M&M: Stand and Deliver

This movie from the year 1988 was based on the true life of mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante. Don't moan just yet without watching it first. This movie came before some of the others, sadly better known “real-life teacher stories”. By the way, the real Jaime Escalante is quoted on imdb for saying that the movie is “90% truth and 10% drama”, which seems pretty good to me.

Jaime Escalante was a really tough teacher. He had to be, teaching a class of Hispanic immigrant teenagers. He's played by Edward James Olmos. Some of you may know him from Battlestar Galactica where he was William “Bill“ Adama. Olmos got an Oscar nomination for his role as Escalante. The movie mostly focuses on the mathematics classes. But we do get to see glimpses into Escalante's private life. He's got a son, who is played by Olmos' real-life son, Bodie Olmos.

Escalante has to teach those teenagers mathematics and he's really passionate about it, which certainly also helps the teenagers to get interested and pay attention during those classes. He's honest with the students and tells them that they have two strikes against them: their name and their complexion. That will make the world assume they know less than they do. Their bosses at work won't care about their problems, so neither does he. He still ends up helping out one of the girls in class when he finds out her parents took her off school and talks to the father. Of course the class also has a trouble maker. Escalante calls him “Finger Man” for obvious reasons. I like the way Escalante deals with him by teaching him some cool mathematics with his fingers. Judging from Youtube comments, I'm not the only one wishing that my teacher taught me that trick. You'll know what I mean when you watch the movie and get to that scene.

The students get well enough to do the AP Calculus in their senior year. Escalante has his students take summer classes in advanced mathematics in preparation for this. The other teachers start being cynic towards Escalante. They don't think the students are capable of it. But Escalante and the students prove them all wrong. They take the test and pass it, too. However the Educational Testing Service doubt the results. They accuse the students of cheating, since several students have the same mistakes. Escalante believes there is a racism problem behind this. In a short scene where they try to question the some of the students, one of them seemingly cracks and has just the right answers. Among the people questioning them is a fairly young Andy Garcia as Dr. Ramirez, by the way. You can clearly see him fight not to laugh along with the students, but at least he shows a short smile, before he and his colleagues go away. Escalante suggests the students take the test again. They're granted that wish with only one day to prepare for it.

How did they do the second time with the exam? See for yourself. Really, go watch the movie. I know it's an old one, but it's got some great scenes in it. Well worth it in my opinion.

The Neuro-Logical Levels and the significance of our word choices

When I was studying inclusive education, they told us that body language and an “open body posture” was important when working with clients. But they didn't elaborate on that. So I had to do my own learning (mostly reading) about that. I came across Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). I won't go into the details about what that is. Part of what they did and still do is either checking out those that are good at something and find out how they do it that well, so they can teach others that aren't that good or know nothing about this activity. One of the people especially interested in researching how people do things is Robert Dilts. That quote I opened my previous post with was from the book “Dynamic Learning” by Robert Dilts and Todd Epstein and is a transcription of a seminar on learning and teaching.

One of the things Robert Dilts developed (this is also mentioned in “Dynamic Learnings” and other of his books) are the “Neuro-Logical Levels”, sometimes also just referred to as “Logical Levels” or “Levels of Learning”.

a) Identity – Who?

b) Believes and Values – Why?

c) Capabilies – How?

d) Behaviour – What?

e) Environment – Where and when?

Sometimes those levels even have another one before “Identity” which would be “Spirituality/Mission” asking “Who else?”. For the purpose of this post however, the 5 levels mentioned above are suffice. All the levels influence learning and influence each other. Though changes in the bottom levels won't have so much of an influence on the upper levels than changes on the top levels do on the levels below.

For example it is indeed more difficult to study at around noon right after you've eaten and your body is more focused on digestion and your belly than headspace and learning. I remember one of my teacher at university was really unfortunate to teach us fairly theory packed things in a seminar at noon. One time he noticed we were all just too tired to pay proper attention, he was kind enough to end the class early. I really appreciate that. Or when it's really hot in the summer and you already have all the windows open to get some air in, but there just is no wind outside, it may be difficult to stay focused.

Speaking of focus: What schools usually focus on is how the children are doing in performance. So that would be the behaviour level and how well they do it, rating their capabilities.

Things can get mixed up badly though with terrible consequences, when for example some child is not doing well in writing. We are quick to say that “the child is dyslexic”. Dyslexia is the term for when someone has problems with reading and/or writing. But check the levels above again. If you say someone”is dyslexic”, that's the identity level. It's on top of the levels. It influences all the other levels. And it's wrong. If what makes them bad is being poor at spelling, that's a capability level, not identity level. Sadly people identify with their symptoms fast and what once was a fairly low level of “bad spelling” may soon become “a dyslexic child” or “a child with learning disability”. Make a guess about which of those problems is easier to change?

