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Rob Baier and Chris Luzniak says we can teach math with debate
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Introduction to Learner Centered Spaces Podcast
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Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning. Sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Star Saxton and Crystal Fromert.
Purpose of the Podcast: Creating Learner-Centered Spaces
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Speaker
In each episode, we will bring you engaging conversations with a wide variety of educators, both in and out of the classroom. This podcast is created for educators who want to learn more about how to make the shift toward learner-centered spaces for their students, schools, and districts, or education at large. The Learner Centered Spaces podcast is a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
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Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest.
Introducing Guests: Chris Lesniak and Rob Beyer
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We are so excited to have Chris Lesniak and Rob Beyer on our show today.
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Chris is an international math consultant, author, and podcaster. He challenges students and educators to learn the art of arguing. Some of his work can be seen in his book, Up for Debate, or heard on the Debate Math podcast.
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Outside of math education, Chris is an escape room enthusiast, having done over 150 escape
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He is also a voter for the International Top Escape Rooms Project. Chris and his husband are both mathematicians who enjoy the New York Times crossword each day.
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Also welcoming Rob. Rob is a growth leader in Novomat. Previously, he was executive director of K-12 math, science, and STEM at Pittsburgh Public Schools.
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We asked him about his passion and he said he loves bridging ideas, instructional resources, research, educators, and instructional routines with other educators.
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He likes to present nationally, statewide, and regionally. And he says he has nothing on being potential best friends with Chris. Well, we are glad to have both of these friends on our show today. Welcome, Rob and Chris.
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Thank you. Thank you for having us. That's definitely the first time you heard me say that in the bio. That was beautiful. So sweet, Rob. Thank you. Yeah, the affection between the two of you is absolutely amazing.
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So what we always like to start with is for you to tell us ah about a defining moment in your educational journey or something you're working on right now that matters to you.
Rob Beyer's Career Journey and Lessons
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All right, I'll start. So I think I've had multiple defining moments throughout my a career. I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason, the good or the bad.
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Um, So, you know, all the rejections I received from trying to get teaching jobs early on the rejections I received to try to be an administrator somewhere to being in the school that I grew up in um yeah and graduated from and had, you know, my father's a ah ah principal, was a principal there at the time and thinking I was a sure thing to like get a ah teaching job there to getting turned down.
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um you know In the moment, you get really upset about it, but then like it opens the door to something else. And so i have had a lot of doors that you know when one closes or several close, there's always one that ends up opening. um And i think what really helped my path a lot was I said the right thing at the right time to the right people.
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And that then Chris reached out to me and said, you know, hey, i I would like to i have this idea for a debate math podcast and I would like to have a partner you know to be on board with this. And at the time he and I have spoken maybe twice at that time.
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So there's one like we knew each other, knew each other. um so like, you know, and once that happened, ah the career kind of like really blossomed into like a lot of ah lifelong friendships in the math field.
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um and one that I would never take back. That was and was one of those that I said yes to it, and I'll never regret that.
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Rob, you're so sweet. This is a love fest here. um You know, I'll add, so kind of like in this everything happens for a reason sentiment, I've been thinking a lot lately about my early career.
Chris Lesniak's NYC Public School Experience
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I taught in new York City public schools and i got in through the Math for America program back in its early days.
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And going to monthly PD was a requirement. And it just so happened that the school I took my first job at in New York, all my colleagues were also very high into collaborating and trying new ideas and and you know attending PD or reading articles or things.
00:04:49
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And so I was just immersed in that culture. And I just luckily, right. And I do a lot of work with schools now. And I just see how many teachers have never thought about something in 5, 10, 20 years outside of their own little bubble of their classroom or their school or their district. And there's no hunger to ever try anything new. And so part of my work is is to develop that. And I just think about like how lucky I was that just everywhere I've worked, and I worked in LA in a school that... There wasn't Math for America, but just my colleagues were awesome and and excited to try new things. And I just, like just in this culture that made it very easy for me to continually like grow and reflect and try new things. And that's what made me the teacher that I became after like 15, 20 years in the classroom.
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It's interesting you say that, Chris, because I i work with, i as a consultant now, so I work with a lot of different schools, and it it always surprises me how some school cultures have no culture of continuous learning and...
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I've always been a reader and I've always been somebody hungry to continue to grow because being okay was never good enough for me in the classroom. And I wonder with your experiences, like how do you combat those cultures where that lack of curiosity could be stifling to the kiddos, not just for the teacher, adult learners in the spaces, but then also in the classroom?
Challenging Stagnant School Cultures
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Cool, that's a million dollar question. You answer that and you can be the star consultant for the country. ah i I think it's a slow process. like i think Like I said, I was lucky that I just was immersed in that culture and I never knew anything other than that.
