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While Steve shares that his team is “all-in” and “pulling the same wagon” we are pulling over here at Make Math Moments, they know that there is always a pebble kicking around in that shoe that needs a good shake-out.

Stick around and we’ll hear about some of the current pebbles including how to “cover it all” when we are trying so hard to integrate mathematics teaching practices that we know are so important to build mathematically proficient students.

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we chat with a teacher like you who is working through some problems of practice and together we brainstorm ways to overcome them. 

Resources

• Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

District Math Leaders: 

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What about opportunities for those who are eager and willing to elevate their practice, but do not have the support? 

Book a call with our District Improvement Program Team to learn how we can not only help you craft, refine and implement your district math learning goals, but also provide all of the professional learning supports your educators need to grow at the speed of their learning. 

Book a short conversation with our team now. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve:

… when the data research starts to empower your own experience, makes you want to go and seek out the professional development and read the articles and really get involved. First, not necessarily to justify your own experience, but to make sure that your own experience wasn’t wrong. And so on a personal level, there had to have been some subconscious level for that. As far as what I’d be able to bring to my kids-

Jon:

that there is a Steve Doherty and Steve is a mathematic specialist and vice principal of academics in his school from the Seattle, Washington area. Join us today as we learn about Steve and the work he and his colleagues have been engaging in to improve the overall teaching and learning processes of mathematics in his buildings.

Kyle:

While Steve shares that his team is all in and pulling the same wagon that we’re pulling over here at Make Math Moments, they know that there’s always a pebble or two kicking around in those shoes that need a good shakeout. Stick around and we’ll hear some of the current pebbles including how to cover it all when we’re trying so hard to integrate mathematics teaching practices that we know are so important to build truly mathematically proficient students.

Jon:

This is another math mentoring moment episode where we chat with a teacher just like you who is working through some problems and practice, and together we brainstorm ways to overcome them so that we can grow our classrooms like a strong and healthy and balanced tree.

Kyle:

Let’s do it.

Kyle:

Welcome to the Making Math Moments That Matter podcast. I’m Kyle Pearce.

Jon:

And I’m Jon Orr. We are from makemathmoments.com.

Kyle:

This is the only podcast that coaches you through a six step plan to grow your mathematics program, whether at the classroom level or at the district level.

Jon:

And we do that by helping cultivate and foster your mathematics program like strong, healthy, and balanced treatment.

Kyle:

If you master the six parts of an effective mathematics program, the impact of your math program will grow and reach far and wide.

Jon:

And each week we give you the insight you need to stop feeling overwhelmed and gain back your confidence and get back to enjoying the planning of facilitating of your mathematics program for your students or for the educators you serve.

Kyle:

Well, friends, we’re going to dive in here in just a moment with Steve. You’re going to get a chance to get a glimpse into someone who’s been a math moment maker for quite some time. It’s awesome to hear that Steve and some of hiss educators have had opportunity to not only engage with us online through the podcast, through webinars, but also in person in some of our past conferences through keynotes and featured guest spots.

Kyle:

So it’s awesome to be able to connect and to really just kind of sit back and listen to all of the awesome things that are going on. It sounds like there’s an amazing culture there and while that tree is growing so nicely, I see that in this conversation we help Steve work out a couple of those pebbles.

Jon:

And I think when you listen closely, you’re going to hear some discussion around the trunk of their tree, which is kind of the vision setting and the culture building that happens in our classrooms. So we’ll be listening in on how to strengthen that aspect of the tree. Also, you’ll probably hear a little bit about the limbs of the tree, which is about the professional development structure and planning around how to achieve some of the goals that Steve’s on his journey for him and his teachers that he serves. So let’s get to it.

