In the early months of my very first teaching job, I learned my first valuable lesson for the profession of teaching. The lesson was that every success in education is about making connection. This lesson wasn’t from a depth of understanding but out of fear. (When I say “very early,” I mean before I entered the classroom.) When I talked to my first contact of my first school district, I told an HR person that I was a little scared about the physical size of high school students, even though I weighed over 200 pounds. She told me that, when I make a connection with a class, the larger kids usually became protectors rather than assailants. I took this information as an understanding that “it was all about connection.”

I have tested this hypothesis many times over in my 20 years in classrooms. In my experience, it has always been true in every classroom. It has also been true in social situations and work situations. In general, it is an excellent lesson in my Life. Fast-forward to Fall 2013. I am teaching high school math in a 99% African American high school. (It was also a low-achieving school as far as academics.) I am also PhD candidate in Psychology, with an emphasis on its applications to high school education. And I need an idea for pilot study for my degree.

I decided to look how I started classes. For that matter, how any math teacher starts a class. (This probably can extend to other subject areas but I have never looked at that.) As you may or may not know, math classes in high school usually start with a few math problems to solve. I have heard called a warm-up or a sponge. For motivated students, it reminds them of the stuff they learned the previous day and primes them for the new information. It works great for, as I said, motivated students.

However, it doesn’t take much observation of the high school math classes I have taught that 80% of my mathematics students are not very motivated to learn mathematics. So, the question is, how does this kind of opening affect the uninitiated? From my observations, I realized that these kind of openings remind the uninitiated that they are in a place that they don’t really want to be. As a result, I thought, “How can I flip that script and make this a place where they want to be and, at the same time, be a warm up to thinking?

What I came up with was a pretty simple idea. On the board, I would write a quote or some poetry. I would then ask students to respond to the quote or poetry. They could respond verbally or written on a piece of paper. The greatest part of this assignment was that there were no incorrect answers; just inadequate attempts. How did I decide on inadequate? First of all, “what he/she said.” Also, written responses were a minimum of 50 words. As for verbal responses, I asked for more if I wasn’t clear about any “surface” responses. My pilot study used several of my colleagues to use this exercise for their classes.

The results were very good. Participating teachers extended the idea to use videos. They reported better grades. They reported higher grades. They reported more consistent participation in class. One teacher even witnessed students looking new terminologies from the opening exercises.

There were complaints that breaking down a quote was not “mathematics.” I would argue that this breaking down was based in logic and logic is taught in our geometry classes. Besides, the process got more students thinking that the standard warm up.

Why did stop using it? Because it helped me get suspended once and was partially responsible for irate parents, which probably led to my forced resignation. (I would like to point out that the suspension and the resignation were also about me getting sloppy in my methods. I cannot blame these actions solely on this practice.) Despite its effectiveness, I made a vow to go mainstream and not take too many chances. If I could get assurance of my professional safety, I might try it.

Note: This is an unpublished study. If you want more information, contact me and ask.