A flashlight in the dark

I finally got a few minutes to talk to Danny, my co-op teacher about my unit (which will probably be starting February 9th). Unfortunately, he doesn't really know much about it. In general the math curriculum, well, doesn't exist. I think that this is the first year that he has taught geometry here and there aren't many/any resources that the school has. As a policy, the school doesn't use text books. This is both a philosophical and a monetary decision, I believe, and I appreciate what they are going for with that. Too often it seems like teachers take a text book as curriculum whole sale, and just go through the book with little to no supplementing. This can be a particular mistake with students that are similar to the ones at A3. As an arts high school, a lot of the students have math phobia (and many of the teachers too). In an effort to draw in those students, and help them to appreciate and enjoy math, most of the instruction is inquiry or project based. The problem being that as of yet, there aren't any existing lesson plans or projects, or even sources for problems for me to draw from. Maybe I'll go buy a Geometry text book from Smith Family, just to use as a resource for equations/problems, I already have an Algebra and a Calculus book.

Danny walked me through how a typical day goes for them in math. He says they like to start with a warm up or brain teaser, and then move into explaining and discussing the concepts they'll be working with. He didn't really go into any specifics as to how that is usually done. Definitions and vocabulary are usually a large focus for the students, as that is often what holds them back from understanding what is going on. After the concepts are addressed, the students break into small groups and work on figuring out one or two problems. After they have had a period of time to work, and come up with a solution, each group shares what they did and how/why they did it. This, Danny said, is often the most difficult part for students, the explanation of why thy do certain steps. It seems like there is a general 'no homework' policy, though I'm not sure if that is just these particular teacher's philosophy, or a school wide policy. In general I don't think that assigning tons of homework is necessary, however, allowing students an opportunity to work on the math concepts in a different space, without the resources of their friends and teachers can be a great learning experience. On the other hand, I was just reading an article for my Curriculum Assessment Alignment class that was discussing the fact that school trains students for a type of work that is not often found in the real world. How often would a person have to do computations without the aid of a peer or adviser, outside of academic and assessment situations?

So now my task is to search for problems, vocab and brain teasers for dealing with quadrilaterals, and find a way to integrate them into the culture of the math classroom, without ever actually seeing that culture. Not to mention make sure that those materials and goals are aligned with the content standards for Geometry. This is definitely a new challenge.