Somewhere, I saw a quote that said, “The most attractive quality in a person, is that they know who they are.”
Now, its one thing to know who you are, and not anyone else. That’s not what I’m talking about today. Knowing who you are involves some serious study and reflection. You want to get to know the real you, the you that loves quiet jazz music in the fall. The you that just decided to start watching Gilmore Girls, about 20 years later than everyone else. The you that seeks out a challenge because you know its going to make you better.
In order to get to know ourselves, we will have to have an open mind, like literally. This is not a closed door romance. Opening your brain to see what is going on in there is a real thing, its called Metacognition, and it should be the number one thing we are doing in classrooms this year.
Listening to the voices in your head
This is not a blog post about math, but to illustrate my point, I want to share an experience I had recently that made me a bit more aware of myself, a little more metacognitive. I was asked to try a strategy to subtract two numbers.
Think for a moment, how you would normally subtract two numbers, mentally. Mentally, meaning you are doing this in your head. Aha! Look at you being metacognitive. I’ll bet you just pulled out two numbers like 7 and 5, and you ended up with 2. Wow.
How, how did you end up with the 2? Now what if you had bigger numbers?
The strategy we were asked to try is called the Count Up strategy, counting up from the smaller number to the larger number.
This is how I generally do subtraction, mentally, something I already knew about myself thank you very much. At least I thought I did, but then I was asked to try a timed test, doing this strategy with two digit numbers. I was given one minute to solve as many problems as I could, mentally, using this strategy.
Want to guess how many I completed correctly? Five. Five two digit subtraction problems in 1 minute. I am an instructional coach people. I was in 2nd grade a very long time ago.
But here was the best part of this whole thing. After the minute was up, we were asked to reflect on our work. The first question was: How does this strategy help me subtract whole numbers? And the second question was: How confident am I in this strategy?
Right away, my brain said, quite loudly inside my head, “I just need more practice.” That right there friends, is metacognition. I knew I understood the strategy, and I also knew I wanted to use it because it made sense. Most importantly, I listened to that voice in my head.
Building a control center
Metacognition is rising to the top of every educators list of buzz words these days.
We all think, some of us a little too much, so what we really need to do is understand how we currently think. Its always better to know where you are, before you can know where you are going. The place we are going in metacognition land is not just observing our thoughts, but controlling them.
In Pixar’s Inside Out, we get a peek inside 11-year-old Riley’s mind, where five emotions – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust – work from “Headquarters,” a control center that looks like a high-tech command room. These emotions operate a console that influences Riley’s reactions and decisions throughout her day. The genius of the movie is showing how these emotional characters literally watch Riley’s life unfold on screens while deciding how she should respond to different situations – they’re essentially metacognitive observers of her experience.
Here’s what hit me about Riley’s control room: those emotions aren’t just reacting – they’re watching Riley navigate her world and making conscious decisions about how to help her respond. That’s exactly what happened to me during that subtraction exercise. When I said ‘I just need more practice,’ there was a little mathematician in my control room taking notes, watching my performance, and making plans for improvement.
Most of our students are doing math with their control room lights off. They’re solving problems, but nobody’s up there watching HOW they’re solving them or noting what they need to get better. When we help students flip that switch and get their own little mathematician observer online, they stop just ‘doing math’ and start becoming mathematicians who understand their own thinking.”
So how do we help students build their own learning control rooms? The good news is you don’t need to overhaul your entire teaching practice. You just need to start asking the right questions at the right moments – the kind that wake up that little observer upstairs.
Managing an effective control room
Think of it this way: every time students solve a problem, there are actually two things happening. There’s the math they’re doing, and there’s the thinking about the math they’re doing. Most of the time, we only pay attention to the first part. But when we start shining a spotlight on the second part – that’s when the magic happens.
Control Room Check-ins: After students finish a problem, ask: “What did your brain just do there?” or “If you had to teach your method to someone else, what would you say?”
Mathematician Observer Questions:
- “What part felt easy? What part made you slow down?”
- “If you did this problem again, what would you do the same? What would you change?”
- “When did you know you were on the right track?”
Console Conversations: Have students share not just their answers, but their thinking process: “Walk us through what was happening in your control room while you solved this.”
Control Room Predictions: Before diving into problems, ask: “Based on what you know about yourself as a math learner, how do you think this will go?“
Preparing for expanded control centers
Just like Riley, your student’s control rooms will become more and more complicated as new and harder problems arrive.
What if in addition to teaching math (or reading, or science, or whatever your subject), you made it your mission to help every student build their own learning control room?
The world we live in demands that students know when they are stuck, how they got there, and find a way through it. Kids who can say ‘I’m good at this type of problem but I need more practice with that type.’ Learners who know their own thinking well enough to make plans for getting better.
Remember that quote I started with? ‘The most attractive quality in a person is that they know who they are.’ Imagine a classroom full of students who truly know themselves as learners. Who understand not just WHAT they’re learning, but HOW they learn best.
That’s not just better math instruction – that’s helping kids fall in love with the person they’re becoming.
So this year, flip on those control room lights. Ask the questions that wake up the little observer in each student’s mind. Help them build the habit of watching their own thinking.
Because when students know themselves as learners, everything changes. And honestly? When YOU start paying attention to their thinking about their thinking, your teaching changes too.
Your students’ control rooms are waiting. Time to power them up.”