bermuda, which is the first time I think I've ever had to say that in my life. Crenstant Williams, what a pleasure to have you on Crenstant. How are you today?

Present.

Here yes, we're good. Yes

I'm good sir, thanks for having me on the call.

it's an absolute pleasure. I'm wondering, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself for listeners that may not have come across you before? Can you just tell us sort of where you are, what you do, and just a little bit about what you get up to on a sort reasonably regular basis?

Okay, so my name is Crenstant Williams. live on the island of Bermuda, which is a little dot in the Atlantic. We're 21 square miles. We have a population of 65,000 people. Currently, my current role is I am the acting principal of Port Royal Primary School. Prior to that, for four years, I was the math officer. And before that, I was the deputy principal at West End Primary School.

Can I just say a side note because it's really fascinating, I think, that you're head of referees for the BFA.

yeah, okay, you would bring it. Yes, I am. also the second vice president for the Bermuda Football Association and my other title is I'm the head of referees. Yes, I am. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, Yeah. Yeah, I was trying to leave that part out of it, but yeah.

Wow, wow, so impressive. Yeah.

Is that because you don't have enough to do generally?

We've been fortunate to talk to you in another podcast and so I know that you're forming an absolute legacy in terms of Bermuda's education and the work that you've put into that. And you've talked about mastery, to teaching and those sorts of things and the things that you've implemented and supported colleagues with. I just wonder if we can pick up on one point, which is the impact of the work that you and your colleagues have done to support struggling learners.

And just wondering if you can talk to us a wee bit about that.

Sure, as I think I stated on the other podcast, for me, the game changer in all of this is the numicons. Well, actually, numicons and just use some manipulatives, but the numicons was the game changer. I saw that in action, and they came, we ordered them for Harrington and so on, and then my teachers got trained on how to use them. And it was just phenomenal because you had children, as I stated before, in our system, we have preschools.

But not, you have government preschool and private preschool. So in preschools it's not mandated. Children have to do necessarily schoolwork. So a lot of children come and then they are behind because they're not quote unquote ready for year one. you would have say Crenstant has been at a regular preschool doing his schoolwork, he's ready for year one. But then here comes Crenstant's good friend, Nick for example, who's not quite there. So you have to work on your tune.

So what's been happening is that with the numicons and the representation, the children are able to see why one is one. They show you two, they can visualize it, they have the pegs where they put them in, it just, the foundation for me was built. I had a situation when I was at a particular school where I had 12 children, I believe, yes, five of my boys. There was, yeah, five boys, seven girls. And I was told that all five of my boys,

were below grade. So I was, what do mean by below is a below grade? The below grade. So first thing I did, said, okay, we're gonna do the same year six work, but they had to do the checkpoint. What I started to do, I used the manipulatives and I also showed them how to use the bar modeling strategy. But instead of starting at year six questions, I went down to year three to boost the confidence. Then I also, we had a lot of place value counters, the numericons, we also had the bar modeling.

bar model. I cut them out so the children had them already there. Then I have to go keep making them. And what I found also, I started to do, I would read the question to the boys and then they would tell me what I had to do. But as time went on, the confidence grew and grew, they caught up to the girls by the end of the school year. And I even send them home manipulators for them to use at home. And I said to the parents, don't feel bad. They're supposed to be using them. It doesn't mean that Crenstant is behind, per se.

he just might need a little more time to solve it. And the parents were like, this is amazing. Can I come to school to learn it as well? And I was like, well, it's not really meant for you yet. I'm trying to get the boys to do it. And it just took off. And by the end of the school year, cause two of my boys have what they call an IEP, is an individualized education program for the children that might not learn as catch on as fast. By the end of the school year, their IEP, they had shown growth where they had caught up, they had grown.

