Teaching From My Head, Or From The Book?

There's so much backstory to this post that I hesitate to start--I could spend days telling you how bad my school district has screwed up everything from switching from traditional to integrated math, to having no valuable textbook piloting/adoption process, to fashioning rules for (not) accelerating capable students, to creating odd classes to get around the other rules.  While convincing themselves that they use "a collaborative model" of management, it's a top-down style with little to no help to teachers.  I've said several times in frustration that it's obvious that the number one priority of my district is not the education of children; if it were, just about everything would be done differently.

So you'll just have to take my word for it that currently, the situation in my district is "less than optimal".  And in math, the bad decisions compound.  Again, it would take too much explanation, so I ask you to just believe me when I tell you that.  It's bad.  Very bad.

There.  Without any facts or anecdotes, I've tried to set the scene.  I hope I've done so adequately.

And now the story.

One of the classes I teach, new to our school this year, comes with a student textbook that is known in education parlance as a "consumable".  In other words, it's half book, half worksheet-book.  We'll buy new ones each year.  In theory, students would take classroom notes in these paperback books (which are inches thick), would do their homework assignments in the book, and would rip out the homework pages and turn them in.  The "notes" they would take are more like "filling in the missing words" in the book or on the example problems, and the homework has all the advantages of worksheets but without the copying!  The former might work if the book's methodology were clear, and the latter might be useful if I didn't have to spend more than one day on a lesson, and if the problems on the homework page lined up perfectly with what we'd cover in a day so that students would only have to rip out and turn in one day's assignment while leaving the next day's intact until the next day.

To channel John Kerry, "would that it were so."

Yesterday I needed to cover the section about transformation of functions (stretch, reflect, and translate), and today I needed to cover the section about inverses and composition of functions.  Looking at how the book covered the material, I just couldn't do it.  It's one thing to present in-depth instruction that makes kids think, it's another thing entirely to present the material in such an obtuse way as to allow someone to pretend that the material is in-depth.  The textbook authors charted the latter course.  Thus, my dilemma.

So yesterday, I just taught.  Off the top of my head.  Completely ignoring the convoluted way the material was present in the text.  Here's how you stretch a function, both vertically and horizontally.  Here's how you reflect over the x- and y-axes.  Here's how you translate vertically and horizontally.  Direct instruction, presented clearly.  Today's homework results indicate that my instruction was effective. 

And today I did the same thing with inverses and compositions of functions.  Clarity is one of my hallmarks.

So at the end of class I asked my students a question.  I told them that I'm not fishing for compliments or anything, that I genuinely want to know what works best for them.  Do they prefer that I follow the book, where they only have to write some of the things due to the text's fill-in-the-blank style, or do they prefer when I go rogue and teach my way?  I wasn't even done asking the question before the chorus arose, loudly and forcefully, "your way." 

They want to learn.  They're not afraid of hard work.  They just want the best opportunity to learn; they want clarity in their instruction. 

I feel like I'm doing them a disservice when I try to follow the book and have them fill in the missing words and numbers.  Yes, those pages can be thought-provoking when the material is written and presented well, but that presentation gives the impression that there's only one, or one best, way to solve a particular problem.  When I teach "freestyle" I can show students multiple ways to solve a problem.  There's plenty of room on their note papers for my multiple methods, there's no such room in the text.  One way, the book way, or the highway, I guess.

I'll use the book when it makes sense to me to do so.  Otherwise, I'll teach it my way.