Kyle:

So Steve is out in the Seattle area. They’re wrapping up the school year, beginning of June is the end date for those friends. Steve, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Steve:

So I’m the K-8 math coach at our school. I’m also the vice principal of academics and this year I’m teaching our zero period geometry class, which is an optional class just for eighth graders, and then I’m teaching the section of our eighth grade math class. And so we offer an eighth grade math class. It’s the only place where kids take different classes is our eighth grade class and we offer advanced algebra, which is equivalent down here to a full ninth grade level class. Then algebra, which allows us a little bit more flex so we can go deeper and slow down a little bit more.

Steve:

Kids that take that class and show a really high level of understanding will go on and take the same geometry and honors level geometry that our advanced kids will. And then the eighth grade math is our eighth grade math. That’s United States Common Core. It’s what you would take at any other eighth grade math class.

Kyle:

So that’s quite a variety there that you’ve got going on and quite a number of hats that you are wearing.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah. I’m also this year the pre-K PE teacher. Before I took on the wow vice principal role, I was a lifelong… I taught PE and math, so I would teach K-3 and then eighth grade PE and then I taught seventh and eighth grade math. It’s super fun. Get to know all the kids. It’s really great.

Kyle:

I love it. It’s definitely changing gears a little bit, right? So it’s like especially if you enjoy it. I know sometimes in the elementary grades you find that either there’s teachers that love teaching phys ed, and then there’s some teachers that are like, please take my phys ed if they have phys ed. So if you enjoy it then obviously that sounds like an awesome schedule for sure.

Steve:

Yeah, so the transition to math coach was a few years ago, and I’d say honestly, that’s probably when I came to know your guys’ work. That would’ve been probably around 2016, I would say.

Jon:

Okay.

Steve:

I know in my math coaching, a couple of teachers went, saw you guys in Salt Lake City.

Jon:

Oh yeah. I remember that.

Steve:

A year or two after I took over and they came back and they’re like, you got to see these guys. And I’m like, I’ve seen them. That’s why I sent you to Salt Lake City. They came back and were super enthusiastic. You guys actually were the first two off the tip of their tongues when they came in and were the first things that were putting into action.

Jon:

Awesome.

Kyle:

I love it.

Steve:

And the year before we’d been here in, you guys were here in Seattle, and so building on Peter Liljedahl’s work, am I saying his last name correctly?

Kyle:

Yeah.

Jon:

As best I can say. Peter always corrects me every time we chat with him.

Steve:

We had seen him and I just absolutely love his thinking classrooms. And then we saw you guys in LA the whole gang this year too.

Jon:

Awesome. Before we get too deep into all of that, let us know what’s your math moment when we say we talk about math moments here on the podcast all the time. When I say the word math class, usually our history kicks in immediately before we start to think about what it looks like in our own classes, but usually kind of math class triggers memories from your experience in math class. Let us know, what would you say is your math moment?

Steve:

Oh gosh. So going back as a kid?

Kyle:

Yeah. Anytime. Whatever pops in your mind, you think math class.

Steve:

I struggled greatly in math class and there was definitely a gap that occurred and it was going to be in between halfway through fourth grade and probably halfway through sixth grade. And I just was not able to recover until… I mean, I got my math requirements through high school and things like that, but I was probably, gosh, 16 or so when it started to click what the things meant instead of just memorizing and being asked to perform.

Steve:

So as soon as I got past the idea of performing for math class and then being able to see how the pieces fit together, that was super helpful for me. And I think it was just a matter of a 16 year old brain versus a 10 year old brain, and that was really helpful.

Kyle:

I find it really interesting that you kind of brought it to between that fourth and sixth grade band, because I find that is one of the big, we say like getting off points or stepping off the bus points for a lot of students. And then the next one, sort of when you get to that algebra as you move through those higher grades like seven, eight, ninth grade math, and then of course one more stop as you sort of branch off again towards some of that much more abstract concepts. So I’m wondering how did that influence, or did it influence how you were teaching as a teacher in the math classroom having the opportunity to have taught math and now being a math specialist in your school?

Steve:

Yeah. Well, I would say it impacts everything I do now. And when I saw your guys’ work, and I started in with Joe Bowler, and I don’t know if you guys know, you must know Dan Finkel and Katherine Cook.

