What Do "They" Mean by Rigor?

One of the latest buzz words being thrown around is rigor. Who is throwing this word around? Mostly I hear it from administrators; people who have the job of evaluating teachers. What is usually said is, "You need to increase the level of rigor in your classroom." I would imagine that most teachers stare back at their principal, or whoever just made the statement, like the puppy who turns his head to the side in that adorable gesture that means, "I'm listening but I don't understand." Unfortunately most of those same teachers will not ask the administrator for examples of what that means. Well, come on, would you go out on a public limb and admit you have no idea how to 'raise the level of rigor' in your classroom? Remember, this is the person writing your evaluation. Why would you put a seed in his brain about what might be perceived as a flaw in your ability to do your job? This is also a regrettable consequence of our current system but that's a topic for another day. (My suspicion is that the administrator wouldn't be able to give an example. You know what might be said..."I just know it when I see it." Yeah, thanks, that's helpful.)

What is rigor in the classroom? What does it look like in the classroom? Does it always look the same? 

One dictionary defines it as a noun meaning, 'the quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate; severity or strictness; demanding, difficult, or extreme. I can see how some of that can be translated into practice. The first part of the definition seems to be the responsibility of the teacher as he plans his lessons. In a previous posting about professionalism, I mentioned that teaching is built upon a large body of knowledge. It is mandatory that a teacher be very serious about the utterly exhaustive job of being thorough and accurate. But would an observer be able to see evidence of that thorough and accurate content knowledge? I would hope an administrator would bring in a content expert to ensure that no errors are being made. In the book, Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, he describes a teaching technique he calls 'right is right'. The key idea of the technique is to set and defend a high standard of correctness in the classroom. When a teacher acknowledges as correct, answers that are barely formed, answers that use sloppy notation, or answers that do not use appropriate vocabulary, that teacher is robbing a student of a learning opportunity. That teacher has also just decreased the level of rigor in their classroom. Mr. Lemov believes that teachers must use the content and their expertise with the content to take all students outside their narrow band of experience. When a teacher is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the beauty of their subject matter and can convey that to the students, the rigor increases.

I also think a rigorous classroom is one that gives students the opportunity to engage in the lesson in a way that helps them see the importance of mathematics. I was in a classroom recently where the objective of the lesson was to translate a word problem into an equation. Most of the students read the problem and started to solve it without writing an equation because an equation was not necessary to understand the problem. The teacher would not even validate any students who did not write an equation first. Once an equation was written and shared, the teacher proceeded to insist that every student solve the equation by going through the "proper" algebraic procedures. One young man sitting near to me was frustrated because he already had the answer to the problem. Does forcing every student to solve a problem in the exact same way make the classroom rigorous? Every problem that was presented during that period could be solved without writing an equation. Some of the equations were nothing more than arithmetic problems set equal to a variable. If the teacher would have thought more during the planning of the lesson, it could have been easily made more rigorous. How about carefully choosing or writing problems that are more difficult to solve without an equation? How about allowing the students to solve the problems in whatever creative ways they can and then comparing methods? Would that comparison of methods possibly lead to some amazing conversations?Might those conversations result in the equation writers convincing the non-equation writers to give it a try or vice versa?

I'm going to repeat myself and say that this generation of learners is not especially tolerant of being "talked at". They want to be in the conversation and they want to engage with learning. I've also watched them play video games. They are not afraid to try things, make mistakes, and revamp their strategies. Isn't that one of the habits of mind we want to promote in the classroom? One of the CCSS Mathematical Practices says that mathematically proficient students make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Maybe if teachers plan appropriately to offer their students those opportunities they will never again be sitting with an administrator being told that they have to "increase the level of rigor" in their classroom.

I think I just wrote about professionalism again.