Episode 9: Write your own maths lessons, why not write your own novels too?

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello, I'm Emily Guille-Marrett.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Introduction

This is the School of School podcast. Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Andy Psarianos

Okay, thanks for joining us everyone. Today, we're going to talk about why you should write your own maths lessons, or should you? Go on Emily, what's your point of view on this?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Oh, it's the million dollar question. So reasons to ... creativity, coming up with your own ideas, sitting there imagining the children in your classroom coming up with fun things that you can do.

It makes me think of a teacher I used to work with who would tell me how she would dress up at the beginning when she started her NQT and she'd dress up as a pirate and have this amazing time and the kids ... they'd be pirates and they'd go and get pirate books and they'd be in the pirate role play area and she was doing all this amazing stuff which, there was a lot of wonderful things in there, so don't get me wrong, but her point being when she does her training to other teachers now was what were the children learning? We had a great time and they were learning things, but what were they learning? So ... but you could create your own brilliant worksheets, like pirate hats that you can cut out and make, and there's an argument for that, but why are you doing it?

Adam Gifford

I've been involved in writing some lessons. So I've got sort of skin in the game I guess. That's on one hand, but then on the other hand, I think back when I first trained in New Zealand, we were always taught to sort of contextualize where we could and think about our community and think about our area and think about what the children brought to the classroom that perhaps differed depending on where you were. And we were taught to acknowledge those sorts of things and try to include that in our planning. And I can see a lot of mileage in that. I mean, I've done that here in the UK as well and had some pretty amazing things happen where we went around the local area with pictures and one of them was a girl in my class's grandmother.

She still lived in the house, but the picture was her as a wee girl outside and then that sort of flipped around because the girl was with the grandmother and it was reflected the picture and those sorts of things. Now it's lovely and it connects the community, but I think that what we need to be really careful of is whenever we are teaching something, it's a carefully orchestrated set of skills that need to take place. And we can't lose sight of that. There has to be a set of skills. There has to be ... there's a certain amount of research skills and expertise that go into really, really good lessons. I do think, however, that we don't ever want to lose sight of the learning that can take place outside of, for example, textbooks and whatnot. But we have to give well written textbooks like Maths — No Problem!! series ... we have to understand that they are expertly written. We have to understand the huge amount of effort that goes into making sure that those skills are carefully crafted and those sorts of things.

Andy Psarianos

The question here is should teachers be writing their own problems? And I guess really at the heart of that question is number one, do they have the expertise? Number two, do they have the time, right? And maybe more important than both of those, what makes a lesson good? Right? And I think what makes a lesson good has nothing to do with that individual lesson. What makes a lesson good is where it fits in the context of yesterday's lesson and tomorrow's lesson and last year's lesson and next year's lesson. Right? And that's what makes a lesson good. It's the whole package that's important. It's not just an individual performance of the teacher in the classroom or the performance of the teacher in writing a lesson, right?

So should teachers be writing their own math lessons? Only if you believe that actors should be writing their own plays. If you think that every actor can go in and write the works of Shakespeare and do the performance of their life, then great. But most actors wouldn't even dream of trying to write their own screenplay, right? Or their own script. They would just much rather pick up a good one, right? And then give the performance of that. That's my opinion. Now you might not agree with it, but anyway.

Emily Guille-Marrett

I'm going to move that into ... you've got me thinking about Learn to Read books. So I find it quite painful that for some children, a lot of the books that they mainly experience are the ones that are leveled reading books. And I feel that there are a number of series where classroom ... not just classroom teachers, but teachers, educational professionals have written a kind of program. And I'm not saying that the rigor of the program necessarily is wrong, but sometimes I feel quite passionately that the people that bring those books to life are often the creatives, the authors and the illustrators who can play so well with the words. And yet, somehow we differentiate the quality literature, the picture books that are out there. And yet the books that the children have in the classroom might be very sort of done uninspiring because they're perceived to be worthy and the pedagogy has to be there.

So I think sometimes maybe there's a place for collaboration in that kind of thing. And there I would say don't ... some teachers are wonderful writers. Some teachers are published writers ... some of our finest children's authors. Okay. Lucky you, if you are that person, go ahead and write the books. But I think that's an example of where having a pedagogy and an understanding and then getting the right people to produce the materials has a different desired effect.

