Pro: Students get to see the creative side of math

Common Core for Mathematics has the potential to be a positive instructional change for students. In order for students to experience the change, however, it depends on the teacher and his or her view of math instruction.

The overarching goal of teaching mathematics to students needs to be conceptual understanding.

The Common Core for Mathematics, especially kindergarten through fifth grade, places standards at developmentally appropriate places where students are at the right age to conceptually understand them.

Many schools have seen success with Common Core because they set conceptual understanding as the primary goal of math instruction and listen to how students think about numbers and mathematics as they hold classroom conversations with their students. Students have the opportunity to learn from one another and use strategies rooted in their conceptual understanding of numbers and operations.

Prior to Common Core, we found classrooms where students memorized procedures taught to them by their teachers, and now we are finding students who build upon the teacher’s and other students’ ideas about math concepts.

Students view the math classroom as a place where they share their ideas about numbers and problems, and how they might be solved, instead of a time where they learn exactly step-by-step how to solve a problem where no variation is allowed. They are discovering the flexible and creative side of mathematics and are not forced to think about numbers and operations one way, the teacher’s way, or the textbook’s way.

Flexibility and creativity with numbers is exactly what is needed to begin to see mathematics as something that is all around us – it is a useful tool to model real-world situations and problems. The Common Core for math is set up for this kind of classroom.

Please note that I am not omitting time spent developing skills and fine-tuning them in the classroom. This, however, should not be the overarching goal. Skills are definitely needed, and so is flexible thinking and creative problem-solving.

It takes the teacher to approach the topic of mathematics in a way that instills conceptual understanding in students, where students see its value, and where students use mathematics in non-routine problem solving.

If instruction is approached in this way, the Common Core Math Standards, especially the math practices in the standards, support students in the learning and application of mathematics in their other subjects. They see it as a usable tool.

We are coming out of a couple of decades where it has been accepted for a student to say, “I am just not a math person.” We would never accept a person saying, “I am just not a language arts person.”

Both math and language arts should be seen as equals, that they are both used in conjunction within all other fields of study. The Common Core for Mathematics supports questioning and creative problem-solving.

Our students will definitely need this for the America they are entering.

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Pro: Students get to see the creative side of math."