Thank you Dan for your comments. NCTM is not saying, “keep off the online activities.” NCTM is neither arguing that teachers should avoid online materials, nor should teachers only use online materials from NCTM. What NCTM is arguing for is that those materials be selected wisely to ensure they fit within a coherent curriculum. I certainly agree that many teachers are drawn to, or pushed to, on-line materials as a result of the quality of the materials they are provided by their school district, but I don’t equate a curriculum with just a publisher’s text either.

Clearly there is work for traditional publishers and other curriculum providers to do to improve the quality of the materials they offer teachers. I believe collaboration is needed, not a guarantee, and expands well beyond curriculum coherence. Effective teacher collaboration can also serve the goal of equity by ensuring that the experiences of two different students in the same school and course with two different teachers don’t experience widely different learning opportunities. For example, a focus on procedures in one class versus a focus on reasoning and sense making supporting the development of procedures in another, simply because each teacher selected his/her own curricular activities. These different approaches, as a consequence of isolated curriculum selection, can result in vastly different learning opportunities for students. As a profession we need to do more to collectively and collaboratively reach each and every student.

On a side note I think these conversations within the community are a sign of its strength. By engaging in these conversations we iteratively better understand one another’s perspectives and improve our practice. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan, for highlighting Matt Larson’s recent President’s Message. It is an important message and I was glad to see NCTM make a strong statement about curricular coherence, which is often overlooked in discussions about high-quality mathematics tasks. It is nice to see NCTM out front on issues such as this, which is what you have been encouraging in previous posts..

Your response, however, seemed to misinterpret some of Larson’s comments and seemed, to me at least, a bit defensive. Larson was not saying, “Don’t use online activities!” Far from it. As such, I thought your “Keep off the grass!” analogy was over the top. Larson was simply saying that using online materials — even great tasks such as those you discuss here — should be done carefully and thoughtfully. That’s a fair and needed warning. A collection of great tasks does not necessarily make for a great curriculum. You, Karim Ani, and others who have promoted the use of rich mathematics tasks have acknowledged that before.

As for publishers, while the publishing industry is changing, previous waves of improved mathematics curriculum materials did not originate from publishers. Support from NSF and foundations provided much of the catalyst needed to promote new developments in mathematics curricula, with publishers following later. Unfortunately, such support is no longer forthcoming. NSF retrenched years ago under political pressure from the “Math Wars” and foundations either are uninterested in mathematics curriculum development or are putting their support behind “personalized learning” programs that show little or no promise to actually help students learn mathematics.

If we want to see the development of new models for mathematics instructional materials, we’d be better off pressuring NSF to get back into supporting instructional materials development than putting our faith in publishers or venture capitalists. That way, next-generation curriculum developers like you (and others) can get the needed support to create the new materials we all would like to see. As has happened before, publishers will follow suit, once they see the demand for these new of materials.

In any case, I applaud Larson and NCTM for raising an important issue and emphasizing the importance of curricular coherence. And thanks for pointing people to Tyler Auer’s thoughtful comments about Larson’s message.

Btw, it’s interesting to read the tweets responding to Dan’s query about reasons why teachers download or write their own instead of using textbooks and to note the difference in language from the language of coherence. The primary critiques of the textbook that stuck with me were: too procedural and micromanaging, not supportive enough of inquiry and the Practices side of the equation, too hard to work with, etc.

Yes, there was some mention of the lack of coherence in textbooks also, but I wonder if coherence isn’t a secondary and less visible dimension, where in the classroom we are more focused on the readily identified factors affecting the quality of the engagement. And, because coherence runs under the surface in some sense and is very difficult to achieve, we may underestimate its impact on the experience, the way in which organization designed for an overarching effect and an investment in enabling the learner and teacher to realize fully the benefits of prior learning and skill building can pay off as the year(s) go on. Or maybe it’s just plain difficult for it to have such effects.

Here is a small tool that I think I want. I think NCTM/Math Forum could help develop it, and I think it’s an example of the sort of way I want NCTM to be in the business of tending to the online infrastructure of teacher’s online work.

(Also, apologies if you’ve heard this before. I’ve been yammering about this for a while, but I have had trouble communicating my excitement to others. Can’t tell if it’s because the idea sucks or if because I’m a troubled visionary ahead of my time.)

Is there a way to create bundles of lessons online and easily share those bundles online? I don’t think there is, and I often want to do this.

Would such a tool if it were designed well — easy to make, easy to read, lightweight, easy to read, easy to edit — would it change how teachers collect and share curriculum? Could it be a nudge in the right direction?

This feels like a design problem for the math teacher web. I’m encouraged that the Math Forum/NCTM seems interested in this design problem. While Matt’s piece didn’t rub me the wrong way, it does seem to me that treating this as a challenge for people who want to influence what teachers do is going to be a better framing than trying to convince teachers to change their online patterns.

