Teacher Feature - Mike Muschello - VSSA Thinking Classroom

 New Teacher Feature alert! 

Mike Muschello (email michael.muschello@eagleschools.net) is currently a Math teacher at Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy. For the last two years, Mike has worked as an Academic Coach (AC) at VSSA supporting middle and high school students with Math and Science. ACs serve as built-in tutors for students and support teachers. They typically co-plan/co-teach with teachers or pull out small groups for intensive support. Mike also worked with high-intensity traveling students (HITS) to help them stay on top of their work while they travel. He has been using the Thinking Classroom approach to help engage students in his Math courses.

1) What question were you trying to answer?

I was trying to get my students to actually think more during class. Most kids find math class boring, and as a new teacher, I had the opportunity to bring a fresh perspective to teaching math. I wanted to eliminate the traditional “I do, we do, you do” lessons we all remember from math class. That type of class is boring for me and for the students. Even the students who are engaged are mostly just mindlessly copying down notes, and it is not until that last “you do” part of the class that these students actually start thinking about how to solve whatever problems they are faced with. For most of the students, this type of class allows them to be anonymous, tune out, and truly not think at all during class. How could I make math class more engaging, even for those kids who are self-proclaimed “math haters,” or who “have never been, and will never be, good at math"?

2) How did you decide to answer that question?

My teaching is modeled after Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics book/philosophy. Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC) involves 14 practices, but I started with just the first three. They are:

1. Begin with a problem

The idea here is to start with a non-curricular “thinking task.” We also refer to them as brain-teasers or riddles, but in general, they are collaborative tasks that are designed to engage students and promote talking about how to solve these tasks. One that I have found to be super engaging is the “bridge riddle” where students need to figure out how to get four scientists across a bridge late in the night to escape a zombie horde. There are plenty of other non-curricular thinking tasks, useful for all subjects, and ages, all over the internet and in Liljedahl’s book. I used the first three days of school in August just on non-curricular tasks to get students used to thinking and problem-solving with each other in math class. I now mix in non-curricular tasks about once a month.

2. Visible, frequently random grouping.

Since I want to engage students with collaborative tasks, they need to be put into groups. According to Liljedahl’s research, the ideal group size is three students. Two also works, but never larger than three. To create the random groups, I use a Google Sheets template with all of my students’ names for each class I teach. It is extremely important that I show my students the groups as they are randomly created. This demonstrates that there are no “smart groups'' or “smart kids being paired with dumb kids,” or any of that other nonsense that kids may make up about themselves or their classmates. Showing them these randomly generated groups demonstrates that I have no bias and I’m never intentionally putting friends together, or separating anyone specifically. This also means that sometimes students who have a current drama are grouped together, or that best friends are grouped together. But hey, if you try and change anything then it’s no longer random.

I switch up these groups at least every class, and sometimes multiple times per class. This promotes the sharing of ideas and eliminates traditional group dynamics that kids can fall into over time. There is no “she’s always the leader” or anything like that. Changing up the grouping mid-class is also a great way to refocus the class if things start to get stagnant, or start to go off the rails a bit. 

3. Vertical, non-permanent surfaces.

The vertical part of this is key. After assigning the groups, I get my students to stand up (if they are able to), ideally within the first five minutes of class, to start solving problems, either curricular or non-curricular, at the whiteboards that encircle my entire classroom. Students even work on the windows! Yes I go through a lot of expo markers, and yes I had to have talks with my classes about how to appropriately use the expo markers, but getting students to solve problems standing up at my whiteboards is a beautiful thing. 

The “non-permanent” part of this is to promote risk-taking and get students to start writing faster than they would on paper. Whiteboards (or windows) are super easy to erase, so students feel more comfortable attempting problems and making mistakes. That’s how we all learn! Working up at the whiteboards also allows students to look around the room, and talk to other groups, when they get stuck. It further promotes collaboration and talking to solve problems. Standing up also keeps the kids more awake.

3. What impact did the solution have on your students? 

At first, there was some resistance to this type of teaching. The shy kids didn’t want to work with others, and students would get paired with someone they didn’t like and ask to change groups. Absolutely not. After the first few weeks, however, students really started to buy in. At best, I have students who ask me as soon as they walk in the door if they can see their groups and start working. At worst, I have students who stand away from their group members and need a little encouragement to share their ideas, which they end up doing way more often than not.

Students really want to contribute during our class. They want to express their ideas and argue as to why their solution is correct, and they are not afraid to be wrong since any work is so easily erased. I also feel like my students are on their way to becoming risk-taking, engaged thinkers as opposed to students who sit there silently and copy notes.

When talking with other teachers at VSSA about what kind of students we want to have in class, the overwhelming majority of adjectives that were used did not relate to students being obedient and getting high grades. Ideas like risk-taking, collaboration, respect, and perseverance are way more important to us than the number that shows up in PowerSchool. I feel the BTC teaching style I use promotes these values that we care about.

4. If you were to do it all again, would you do anything differently? Any other tips or tricks you would recommend for teachers wanting to implement something similar in their classroom? 

I wouldn’t do much differently. I would certainly still use the BTC style, get my kids in random groups and get them to stand up while working. Of course, I still have a lot to learn about teaching and there are those other 11 elements of BTC that I have yet to get good at. 

One thing I need to improve on is how students take down notes for studying outside of class. While spending most of the class working on whiteboards is great, the kids still need some time at the end of class to take real, on-paper notes about what they just learned. I also want to improve my curricular material to better fit the style of “engaging, collaborative thinking tasks.” As of now I mostly introduce an idea based on prior knowledge, let kids struggle with it, try to piece together how they can solve these problems, and then come together as a class at the end to make sure everyone sees the correct ways to solve those problems.

Another difficult aspect of this is how you answer questions while students are working at the boards. Most kids try to turn and ask, “Is this correct?” right away, but answering that makes the students stop thinking. That’s an aspect of building a class culture that has been very difficult for me but with persistence this year most of my students know not to ask those types of questions anymore.

For teachers that want to try this, those first three principles I listed are key. Figure out good tasks, both curricular and non-curricular, show students their random groups, and get them up and working at vertical, non-permanent surfaces. Check out Liljedahl’s book, and watch this video where he explains his philosophy.

I’m still working on the rest but I’m very excited about getting better in the years to come.