(2023-12-13) Hendrickson Boss Questions In Math

Brandon Hendrickson: Boss Questions in math. Too often, in too many classrooms, students feel that math has no purpose

What we need is a way to gin up purpose in math that takes agency seriously, and that can scale to every math lesson.

2. Basic plan

Every day in an Egan classroom, the teacher can begin the math lesson with a Boss Question. (cf (2023-04-04) Building Human Intelligence At Scale To Save The Next Generation From Chatgpt)

is harder than anything in the lesson itself

is ridiculous (or captivates interest in some other way)

It’s best if the Boss Question is written down and affixed on a wall. This way students can continue to see it throughout the lesson, and afterwards.

So far, this is all a description of what could be called lesson-sized “Miniboss Questions”. We can also use “Superboss Questions” — sized to fit a whole chapter or unit.

Superboss Questions can be hung up at the beginning of a new chapter in math (usually once every 2 or 3 weeks, though this will differ by curriculum) in a more permanent location. They are, naturally, much harder and weirder looking than the Miniboss Questions.

writing down specific questions about the problem

3. What you might see

At a random point in the lesson a student’s hand shoots up. He shows the teacher an answer, and the teacher… smiles, and shakes his head: nope. The student scowls, and the lesson continues.

Soon, another student raises her hand, and shows her answer: yep. She begins working on the homework, and the teacher returns to teaching his lesson.

4. Why?

Heroic deeds should feel heroic.

Starting with Boss Questions frames math as a heroic undertaking.

5. Egan’s insight

Where do we see this in the human experience?

When Cyrus the Great conquered in 539, Babylon became part of the Persian Empire. Monotheistic Zoroastrianism was in; polytheistic astrology was out. Jobless, astrologers took to the road, finding rich individuals in places like Greece to tell horoscopes to… and swap math riddles with. They couldn’t take the cuneiform tablets with them, but they had scores of mathematical puzzles in their heads.

How might this build different kinds of understanding?

The reason to create problems that aren’t part of the “official” curriculum is to cultivate 🤸‍♀️ PLAYFULNESS; making the problems nonsensical triggers our 🤸‍♀️ HUMOR. And while they don’t need to be solved, just offering a small number of problems may secure 🤸‍♀️ EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT.

And encouraging students to write down questions and invent stratagems is similar to proposing 👩‍🔬 HYPOTHESES & 👩‍🔬 CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS.

6. This might be especially useful for…

Students who can learn math on their own

Boss Questions function as a sort of pre-test, allowing kids to skip to the end.

Students who crave independence, but still need lots of help

7. How could this go wrong?

A. No one cares about them

B. Students care about them too much

These become too enjoyable, and the teacher can’t break in with the actual lesson.

C. They become obligatory

8. Classroom setup

How might the physical classroom environment support this?

As Peter Liljedahl (below) points out, there’s something magical about pointing at something on a wall.2 How might we plan for the wall space to do this wonderfully?

9. Similar stuff (others are doing)

Julia Robinson Math Festivals

Thinking Classrooms

Dan Meyer

His videos presenting these problems are almost… hypnotic?

10. Open questions

11. How could this be done small, now?

12. Related patterns

*This hones the crucial skill of “Question Asking”, and would be a great way to practice different “Problem-Solving Methods”.

This would be a great source of problems for a student’s “Deep Practice Book”.

If everyone understands how to do a Boss Problem, we might want to celebrate that with a “Genius Rock”.*

Afterword: Going full-meta, here

dang did it make math more of a fun challenge for the kids! So much bang for so little buck.

focus her prodigious powers on something that was still math, but wasn’t the math that was tormenting her.