0:00 Hello and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators. The hosts are Eva anhyzer dusty Jones, and I am Joel Amidon. Today we are talking with Jennifer Wolf, an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics from the University of Arizona, about her teaching of math teachers during these, as we say unprecedented times you said that over and over again. Welcome, Jen. 0:26 Hi, thank you all for having me. 0:28 We're excited to have you excited to talk about be as excited as we can, during these times to talk about some of these things. We're going to be tackling five questions around five questions, we might add some here or there, just in case those of you are into numbers. But let's get started. So Jen, what classes are you teaching? 0:45 I am teaching two sections of understanding elementary mathematics part two. So we have two content courses for our future elementary school teachers in the second course focuses on algebra, geometry, and measurement and statistics. 1:00 Okay. You said you have two sections of them. Yeah. 1:02 So I'm teaching two sections of that back to back. Online. Yeah. So it's pretty intense. Okay, 1:09 so what are you doing with those? What changes have you made what has happened, like we said, before we started recording a lots happened last five meat weeks. But what has happened with those courses, since we've kind of gone into this social distancing period, 1:22 our department decided that we would go synchronous, and I think the the idea behind that was that it would offer some students maybe some stability, or accountability, or however you want to phrase it, so that they were coming, they'll be coming to class, or have been coming to class at the regular times that we would meet face to face. And so we're doing that through zoom. When this all started, we got the announcement that hey, you have a we're all moving online, and it was like near the end of our spring break. And then they delayed the start of classes for a couple of days. So we had a few days to get ready. That's all you need. Right? Right, apparently, apparently. So I was in all the zoom webinars that you could possibly take through the UAE through amtv through nctm. And then to start the move, I surveyed my students and did like a wellness check thinking about what access to resources that they might have. And then to continue on. Okay, I went to all these webinars, okay, how what elements of my face to face or I do a lot of work with complex instruction and group work. So how am I going to be able to do that in the synchronous online space, right, so it came down to using Google Slides. And then we use desire to learn, which is a course management site. That's kind of the start of how I started to move the courses to online and synchronously. So we use zoom. And then I'm using Google Slides as a way to collaborate in addition to some of the features of zoom, such as the 2:52 breakout rooms, okay, just I gotta ask a few questions shares, knowing that you're teaching content, and you gave a survey with regards to resources. How did that adjust what you did? Or were planning to do with your students in this during this time? 3:07 Great question. I wanted to see to what extent they had internet access. Did they have access to a laptop, a desktop, a mobile device, an iPad and checking out what other what kind of resources do they they have? So that that then kind of shaped what I would do in the course. So one resource that everyone either had a laptop or a desktop, most students have had iPhones or androids. A few students had iPads. And just a few students had printers. And so when I went to think about how am I going to design this course, I needed to do it in such a way that it didn't rely on being able to print. So that was helpful in thinking about, okay, when I put these Google Slides together, maybe something that I would normally put in a handout, I made sure it was on each Google slide. So that you could still work in the Google Slides around that problem. And then maybe do pencil paper, work, wherever you're joining us from excellent. 4:03 I guess my other question is about and this is something I'm really interested about, like how are you doing complex instruction, which for those and maybe give the the thumbnail of what complex instruction is 4:14 right? So at the heart of complex instruction is just thinking about how do I attend to dismantling hierarchies of status and oppression? And in this case, within the synchronous online environment, so this idea that we all have strengths that we bring to the table, and how do we leverage one another's strengths? How do we value each other's strengths to tackle some really rigorous mathematical ideas. And so that has been one of the things that has been quite challenging, because I'm still doing breakout groups. And so they're each in their group. So we have a problem and they'll go work on the problem in the breakout groups. And then I'm kind of hopping between great breakout groups and seeing how they're interacting and then, of course, I I have to monitor In my setup, so I can, while I'm, I have zoom on one, I have the Google Slides on another. So I can see how they're progressing in their work on the slides, and then that kind of gives me information on which groups I can go visit next. The downside of that is that I'm beginning to realize how much I rely on gestures, body cues, and to think about, okay, how is status playing out, because as you can imagine, when you jump into a breakout room, I'm jumping at a moment in time, right? That it could be that this person has done a lot of talking. But in the time that I've come, maybe they haven't talked as much. There's Yeah, some challenges there. But at least they're able to collaborate in that space. And we can use the Google Slides as a way to interact and communicate our understandings. 