Andy Psarianos

So are you ... are-

Emily Guille-Marrett

Not a worksheet, but it is a product.

Andy Psarianos

Okay. So let me flip that around. And this may be a topic for another podcast. Should teachers be allowed to write the novels for their classrooms?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Oh, come on. I'm a literacy publisher. Of course they can. If they could-

Andy Psarianos

Really?

Emily Guille-Marrett

But the question is ... because we're all writers, but what I would say is not instead of, I would say there is a place because if you model writing and you model being an author, it's a positive ... for a period of time, I would be depressed if ... I mean, let's be honest, Michael Morpurgo, he ... there are people who've been in classrooms. That's different. I mean, generally, no, I think it's Joseph Coelho. We want to have their books. Do we want to have Isabel Thomas? Yes, we want to have their books. Do we want to have ... yes, we want writers of quality. That's what the children should have. Not the teachers writing the books.

Andy Psarianos

Right. So, yeah, no-

Emily Guille-Marrett

Unless they can.

Andy Psarianos

So let me propose a concept, right? So, okay. New national curriculum, right? New national curriculum. We're no longer studying these books. These are no longer on the reading list for whatever, right? Let's say secondary school. You're no longer ... no one's studying Shakespeare anymore. All teachers must write their own novels for the literature classes in secondary school as of next year. Is that a good idea?

Emily Guille-Marrett

No.

Andy Psarianos

Of course not. It's a stupid idea. No one would ever suggest that. So why do we...why do people think that's a good idea in maths?

Adam Gifford

It's not. It's a really bad idea.

Andy Psarianos

It's not. It's just a really bad idea.

Adam Gifford

It should never be pedaled as a good idea. And I think that there are too many constraints that, unless you've got the expertise to write ... so I'll give you an example, I'm just doing some work to support some mathematics. Year two class ... children sat there, gorgeous wee bunch of kids really into it ... teacher, bit nervous because I was there watching, but anyway, it started off and it was going seemingly well. Sally and her dad were comparing heights. I thought, "That's lovely. That's a lovely wee thing, isn't it?" Because I remember as a kid looking up at my dad and that sort of stuff, so this is great. So the first line appears on the board. Sally's dad is 60 centimeters tall and I did a bit of a double take ... I'm fortunate.

I've been to schools all over the world and it seems like there's some sort of international convention that rulers are always 30 centimeters. I don't know who decided that, but that seems to be the kind of international norm. I thought Sally's dad is two rulers tall and I couldn't giggle. It's a serious business. I was there observing and then I thought, "Oh, it's a comparison problem." Here comes Sally. Now Sally was 30 centimeters tall, right? And they had to find the difference and so on and so forth. Now, the reason why the teacher picked that is because in year two, they're dealing with two digit numbers. So Sally's dad was never going to be any bigger than 99 centimeters, right? Sally, because Sally was going to be shorter, was always going to be less than 99. Now that could be feasible.

But the point I'm trying to make is the children-

Andy Psarianos

It's not likely.

Adam Gifford

Yeah. Well, I looked to see world's shortest man, that sort of thing. But I thought the combination of a 60 centimeter dad and the 30 centimeter daughter? No, not happening. I don't care where you are, but that's not happening. But the point is that I chose whether or not to talk to the teacher or the child at the end of it. Now I chose to talk to the teacher and you point that out and immediately it becomes obvious. However, there was that overarching thing that the objective said, I can only use two digit numbers, so therefore it fit the criteria. But I guarantee if I had to say it to the children, if I had to follow them out ...

"You were paying attention in there, that's great. Hey, how big do you reckon your dad is?" You know, they'd probably turn around to me and say, "Oh, he's pretty big. He's about 63 centimeters tall I reckon? Something like that. He's quite a big bloke. And what about you? How big are you?" "Oh, I'm probably about 32, 33. I'm quite big like my dad. So yeah." And they would've lapped it up. They would've believed that that was their reality. And I think that there are so many facets that people need to think about when they're creating content. Just forget the textbook. It's too ... One, it's too much work. You'd have to give people sabbaticals of years at a time in order to do it just on a practical level. Then, I think that there are so many aspects that go into it that you would also then have to apply the training to it.

