11/3 Math in the time of Covid

It took nearly a month longer than normal but I finally have the virtual math club setup for the year and we met for the first time on Tuesday.  Given the weirdness and difficulty getting communication out I wasn’t sure how many students would show up but I was pleasantly surprised to reach 15 on the first day . I expect this number to rise a bit in the next few weeks and while normally I would want a firm roster, in these uncertain times I’m okay with being less rigid.Looking over who showed up or has registered so far, I’m gratified that most kids from last year came back. That’s the ultimate vote of confidence for me. I also have about a third of new sixth graders which is needed for continuity. Gender balance continues to be really good and hover around 50%.  However, the club does continue to skew Asian as has been the trend for the last few years. That’s fine as long as everyone works with each other and remains welcoming but I would like to penetrate a bit farther into the rest of the community.  Given the difficulty doing outreach, I’m somewhat at the mercy of parents and students choosing to join I don’t think I’m going to make much progress on that front until school is once again occurring in the real building.On the bright side, it was a ton of fun too see everyone from last year who came back.  The main reason I kept pushing to complete what was a very bureaucratic process this year was the thought of all the kids.   Because I initially was unsure how many students would be there. I did only some light planning for this meeting. My basic agenda was:1. Go over procedures and goals for the year.2.  Have everyone introduce themselves.3. Do a group discussion about my favorite key questions. What does Math mean to you? and What do you do when you get stuck?4.  Do a group “Which One Doesn’t Belong” exercise.5. Close with a group puzzle from a few years back: Pythagorean Triple PuzzleThis is not super ambitious but flexible enough to work with only a few or as it turns out 15 kids. ObservationsThe most common response from everyone when asked about why they rejoined was missing socializing with their friends.   I’m taking this to heart and trying to provide a space where that is possible. My main strategy will be to focus on small break out rooms and having kids chat and  work together on a few problems each week.  Also initially only about a quarter of the kids had cameras on. I’m hoping that more will do so and I’ll probably encourage that over the next few week.Right now I’m using the district standard MS  Teams for the web conferences but I’m not the meeting host. That prevents me from creating break out rooms and also restricts the tools I can use in the web conference.  There’s also a strange phenomena that if you share a window but open the chat window, teams reverts to sharing the whole screen (which is really annoying).  Long term, I really need both the breakout rooms and preferably the ability to annotate shared documents. I may look into something like Jamboard for use down the road.  What I do find effective already is using the chat window. I’m going to lean on that even more than having everyone speak as a low stakes way to drive engagement. I also like using the raise your hand button for group questions.  Being virtual does make it a lot harder to track who is talking / engaged that being in person. I think next week I’m going to set up a roster and literally mark when someone speaks to make it easier for me to notice patterns.But despite the limitations the first day went really well and I’m excited to design more ambitious sessions in upcoming weeks.