5:48 Yeah, that's really like interesting, like, you know, we know what maybe frustration or what powerplays like what it Look, you know, what it looks like, when someone's taken over. And you see the other people like leaning back in their chairs. And they're like, Oh, you can see like, these other people are giving, not giving up, but they just like, I can't get in here, because they're just taking over this task, or they're taking over the materials. It's hard. What does that look like in an online environment? And 6:10 that's one of those things, it's been really challenging that in the face to face when I'm with one group, at least I to some extent, I'm listening and hearing what's happening in around in the face to face in the classroom. But in this space, I'm not hearing other groups, I'm not seeing other groups, until I actually physically go to the breakout room. 6:29 And I guess those other groups aren't hearing or seeing each other. Also. 6:35 Yeah, they're not hearing each other, either. 6:37 That could be a plus or a minus. But you know, I know sometimes I'm working with groups, and someone says, Well, I heard somebody over there say this, and I'm not really sure what that means. Right? That helps kind of fuel the conversation. And also, 6:51 just as Jen describes her, her setup with her monitors, you can follow her on Instagram, you actually see the picture of your setup, which I really love that you shared that with the balancing of monitors on like, tubs of manipulatives, and stuff like that. That's awesome. That 7:06 was my standing desk setup. Yeah, 7:09 there you go. It's fantastic. I mean, it's probably not as good as the closet that I'm speaking in right now. But you know, it's okay. We kind of dove in some details, but in just in broad strokes, how did it go? How's it going? 7:22 I think it's going as well as can be expected. I've learned some new things about myself and push myself to try new things I want to So one thing that I would say that's an advantage. Moving to online in the middle, I know, we might not think of a bunch of those. But the idea that I got a chance to a few years back, I attended an AMT session with Eva and Mandy Jansen and Charles and Anna Marie Connor, where they talked about building relationships with their students. And one of the takeaways was the idea of meeting with your students one on one for like an hour, if you can, if you can, you know, 45 minutes to an hour to get to really know them, and know them as human beings. I've continued to do that since I attended their session. And I had been doing that with this course. I also had them do like short flipgrid introductions and more recently, I've integrated Sarah Vander works name tense. So going into this environment, I had really good relationships with each of my students like I knew them. In the classroom, I knew about things that they enjoyed outside of the classroom, some challenges and the ways in which they're different strengths that they bring to the classroom. And so I think that that helped in moving to this online environment. We also had de to our course management site, and I in the when the face to face, I keep that updated regularly. So after every class, I update it. So they were used to Oh, if I miss a class, if I'm not sure about something, how do I get the handout? What is it that what were the topics covered in class what's expected next time, they could always go into that site and be ready for the next session? And I'm continuing to do that in the zoom. So thinking about what is it that I can bring that I did in face to face that's manageable in the online synchronous environment, because not everything is going to be necessarily the same, like I might not be able to certain things I might do in the classroom, especially, you know, with geometry and measurement and thinking about where it was going. Every activity, every group work we did was very hands on. And so I had to think how am I going to move that into the online environment? What is hands on look like? What does collaboration look like? And so I mentioned that I had attended several webinars and I'm particularly appreciative of Teresa Willis's work. She's done a lot too for synchronous teaching, and she's been doing it for 10 years. And she was very open about sharing a lot of her resources and how she gets engages the students in the five practices. And so I'm very thankful for that as well as sharing of resources in collaboration with Mandy Janssen and Matt Felton Kessler. So that's helped quite a bit like with Google Slides like color coding my group so each of my groups in my face to face where each They would have a cube on the desk. So that'd be my red team, my red cube group or my blue cube group. And so the way that transition into the online is with my Google Slides, my red group, the background for each slide is a light red color. So that when we go to jump and do breakout groups, and the small groups that they know which slides to work on, and I can jump around in the slides and know which group I'm with. I love that. 10:23 That's a nice small detail that that's really 10:25 good that Google Slides Also, if you run it through Chrome has closed captioning. So I found that that's really helpful with my emergent multilingual learners hyperlinking to Google Translate, and then being very cognizant of providing a lot of visuals and color coding along with text in each of the slides, having explicit and clear transition slides with directions. So they can always go back and refer to different slides when they're in their group work. What are we supposed to be doing? What are the goals here? And then to start off each class, I always start with a wellness check, how are they