Field Study Days: Visiting Educators in Long-View Math Classrooms
Long-View supports the learning of both our amazing student population, as well as the learning of schools from across the world. Through the number lab, our joint venture that is focused on teacher education, Long-View Micro School students and faculty share in the mission of helping other teachers meet the challenge of educating children at high levels in mathematics.
The advancement of the education system in the United States has been severely stifled for decades by pervasive conservative notions of teaching and learning. This has caused historically poor mathematics instructional methods to persist, diminishing students' confidence as mathematicians and contributing to a considerable lag in performance in the classroom. Long-View is an exemplar of how this problem can be radically shifted.
Preparing kids for the increasingly complex mathematics of this century requires an approach that cultivates habits of mind that attend to the deeper, underlying structure of mathematics and embeds this way of thinking longitudinally in students’ school experiences, beginning with the elementary grades. the number lab has developed a content trajectory and honed ways of teaching that support students thinking at high levels. Long-View serves as a daily example of this, and teachers across the country come to see it in action through Field Study Days at the micro school.
During a Field Study Day teachers and school leaders arrive before school starts for a pre-brief meeting about the class they will observe that day. Some are visiting for the first time and others are returning after having attended the number lab’s summer institute held on the UT campus called Educators’ Collaboratory. Whether returning to learn more or visiting for the first time, Field Study participants are excited to be briefed on the lessons they will observe during the Long-View math block and to be further trained on how to implement the number lab’s content and pedagogy.
While the Long-View math block is in action, the visiting educators sit on the edge of the classroom and watch the children at work. They take notes as they listen into their discussions and transcribe into their notebooks the mathematics they see on whiteboards as children work with a partner during Studio Time. And after the block ends, the visiting educators gather together for a post-brief meeting to analyze the thinking that is evidenced by the children’s work, as well as the way that the culture and pedagogy contributed to the high levels of reasoning they observed. They leave inspired to strive for more ambitious teaching on behalf of their students, have a clearer vision of the incredible capabilities of children, and are more prepared to foster high levels of mathematical thinking in their own classrooms.