I am not certain of the point that Matt Larson is trying to make; or rather, that it needs to be made at all. “What NCTM is arguing for is that those materials be selected wisely to ensure they fit within a coherent curriculum.” What is it you think most teachers do Mr. Larson? I seek materials that engage, expand, and fit into my curriculum. No one else, and certainly not the publishers, is doing it for me. There is no time scheduled in my day to collaborate with other teachers of my courses. Emails usually suffice, but are definitely not enough. Teachers across the board are trying new things in the classroom every day to see what works and what doesn’t. And what works for some does not necessarily work for all. Effective teacher collaboration has traditionally been the downfall for most schools. For ours, primarily, it is a financial issue. Our schedules are packed as much as they can be with classes and supervisions. Between planning, grading, helping students, and administrative b.s., there is little time for collaboration. But teachers know this already. The district would need to pony up the $$ and provide more teachers so that we would have more time built in to work together. NCTM cannot solve this problem. I do like using their stuff sometimes though :).

Upon further reflection, I believe there are even greater battles being fought for coherence.

Because standards and standardized tests were rolled out ahead of aligned commercial or open-source curricula, many districts have chosen to “roll their own” curriculum. Because of the disparities between and among different teacher and learner audiences, most of these efforts result in Frankenstein-monster-style curricula, in which Lesson A is stitched to Unit B and wrapped in language from Curriculum C.These are mashed together by mid-level people who are not curriculum experts in an attempt to create coherence through common printing, binding (or through PDF generation), and legal proclamations.

As a result, we have even less coherence than before.

I appreciate Dan’s perspective about the six-year time cycle for conventional commercial curricula.

In my classroom, *I* am the common element. I am also the one who gets yelled at if students and families have a bad experience due to incoherent curricula. This makes me the de facto editor of bad curricula – regardless of where they come to me from.

For this reason, it feels insane to me to suggest that I *not* be resourceful in the MTBoS in the service of greater coherence for my students. I assure you this is a major pain in my butt, but I am determined to use it as an opportunity to become a clearer and more effective teacher for and with my students.

One last deep thought – I sure am getting tired of being blamed for the incoherence of standards and curricula that are way above my pay grade. Unfortunately, the way all of this has been set up (or *not* set up), everything rolls downhill into my yard.

Grumpily,

– Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)

Dan:

Whenever I ask a question like this around Desmos, I tend to get the response, “How far would Google Docs get you?” What are you looking for that existing solutions, however clunky, don’t provide?

I’m not entirely clear why I hate doing this on google docs, but I do. I need to do some soul searching to figure out why, I think…

run soulsearch.exe

Docs is the tool that I use, at the moment, to handle this stuff. Geoff’s curriculum maps do a great job of collecting curriculum, and they use docs.

One issue is that docs are clunky to load and to view. I don’t feel as if they are capable of capturing my “vision” for a unit or something. I’m reluctant to link to a google doc from my blog. (Partly because it’s not published. It’s hanging out in a folder. I assume that, at some point, I’ll screw up and delete it by accident, as I’ve done to various important google docs numerous times already.)

Another thing about docs: they aren’t searchable. I know, I know, now we’re getting into Better Lesson territory, but so far Desmos has been handling that problem pretty well with the curated search.

Maybe y’all can let users make Desmos activity bundles and treat those the same way as you treat activities? And, if that goes OK, you can give us a labs experiment where we can include things besides Desmos activities in the bundles? (And then, eventually, ditto with courses???)

Great communication thread, as always.
I think we are all agreeing that Matt Larson’s response, “What NCTM is arguing for is that those materials be selected wisely to ensure they fit within a coherent curriculum” is, in fact, what we are encouraging teachers to consider. Working across grade levels, I know how easy it is for an ES teacher to turn to Pinterest to find a ‘fun’ or appealing product, pre-made – especially considering they are busy planning similarly engaging activities and tasks for multiple subject areas. For those of us that get to focus on math only, we might have our readily available, go-to math websites and resources. With that in mind, how do we create that path that supports all teachers across grade levels, AND explores so many of those resources already out there? How might make those connections to the Teaching & Learning Practices in Principles to Actions? Teachers already use Dan Meyer’s 3 Act Task and NCTM’s problem bank as resources when planning for learning. Further, the work NCTM is doing around Activities with Rigor and Coherence (the newly aligned ARCs) is encouraging – I’m looking forward to inviting our teachers to use it as a resource.

In short, I actually think we mostly talking about the same thing here… the question is, how do we all get around the same table, to have that conversation? How do we get the path design going?

JM ivler:

I appreciate your persistence in working on improving how we engage students and apologize that NCTM did not respond to you. As I indicated in a previous post, NCTM does not recommend that anyone only use NCTM materials. While NCTM does not endorse products, we do provide opportunities for teachers to share, learn about, and discuss methods and resources as part of collective and collaborative professional growth. Under the Math Forum, we are working to increase these opportunities for teachers. Teachers and math educators sharing and discussing methods and resources are the foundation of our journals and our conferences similarly focus on sharing the expertise and work of teachers.