Teaching Teachers To Teach: It's Not So Elementary
Deborah Ball realized years ago she had a problem.
It was around 1980. She'd been working as an elementary school teacher in East Lansing, Michigan for about five years. But she felt like she just wasn't getting any better at it.
"I felt like I was really thoughtful," she says. "I tried to make stuff make sense to them. I used examples and tried to connect them to their lives, but they would forget things as fast as I taught them. On Friday they could do it, on Monday they would have forgotten."
Ball is now the dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, and kind of a rock star in the field of teacher education.
She's spent the past three and a half decades thinking about what good teaching looks like. And every summer, she puts her own practice on display, teaching math to fifth-graders in front of an audience of educators. It's part of a program called Teaching Works she started, in part, to help teachers figure out how to get students to not just give right answers, but really understand math.
"I'm really trying hard to dispel this idea that teaching is this thing you're born to do and it's somehow natural to everyday life," Ball says. "I don't think either of those things is true."
What Ball is trying to model at U of M is a system where future teachers have to demonstrate they can do some core things — like present a math problem, and lead a discussion about it — before they're safe to practice.
"Nobody goes out in a pilot school and is told: 'Go out in the plane today! Try it out. See how it works,'" Ball says.
"Maybe they don't really get this"
At the Elementary Mathematics Laboratory on the campus of the University of Michigan, 28 children sit at tables arranged in a horseshoe shape. Ball was just introduced to these students — from a nearby school district — a couple of days before, at the start of a two-week class. But she moves around the room in a way that suggests they've been working together for much longer – commenting on their work, complimenting their thinking and always using their first names.
Today they're working on a fraction problem. It's a tricky one, designed to test their understanding of the concepts "equal parts" and "the whole."
There's a lengthy discussion of the problem, with Ball gently probing the students' thinking – never correcting, never saying an idea is wrong – just asking more questions.
There are some, shall we say, creative interpretations of the math concepts this lesson is intended to impart. It's clear some kids don't understand that a shape has to be divided into equal parts in order to figure out what the fraction is.
And then, after 22 minutes, a student named Mitchio says something, which Ball then repeats to make sure it sinks in for the whole class:
The parts have to be equal to identify a fraction.
A few minutes later, I catch Ball during a break. She says the thing that was throwing kids with the fraction lesson was that they'd never seen a shape that wasn't already neatly divided into equal parts.
"And that's the question we never ask in school," Ball says. "We just give them all those right answers ... we give them drawings that are already divided correctly, and we never stop to think – 'huh, maybe they don't really get this.'"
Good teachers aren't born, they're trained
It's that question – is this kid really getting this? – that was nagging Ball decades ago as an elementary math teacher. And it's one she'd like more teachers to ask, more frequently.
Noncy Fields teaches fourth grade in Ypsilanti, just a few miles from the University of Michigan. She's been to several of Ball's summer teaching sessions, and says watching Deborah Ball in front of a classroom has totally changed how she teaches.
"When I came out [of college] 20-plus years ago, I was almost married to the textbook and I felt like I welcomed right answers," Fields says. "Wrong answers, I wanted nothing to do with them. It froze me if a kid were to say something wrong. Now, I feel like a doctor. I diagnose problems. I look for those misunderstandings. That's when I dive in and I do my best work."
The University of Michigan is not a school that churns out thousands of teachers every year. By that measure, it's actually a pretty tiny program. But Deborah Ball has had a big influence on the national conversation about teacher quality.
What Ball is trying to model at U of M is a system where future teachers have to demonstrate they can do some core things – like present a math problem, and lead a discussion about it – before they're safe to practice.
She says pilots, doctors, plumbers and hairdressers don't learn on the job. And teachers shouldn't either.
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Transcript
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today, the Obama administration did something that many people had been demanding for years. It called for a reduction in standardized tests. Parents and teachers have been complaining that so much testing stifles creativity and real learning in classes. But others say there's another problem in the classroom that hasn't been talked about so much - inexperienced and poorly prepared teachers. Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, says many young teachers are thrown into the classroom without the core skills they need, and she wants to change that. As part of our series "50 Great Teachers," Sarah Hulett of Michigan Radio has this profile.
SARAH HULETT, BYLINE: The story begins around 1980. Deborah Ball was an elementary school teacher in East Lansing, Mich. She'd been teaching for about five years, and especially when it came to math, she felt like she just wasn't getting any better at it.
DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL: I felt like I was really thoughtful. I really tried to make the stuff make sense to them. I used examples but - and tried to make it connected to their life. But they would forget things as fast as I taught them to them. So on Friday, they could do it; on Monday, they would've forgotten.
HULETT: Ball spent the next three and a half decades thinking about that. She's still thinking about it. She continued to teach elementary school until the early '90s. But she also went back to school, got a PhD in education, became a professor and now she runs one of the top Ed schools in the country. She's kind of a rock star in the world of teacher education. But she's still honing her craft as an elementary school teacher.
BALL: Don't just answer the question. I want you to explain your thinking. So write down your reason for both answers.
HULETT: For two weeks each summer, Ball teaches math to kids heading into fifth grade. And she has an audience - dozens of teachers in bleachers and in an overflow room watching closed-circuit TV - are watching her. It's part of a program she started in part to help teachers grappling with that same question she had all those years ago - how do you get students to not just give right answers, but really understand math?
BALL: OK, are you ready to see the picture?
HULETT: The 28 kids sitting at tables in this room have two rectangles in front of them. Both rectangles are divided into three parts with one part shaded. But one of the rectangles is divided into equal parts; the other isn't. I'm not going to say too much more about this problem or you'll just reach for the dial. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that the answer for that second rectangle - it's one-fourth. But most of the kids, they think it's one-third. Ball asks students to come up to the board, say what they think the answer is and explain why. A girl with black-rimmed oval-framed glasses steps up.
BALL: Your eyes should be up on Madison(ph) right now.
HULETT: Madison is in the one-third camp.
MADISON: Because when you do fractions, you count, like - so how many, like, squares you say there are. And then the one that's shaded, you would put that there. So that's how you would know if it was one-third.
HULETT: Ball doesn't tell Madison or the rest of the one-third kids they're wrong. She just listens, closely, gives them all the time they need to think and raise questions. Finally, one kid, Mitchio, says he didn't get one-third. He got one fourth. He comes up to the board.
BALL: Turn around now and tell the class what you said and what you just did.
MITCHIO: I just added a line to make it a proper fraction and...
HULETT: By now, we're 18 minutes into the discussion about this math problem. A student has given the correct answer and explained how he got there. But Ball still isn't even acknowledging Mitchio is right. She wants to find out what other kids think about Mitchio's answer. And this is one of the cool things about watching Ball teach. There is so little and yet so much going on. Finally, after 22 minutes, Ball repeats something Mitchio said that gets to the heart of this math problem.
BALL: The parts have to be equal to identify a fraction.
HULETT: The parts have to be equal to identify a fraction. That's what Mitchio showed his classmates at the board when he took a piece of black tape and gave that second rectangle four parts instead of three. A few minutes later, during a break, Ball says that was the thing that was throwing kids on the math problem. They'd never seen a shape that wasn't already neatly divided into equal parts.
BALL: And that's the question we never ask kids in school. We just get them to give all those right answers because we give them drawings that are already divided correctly, and we never stop to think huh, maybe they don't really get this.
HULETT: It's that question - is this kid really getting this? - that was nagging Ball decades ago as an elementary-math teacher. And it's one she'd like more teachers to ask more frequently. Noncy Fields teaches fourth grade a few miles away in Ypsilanti. She was watching Ball during the fraction lesson, and she's actually been to several of these summer teaching sessions. Fields says watching Deborah Ball in front of a classroom has totally changed how she teaches.
NONCY FIELDS: Oh, my God. I'll tell you exactly how it's different from me. I was almost married to the textbook - the math textbook - and I felt like I welcomed right answers.
HULETT: Wrong answers - she wanted nothing to do with them.
FIELDS: Now I'm looking for those misconceptions, those misunderstandings - that's when I dive in and I do my best work.
HULETT: The University of Michigan is not a school that churns out thousands of teachers every year. By that measure, it's actually a pretty tiny program. But Deborah Ball has had a big influence on the national conversation about teacher quality.
BALL: I'm really trying hard to dispel this idea that, you know, teaching is something you're born to do and it's somehow natural to everyday life. I don't think either of those things is true.
HULETT: What Ball is trying to model at U of M is a system where future teachers have to demonstrate they can do some core things, like present a math problem and lead a discussion about it before they're safe to practice. She says pilots, doctors, plumbers, even hairdressers don't learn on the job, and teachers shouldn't either. For NPR News, I'm Sarah Hulett. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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