Dr. Lee: So if you had one piece of advice for teachers, on how they could improve their teaching of statistics, what would it be? 

Christine: Oh, that's a tough question, you know, I think if I had to say one piece of advice, do not be afraid to ask questions. In my work with teachers, one of the things they commonly say to me is, "I'm so uncomfortable with this, I'm afraid to try these tasks in my classroom because I can't anticipate what my students are going to ask", and I always just say, "That's okay, if your students ask a question that you can't answer, say I will get back with you or let's try to discover this together" and then, you have a source that you can go and email right away, and ask questions. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, and that is you, right? 

Christine: I get a lot, I do get a lot of emails from teachers that I work with. 

Dr. Lee: I do too, I do too. 

Christine: Actually, I appreciate it so much because it helps me as a teacher to understand the subtle issues that I don't necessarily think about that can be real challenges in delivering the curriculum. But, I would say, don't ever hesitate to ask questions, and don't be afraid to teach the statistics standards. Take advantage of whatever professional development that is being offered in the statistics, and also know that there's a lot of rich resources out there. 

Dr. Lee: There are, there are. 

Christine: There is now a lot of rich resources, and try to find someone within your State Department, within your school district, go to a workshop, that will help get your hands on those resources. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, that's really great advice, thank you very much. 

Christine: You're welcome, thank you for letting me be here today. 

Dr. Lee: You're welcome. 

Dr. Friel: Get an investigative problem to start with, do not start out saying, "I'm going to teach you bar graphs today, or I'm going to teach you circle graphs, or I'm going to teach you how to do the mean or the median", that is not the intent of how you address statistics, it's supposed to be an investigation. So you need a problem that engages kids whether it's data you give them or data that they collect, but you have to start there and then you build your ideas from that. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, that's great advice, thank you. 

Dr. Friel: You're welcome. 

Dr. West: Okay, I'm going to steal something from Ella Rossman here, but put my own take on it. So I would say focus on good questions. Specifically, when it comes to developing new concepts and things like that, and your course materials in the classroom, then I think that a lot of effort has to be put in at the very...up front, so that that's all motivated by good questions that you're asking of the student. Good questions inspire them to really think a little more deeply about the material, and I think that's something that...a good use of time in terms of preparation, is to focus on those good questions, those good motivating questions. Those, I think, can really engage students and it in turn, what I think that leads to, is you wanna have your students also ask good questions. 

Dr. Lee: Absolutely, that's exactly what I was going to say. 

Dr. West: And... 

Dr. Lee: You model that and then you hope that there are going to. 

Dr. West: That's right, so a little early on in the semester they're going to see you do this right, and then when you show them a data set, for example, you want them to come back, you wanna give them a chance to ask good questions about the data before you push them in a particular direction, a particular type of analysis, you wanna have...giving them a chance to ask the right questions. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, I think what I really like about that, that really is our first phase of a statistical investigation, and one that historically, we don't always pay attention to. And putting more emphasis there and thinking about the levels of sophistication that you're posing those questions at the beginning and really kind of modeling the way that you ask good questions, and then as the students are developing more sophistication they're the ones that are answering, or they're the ones that are posing and then answering their own questions. 

Dr. West: That's right, words matter, words really matter and you wanna have some really good words for them in terms of those good questions that you're asking and then give them a chance to model that. 

Dr. Lee: Good, thank you very much.