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> Teacher Feature - Gwen Clinkscales

A master teacher collaborates with students
to make math a process of individual discovery.

By Emily Weinstein

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May 2002 - If anyone missed Gwen Clinkscales' eighth-grade math class the day I visited, they wouldn't be able to borrow another student's notes. That's because in Gwen Clinkscales' math class, there are no notes. Learning doesn't happen by rote transmission from blackboard to notebook. In Gwen's classroom, at The Renaissance Charter School (TRCS) in Jackson Heights, Queens, learning is a process of discovery undertaken by each student in the room.

Gwen Clinkscales aims to connect with every student in the room.

"See What You Can Discover"

"Experiment," encourages Gwen, as she is known by adults and kids alike. TRCS is a first name-basis sort of place. She passes out compasses to her twenty-odd students, all of whom are remarkably ready to work, considering they are thirteen and fourteen and it's the fourth day of a record-breaking April heat wave. "Draw with these compasses and see what you can discover about how they can be used."

After the class has filled their papers with different-sized circles and arcs, Gwen selects a student to be the day's recorder and goes around the room, asking for observations. Even the three adults visiting today are asked to contribute. Everything is carefully written on the board, regardless of whether it's been said already or doesn't entirely make sense. As each student speaks, Gwen listens intently, and the students follow her example.

Each student's discovery is recorded.

Making a Connection

For Gwen, teaching is all about making a connection.

"Connection is showing respect for students," she says. "They already have a lot of information and you're here to be the bridge to bring it out, so they can put it together and share it."

Teaching without being mindful of this connection results in what Gwen – among other notable educational philosophers – calls a "master-slave relationship." In that case, "there's the person who's in control and the other people who know nothing." In Gwen's classroom, knowledge grows from the students' interaction with the world around them, with Gwen as a facilitator.

During our interview, she meets eyes with a student who has looked up curiously from across the room. "Veronica," she says, smiling. "I'm talking about teaching you."

The walls of Gwen's classroom are lined with models and drawings. This would be an anomaly in the average math classroom, but in Gwen's it's the norm. She's developed a philosophy that is very complimentary to Salvadori's. "Everything I do is what Salvadori is about. Everything I do integrates the built environment as a concrete example of what we're working on."

Making It Real

When her class studies slope, they talk about the stairs in New York City. When they measure, they talk about scale. In order for students to learn math, Gwen feels, "It has to be real. I make it real using the built environment."

At the end of class, Gwen collects the compasses. Instead of an admonition to go home and produce identical answers to a set of textbook problems, Gwen's students are instructed to "Think about how your thinking changed today. Write about that in your journals."

As the room clears out, Gwen finds five more minutes to talk with me about her methods and the philosophy behind them. "Until we get over how we were taught," she says, referring to the "master/slave relationship," "the kids are not going to hear us in math."

In the last forty-five minutes, every kid in the room heard her teacher, and – an even greater rarity – every kid in the room was heard.