Kyle:

Oh yeah.

Steve:

When the data research starts to empower your own experience, makes you want to go and seek out the professional development and read the articles and really get involved, first, not necessarily to justify your own experience, but to make sure that your own experience wasn’t wrong. And so on a personal level, there had to have been some subconscious level for that.

Steve:

As far as what I’d be able to bring to my kids. It’s the idea of showing how things fit together. All we want is for our kids to be able to look and think so that they can get out there, put the pieces together and fight for themselves and take care of themselves in this world of ours. So the way that you guys put things together and the commitment that we have in our math program is this, what do you notice? What do you wonder?

Steve:

And from there, what are you empowered to do to help solve problems and things, see how things connect. And if you can do that and have that curiosity and that confidence, you’re going to be able to make good decisions. You’re going to be able to read data correctly, you’re going to be able to see how things fit. So when you’re ready to take calculus, you’re able to see not just the mathematics and the algorithms, but you’re able to see how it fits together. And it’s human invention, right? Mathematics is a human invention of language, so you don’t have to count everything all the time.

Jon:

I love that as a great vision for mathematics classrooms. And we often talk about pillars in our classroom that we can rely on as kind of guiding principles to help structure elements of our room to being, how we interact with each other, what you can expect on a regular basis. Specific rules of the room and the dynamic are all kind of come down to some of the visions and the guiding principles of our math class. And it sounds like you’ve got a great vision there and I think that will translate to the teachers that you’re working with.

Jon:

So having said that Steve, what would you say is your current pebble that you’re working on in your classroom, classrooms that you’re visiting, you’re working with? Let us know what can we dive into here in this short time we have together?

Steve:

Yeah, I would say two things. First, I don’t know if it’s a pebble. I’d like to hitch onto the wagon that you guys are pulling and thinking about and listening to your podcast and watching your work. You guys have talked extensively about where you guys started, say even when I came on board in 2015, 2016 and when you guys were doing your district thing and how you understand so much more now than you guys did in 2016, and you guys have been really deliberate and really specific about that. And I think that that’s awesome.

Steve:

And that would be my next thing is I’ve got, my teachers are on board. I’m lucky, we’ve worked hard together, we’ve taken a bunch of professional development. These teachers are seeing the kids’ reaction to it, they’re seeing the results that they want. We have a math night at our school and 12 out of 16 math teachers volunteered their time and came and did our math night and the others, it wasn’t, I think that other things, it wasn’t that they didn’t want to.

Steve:

So these people are tripping over themselves to show our whole community and parents and stakeholders what it is we’re doing in our math classes. So how can I follow your guys lead and constantly, which I always am in thinking, but okay, what’s next and what’s now? How do we continue to develop that number sense that will pair to algebra sense because that’s my job. You guys work with a lot of high school people. If I can get them instilled with number scents and parlay that into their algebra accents in six through eight, you guys are going to do great work with what comes next. But that’s my job here. So what do we do to continue to push to be the best that we can be.

Kyle:

Oh wow. Here’s what I want to tell you. First off, I’m like, it is so awesome to hear how first of all, all of the district leaders or school leaders or math leaders that we have conversations with, the one thing that I find in common is, and I think this is why folks like you end up in these roles, is that you recognize how dedicated, committed, how awesome educators are around us. And I think sometimes that gets lost sometimes along the way in our messaging, even on the podcast, Jon and I try to make mention of this, but I feel like this is a great opportunity again to say when we’re trying to nudge for change in math education, it’s like nobody’s out there doing the worst they can. No one’s out there going, I want to make this the worst experience for kids.

Kyle:

Everybody in their mind, they believe that what they’re doing is the best way to do it based on what they know. And it’s just so awesome to hear you speaking about how obviously the culture in your community, in your math community that has been generated. And I’m sure the work you’re doing has something to do with it, and I’m sure that there’s other elements in there as well, other leaders and other aspects there as well. So it’s awesome to hear that.