Two years worth of learning just from using the manipulators so yeah

Fantastic. And there's a, I want to, I want to pick up on something you said there, Crenstant. You said, you said, and I think it was really eloquent the way you said it. You said that it takes them, it just takes them longer, you know, to get there. Right. And I think there's, there's a really important thing. I, I did a lot of work with the late Tony Gardner. know, Tony passed away recently and, and,

Yep, yep.

Tony worked with the advanced students and like the really advanced students and, know, Olympiad children and stuff. And he says something really profound to me. He said, you know, those children that move really fast, none of them ever end up being the kids that he works with, right? In universities and stuff. And, you he was a university professor at Mass. Those who plod along slowly,

and need to understand are the ones that go, they eventually, it's the tortoise and hare, eventually they overtake those kids that showed early success, right? Sometimes we mistake that early success for being good, but it's, it does, that's not what it's a representation of. It's those who take the time, understand that it's meant to be difficult and that you have to spend time to try to understand.

Those that learned that early on are the ones that always end up being those unbelievable mathematicians. I always thought that was a really profound thing that we don't talk enough about. So seemingly struggling students in school are often the ones that end up being those who solve the world's biggest problems.

Very true. And like I said previously, what I found is that the so called learning support children, when you give them the bar modeling strategy, they are the ones that grasp it and they just take it and run with it. Even multiplication, something else I introduce children to is called the lattice way of multiplying where you have all the square, rectangle you draw it across and go all the way up. They do it. There's children, they understand it one time.

My so called gifted children will look at the board and be like, how did you do that? I don't understand it. But the learning support children understand it one time, always.

Yeah, so you're talking, I'm not familiar with the terminology, but you're basically, it's using geometry to multiply, right? It's using rectangles and yeah. Which is how, by the way, yeah, that's by the way, that's how the Egyptians and the Greeks used to do it, right? Cause they didn't have place value in those days, right? Can you imagine trying to multiply Roman numerals, right? Just think about it for a minute, right? Like it's.

It's what a mess, right? So that's how they used to do it, right? They used geometry.

But my learning support children, like I said, even the learning support teachers, of course, they weren't really familiar with it at the time. And they were like, what is he doing? It's taking a long time. I said, give him time. And then him or her will finish. You would see him, but like I said, is this the same answer? Tell them, well, how did he do that? So I tell people, because a child's quote unquote in learning support is not a life sentence, and it should not be stick with the child for the rest of their life. It just means right now,

They need extra time and they need extra support to get to the answer. That's how I do

So this introduction of mastery into the Bermuda system, what impact has it had on those who were struggling previously?

It's had a big impact because now, as I stated, the children understand what they're doing in mathematics. It's no longer, they're excited to learn. You know what I mean? So they get in their minds, they're playing with the manipulatives, but actually they're learning while they're playing. So I even told these schools I've been at, I said, we need to have a day where, cause when I was the officier, I would tell schools, you need to pick a day when you're doing a lesson where the children just solve problems by using the manipulatives or just by modeling only. Nothing else. Have one lesson a week.

where a lot of them explore the manipulatives, you put something on the board and let them work it out and prove it you by using the manipulatives. And most teachers are like, hey, this works. The children love it. To the point where the children start asking, can we do it every day?

So math becomes their, we hear this a lot, math becomes one of their favourite subjects and they want to do it. It's not torture. And when you hit that, I mean, then just get out of the way, right? It's like, don't stop them.

Yeah, and it becomes a confidence booster which was my which is my question to you is you know when you kind of get a label, that isn't particularly positive, there needs to be a way to counter counterbalance or counteract that so that kids do feel like, hey I don't have to have this label or I don't have to believe it and it sounds like this has been a way for

many of the children to do that. They start seeing that they understand it and you know, start getting good results. And as you said, that doesn't have to, it doesn't mean that they're needing support forever. They can move on and eventually become these, you know, master mathematicians.

