Sometime in the last 11 years, you may have attended a webinar from the Global Math Department or read one of their newsletters. We’ve highlighted both numerous times in our Sum of It All newsletter, leveraging the work of a group of teachers who met through social media had put together, effectively creating exactly their namesake - a global math department. So much has changed since they began and the team recently decided to end their project, sharing a final series of webinars, the Last Run. Their library of archived webinars are a worthy source of professional learning (access on BigMaker and YouTube) to bookmark.
I was recently watching one of their Last Run webinars, What We Learned About Math, Teaching, and Technology While Building Desmos, and around minute seventeen Faith Moynihan shares a list of Desmos Community Agreements. I’ve seen numerous lists of agreements (or “norms,” depending on your context) over the years. I’ve been on committees to create them, co-created them in various contexts, and spent more hours wordsmithing them than I care to acknowledge, and yet never before had I found a list like this one.
Consider for a moment the last list of community agreements that you encountered. Did the list err on the side of describing what it means to be polite or professional instead of provocational? Did the list create space for each and every person to show up as their best selves, or did it stifle their brilliance? The tension is not easy to mitigate, and teams often tire trying to find the balance.
We acknowledge one another as equals
We recognize that we need each other’s help to become better listeners
We slow down so we have time to think and reflect
We remember that conversation is a natural way humans think together
We acknowledge each other’s and our own humanity first
We don’t give up when a conversation gets difficult or ambiguous
We support difference with clarity and curiosity
We expect messiness and accept nonclosure
We are mindful of interruptions and the space we take up
We make each other stronger by providing our honest feedback
We make space to accept gratitude
The list from Desmos was clearly different, a roadmap for how they needed to show up for each other, a list that allows creativity, collaboration and thinking outside of the box to be possible, and a list that expects and acknowledges needing different things in different moments. The team was setting out to fundamentally change how students do math, and to do that, they needed to figure out what it looked and sounded like to collaborate.
Collaboration is messy. So are changing educational systems, providing high-quality math instruction, and developing strategies and supports that meet our students’ needs. So the next time each of us set out to craft agreements in our work groups, I invite you to consider what you need in order to engage fully in the messiness of the work, to be able to lean in with curiosity and creativity, and to provide and receive honest feedback.
Take a moment to consider what helps you to be your best self, and how we can create spaces for each other to thrive in the messiness of our work. What agreements or norms will get your team ready for the work ahead of you this school year?
Comments