Kyle:

The question I was eager to dive into here for you is based on that… so it sounds like you’ve got these people and you had mentioned about hitching onto the same wagon that we’re pulling. It sounds like they’re all hitched on too and they’re like, Hey, we want to do the work. I’m wondering if you could go and pretend for a moment and you were to randomly pick one of your colleagues out there and you could be them, what do you think they would say if we asked them what their pebble is?

Kyle:

And just to restate it, just so it’s clear, it sounds like they want to do the work, right? They’re like, we want to do great things. And it sounds like they’re already doing great things. If I’m going to guess though that every single educator out there in the world has a pebble and they’re like, “I’m working on that one right now, or I’m thinking about that one, or I’m grappling with that one”. What do you think maybe a teacher in your community might say to that problem? And I wonder if maybe we kind of latch onto that as an idea. Not suggesting because they’re not doing a great job already, but maybe it’s just to say, this is the thing that they’re feeling like they’ve hit a little bit of a hiccup in the road or a little bump in the road.

Steve:

I would be willing to bet that the big question is this, how do I use or balance these things that I’m doing that I know are based in good, true, actual, real mathematics with all the stuff I’m supposed to get to in my textbook?

Kyle:

That’s such a great, great pebble. And I would argue every person listening right now is like, me too. Whether they’re a district leader, whether they’re an educator in the classroom right now, that is definitely a huge one. And I mean, I think there’s a couple other pieces. I got a question for you around how would you say in your school, in your district or organization, how is that maybe dealt with, are there pacing guides? Is there sort of messaging around what that should or could look like and sound like in the classroom?

Kyle:

The reason I ask is because oftentimes in districts we try our best to help our educators, but sometimes some of the things we say, or more importantly, the things that we do or the policies we have in place sometimes kind of promote something that’s different than what we’re saying we want people to do. What does that look like and sound like in your environment? Do teachers feel like the district is pushing this idea or is it, I think we also put a lot of our own pressure. It’s like I know the common core, these are the standards and this is what has to be done. Even though the district didn’t really explicitly come down on me for it.

Steve:

Yeah. And I really think that’s what we’re all pushing for here. So vote your standards, know them inside and out. And it’s easier for me to say as a specialist and as a math coach, I think it’s going to be a little bit harder, or not necessarily harder, it’s going to be a different beast if you are teaching kindergarten through fifth grade and you are solely responsible for teaching all of the other subject areas. But nonetheless know your curriculum, which people do, and then look for the best ways to deliver that curriculum and not be married to the textbook.

Steve:

I mean, let’s face it, parents who are not professional educators and tutors love textbooks because they’re sequential and it’s just tell me what to do. And I totally get it. And I don’t mean that in any kind of sarcastic or glib way, but when you’re given the freedom, which is an encouragement, which is what we try and do here to talk to the teachers and say, you know what it is that you need to cover in terms of the actual concept, really concentrate on that.

Steve:

And that’s been a big movement for our teachers to trust that because you go through teacher school, you come up, maybe you’re not a math major, that’s why you look for the best textbook resources that you can have to guide those teachers that aren’t as confident. But then what you look for is to tie the things that you guys do. How is this meeting your standard? Then go ahead and do this. Well, what if it takes more than the 10 minutes and I don’t get to the practice problems? Well, that’s going to be okay, provided you can go and show the formative assessment that will lead to the summative assessment. These kids can hit the target that we’ve been tasked with hitting, which then goes again, back to your common core for us to those standards, what is it that students can demonstrate? And you need to give them lots of opportunities to do that.

Steve:

So if you need to free yourself from doing a whole bunch of textbook questions, you absolutely need to do that. You need to look for the ways to show kids or kids can show you what they understand and you can continue to raise that ceiling and challenge them. And if you need to move away from the textbook, you absolutely have the freedom to do it. And what are you going to show for summative assessment that shows that these kids have hit that?