doing? And also breathing exercises. So I've been doing a lot of yoga and then just thinking about, okay, let's take deep breaths in and out and set our intention for learning in the community, relaxing our shoulders just getting ready to engage in this work. 11:11 So if I know Eva, I know she's been taking, like copious notes. And I bet she probably has a question though, too. For you. 11:18 I do, actually, my experience is a little bit different from yours in a sense that I did not know my students before, because we have a quarter system. So this all happened right before our last quarter started. So there is a challenge in just jumping on. However, the questions I'm curious about is, in my experience, now, there's things I'm noticing, in my teaching that I think, Oh, my gosh, this is so much better in an online version. I would like to keep this when I go back into regular versions. And I was wondering if you had experiences of things that, you know, the other way around, that are working really well, now that you're going to maybe incorporate back into your regular teaching? Hmm, 12:06 that's a really great question. I've not had a lot of experience with Google Slides going into online teaching, I usually use PowerPoint. So Google Slides, what I like about it is that one of the advantages is I can see what the groups are working on and I have an electronic copy of the work. And so something that I found really helpful was that I can take their work and screenshots of their work, and then put them in other slides. And then we can do like notice and wonders. So I'm wondering, because your question was like, how am I going to translate that back? When I go into face to face? 12:42 Yeah, would you still use that 12:44 maybe I'm gonna have to think on that a little bit more. So 12:46 one of the things that I have noticed in mine, and I do asynchronous, so it's a little bit different. But I've been implementing Mandy Jensen's rough draft thinking in a new way, where we now across three weeks, you know, when they first work, they're doing a rough draft slide of their thinking, the next week, they get to go revise back based on feedback from their classmates and from me. And then the following week, they're creating a final version. And again, you can kind of see the history of them in Google Slides. And people can see other people's slides, and it has a different flair doing it on Google Slides than it does. Usually I do posters in class. And so I'm trying to think about what are the upsides here? And how is this working? For me? What am I learning about rough draft thinking that I'm going to translate back? So I was just kind of curious if there's things that you notice, you don't even have to know how to translate it back. But are there things you notice that are working well, that other people might be able to also do if you share? Like the colors right? We already I heard dusty? Oh, yeah, perk up that that's a really cool idea to use colored backgrounds for groups is there other things like that? 14:07 So some of the things that I've used the color backgrounds is really helpful. And when I mentioned before about having a lot of visuals, one of the things that was really helpful in moving to online, is thinking about one of my big, big ideas is like, what assumptions Am I making? Like, what assumptions Am I making about students access, opportunity and privilege? That's something that I continue to reflect about every time I go into thinking about what's this next class going to look like? And one of those things in moving online was an assumption that my students knew how to use Google Slides and assumption that my students were familiar with zoom. Like we talked about how this generation is very active with digital tools. But I found that I didn't want to make those assumptions going in because they were really overwhelmed as it was all their classes moving online, and so forth. First three or four sessions of classes, we explicitly went over what are the different tools, I had lots of screenshots, so they could refer back to it, just having a lot of visuals. And I think that's one of the things that I'll take away from the online to the face to face is continuing to think about how to incorporate more of those visuals. And the color coding of the slides with the groups, I also have each, I have a little visual too that has all their names on there along with, with ci, one of the ways that we do status interventions is to think about group roles. And so they still have roles within their groups like the task monitor, the questioner, so on and so forth. And those roles and their names are on each of the slides, each of the color coded slides, which is helpful, 15:45 nice, I've got those written down, definitely like the colors and things like that, 15:49 it's kind of hard to articulate, it's easier to kind of show I think, the ways in which like, I'll do a notice and wonder using their work. And it's kind of like a gallery walk like you would do in a face to face only now it's a gallery Walk of slides, doing matching, like physically having them move and card sorts, and doing matching, having spaces where each group can do a group reflection on maybe a video that they just watched. So they'll go to the breakout room, they'll watch a video, they'll come back from watching the video they'll talk about they can type in the different strategies that they saw in the video. And then what's the How do they compare the strategies they use to solve the problem with what they saw on the video, and reflect on that. And then I have a record of that. That's public a little bit more public than it might be in face to face where it's on their paper or in their binders in their work. So 16:40 I have a question Jen about the materials. And you're talking about the importance of visuals. And I know from teaching this type of content course with geometry content, especially but also with statistics and, and probability there's, if I was doing this face to face in a classroom, there's a lot of hands on things, there's a lot of tubs of manipulatives that I would bring in. So are you using a lot of? I'm assuming you're using a lot of Virtual Manipulatives. Is that right? Or are you having students make their own stuff? If printers being you know, scarce? That's not maybe a reasonable request. But how are you handling that sort of thing? 