"It's like the boat that takes you to Magic Kingdom"

I had not one but two serious fights in my class today. It was thrilling, invigorating, and made our entire journey to this point seem more than worthwhile. I had students arguing, in multiple classes, for 15+ minutes at a time, about math.

To be honest, I didn't see it coming. We were working on an estimation task (http://www.estimation180.com/day-159.html) like we do in every single class. They had done the previous day's estimation in the last class without much excitement. Today though, everything changed, I had girls jumping out of their seats and running to the board to try to convince everyone of their reasoning, trying to get them to take turns was chaotic because they all wanted to share their thinking. I had students who have NEVER spoken in class (we only have three days left...) raising hands to chime in.

First the argument was that children's life jackets are 2/3 of the size of adult's - or is it half? And if they're smaller, then do more first in the same space or less? That generated a good bit of discussion, but then, the mother of all questions came out, are the benches the same size? Each size was so passionate about their argument that they actually formed arguments! It wasn't just "because I think so" or "it looks like it" - they were coming up with ways to convince the others. This WAS the moment I had been working for us to get to all year long. It was awesome.

I think my favorite part though, was when the door opened and a member of the Buildings & Grounds staff came in. I thought he was there to take care of an issue, maybe repair the chair I had submitted a work request for earlier, but he just watched us. When I asked him if he needed me for something, he shared that he had seen the photo and question through the window and was curious about the answer himself. I asked his estimate, and thinking he had something better to do, ran over to him to whisper the answer. But he stayed. He stayed for 15 minutes while my girls argued with each other over the size of the life jackets, how they could possibly be arranged, if the benches were the same or not, why there might even be different benches on a boat. I was amazed by my girls, their passion, and the arguments they were constructing - but I was even more in awe at how their excitement and the question itself could spark the natural curiosity of a passerby. It was a really beautiful experience at the end of outstanding year in this crazily re-designed course we know as Algebra 1 in the iLab.