Helen Sheridan
79 posts
Celebrating the completion of our book, ‘Reforming Lessons’, with my co-author, Robert Peal. It will be published in late August by Routledge. The book tells the story of the education reforms introduced between 2010 and 2024, and why they have proved to be so successful.
Yesterday morning, I placed copies of seven example-based You Teach You geometry worksheets in separate piles on a table in my classroom so that my GED students could work through them one at a time when they came in. They were used to the “see it, do it, check it” format from previous classes and settled in to work, coming to me for assistance (not as often as you might think since the 1:1 ratio of examples to practice problems makes the worksheets self-explanatory) and to check their work against the keys (which I showed them one at a time on my laptop, without comment). There were a few “Oh, I see what I did wong!”s, a number of “Yesssss!”s, three or four questions, and one high five as I revealed the keys, but mostly the students simply looked at the solutions and smiled to themselves in silent contentment; confident that they were actually mastering the math they’ll need to pass the GED. These are individuals who, by their own admission, have never felt confident in math class before, so the looks on their faces spoke volumes. And something else spoke to me too. There happened to be seven students in the class at the time, same as the number of worksheets, and at one point each of them was working on a different one. Students work at different rates, often vastly different rates. When we don’t account for that, some feel rushed and fall behind while others get prevented from going further. When we do account for it, they all get precisely what they need to succeed. #YouTeachYou #Reproducible #MathWorksheets #GED #AdultEducation #RemedialMath #InexpensiveMathSolutions
In debates and discussions around education, it is often the case that when people say this or that approach doesn’t work / is harmful / should be banned / is anti-child / etc, they really mean “but this isn’t how things were when I was at school.” This understandable human desire to recreate the world or our childhood is why we are stuck in a never ending cycle of fads and fashions, be that in education practices or popular music or dress sense or pretty much everything. It is the main culprit when it comes to understanding why education rarely goes with the evidence base and instead opts for what makes people feel comfortable.