My Lessons Were Clean, But the Things I Said Out Loud Were Hollow

In my early years of being a practitioner of "ignorance is bliss" in math education, the only question I asked my students was “Everybody understand?". Like clockwork, I got a few nods and we moved on. No hands. No questions. No pressure. “Copy me teach” was the expectation and I was the only one doing the thinking.

If you asked me how to divide fractions, I’d respond with Keep, Change, Flip. And if the kids asked me why? I’d deflect and say just copy the steps I wrote down. I didn't have the luxury of time for in-depth explanations of why. I had to adhere to a pacing calendar and demonstrate results. To help students remember, I even coined a catchy nickname like Kentucky Fried Chicken (Keep it, Flip it, Change it), which achieved my goal: scores that kept my name off the list. Notice it was what I needed. 

In 8th grade, it wasn’t much different. When I taught scientific notation, my explanation was: If the exponent is positive, move to the right. If it’s negative, move to the left. Don’t ask questions. Just do what I said. That wasn’t just for them. That was for me too.

Insanity right? It worked until it didn't and it didn't take long before I got tired of sidestepping and decided to stop doing what was easy for me.

While I was working through my own relationship with math, trying to see it with fresh eyes and a little more grace, I realized I couldn’t keep showing up the same way. The classroom culture had to shift too. I had to build a space where it was safe to be vulnerable, safe to try, and safe to ask why. Doing that while rebuilding my own understanding was messy and emotional, and exactly what needed to happen. As my self efficacy grew, so did my willingness to take risks in front of my students. Eventually and slowly, they started doing the same. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real, and that’s where the learning started to change.

Is Keep, Change, Flip a strategy? Sure. Does moving the decimals to the left work? Okay. But understanding why and creating space for students to ask why is where the real teaching lives.

And what we say out loud or even silently? It matters. Efficacy is when our words, the math, and our intention finally align.

In a recent session that I co-presented at CAMT, we invited our participants to reflect on the things we say out loud and even silently. Some statements and questions revealed doubt, discomfort, and survival-mode habits that we never really questioned. That

reflection matters because if we are not checking our apprehension to the math we teach, we are definitely passing those same practices to the young people that we educate. 

Next up, a whole series of how teacher efficacy dies in the shadows of performative leadership.

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#MathEdEfficacy Curriculum is the tool. Efficacy activates it.