Yep. Well, I think for me, what really, when I initially left Harrington Sound and I had just introduced the Master approach there and I moved to West End. When I moved to West End, the Centennial Foundation, we continued with the funding whereby we introduced the Numicons to the five schools up the West. It was Somerset Primary, West End, Daltony, Tucker, Harring Bay, Port Royal.

And then those teachers got introduced and they got the set of numicons. They were just like, wow, I'm waiting for this all this time. Thank you so much. They really did the training. We even had a whole year of early years training for the teachers where they learned about using the numicons. And they did it for the entire year. And everybody was saying the same thing. Can we get this for the year two teachers and year three? what we were afraid of was the year one teacher does it all the time.

but then the year two teacher wouldn't have access. So we then went and I got the ministry to purchase numicons sets for every P2 class on the island. But then of course what happens after that? P2 teachers, the P3 teachers now say, hey, they have it, I want it. So then I said, well, I put it back on the schools. I said, unfortunately, due to budgetary restraints, if you want it, these schools don't have to come in and get it for the teachers. But it proved definitely amazing.

You go to workshops now and you see teachers sitting there, the numicons and discussing strategies and how the light bulbs are known for the children and those type of things. And especially, I also have to stress to the teachers when the children come in September, they're not year ones until I normally say till February. And I said, light bulb not going to go until February. And they said, no, it's going to come on earlier. But now they're realizing, because for me, they're still in preschool. So now when they get to January, February, and they're like, hey, they can see the difference. I mean, you can see.

I watched when in a couple of classes, know, teachers will pull out because of the math office at the time I go and observe lesson. Teachers see me come and they'll be teaching different subject. boys and girls, let's go. We're gonna stop. Mr. Williams is here. Let's pull out our numicons. And it was like watching a army sergeant conducting his troops.

Okay, let's show Mr. Williams nine and they'll pull out. This is nine. Let's show Mr. Williams 12. This is 12. And it was just, they enjoyed sharing it to me. And then it will be like, okay, well.

Now we're going to show them using our place value counters. So you're going to show them three different ways using your place value counters, your numicons, and your base 10 blocks. Let's show them. And to see the children able to show you 10 in three different ways, that means, OK, they really understand what's going on. And it was normally the ones that we say that were the struggling learners, they were the first ones to pull me to the desk to show me what they knew.

The results amazing, the pickup and the sort of attitude clearly amazing. Can I just be clear, when you introduced the Numicon and the various other supports that you've put in place, does that mean that all public schools now have kind of taken all of this on? Have you reached sort of all of them? Because it does, it seems like, you know, with the numbers that you're talking about, the impact that it's having.

that it would suggest that all the schools will sit up and take notice, right? Is it managed to sort of go into an attitude changes as well as just the materials themselves into all schools?

The system is in all these schools now. I'm not going to sit around and tell you everybody uses it 24 -7. But yes, they have been introduced to it. We do have some people that are retired, so some of the new teachers that are coming here, we have to get a list of them. We have to offer them training. But all the principals are there, and they have mandated the staff what they need to do. And this year, that's one of my focuses, either as a principal or as a math officer, that we have to make sure that that continues. Because mathematics, like I said,

That's been our Achilles heel for a while, in terms especially of the checkpoint results and to gauge how well we're doing. But what I've gone and done in the meantime is I've created assessments with the team I was working with. We have assessments in December, in March, and in June. And then all the schools have to submit the information to me. So I go to the data and then we could see where the gaps are, where the strengths are, and what we need to improve on.

So that also gives us an idea. And I found, particularly my normally the fresher students and second year, the results are normally very, very good. Very good. But it's in the middle to the upper where things kind of taper off. So realizing, okay, now I might have get some more manipulatives for the upper schools so that they can continue like on the lower school doors.

But yes, all schools have access to it. Yes, all.

Crenstant, thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing all your experience and wisdom with us. you know, hopefully we'll speak to you again soon.

No problem at all. Send me an invite and I'll be happy to come back on. No problem.

Fantastic.