Teachers' and Textbook Writers' Meeting - November 2018

Some of our Fall 2018 kids demonstrate single- and multiple-digit addition.

By Clarence Thompson

Our teachers' and textbook writers' group had a productive meeting today.  Book 4 of our Elementary School Math series is progressing nicely, but is not quite ready yet to take out of the oven.  However, my friend and fellow teacher Angela has created an awesome chapter on mathematical expressions, in which she defines key terms which will be useful when we introduce our students to variables and algebraic expressions.  She and my friend Jay Brannon are also working on a section of the chapter which will deal with order of operations in arithmetic.  Also Jay and Jonathan are working on a chapter that deals with inequalities (greater than and less than), estimation and rounding.  My friend Craig has created an answer key to his word problems (which reminds me that I need to create an answer key to my word problems as well!).  Hopefully we can finish before mid-December.

Also, we are planning to start a paper-and-ink newsletter in January 2019.  My friend Jay will be the editor-in-chief, as she has experience in running an underground student newspaper which she created during her high school days.  We're thinking that each issue might have at least one math problem that kids can solve and bring to our North Portland teaching group in exchange for some sort of prize.

Lastly, we are exploring the possibility of starting an adult basic arithmetic class for the Flying University parents and any other interested adults.  This would fit in quite nicely in the work of capacity-building which is part of the mission of social movement organizing.  It would also help the parents to reinforce the lessons we are teaching their kids.

We discussed a troubling trend which we have begun to notice among the schools in the Portland Metro area.  It is well known that many African-American parents have begun to abandon the public school system because of the extremely low expectations, lack of academic support, and excessively harsh discipline inflicted on their kids by the public schools.  As a result, many parents have turned to private religious (specifically Catholic) schools to provide the education for their children that the Portland Public Schools refuses to provide.  Two of the families in our North Portland teaching group have begun to send their kids to Catholic schools.  But we are seeing that some of the Catholic schools in the Portland metro area are starting to use the Common Core curriculum for math.  It is our opinion as teachers and textbook writers that the Common Core curriculum does not teach our kids to be competent in arithmetic or any other mathematics.  We also understand that African-American parents are paying good money to Catholic schools to prevent their kids from being dumbed down by the public school system.  But it seems that the same kind of support which our kids in public school need will also now be needed by our kids who go to Catholic schools.  We will make sure the Flying University Project is ready to provide that kind of support.