{"id":14110,"date":"2021-02-11T01:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?post_type=cw_post&p=14110"},"modified":"2021-02-24T09:06:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T14:06:17","slug":"a-mastery-based-math-teachers-journey-initial-missteps-and-the-aha-moment","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/a-mastery-based-math-teachers-journey-initial-missteps-and-the-aha-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mastery-Based Math Teacher\u2019s Journey, Part 1 \u2013 Initial (mis)Steps and the \u201cAha!\u201d Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first post in a four-part series by Ashley Ferrara about her ongoing journey to develop a mastery-based approach to teaching mathematics. She is a teacher and interim acting assistant principal at the Academy for Software Engineering<\/a> in New York City, a member school of the Mastery Collaborative<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"When my school announced it was officially shifting to mastery-based learning, I called its bluff. We hadn\u2019t shifted grading platforms, so I wrote it off as a firework that would fizzle in a year. (Not to mention that I believed mastery-based learning was completely impossible in a mathematics classroom. Had anyone seen the number of content standards I had to cover in a single school year?!)<\/p>\n

Like clockwork, I continued with each of my algebra units having two quizzes and a cumulative unit test at the end\u2014of course preceded by two days of review in class\u2014and patiently waited to be told that we were no longer moving in that direction as a school. Well, my school called my bluff. Big time. The following year, we shifted fully to mastery-based learning (yes, including that grading platform I was holding out for), and I had to eat my words.<\/p>\n

Is this the most politically correct way to start a blog series that cannot say enough in praise of mastery-based learning? Probably not, but I want you to know that if you are where I was at, I get you. I hear you. I was (and definitely sometimes still am) you. I did not come out of the educational womb pushing mastery-based learning, and it was a bumpy road to get here, but I\u2019m really excited to share with you what I\u2019ve learned along the way.<\/p>\n

We are going to review my transition in shifts over four blog posts, because to say it was smooth, seamless, and quick would be an outright lie. Shifting to mastery-based learning is a multi-year process that I am very much still working on. The scope of the four blog posts is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Developing my initial mastery skill, and my \u201caha! moment\u201d that mathematics repeats itself.<\/li>\n
  2. How I taught and assessed mathematics content that did not repeat itself.<\/li>\n
  3. My evolution to skills that could be assessed repeatedly throughout the year.<\/li>\n
  4. How I transitioned entirely to a problem-solving approach and removed all content-specific language from my mastery skills.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The first shift was trying to identify what a mastery skill was in the world of algebra. To be honest, I\u2019m going to more or less skip over that entire first year of transition and call it a loss. I was the definition of a \u201csquare peg, round hole\u201d approach to mastery-based learning, and my first set of mastery skills couldn\u2019t actually be called a set, because it never stayed the same. I was making token changes to a traditional unit\u2014describing each of its parts in a sentence with a rubric, and the rubric changed weekly.<\/p>\n

    Below is an example of a mastery skill from my first year. It was created for my first unit, which focused on distance-time graphs. It falls into my \u201cwhat not to do\u201d category for many reasons, but the two most prominent reasons are noted in my takeaways below the skill.<\/p>\n

    \"Table:<\/p>\n

    The biggest thing to celebrate about this was simply that I did it, so I would never again have to create my first<\/em><\/strong> mastery skill and rubric. I also had two major takeaways that influenced the discussions and decisions my co-teacher Stephanie Iovan and I made for the next school year:<\/p>\n