Kyle:

I love it. I love it. That’s a great message. And to me really shows again why the culture in your building is the way it is where people are going to rally around because the message is so clear and you’re not asking them to do something that’s impossible to do or just saying, well, listen, figure it out-

Steve:

Yeah. Can I interrupt you for just one second because you guys have done a great job with this too. The other thing we’re not asking them to do, we ask them to do these kinds of tasks. We’re not asking them to be disingenuous just because you’re not giving a 50 point or a 25 question algebra test, that really just is a quest, right? It’s just asking the kids to do something through brute force. It doesn’t mean the assessment itself is disingenuous. When was the last time you took a cumulative test in your work life?

Kyle:

Yeah, totally. And not to mention too, it’s like is it 50 questions that are all kind of the same, asking the same thing? Are they actually knowledge? Is there some depth there? So there’s definitely some-

Steve:

Oh yeah. I remember it was you guys that said you didn’t teach, what was it? You weren’t a teacher for five years, you taught one class for five years. Is that right?

Kyle:

Yeah. I think Jon pulled that from… he is like, he thinks he heard it somewhere. He doesn’t know where. But yeah, ultimately that was definitely a huge awakening for us for sure, when we sort of started to recognize that, wow, the kids keep changing, but everything I’m doing is exactly the same. That is obviously problematic.

Steve:

Which circles back to my potential pebble or call it whatever, you never want to get to where you’ve arrested the point where you’re not going. Do you know Dr. Atul Gawande? He’s a physician down here and writer. He’s pretty famous. He’s written a bunch of books. He was, I think the chief of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, but he wrote this incredible article in the New Yorker magazine about 2016 right before I took over coaching. It’s called Professional Athletes and musicians Need Coaches. Do you think you might need one too? And it’s just a greater population, but there’s a whole couple of more than a couple paragraphs in there talking about educational coaches such as yourself. You can probably Google it or whatever duckduckgo it, but if you can’t find it, I’ll send it to you if you want.

Kyle:

Love it. Yeah, no, that’s great.

Steve:

It just talks about how you recognize to not… where your improvement needs to be and how you can really focus and get better in those areas.

Kyle:

Well, interestingly enough as well, and I don’t know how much in depth we’ve gone into it previously on the podcast, but something that I do share with people a lot when they ask when or why did you and Jon sort of team up to do this work? And the reality is, and right now Jon and I are both working pretty much fully with districts around North America in particular and really helping them with crafting a clear vision, with actually trying to figure out where are their pain points and what do we need to do or what could we do in order to do more meaningful work? And I’m using that very intently more meaningful work because it’s not that there wasn’t meaningful work happening, it’s just trying to get that clear and sort of concise direction. It really all stems from that exact idea. So Jon and I realize that we are way better when we are pushing each other. So we work on that basis.

Kyle:

But then now what we do is we actually work with leaders and math leaders similar to yourself where we come together and sort of look at, “hey, where are we at and where are we going in particular”? And what we’ve found in a lot of cases is that it’s such a busy job. I’ll go back to how many hats you’re wearing, right? You’ve got, I’m sure a bunch of different titles. It sounds like you’re not only a math specialist, but you’ve got a bunch of other things that you’re kind of working on. And it can be really difficult to keep that vision and not so much the vision for yourself for what you want everyone to do, but to be able to craft it in such a way so that it’s clear enough so that everyone else is on the exact same page.

Kyle:

Because sometimes what happens is you do a great job, people trust you and they will do whatever you ask them to do, which is awesome. But if they still aren’t sure to what end, why? They’re like, well, I trust them so I know it’s for good. But then they don’t have that clear vision at the end of that tunnel. It’s like, does the work ever sort of come together? And I’m going to argue that better things are happening. We like to articulate it as different puzzle pieces are there and everyone’s pushing these puzzle pieces and maybe it’s getting closer together, but we’re not exactly sure where they fit because we’re not exactly sure what the finished product should look like in terms of our math classroom.