Side-note: It must have been in eighth grade or somewhere around that time when the teachers taught us about puberty, sex and all that stuff. I remember we got a small book in religion class that I ended up giving to the school library. I'm not even sure if I stopped reading it at a certain point or if I did finish it and then gave it to the school library. In any case there was this paragraph where they explained that teenagers sometimes argue with their parents and are mean and bad towards them. The reader needn't worry though: “You can still change.” (Du kannst dich noch ändern.) That line just made me furious and I told as much to the librarian I handed my copy of the book to. Even back then I thought that a big part of being a teenager is about change and growing up and getting independent. To me at least some of the tantrums of teenagers is based on that growing up process and hormones and not so much about willingly being a bad person. So to tell a teenager then that they “can still change” seemed just a stupid thing to write in my opinion. Was it like if they didn't like who they were then, (e. g. with the tantrums) that it didn't mean they'd stay that way until they died? Well, of course not! I guess the word that offended me most was the word “can”. Granted, there are some bad adult people out there as well. I guess the authors of the book would suggest that they didn't take that chance to change. Generally for me that change was a given in my opinion and to make it a “You can still change” seemed really stupid.

So anyways the point I wanted to make in this post here is that we should be careful, especially with negative feedback to children on which level we make those comments. It will leave an impact. Some deeper than others depending on the level.

My last and best mathematics teacher

“Having a student identify with mathematics is really different than having them study it and try hard to learn it.” Robert Dilts (Robert B. Dilts/Todd A. Epstein: “Dynamic Learning”, Meta Publications, 1995)

I was always average at best in mathematics in school. In exam I'd write 3 or 4 (C or D in American grades). It's okay, but not great. In my final year in college we got a new teacher. I forgot why the other one didn't go on for the final year with us. What did surprise both my new teacher and me though was the fact that suddenly I'd write 1 (A) in exams! That's right. It left me speechless the first time it happened.

I believe that part of it was due to the fact that the new teacher would always start a new subject by talking about how it related to the real world outside. It's good to have some connection to the real world and not just working some abstract numbers and learning for exams only. Mind you, I barely remember anything from the mathematics now. It's 17 years ago. Just too long a time. But I still remember the action of talking real world first.

I wonder how much more students would be engaged in learning and studying beyond just for exams, if all teachers did that. It wasn't that the new mathematics teacher talked the whole first class about the connection. I don't remember how much time he spent. But even if it's just a couple of minutes and listing a couple of examples, at least it makes the subject more relatable, doesn't it? It doesn't have to be a long talk.

In the end I finished school still with an average 3 (C ) in mathematics, because they had to add up some exams before my 1 (A) exams and I pretty much blacked out in one exam that was part subject of the final exam as well. I'm not good at all in some areas of mathematics, because my brain just doesn't seem to get it, despite all the efforts of my teachers.

Beware of the red pen!

During the first couple of years at school, I remember we had moments where the teacher would read us a short text and we'd have to write it down to practise writing and spelling. I did pretty good back then. I barely made mistakes. I still have images in my mind of my writing being free from corrections and only at the end of it there would be a “Prima, Sarah!” (Great, Sarah!) For having no mistakes.

For my first two and a half years of school I lived up in Northern Germany. We had a text that had a sentence where I made a minor mistake about books on a shelf. During the Christmas break of my third year at school, we moved and I changed schools. In my new school we'd still write those texts the teacher was reading to us. Guess what? One time the teacher in my new school read the text about the books and I again I made the same mistake, that bit about the books on the shelf. That was in fact the only mistake I made that second time! My mother pointed out that I had made the same mistake the first time. I have no recollection of writing it the first time and how that went. But that's why I remember that sentence to this day actually: Not for writing it the first time, but for the mistake. The mistake I made twice, according to my mother.

I forgot where I read it. It's been a while. Part of the problem in the current school system and teaching system is that teachers focus on marking out what's wrong. Red pen marking out everything wrong. “Attention! Wrong!” If you're a good student making no or few mistakes, you're only left with a short, nice comment. If anything at all.

There seem to be teachers more recently, that let children write as they like and not correct them. That's what at least one co-worker once told me. Maybe some teachers don't want to discourage the children from writing by pointing out all the mistakes. But where would those end up that are in higher classes and still write the way they want to? There are certain set rules about how to spell and grammar and all that. You can't just ignore that. Sometimes you write different for certain effects and it's purposeful writing. Children need to learn the correct way first though. Or maybe the teachers are lazy? I've seen adults with bad writing, too. Also at a certain age hardly anybody points out mistakes. I don't know about the motivation of those teachers though. I hope there's more to this than... laziness?

How about instead encouraging the good students more and only focus on them? That way they'd feel pleased and confident to keep on doing what they do well. And the bad students might take interest in checking out how the good students do what they do well. Instead of the bad students feeling bad for their mistakes and the good students being only left with short comments? Just an idea.