17:16 Great question. And that's one of those things, I think moving into the fall, if we're still doing online teaching, I want to tackle next, because I haven't incorporated as many Virtual Manipulatives in this class, because I was also balancing Okay, what's one more new thing that my students are going to have to learn? Yes, 17:34 right. What's 17:34 one more new thing I'm going to have to learn? And what emotional capital do I have left to be able to do that? Like what are kind of the trade offs in the kind of response teaching under a global pandemic, I want to incorporate more Virtual Manipulatives. But as of now, I haven't and I've really thought about, oh, maybe I can incorporate more Desmos or more GeoGebra as another resource, but getting the feedback from my students about how the class is going. And I do that after each class, I'm trying to get feedback and reflections on where they are and what they can handle. Like one more thing. Yeah. So I don't know if that answers your question dusty, but that's kind of where I am and thinking, Okay, is this going to be one more thing that I put on their plate that may be a little too overwhelming? It's not that I don't want to do it. I'm just trying to find that balance. 18:22 I completely understand that I'm not teaching that particular class right now. So I hadn't you were kind of listening to me think through this for the first time. So I was glad to listen to somebody who actually had to face that situation. I totally understand where you're coming from. Yeah. 18:35 Did you have any more like big learnings that you could say that you've got extracted? Or maybe even some of the it sounds like definitely you've got questions that you're still pondering. So either big learnings or ponderings, that you've got going on 18:48 some things that have kind of been I've been reflecting on is the idea of like, I need to do what's manageable for my students, but also for myself, like we just talked about, like, what is it that I can add on and I'm, it's okay, that I'm not doing everything, like, what is it that you can do and do really well? And then think about how can you start to add in one more thing to push yourself? What's one more thing you can add that's manageable for you. At this time? 19:14 I'm kind of curious if you adjusted the goals for your courses, because you said you had to kind of think through and take time for check ins with your students. So how did you decide what to focus on? 19:28 Yeah, that's great. Because something that's come up is first and foremost, I always focus on their mental health and well being so we always do some kind of wellness check where I'll have a slide that they can go in and they have their own little text box and they can fill in like, what are you doing to cope or adapt? Right now? What are you doing for self care? What's something new that you've learned in the last month it doesn't have to be mathematical at all, but just sharing that doing those like breathing exercises and checking in is something that that I've been doing 19:59 this would be Something that would be good to do no matter what, right? Yes, in a crisis. So maybe we can learn from this. You probably had to make decisions to cut materials. So how do you go about making decisions like that? Did you just cut chunks of content? Are you just seeing how it goes? 20:19 I've got a been seeing like how it goes. But there are pieces that okay, I needed to cut this because this was something that, like I have them create a ruler and then compare their their rulers to do think about measurement and units. But it usually requires a lot of hands on. So then I thought, okay, like, how am I going to translate that into the online environment? Should I go ahead and just cut that material and think of like something else I could do instead, I'm also recognizing that you can't get through as much as you would normally get through a face to face. And online. That's been my experience. So far, 20:55 my guess is the homework had to be adjusted as well, 20:58 yeah, it had to be adjusted in that. So they can do paper and pencil, we have Adobe scan, I guess the app is free. So they can scan the written work and upload it to our course management site. But I'm not giving as much homework as I might have given before. Because I'm not able to get through as much, they may have a question or two to work on before the next time that we meet. So the amount of material has also kind of gone down. I've continued on with the same topics. And it may be that we don't get to the statistics as much. And we just finished out with geometry and measurement. But yeah, I've had to make some decisions on Oh, I usually do this activity or this idea. How might I do something different? Or is it that I'm not going to do this right now I can integrate it at some other time. 21:45 Trying to be efficient with your mu times? 