Kyle:

So that’s been a lot of the work that we’ve been doing. And what makes me wonder, and maybe this is a question to go back to you as maybe a next step based on where you are, I think you had shared a pebble about the idea of content, how do we cover it or that’s at least what you thought educators may want or need. I’m thinking you’ve already sort of got a good handle on that is what I’m hearing.

Kyle:

But I do wonder is maybe how do you and your teammates in terms of, and I’ll call it more like the leadership team, how do you folks get your coaching and is there an opportunity out there to bring someone else in to kind of nudge just a little bit, maybe ask some questions and then sometimes it’s even just to get a calendar booking in the calendar so that you have that time carved out. Because I think we’ve all been there where you carve out time, you’re like, I’m going to do this as planning time. And then you get to planning time and then planning doesn’t happen because all the other things sort of take over.

Kyle:

But there’s sort of that accountability there that might be a good option to maybe kind of take the game of your team, your leadership team, to a place where you can go, okay, we’ve got all these people hooked up. Look at them, go. They’ll do essentially whatever we say for them to do because they trust us and they believe in the system. I wonder how can we push ourselves to help to clarify not the vision for yourself. Because again, I hear that loud and clear that you’ve got a good vision and I’m sure your team does, but how do we help to make it clear for them?

Kyle:

Then in particular, when you move on, let’s say to a different role, if you go in and become an administrator in a different building or maybe you go to the district office or wherever you choose that there’s something there that there’s not this missing part and then all of a sudden all that works sort of starts crumbling away, but that they go, we still know what the finished product looks like and we can continue pushing those puzzle pieces in a very strategic way to make them build that puzzle back together.

Steve:

Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And it is the conversations that we have across subject levels throughout our whole school, we’re super, super purposeful with all that. And we map out our faculty meeting time to the day, to the hour, and we have a rotating cycle to where math teachers meet with math teachers. We talk about ELA, meets with ELA, and we do grade level above, grade level below. But yeah, thinking about a specific way for us to do that is really good.

Steve:

The other thing that comes up too is I always want to be able to give back and be able to lead. This is great stuff what you guys do, and we need to get out there and we need to share it and we need to train people. Maybe it’s a way that I can look at helping to train other coaches even within the building to see how they can, when we onboard a new teacher, be it brand new teacher, somebody from another building, we always have a mentor teacher. Even if you’re a veteran teacher coming into our building, you get a mentor teacher from our building cause they’re a pretty good side school. There’s a lot of moving pieces, but what does that look like for pairing, building teacher leaders?

Kyle:

I love it.

Steve:

Without necessarily the title. Hey, I’m going to need to give my office back here and I got to get out to recess duty.

Kyle:

Yeah, no sweat. I was just about to say, honestly, I’m so happy to hear how things are working. First of all, I appreciate you sharing some of where that journey began and how that’s had an impact. What I do want to leave you with is, first of all, thank you for sharing some of the work that you and your team are doing. It sounds like there’s some great things happening there we can ever be of any help, support. If there’s any questions, let us know. Of course, we have a few different programs for the other district leaders who listen to the podcast and if folks are looking to kind of take those puzzle pieces and help to push them together, we can definitely help with that.

Kyle:

But until then, my friend Steve, I want to thank you so much for spending some time with us and sharing your story and also a couple of those pebbles that even when you’ve got lots of amazing things going on in your building with your colleagues, that the reality is that it’s an endless journey because you’re always going to be looking to keep pushing and getting better in order to help more and more educators and in turn students.

Kyle:

So good on you my friend, and I want to thank you for being on the podcast.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And for all of your guys’ work, it’s been super helpful, especially starting out as a new coach, and that might be, if you haven’t done podcasts, I think that’s something maybe we need to look into is place for new coaches to go. When you’re trying to instigate real change or implement real change, it’s nice to know that you’re not alone. So I really appreciate all of your work with that.

