My colleague is a master teacher. She previously was a network lead in science but couldn't resist the draw of the classroom. She is endorsed in every field and is National board certified. We spoke about my Imagine IT Building mastery through conversation and she led me to the holy grail of teaching. We previously attended PD’s about the growth mindset, but I left each meeting generally perplexed on how I would apply this to my classroom, in my scope and sequence, and amongst my kids. Like all middle schoolers my students love to talk. Using that to my advantage was the initial direction of my Imagine IT, but having them create the form of assessment and question each other took my idea of building skill through conversation to another level. The Holy grail came when she suggested that we use technology to highlight or guide a question. I start a conversation via her website and the students contribute to a forum about said topic, this conversation gets continued in the class and each statement either adds to a proof or disproves it.

I used my focus group to test this idea. I proposed a question about a fire. If a  15-foot ladder’s base is 9 feet from the entrance to a building and it sits perfectly on the  twelfth floor how long is each floor? My focus group was composed of sixth graders who had yet to learn the Pythagorean theorem. It would have been a cinch for them to solve this question with that formula. Instead, they began the conversation  agreeing that the question contained  a triangle. The conversed about how they could solve this, they questioned the actual scale, they drew diagrams. The comments in the forum were hilarious, the frustration was evident, until one student noticed that the measurements were all divisible by three, they divided the hypotenuse, the base, and noticed a pattern. When we got back to my classroom introduced that a Pythagorean triple was, then they researched the Pythagorean theorem. In one day they had taught themselves a  theorem, could explain a proof and create their own real-world applications. When the focus group concluded they still chose to  discuss and create their own questions without my input and on their own. I then asked my students what they thought about the previous task and they concluded that it was more to teach themselves and inquire with minimal guidance. They preferred the hands off approach and felt that discovering solutions themselves helped them learn the concept easier.