Graduate Education Assistance

Scenario Paradise Canyon High School

The Scenario: Student Access to Technology

Paradise Canyon is a public high school serving Grades 9-12. It is a large Division 6 urban school in a mostly lower middle- class neighborhood. Five public middle schools and three charter middle schools feed into Paradise Canyon. It has very competitive and high-ranking football and soccer teams. The student population is 60% African American, 20% Hispanic, 10% Caucasian, 9% Asian, and 1% Native American.

Facilities and Faculty Members Facility: Classroom Stakeholders: Teacher, Students

You have 50 minutes to teach your remedial high school students basic algebra. You have two months before the first district benchmark exam, five months before the second district benchmark exam, and seven months before the state standardized test. You start with a warm-up, provide the answers to the homework, show students how to work out some of the harder problems from their homework assignment, provide direct instruction while the students take notes, give an opportunity for guided practice on a few sample problems, check those answers, and then assign homework. Every Friday, you give an assessment of the week’s material with a few problems from previous material to spiral previously taught concepts, especially the ones for high markers on the benchmarks and the state’s standardized test. Typically, it is four quizzes per unit and then an exam. Your class agenda is predictable, consistent, and covers the required material.

Your students’ quizzes and test scores are very low after the first unit, and they seem lethargic and uninterested in math in general. As you are grading the students’ unit exams, you are displeased with the scores. You come across a student’s test on which he has written, “This class is boring. You are boring. Math is stupid, and I will never use this again.” You stare at this note for a moment. You let it sink in.

• How can you build relevancy of the algebraic concepts that are being presented so the students see the application and value of learning mathematics in an authentic way that is meaningful

for them? • How can you use data (pre- and postsummative assessments and formative assessments)

to show growth and help students change their self-competency beliefs regarding their ability to do mathematics successfully?

• Creative opportunities inspire, motivate, and challenge people. How can you integrate creativity into this course to deepen learning, enrich concepts, make

the concepts more interesting, strengthen problem-solving, encourage risk- taking, or build connections between concepts?

Author: Erica E. Bailin

The Scenario: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners in Algebra