So I think that what well written textbooks, like the Maths — No Problem!! series, we can trust them to bits. What that allows is time to free it up for a little bit of finesse in the classroom for some questioning that can bring it even further or on the flip side of that, give it the time to understand mathematics. Most of us primary practitioners are not specialists. So there's plenty of content in there that we can't be expected to know at a level that we can find out at. So I think the argument is whether or not people have the potential ... maybe everyone's got the potential for a novel. Maybe everyone's got the potential to write a maths book.

Andy Psarianos

I don't think so. I don't think they do. I think everybody ... a lot of people think they do, but the reality is I'm never going to be Wayne Gretzky, right? I'm never going to be Michael Jordan. It's just not going to happen. Never in my life, no matter how much I train, how well I eat, am I going to run a four minute mile. So it's not going to happen. I'd be lucky to run a mile in 20 minutes. And that's just reality, right? And maybe if I train really hard, yeah. For a long time, I might be able to get it a lot better than I am, but I'm never going to run a four minute mile. And the reason we give people books like great authors ... Dickens, or Shakespeare, whatever to read is because it's a model of what great writing looks like, right?

That's why we give it to them, right? And it's the same with a textbook. Why do we give it a great text? Because it's a model of how to communicate mathematical ideas really well, right? There's a reading element to it, right? And you're not going to give that to ... you don't leave those things to chance. You can't leave those things to chance because maybe some teachers can write really good novels. Can they write Dickens? I doubt it. But they might be able to write really good novels, right? But they should spend their time becoming better teachers and not becoming better authors because we already have great books. Why waste your time?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Okay. I'm going to challenge one thing, which, I'm not disagreeing. It's challenging a concept here.

Andy Psarianos

You can disagree.

Emily Guille-Marrett

And that is ... no, I'm not disagreeing on the ... it's a concept within this though. And I've seen some really interesting projects like teachers as writers and it picks up a little bit on what Adam was saying about spending the time on the maths. So if you take the principle that you're saying, and you say let the textbook do that, you can actually become, if you have more time, you can decide I'm going to actually understand this more deeply. I want to know about this more. And the Teachers as Writers project is really fascinating because we actually expect children to sit down and say, write a story, create your character as if it comes from nowhere, not understanding the kind of process of writing and developing.

And actually there is something to be said for ... okay, there's a difference between the Katherine Rundell award winning children's author. Let's just say there is a difference to that, but you could certainly read more if you were freed up and if you had good quality literature. I think becoming an expert in children's literature so you can recommend and inspire the children ... but I think you can also have an amazing experience becoming a writer and feeling what it's like to be a writer and learning more of those skills more deeply. That's where to spend your time so that when you are teaching those skills to the children and you are doing the more technical thing, there's a kind of personal experience that you are experiencing being a writer. So you might not be the Katherine Rundell, but you could still-

Adam Gifford

I think the difference there, Emily, is that I think ... so Paul Yen ... famous mathematician, maths educator, talks about you don't fully understand something until you've written your own problem and completed it, right? But what isn't tagged onto the end of that is written your own problem and completed it and then used it as the basis for learning for other people where learning is crucial.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

So I think that we have to separate it out into two parts. Of course, encourage the process of learning to write and the process you've just talked about ... the process if I spent my time writing my own maths problems and going through and seeing if they worked and critiquing them and those sorts of things will more than likely result in me understanding the subject better, but does it give it the seal of approval to go in and take it in to children in year three who tomorrow, for example, they will only ever get that Friday in year three once in their lives. So do I really want to ... do I really want to take something that I've written that I think's quite good, but let's just put egos aside for a minute, shall we? Is it good enough to use that one unique day in a year three child's life? Is it good enough for them in that day? And I think that there are too many checks and balances to go through for me to make that decision alone.

Emily Guille-Marrett

And I agree with that and actually think that it's brilliantly brings it together because should teachers do their own is if they have the materials and the best quality literature books and so on, and they're using those, then it can free them up to become better writers for themselves. But I agree with you that for our lovely children, they need the best and they need to have that written by the experts.

Andy Psarianos

Okay. I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going to ask you guys a question. Yes or no. Should teachers write their own maths lesson? Yes or no. Adam?

Adam Gifford

From scratch?

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

No.

Andy Psarianos

Emily?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Depends who the teacher is.

Andy Psarianos

And I say absolutely not. All right. That's it. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us.

Closing

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.