21:47 Yeah, it's still very challenging, because I want to go back and think, Okay, what are my learning goals? What are the what's the purpose of doing this? Right, so 21:54 I have another follow up question. How has this affected grading? Can you talk a little bit about that? 22:01 Yeah, this is a real tension for me right? Now, I'm going to be really honest. So when we grade, right, when we assess students, what am I assessing them on? Are there ways in which I still assess students on compliance, behavior, privilege access, like that's one of these reflection questions, I'm constantly thinking about my grading. So what I've done is that they're turning in, like their homework or problems that they work on. And I have an iPad with the pencil. And so when they turn it in, I just use notability. I import it in and I give them written feedback. I also are having them self assess. And I did this in the face to face as well. I'm having them self assess how they feel that they're doing our institution for this semester went to they can opt to do like a pass fail, or they can do a letter grade. But no matter what they decide there, it'll still count towards progressing in their program. I don't feel I mean, just be quite honest, I don't feel comfortable giving them quantitative scores. But some of my students still want that quantitative score, so they know where they are. So the way that I grade is that like a 10 point scale, but then a 10, it has like a description of what it 10 would be, and it has different bullet points of things that I'm looking for. And that would be a score of a 10. But it's really focused more on the descriptors and less on the quantitative part. And then they're also able to like, self assess in there. And I also do revisions. So we learned through revisions. So that's another way that I grade that if they turn in the first draft, and I give them all sorts of feedback, and they evaluate themselves using this rubric. And then they can always go back and revise and then submit that and that revision replaces what they did before. I don't know if that quite addresses it. I'm really strong. I'm quite honest, I'm really struggling with the grading thing. Because when we move to online, I'm like, Are you serious? I've got to grade them and give them numerical scores back. Yeah. And I feel like this is one of those things where I'm like, I really want to push back. But it's a real tension with me right now. Like, you know, I want to just give them written feedback, have a look at their feedback, and then revise it, give them more feedback and highlight like, what are they doing really well, like? And then what are some things that they could work on? And I think that's more beneficial. So that's a row. I don't, I'm still struggling with that right now. 24:26 It's like you want to treat them like a professional? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, like, yeah, we're getting evaluations, but it's more like how can I qualitatively get better in what I'm doing? There's things I need to work on. And yet we're in this system of great yeah, that's, that's like a bigger question even beyond this, but then it just adds more emphasis to that struggle when we're in such a situation as we are. 24:48 And this is the time to, I think push back on a lot of the decisions like this that you do in your own classrooms, but I'm experiencing that tension a lot right now. And just I keep coming back to like, how am I practices align with my beliefs, and what assumptions Am I making about access and opportunity and privilege? And what am i assessing them on? Is it that compliance behavior privilege access? Like, what's the point and the feedback? Is it educated? Is it constructive? But yeah, so grading has been 25:16 a challenge. I love that we're getting these ponderings. This is good, because it's something we need to think about. But I know what I'm so happy for the time that you committed with us so far. But just wondering on this last question, if you have anything to add, what would you change? If you had more time to set this up? And maybe even thinking like, what might be, you know, if things happen in the fall? Like, what might you given more time, put into play for your courses? 25:39 I think it would be helpful for me to think about a little bit more about what has worked and what hasn't worked, and a lot of the great questions that you all have asked today. And then thinking about how do I make this environment a little bit more student led? And it's not to say that I'm not I'm having them collaborate, they're in breakout groups. But then I find that because I'm hopping from group to group, I see the slide I have to make, I have to make room like that in the moment decision about like, oh, how am I gonna select and sequence and when I do this, what am I privileging when I make those decisions? How do I make it where when we come back to whole class, that there's more student voice in there, because what I'm finding is, is 75 minutes goes by really quickly, in this space with everything that we're doing. And so I want to figure out, how can I make this a little bit more student led, like, have them work on problems ahead of time, and like as Ava was saying, she's been incorporating a lot of the work of rough draft thinking, and having them put the rough drafts on slides and then having them take the lead more maybe on those rough drafts of their slides. That's one thing that I like done that I'm thinking now. Nice. 26:51 Well, I appreciate I again, I appreciate it, some of the things that some of the challenges that you put out there, I mean, and even thinking about how are we putting our students first and their own well being, I really appreciate the fact that you're doing so thank you, Jen, so much for spending some time with us. 27:04 Oh, yeah. Thank you for having me 27:06 on the teaching math teacher, podcast, and just all of you. Thanks again for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope that you are able to implement something that you just heard, and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher, educators.