By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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The “Math Walk” (771 Words)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Some days in the classroom feel like rehearsals. Other days feel like trials. Then there are days ... like today ... that feel like a “walk”.
Not a casual stroll. A “Math Walk”.
The phrase comes from the district’s practice of sending instructional coaches into classrooms for “learning walks.”
They are meant to observe, support, and share strategies.
But for me, the phrase is more layered.
It names the way I move through teaching ... walking the line between encouragement and accountability … between hope and exhaustion … between “hands up” … and “hands out.”
The Visit
I forgot the “Math Walk” was scheduled today.
I issued no “warning” to my “classroom cauldron.”
I did not need to issue one ... they were in a relatively good place.
The “Walkers” entered during our breakfast transition.
Their presence coincided with my own decision to withhold a favorite scaffold ... the Desmos Transformation Calculator ... and instead announce an upcoming quiz. The message was clear ... today is about serious work.
To my surprise, many students responded well.
The “Walkers” circulated, talking with students, asking questions, offering explanations.
I have been undermined in every conceivable way during these visits ... students interrogated like witnesses … my authority reduced to a sideshow … my work reframed through another’s lens.
But this time, they worked alongside me.
That is my “preferred poison.”
Do more than just watch me ... do this work with me.
What I Saw
Through my own “autoethnographic camera”, I saw the contrasts that define my days.
Students with “hands up” ... sincerely engaged and seeking help … others with “hands out” … derisively calling for “the help”.
Students completing problems in earnest … others waiting for answers to fall into their laps.
A handful rising to the challenge … another handful retreating into inertia.
JW, who often drifts, was first to finish her problem set … and invited my feedback.
DDH, steady as always, carried the energy of the room by showing respect and focus.
She later asked if she could visit her father, and I seized the chance to affirm both her and him. That small moment may have mattered more than any problem solved.
The Copy Room
Later, during my planning period, I stepped into the credit recovery lab to make copies.
The room hummed with contrast.
Two students, deep into Spanish orals prep, pushed each other with seriousness and care.
On either side of them, predictable “chaos” and inertia reigned in the labs.
The juxtaposition “sobered” me.
So did the memory of a conversation with a new special education teacher, already “set up to fail” with the toughest load and the least support.
So did the realization that much of what I see ... the chaos, the segregated schedules, the inequities ... are not accidents.
They are systems.
Systems that make money, shuffle resources, and sacrifice “pawns” like me in order to preserve appearances.
Though I am a “pawn” here … my child benefits from similar “structures” in place at her school.
That is when I turned my “camera” off.
Some truths are too heavy to narrate in the moment.
Small Victories
Back in class, the contrasts continued.
CK, struggling to plot points on the coordinate axes, pushed forward while peers mocked her.
I fought off multiple distractions to sit with her until the concept clicked.
EW ... usually disruptive ... reported her mother had confiscated her phones and forced her to study.
For once, her test results suggested that maybe she did.
Are these small victories enough?
Some days I’m not sure.
The weight of performative observation, the endless battle with “learned helplessness”, the systemic inequities ... all of it makes me wonder how much longer I will carry this “walk.”
I know that I am in my “last days” of teaching.
And yet ... I keep “walking.”
What the Walk Means
The “Math Walk” is more than an event.
It is a metaphor for this work.
It means choosing to walk … into rooms that may resist you.
It means choosing to walk with students who sometimes want help … but not
responsibility.
It means choosing to walk … even when the system sets traps instead of paths.
Most of all, it means seeing the “Walk” not just as an inspection, but as a chance to name what is real ... the dignity in small breakthroughs … the truth in systemic inequity … the sacredness of seeds planted in unlikely soil.
I do not know how many more days I will “walk this way.”
But I do know this ... every step … every seed … every story … adds up to a
testimony worth telling.
And still I rise.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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