My Review of "Out on Good Behavior: Teaching math while looking over your shoulder"

"Out on Good Behavior: Teaching math while looking over your shoulder," by second-career middle-school math teacher Barry Garelick, both infuriates me and gives me hope.  This is Garelick's fourth book about his journey to becoming an effective math teacher out of his love of math, appreciation of traditional AND effective math education, and somewhat out of necessity.  I would categorize his authorship of four books, however, as a sense of duty.

This is a quick and enjoyable read that any school teacher, leader, or school board member should check out.  It has some laugh-out-loud moments as Garelick recounts some of his many memorable student anecdotes and quotes.  Garelick's writing style is enjoyable, conversational and engaging.  He has a great sense and the right mix of humor, irony, and sarcasm, which I really appreciate.  Yet, he's seriously on-point in his observations.

This book focuses on the first few years of Garelick's new career as a math teacher.  Specifically, he covers many of his experiences during the two year "parole" period right after becoming a teacher, when new teachers are observed and coached by an assigned mentor.  Garelick readily admits how he achieved (and still achieves?) the advice given to him by a fellow teacher: “Tell the administration what they want to hear, then do what is best for your students.”

The world of math education - and probably all subjects' education, but I only have delved into the domain of math - is rife with buzzwords and impressive sounding lingo.  Garelick sees right through and questions these supposed "ideas," most of which are hollow consultant-speak ruses that are more effective at selling curriculums and textbooks to naive and virtue-signalling school boards and administrators.  

As a math-loving parent with an M.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Electrical Engineering, I am no dummy when it comes to math.  Neither is Garelick, whose first career was in environmental science.  We both could see through the word salad edu-fads quoted back to us by those who influence and make decisions about our children's math education, including “growth mindset,” “grit,” “critical thinking,” “21st century skills,” “collaboration,” “creativity,” "nuance," "productive struggle," "intentionality," "instructional shifts," “open-ended questions are better than problems with one right answer,” and "disdain for teaching by telling, desks in rows, teacher at the front, and direct instruction."  And let's not forget, the dreaded "ROTE" memorization!

Garelick writes, "Younger teachers have been taught in ed school to accept as valid many of the edu-fads and buzzwords. Older teachers somewhat buy into it but have enough experience that, in the end, allows them to do things like teach at the front of the room using explicit and direct instruction and answering students’ questions directly.  I have been fortunate enough to work in schools where I’ve been given the autonomy to teach as I wish. I recognize, however, that there are teachers who are not allowed to do so and must conform to mandated practices with which they disagree and that are ineffective. It is to these teachers that this book is especially dedicated."

Garelick is not some antiquated closed-minded neanderthal opposed to new ideas.  He is a wise and passionate educator who realizes there must be substance to ideas which translates to results.  While the education industry continues to play whack-a-mole, continually changing methods and approaches to teaching in order to ostensibly "level the playing field" so that "all students are math students," Garelick knows what works and what doesn't, and has found ways to see through the nonsense, strategically "adapt" versus blindly "adopt" new concepts, but otherwise has been successful in "telling them what they want to hear" while his students go about the business of learning math. 

Back to my opening sentence about this book.  This book infuriates me because it reminds me of all the times I heard school board members and leaders in my school district parrot back talking points of math "curriculum" vendors such as Mathematics Vision Project and whack-a-mole math fad-ed prophets and peddlers, while talking down to parents legitimately questioning why their children were failing in math.  Then when challenged on their assertions made as matters-of-fact, they either quote out-of-context statistically irrelevant data, change the subject, or go silent.  Keep in mind, this is the same camp of math education "innovators" who are driving the "2+2=5" movement and the movements to remove accelerated math from middle-school.  No thank you.  This book gives me hope because there are people like Barry Garelick and the many astute math teachers in my school district who see through the buzzwords and hype, and instead do what's best for their students: teach them using what works best.