Vern Williams Fights To Keep His Blackboard
Konstantin Kakaes, writing in Canada’s National Post:
“When Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, Va., recently renovated its classrooms, Vern Williams, who might be the best math teacher in the United States, had to fight to keep his blackboard. The school was putting in new ‘interactive whiteboards’ in every room, part of a broader effort to increase the use of technology in education. That might sound like a welcome change. But this effort is undermining education, particularly in mathematics and the sciences.
I went to see Williams because he was famous when I was in middle school 20 years ago, at a different school in the same county. Longfellow’s teams have been state champions for 24 of the last 29 years in MathCounts, a U.S.-based competition for middle schoolers. Williams was the only actual teacher on a 17-member National Mathematics Advisory Panel that reported to president George Bush in 2008. Williams doesn’t just prefer his old chalkboard to the high-tech version. His kids learn from textbooks that are decades old—not because they can’t afford new ones, but because Williams and a handful of his like-minded colleagues know the old ones are better. The school’s parent-teacher association buys them from used bookstores because the county won’t pay for them.
His preferred algebra book, he says, is ‘in-your-face algebra. They give amazing, outstanding examples. They teach the lessons.’ The modern textbooks, he says, contain hundreds of extraneous, confusing and often outright wrong examples, instead of presenting mathematical ideas in a coherent way. The examples bloat the books to thousands of pages and disrupt the logical flow of ideas. Teachers at other schools in the county have told him that they would rather use the old books, too, but their principals would kill them. Other teachers have told me the same about new technologies — they, like Williams, think the technologies are ineffectual, but lack his courage to oppose them.” Read more here.
So dismaying that Vern Williams, a math-teaching legend, had to fight to keep the tools that he thinks work best. Anyone else feel that old-fashioned tools and textbooks are still superior?
No idea how a blackboard can be better than an interactive whiteboard. At the very least, you could just keep the whiteboard turned off and use it as a writing surface as effectively as a blackboard.
The older textbooks being better… yes, I can see that being possible for precisely the reasons Williams describes.
I had the “pleasure” of being on a panel discussion with Mr. Williams. While he is to be applauded for the results he achieves with his students, his clinging to “old books” and chalkboards is just a symptom of his being a legend not just to others but even a larger legend in his mind. I found him to be condescending and dismissive of anything that even had a sniff of “new.” Just as “old” should not be dismissed because it’s not shiny, so too should “new” not be eschewed simply because “it’s not the way I learned it, so it must be bad.”
I have been teaching lower-division and remedial college mathematics for 25 years. Never have I experienced so little discussion of how students learn, and what are the best ways of teaching them, and so MUCH discussion of how to use the latest technology, as I am experiencing today. Many of today’s teachers are as enraptured with technology at the expense of education as their students are obsessed with their cell phones at the expense of real friendship. Technology itself can hardly be bad as long as we start with the question of “What’s the most effective way to get our students to learn?” instead of starting with the question “What can we do with this new toy?”
I don’t agree that coaching a winning MathCounts team and advising George Bush automatically qualifies anyone as “best math teacher in the United States,” especially when that teacher is resistant to prepare students for the new century and tools ahead. Teachers are role models–this teacher is modeling inflexibility and lack of adaptation for this changing globe.
I was a bit dismayed by Mark’s comment saying, “No idea how a blackboard can be better than an interactive whiteboard.”
Technology is not the end in and of itself. It is merely a tool that we as educators can use, but in way is technology the goal. The goal is the education of our students, in multiple disciplines, in multiple ways. We are trying to impart knowledge, to make them think critically, to see the world differently. Technology can be useful to achieve these goals, among others, but just because a teacher has a smart board or a student has an iPad, that doesn’t necessarily mean we are doing a better job at educating them.
Are students “smarter” now that they have every answer available to them within 30 seconds by searching wikipedia? Are teachers better because they can grade quizzes online for their students? Effective teaching methods are effective teaching methods no matter how they are “effective.” If a student walks out of the classroom with the knowledge and preparation that helps them in their career or next educational step, who cares if it came from a chalk board or from a smart board? An effective teacher is an effective teacher; an ineffective teacher is still an ineffective teacher, regardless of the technology they have at their disposal. Technology is a tool, not a goal.
I’m a bit dismayed at Ed S’s dismay at Mark’s comment. I think Mark was perfectly clear: since you don’t actually have to use the interactive features of the whiteboard, there is no reason that a blackboard should be better. An interactive whiteboard has all the functions of a blackboard: it is a large surface, easy to write and erase on, and highly visible to students. The whiteboard also has additional features, but since they are optional, there’s no rational reason to fight to keep a blackboard.
I’m sorry Alfred Molina (by the way, I loved you in “The Man Who Knew Too Little”), but I have a SmartBoard which is about 5×6. It covers up the center of my board space and it is bolted to the wall. I used to use my entire board (it took up half of a wall) for a lesson. Now what I supposed to do? Move to the next “page” on my whiteboard feature? Why do that when it was much easier just to move to the other side of the board. I’m sorry that I need more than 5×6 at any given time, but that is the reality of the situation. So that is why it isn’t necessarily “better” for me.
My son and daughter were both lucky enough to have Mr. Williams in middle school. My daughter has now been an inner-city math teacher for eight years. I am so proud of her and what she does for those kids. My son got his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and works for Google. They both think Mr. Williams turned them on to math.