Making Maths Relevant
Wednesday, 5th May, 2021
In mid 2019, after more than 16 years primarily teaching Art, Design and Technology focussed subjects, I was offered a challenge: design, create and deliver a semester based maths program for FLO students: call it Maths Engage.
It has to be acknowledged that taking a group of students who have rejected school and have been potentially disengaged from any formal schooling for one or many years, and expecting some level of attendance and engagement in a class with ‘Maths’ in the title, is a challenge from the start.
It has to be acknowledged that taking a group of students who have rejected school and have been potentially disengaged from any formal schooling for one or many years, and expecting some level of attendance and engagement in a class with ‘Maths’ in the title, is a challenge from the start.
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A few years earlier, in another FLO setting, I had taken on the task of designing and delivering the curriculum for an education and engagement program aimed at a group of highly disengaged students from 14-21 years old. This was a seriously tough crowd and my first real experience of such high levels of disadvantage and disfunction: these young people bore a heavy load of trauma and life experiences that had seriously affected their mental health, their belief in themselves and their willingness to comply for compliance sake
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FLO – Flexible Learning Options.
FLO is a strategy to reengage young people from 16-21 years old who have rejected mainstream school, offering education, life skills and case management support. Programs are run in various ways through government schools and non-government providers. Young people who enter FLO programs are typically experiencing significant issues that have led to poor mental health, which in turn has affected their capacity to engage in school in a meaningful way. |
The expectation here was to develop students’ literacy and numeracy skills and I quickly realised that if I called what we were doing Maths or English, the walls of resistance went up pretty quickly and nothing would be achieved. The other personal challenge was that I had no other experience teaching Maths, I have no qualifications in teaching Maths and I hated Maths at school, primarily because it was incredibly dull, lacked relevance and I didn’t get it.
Hooking in this group of students and authentically engaging them meant I had to create learning that mattered, to them. Getting to know these students and understanding their contexts, experiences and goals for the future, I reflected also on my own life experiences and it seemed obvious: maths matters when understanding it helps us to avoid poverty traps, to live independently and to have the means to achieve our goals.
The Life Budget project was my first win with this group of students and it emboldened me, both in terms of my own Maths understanding – at that stage, very much grounded in personal financial literacy – and my confidence in using Maths strategies to successfully engage young people who were profoundly disengaged from education.
In mid 2018 I successfully revisited the Life Budget project as one aspect of a broader reaching life skills program, Passport For Life, that I created to meet the needs of a specific group of FLO students at my new site. Again, I saw the power in making maths relevant by linking it directly to successful independent living.
One vital realisation through reflecting on my work in the FLO sector, is the fact that so much of what works well with FLO students is actually just good teaching practice that applies equally well in mainstream education. I know that I have successfully taken my deeper learning from working in FLO settings back into mainstream classes, improving my teaching. Quality differentiated teaching practice is vital whoever your student cohort is. Mainstream classes still contain students who are disengaged. Capturing their interest and imagination is vital.
Critical and creative thinkers don’t develop from rote learning. Piquing a student’s curiosity, in an aspect of their own lives and their lives in the broader community and world context, is key, regardless of the student’s context.
Since delivering my first Maths Engage course in 2019, I have drafted and redrafted the program as I build on my own learning about strategies that can meet the diverse needs of FLO students. Starting with four broad themes that allow for the development of numeracy, literacy, critical thinking, ICT and inquiry skills, students use project-based strategies to investigate what matters to them within the context of each theme.
The most successful aspect of this program has been that it allows the creation of authentic individualised tasks based on student interest and need. Maths skills and understanding are linked to the exploration of a personal passion, as well as independent living, including job relevant literacy and workplace maths.
Dani Burbrook ©
If you’d like more information on the Life Budget program or the FLO Engage Maths Program, feel free to contact me.