Vote for Your Students This Year

This month, many of us took advantage of the opportunity to vote—to have our voices heard and work to impact the society we live in.

Voting is not actually as uncommon as it might feel. Yes, the opportunity to vote in an election is not very frequent, but voting is one of the most commonly used ways to make a group decision. Who will be on the school site council? Should we rename the gym after a retired and beloved teacher? We vote for award winners, school dance themes, most valuable athletes, and even the type of food we want to go get for dinner.

What we as educators often take for granted is the fact that we have the responsibility to vote multiple times every single day. Each day we walk into our classrooms and have the opportunity to vote in favor of every one of our students. We vote to believe in their ability as mathematicians, as students, and as people with value. Unlike an election, there are no polls or newscasts alerting the world to the choices we make, but they matter. We have to find ways to show our students that we are voting for them.

How do we do it?

1. Give Them Awesome Lessons: We show them our vote through the lessons that we plan. Lessons that have students become active participants, challenging them to explore grade-level mathematical concepts more deeply and understand the reasoning that leads to procedures. Lessons that give them an opportunity to see connections between different mathematical topics. Lessons that open opportunities to explore connections to the real world and apply the math that they already know to solve authentic problems. When we use lesson planning to cast that vote, we open up doors for students to see beyond the computations of math to what math really is. We can show them the beauty that we see in mathematics.
2. Empower Them: We show students our vote by empowering them to become mathematical thinkers and communicators. We empower them by using questioning techniques to push their thinking instead of asking them to repeat modeled procedures. We provide opportunities for them to share their thinking with peers, making themselves mathematically vulnerable. These intentional decisions demonstrate our vote to believe in their ability and in the value that their thinking adds to our classroom community.
3. Show Them Empathy: Students aren’t perfect and neither are we. We need to show understanding of the stresses that are in their lives and recognize that those stresses impact what goes on in the classroom. We all became educators to help students grow and learn, and our empathy manifests itself in the tools and strategies that we offer to help students learn how to manage that stress and continue forward in a productive way.

As you prepare for your next class, be intentional with your vote. Keep voting in favor of your students. One day, they will come back and tell you how much that vote changed their lives.