The Problem Solving Monster

There are, for most kids, monsters under the bed or in the closet or hiding in the woods near the house. There are rarely monsters at school. I mean, in junior high, someone probably tried to stuff you in a locker or a mean teacher gave you detention every day after school for three weeks. They were mean, but they weren’t monsters. They didn’t really scare you the way that the monster in the closet did.

My students are someway between children who hide from thunder and teenagers who stuff each other in lockers. They are tough, 11 going on 17 and they are streetwise and savvy. Some of them have a better handle on makeup and manicures than I ever will.

But, there is one thing that leaves them quaking in their shoes: the problem solving strategy. My school requires the students to make their thinking visible and to write down how they came to the answer.  We use the acronym R.U.B.I.E.S. to do this.  The goal is to force the students to slow down, consider the critical attributes of the problem, make a plan, explain their work/show their work and prove that they are right.

There are as many named strategies to accomplish this as there are named school districts in the United States.  You can pick your favorite and ask your students to do it. However, unless you are able to some how hold them accountable to it, your strategy will be as useful as trying to put out a fire with an eye dropper.

We have gone over and over how to use RUBIES. We have gone over why and how to use it. The teachers from last year taught the kids how to do it and told me it was reliably used.  And yet…the kids write the acronym next to every problem, cross out the letters and then guess the answer. Sometimes they choose B on Tuesday and sometimes they decide that they like F better on Tuesday because “F” is for Friday and they want it to be Friday.

Yesterday, not for the first time, I wrote a word problem (oh the horror!) on the board. This problem was a two step problem involving subtraction and addition. I wrote it on the board with the numbers missing. We talked our way through the problem, discussing the important words (verbs) and what the author wanted us to do with the problem. I explained, again, that they needed to actually complete the process and make it known to the reader (me, the teacher, the woman who decides their recess fate).  Several students had that light bulb moment that makes teachers come to work every day.

The other students continued to look at me as if I wanted them to spend all their soccer time doing subtraction computation work sheets.

There are two ways to think about this. The first is to say that the kids are lazy and recalcitrant and that you can’t make the horse drink the water.

The other is to look at their fear. Why are they so scared to reveal their thinking? The steps are simple enough, so it can’t be that they are unable to do so. Some of the kids may have low level reading/computation skills, but not as many as seem to refuse to complete the strategy.

It terrifies them to explain their reasoning. It’s not that they aren’t reasoning. They are. They are thinking. They are synthesizing information and making decisions. I have shown them alternatives to the traditional American algorithms and their eyes have lit up with the idea that they have options.  This is a clear indication that in the past, they have not been encouraged to explain their reasoning when it conflicts with what their teacher (or parent) expected to hear.

If students hear confusing messages, their response is to shut down.  This explains their hesitation to make the unseeable seen. If they don’t show their work and they are wrong, they can claim they guessed wrong.  If they show their work and no one understands what they did or why they did it, they are likely to get an earful and still get marked down.

It is frightening to open yourself up to criticism from a superior; think about how devastating it is to have your boss criticize your thought process: it’s one thing to be wrong, it’s quite another to be asked to explain why you are wrong to the person in charge. Kids can be cruel to someone whose thinking and way of being makes no sense. Teachers can be too.

I am hoping that as the year goes on, and community builds, the students will gain confidence in themselves and trust in me to the point that it is not frightening to make their thinking and their reasoning known. And they will start to share with me and with each other.