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And so working with teachers now, I think a lot about... You know, just how can I get small wins? How can I get you to try something new and see that it was effective and useful? You know, how do we just be curious and try new things?
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I know teachers are are overworked and underpaid and all those things. So I try not to put too much on their plate. But, you know, sometimes one tiny move or just one different question could dramatically change the ways, you know, students interact or students learn things in the classroom.
Escape Rooms and Educational Philosophy
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So Chris, but do you use the escape room as a part of classroom learning as well? Yes and no. ah There are you know like companies and curriculum that like have escape room you know activities or something for the classroom that's kind of often like review.
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um I've never really done any of those. i just I think the spirit of an escape room, like the curiosity that we were talking about and the and just playfulness and things like that, puzzle solving, is really what math class is about.
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And so I'm actually preparing a ah keynote for next school year on this, but how how escape rooms have changed the way I look at education and and how we can learn from each other, at both the escape rooms and the math classes.
00:07:49
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Very, very, very, very cool. So what we're curious about now... um Crystal mentioned that we always kind of talk about learner-centered spaces.
Debate in Math Classes: Benefits and Implementation
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what we're curious is how does debate play a role in a learner-centered space, in your opinion? I think um anytime we get kids to have conversation um in a math class and then elevate their voice in a math class, it then becomes about them.
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And we are able to to take moves and pivot off of what they're saying um to kind of help make things more real for students. I think the other thing, too, is allowing students to to talk in math class gives that agency and gives that like sense of belonging that maybe they haven't had before.
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And so as we are you know debating, ah Chris and I often say that it's not about a winner or loser. It's about the conversation. And it's not it's not binary, like the the world wasn't created binarily. It's not reds and blues, blacks and whites, ones and twos or zeros and ones, it's not that.
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It's actually more of a gray area. So getting students to have um you know good conversation where they are having conversations, stating opinions, and then providing reasoning, which happens to be the third standard of mathematical practice,
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then ah allows students to have agency and a sense of belonging in that room. So to me, debate, um and it can be as as as widespread as having a true debate where they're researching, or it could be you know debating the certain approach to a problem. like you know when We talk about systems of equations and, you know, some students really like substitution.
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Some may like graphing and some may like elimination, like whatever they like, um you know, state why they like it and why they think it's the best way to solve that system of equation. um But the whole purpose of that is like getting them to state why.
00:09:54
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Don't just allow them to say it, like getting them to state why. ah so that way there's, you know, some, I guess, some backing there. I agree with everything Rob said, and I'll just add the idea he mentioned about students having an opinion about something.
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That's not something you normally see in a math class. And often students see themselves as good at math or not because they can get the answer or not. And so just giving opportunities to have an opinion about the best first step or something like that can just really draw kids in and give them agency in the classroom.
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And I would like to add one more thing too. So Years ago, ah when I was still a classroom teacher and I was still fairly early on, i would do these moves that getting kids to debate math, not realizing that somebody out there was doing debate math.
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And i Google searched it the one day trying to look it up to you see if there were any resources out there about more argumentation and in math class and debate. And I actually did stumble across... ah Chris's video ah that was done on PBS, a PBS video about him. um And that was years ago before the two of us even remotely met.
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And the video is, you know, it's an older video now, but it was so well done to see how, how you can frame it in a high school classroom to get students to talk. And ah there were certain moves throughout there. to spoil it because i want people to watch it, but there are certain moves that that Chris did that I was able to incorporate into my classroom um as a classroom teacher. And now,
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um As a professional, it's something that's just like I do it all the time and I've seen Chris do it all the time. And then I just have to remember that I did it and that not everybody knows that move. So i have to call it out.
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So that way teachers get to see it when I'm working with them. I've trained you well, Rob. i Yeah. To follow up on on how you're using debate in math class, which is such a cool idea because we think of debate, we think of maybe a humanities class or political science class or social sciences.
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And it's just really neat that you're able to incorporate that into um a STEM type of class. And what I've been doing is ah kind of a passive way of connecting with debate in that I'll put a question on a math test because I teach middle school math.
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I'll put a question on a math test that two friends are disagreeing about a solution. And then I ask them to write a short paragraph about who do they agree with and why. So that's really them being the observer of the ah of the debate, not being an active participant in the assessment part of it.
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So i'm curious of ways that ah me as a math teacher and other math teachers who might be listening, how could they incorporate that debate style into a more summative assessment.
Incorporating Debate into Math Assessments
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Oh, I have lots of ideas. um So first of all, um you need to be doing it in the classroom. So it's a norm for the students to give arguments, right? So I don't want to assess something that we're not normally doing.
