HOW CAN WE IMPROVE THE CURRENT THINKING CLASSROOM MODEL

I attended the Building Thinking Classroom session hosted at GL last night and wanted to share some thoughts and the questions I submitted online for the session.

I will start with some of the positive aspects I took away from last night’s session.

1) The Thinking Classroom encourages students to think and behave outside of their comfort zone, pushes them to think and collaborate with other students and come up with solutions

2) Expedites the teacher’s assessment of the students to gauge their level of understanding of the concepts

Here are my concerns, and I expressed this in the quick conversation with Dr.Greer and Dr.Varley at the end of the session last night:

1) It appears that in each group, students are teaching other students – my son has experienced this in middle school, and his feedback is some days, he does not feel like he has learned anything in math class. He went through a 6-week Algebra class over the summer, so that is helping him get through the Algebra class right now. But that only holds true for some.

2) Without access to textbooks, parents are limited in helping their children who may be struggling with the subject.

3) Not everyone is going to be able to thrive in this model because it puts a lot of onus on the child to advocate for themselves. What support structures do these students have besides EP, and is that enough?

4) The grading system needs to be clarified. Based on what I have heard from other parents, it is putting a lot of pressure on the children to the extent that they are skipping lunch or staying up late at night but do not yet have the confidence or grasp of the subject.

5) Psychological impact on students, particularly high schoolers who are feeling anxious and frustrated with math, falling grades and effects on their GPAs during these crucial school years.

6) Are the teachers trained well enough to implement the Thinking Classroom model, and has the district considered a hybrid model – a mix of traditional instruction with some tenets of the Thinking Classroom sprinkled in that encourages thinking and collaboration?

7) Moving to a 100% Thinking Classroom right after the pandemic, where children are coming out with learning gaps, is perhaps one of the reasons why we saw a lot of frustration at the end of the meeting last night.

I was a bit disappointed in how the session concluded last night – I think the parent community is looking for answers from the district leadership to help children struggling with the model. They are looking for compassion to understand the problem and ways to find a solution together.

Parents are the biggest and best advocates for their children, and the district lost a real opportunity to engage in hard, honest feedback. But there is always time to correct and help our children improve.

I reached out to the district this morning and requested a live Q&A, an honest conversation about what remedial measures are being considered and put in place to help students struggling with this model.

The curriculum committee and the BOE also need to step in and engage with parents of high school and middle school students to find a viable solution.

Here are the questions that I sent to the district leadership this morning:

1) How many school districts in New Jersey have implemented the Thinking Classroom model for Algebra and Geometry? What has been the experience for students and impact on their grades?

2) For the districts that have adopted the Thinking Classroom model, what is the % mix of the traditional instruction methods vs Thinking Classroom?

3) For the districts that have adopted the Thinking Classroom model, what grade did they start the Thinking Classroom model?

4) What textbooks and study materials are provided to the students to prepare for the Thinking Classroom model? Were the families and students provided an option for a physical textbook before piloting to this model?

5) What grades and subjects are being considered for implementing the Thinking Classroom model in Berkeley Heights and what is the timeline?

6) Have the test scores seen improvements for those classes in the Thinking Classroom pilot at GL and CMS?

7) Has there been a survey conducted to get feedback from parents and students who have participated in the pilot of the Thinking Classroom? What was the outcome of the survey?

There was a deja vu feeling as I walked out of the GL session last night. I believe that we can avoid the brinksmanship that we have come to experience too often over the past couple of years as we saw with the French program, the redistricting & reconfiguration, and the busing challenges.

We would all benefit by moving to an open, transparent and honest model of engagement between the school district and parents.

-Dipti Khanna

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