Kyle:

Oh, thanks so much my friend. Hey, keep doing the great work. Enjoy recess duty and we’ll catch up with you real soon.

Kyle:

As always, both Jon and I learned so much from these conversations, and as we mentioned in the intro, we touched on a number of parts of their mathematics tree. Something that I am reflecting on right now, Jon, is just this idea around the mindset. Clearly the sun, soil, water for their tree is well underway. It seems like they’re very open-minded.

Kyle:

Steve is very supportive from based on this conversation. I can tell that he’s definitely someone who I think educators can trust in and can maybe go to when they’re having some challenges. And that challenge we heard in this discussion about having to cover so much and really sometimes feeling like you’re rushing, but knowing that there’s all these other teaching practices that need to take place in order to have an effective classroom teaching and learning environment is so key.

Kyle:

Ultimately, at the end of the day, it seems like they’ve got a lot of great pieces here and they’re trying to push them together and hey, that’s the work that both you and I have been focusing on with many districts and schools around North America lately.

Jon:

Yeah, and when you think about the big takeaway here that I was pulling away this mentioning of that everybody needs a coach. And when we kind of go down that path and thinking about everybody needs a trusted advisor, a trusted other to chat about with ideas on how to strengthen different aspects of your life or different aspects of your job, or in this case, different aspects of helping other teachers achieve their well-balanced tree.

Jon:

So it seems like what you said, Kyle, that they’ve got a lot of great pieces that are kind of in their balanced tree. Now, it’s about let’s bring that together with some support. Seems like a great bit for the work that we do to kind of strengthen math programs at the district level.

Kyle:

For sure, for sure. So if you haven’t yet, we’re speaking of both classroom teachers, but in particular more of our district decision makers, those who are running or coordinating math programs, take a look at your tree first, reflect on it a little bit, and then think about the areas that you feel are getting the nourishment that they need. Maybe there’s some areas that you think are receiving all of the attention that it needs, but in reality, maybe there’s something missing there. Maybe there’s something that you’re just unaware of.

Kyle:

Well, our screener, our math program screener is something that you can do. It’ll take a couple minutes for you to go through, but ultimately it will help to highlight some of the areas where you’re flourishing in your math program, as well as some of the areas you might want to focus on next. And of course, district leaders, if you are looking for a little additional support, it can be tough. Goal setting, creating objectives, creating key results that are actually measurable, that they’re actually relevant and attainable.

Kyle:

This can be hard work, so if you feel that you’re in the planning process right now, you feel like you’ve been here before last spring where you were looking at your plan and feeling like you just didn’t get that same uptake that you were hoping for, maybe just maybe having some support so that you can create those goals and ensure that you have a plan in place to actually reach them. You know what, reach out to us, you can head on over to makemathmoments.com/report. That’ll help you get set up with the assessment, but then there’s also an opportunity to book a call with us and we’ll go through it with you and your team.

Jon:

Two more reminders, folks, in order to ensure you don’t miss out on new episodes, hit the subscribe button that can make sure that you don’t miss out on the episodes, but also helps you kind of stay track on what episodes we have. We’ve got a wide variety and catalog of past episodes. Don’t come back and listen to them all. If this is the first time you’ve found those, there’s going to be a lot there. What we’re going to want to do is kind of search for topics that are top of mind for you and listen to those ones.

Jon:

Second reminder here, folks, don’t forget that all of the links and resources we talked about here on this episode, and also the link Kyle just referenced is found over at our show notes page, which is at makemathmoments.com/episode232. makemathmoments.com/episode232.

Kyle:

All right, my friends, well, until next time, we want to thank you for listening to the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast, where we help you grow your mathematics program like a strong, healthy, and balanced tree so your impact can reach far and wide. Until next time, I’m Kyle Pearce.

Jon:

And I’m Jon Orr.

Kyle:

High fives for us.

Jon:

And high five for you.

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