00:12:53
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um But then we can do anything from like a small question, like what you're saying, and I have more examples in a moment, to like a project, like Rob was mentioning, like a full-scale debate. There's two sides, there's research involved. But on just an easy starting space, like I think about the question you had, um like I've asked questions like,
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um that might have a correct answer, like which of these lines will have the steepest slope? Or ah if these parabolas, these equations of parabolas are paths of rockets, which one will go the highest and you know justify your answer?
00:13:25
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And there's a right answer to that. But then I've also asked ones where it's like, you know um given these equations of these graphs, Which one do you think is the most thrilling roller coaster ride and why?
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And there's no right answer to it. Like they're all like sign graphs, those wavy ones that go up and down, up and down. But, you know, students could talk use vocab to talk about the the steepness and the the height and the, you know, things like that.
00:13:47
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And so I'm looking for them just to make an argument with good vocab. And there's there's not like a right answer I'm looking for. And I think to piggyback on on what Chris has said too, I think redefining what we are assessing and why we're assessing is key here.
00:14:04
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So like if you hear like what Chris was saying was all not so much about the right answer, but being able to explain why you believe something is true or why you believe something is false. So, um and I know that gets a little murky, especially in ah schools that where grades matter so much. um I would like to argue why do they matter so much, but that's a whole other conversation for a different episode, I'm sure.
00:14:30
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ah but But like we're looking at trying to get students to justify Like, let's justify why you believe, you know, that, and like the whole steepness thing that Chris said, like, that's a conversation within itself.
00:14:45
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Like, what is steepness? Like, what, what does that even mean? And, you know, is, if if something has a positive slope and a negative slope, like, does that mean that that one is steeper than the other because one's positive and one's negative?
00:14:59
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Like, there's a lot of conversation that we had there to get true mathematical understanding from students that you can assess. Like, if they can they can justify and they're speaking the language, like, they clearly know what they're doing.
00:15:11
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um Not to say that there's not a place for, you know, solving an equation at some point or or something like that. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying like the sole focus on just the the answer itself, that's got to go.
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and And wouldn't it be great if we sent students out into the world thinking that it's not all about getting the right answer all the time, but also about having justification? it's Think about our political climate right now.
00:15:37
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I love if people relied on strong justifications, you know, and and and sought out truth and looked for ways to discredit an argument that seems faulty if possible.
00:15:50
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I love what both of you were saying about there' there's balance for for both of those things too. Show written communication, you can solve an equation and you do all the algorithms that we teach you, all those things. But there's also room for bringing in your voice and justification for students. And that's so important that we're able to communicate our thinking and communicate our justification, especially when we leave school and go into the world where that's really what we're doing all the time in the workplace and society.
00:16:18
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ah But my my next question for both of you, and either one of you can answer first, um is if there's a teacher, especially a math teacher out there or some STEM related teacher who wants to start incorporating debate, but just really unsure how to even begin, what beginner tips would you have for that person?
00:16:38
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I'm going to start um taking the first part of Chris's talk away because I've seen him do it so many times at conferences. um Starting with like showing them how to debate in a respectful manner and getting them debate to debate something that is like a low-hanging fruit.
00:16:55
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Like, what is the best pizza topping? um Or um what's the best superhero power? Or what's the... you know, worst path to school. Uh, and some may say all, um, so, but like, like trying to get something that's a low hanging fruit and then allowing students to debate, like, you know, I believe that the best pizza topping is cheese.
00:17:20
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And my warrant is because if without cheese, you know, then it's just kind of like a flat sandwich. Or something like that. you know like like Getting kids actually you know start there so that way they understand the structure of debate and why we're doing a debate.
00:17:36
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Now i'll let Chris continue because I'm sure I butchered that first No, that was great. um Yeah, right I would say like kind of with that is really having a routine. Like you heard Rob actually say the words claim and warrant, which are the words I use and when I debate with students.
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But you can use your own words as you want. But having a routine, are very simple, very short routine, and just repeating that over and over gives a safety net for students to enter the debate. um And then like Rob said, starting off that routine in a...
00:18:04
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very easy debate way, like what's the best ice cream flavor or, you know, the best pet or whatever, um just gets it going and and then go from there. And ah to add to that, the it what's funny and interesting all at the same time is when I do this with teachers and people who have a hard time with abstract thinking,
00:18:24
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um And Chris will probably say the same thing. But when we start with like, what's the best pizza topping? I'll have people look at me sideways like, where's the math in this? And i would argue that the whole conversation is about math.
00:18:37
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But because we're trying to get students to justify our reasoning, it's literally the third standard of mathematical practice, which by definition is a math practice. So so like we start there, though, as the low hanging fruit to get that routine down.
00:18:51
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and get the students understand that it's okay to have a disagreement in a way that's respectful. um And then from there, then we get into things like, you know, what's the best way to solve this system of equation or what's the best way to model um addition with fractions or, you know, something like anything like that. Like you can get into the more mathy side of it with numbers and and operations, but to start with like, know, the, know, what is the best pizza topping? What's the best ice cream flavor?
00:19:19
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um You know, who's the greatest musician to ever live? know, things like that. Like that just sets up the class as a culture where then it is about being a learner centered culture.
00:19:31
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Yeah, that's that's awesome. And honestly, in the humanities classroom, it's the same thing. You wouldn't want to add. fresh content with also a new structure right away um because something's gonna, something is gonna suffer for it. So using a low cognitive sort of content when you're teaching new structures, that's always is a better way um to make sure that it sticks and that kids understand and then bring it back to the content later. So.
00:20:00
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I love that you're doing all of this in math class. And maybe it's because i I am not a math teacher that I wouldn't have thought to do any of this in math. So i love i love that it's happening.
Recommended Resources for Debate and Learner-Centered Education
00:20:14
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When you all have been doing this work, are there specific people that you feel deserve recognition or promoting or people we should be following or listeners should be following to create spaces that promote what you're talking about?
00:20:29
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I mean, Chris is pretty humble, but his book is awesome. um Like the the Up for Debate um book that he wrote is absolutely spectacular. It's a six through 12 focus. But if you're a K-5 teacher, you're definitely able to kind of dive into that as well.
00:20:46
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I think um there's others that are out there that are doing some really good things around getting students to talk um or and making it, but you know, starting with culture.
00:20:57
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ah You know, things like yeah the the book, Math Therapy by Vanessa Vaccaria, the math guru. Like I think her book is spectacular about, you know, math trauma and getting students to feel a sense of belonging in math class.
00:21:13
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I think that's a really good start for some. um And then, like i said, like Chris is humble, but read his book, like go get his book. It's it's fantastic. Yeah. I guess I'll add some of my early collaboration with folks were people like ah Dr. Alana Horn and her book Motivated was a big part for me. um And my editor, Tracy Zager, her book Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You had were both really big influences on me and got me thinking more deeply about what I do.
00:21:45
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um And then also, like, in addition to my book, you can go to my website and stuff for resources for actual math debate content. um But I like ah John Stevens has would you rather math.com has great two sided debates to get kids, you know, in in just a five minute activity to get them debating about something that's very mathy, but you know, the price of something whatever.
00:22:07
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um you know Do you want to ah to work in a restaurant with where you get tips or where the house pays you ah a fixed amount but a higher salary or things like that? Some some good real-world debates he has set up on his website for free.
00:22:19
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And one of my favorites to go to is the slow reveal graphs. SlowRevealedGraphs.com is a wonderful site and Jenna, the creator, that's absolutely spectacular.
00:22:30
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um But it's it allows students to kind of debate in a slow reveal graph format where they you know take all the structure away and just show like the beginning piece without any labels and getting students to have conversations about what that graph could be about.
00:22:45
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um And then as you slowly reveal more parts to the graph, then the students get to, you know, they're learning more information. They get to have a deeper conversation about um the math that's involved. ah You know, the one that I did last week or two weeks ago at a conference at at Rutgers University in New Jersey was with 125, you know, teachers and and principals there ah was about, you know comparing ah two artists and their billboard top 10 and top 100 students
00:23:19
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songs and to see who had the better career and spoiler alert, it was Taylor Swift and the Beatles. So that happened. Oh
Engage with Chris and Rob: Social Media and Websites
00:23:29
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yeah. And and speaking of graphs, I should mention the New York times what's going on in this graph. If you just Google what's going on in this graph, they have great stuff that can lead to good debates.
00:23:38
Speaker
I mean, honestly, we could go for 25 minutes just Chris and I talking about all wonderful people and all their work. I mean, we didn't even talk about Mike Flynn Zach Champagne. We didn't talk about like Graham Fletcher stuff. And I mean, Robert Komplinski has amazing things on Open Middle that you can debate. Like there's there are so many things.
00:23:56
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Where can our listeners find out more about both of your work? We both are on Blue Sky. You can find us on Blue Sky at Debate Math. um And mine is at Rob.
00:24:08
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Hyphen buyer on debate on ah on Blue Sky as well. um And I'm all over LinkedIn right now, too. Yeah, I'm C. Lesniak on most social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, things like that, LinkedIn.
00:24:23
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um And you go to my website, lesniak.com. Go to our podcast website, debatemath.com. or just look for my book or Google us and you'll probably find some of our resources.
00:24:35
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We're going to put a link to all of those in our show notes. So if you're listening, look there. And thank you both for being on the show. It's been fantastic. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.
00:24:48
Speaker
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00:25:03
Speaker
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