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Are you a K-12 math coordinator looking for ways to spark genuine, productive discourse among students and teachers instead of just “covering” the curriculum?

If you’re eager to move beyond the checklists and pacing guides and ensure your teachers truly embrace strategies like student-to-student discussions, this episode will help you strengthen your role as an instructional leader and coach.

You’ll learn:

• Uncover how to set precise goals for classroom discourse that teachers can genuinely implement.
• Learn a simple, effective rubric approach for measuring progress in student-centered instruction.
• Discover practical tips to gain teacher buy-in and shape a culture where students take ownership of their learning.

Press play now to empower your math team with proven techniques that transform passive lessons into engaging, dialogue-driven experiences.

Resources:

• Register for the Make Math Moments Virtual Summit
• Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

Attention District Math Leaders:

Not sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ 

Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com 

Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jon Orr: Hello. Hi.

Keri Whitaker: How are you?

Jon Orr: Good. How are you doing?

Keri Whitaker: Good.

Jon Orr: Thanks for taking the time to chat today.

Keri Whitaker: Yeah. No, I appreciate it.

Jon Orr: No worries. I’m Jon for make math moments. Fill me in. You know what’s going on in math in your, great state of Kentucky and Jefferson County, all that stuff. What’s, Tell me what’s,

Keri Whitaker: What’s up? Yeah. So this is where a really, really big county. But I am a math resource teacher. Like a math coach at one school. It’s middle school. This is my first year in the role. We have quite a few with eight math teachers and three, like, we call it EQ, but like, kids with IEPs or like, learning disability teachers who kind of help.

And we use the curriculum illustrative math. Are you there? Yeah. Great curriculum. We’re getting past the point where, like, we’re implementing it pretty well. Like, there’s not a whole lot of teacher pushback as far as, like, using the curriculum. It’s more of like, using it, like they’re still kind of doing direct instruction with the curriculum, right?

Yeah. You know, so it’s kind of like you could give them any book and they’re going to teach it the same.

Keri Whitaker: And not really the way the curriculum that has all of the like, turn and talk and talk with your partner and productive struggle and like, you know, all of those good things, but we’re just kind of struggling getting teachers to really implement that. I guess.

Jon Orr: So like basically the way I imagine it, you know, in that you’re not alone in this, in, in, in implementing a curriculum like lesson of math. So, so probably what’s happening is like we’re using it as a, as a pacing guide. And hey, on this day it says to do this. And I read through it, but then I’m like, I’m going to just teach it the way I would have taught it with whatever other the curriculum was just following the order that it’s that’s all laid out sound, right?

Pretty much we ask everybody on the podcast the same question, which is what is your math moment? So if I say like math moment, there’s always like this thing that pops into our minds, minds, and we we have this image or this memory that sticks with us all this time. So if I said, what’s your math moment? What has stuck with you all these years as a focal point around mathematics education?

Keri Whitaker: Well, it’s funny because it’s actually more like physics. My high school physics teacher, which is a lot of math also, but he would always make, you know, all the formulas and stuff. We would throw watermelon off of the bleachers and we would calculate, you know, use that to, you know, starting point and ending point in time and calculate, you know, the just the gravity and stuff like that.

That was kind of I always wanted to be a teacher, but that was the moment where I was like, that’s the kind of teacher I want to be, is like the one throwing watermelons off the bleachers, and, you know, the ones going outside and running and have it show them that it’s a linear function, you know, that kind of thing.

So I would say as a student, it was my math moment, but also kind of helped shape my teaching as well.

Jon Orr: And that translate like translated like that was always you taught when you were taught math.

Keri Whitaker: Yeah. That’s because I taught eighth grade for a really long time. Well, ten years, that’s not probably really long to everybody, but ten years of eighth grade. And it’s a lot of linear function. So we were taught sign run and you know, like we would walk and then run and compare the slopes and like, you know, do that kind of stuff. So I kind of contribute that to my high school physics teacher.

Jon Orr: Amazing. It is amazing how impactful our rules are, right?

Keri Whitaker: Like, yeah, like.

Jon Orr: Like that stuck with you all these years. And it was just because you saw what that teacher was doing and you were like a totally. I’m on board with how this teacher is teaching and in it, and you remember it because I bet you right now, if you think back to other grades, grade levels that you were in, you were like, I don’t even remember how that class went, right. So it’s like and then but it was like, clearly it wasn’t impactful year for you on your education.

Keri Whitaker: Right? Yeah. So I jumped all the way to senior year of high.

Jon Orr: School, right. Awesome. Is there a vision or goals for the school or the school district right now around mathematics? And specifically this curriculum implementation?

Keri Whitaker: Yeah. The whole district adopted it. And we’ve passed a law in Kentucky saying that if a district adopts it, we pretty much like half to follow it. Right. Which is fun. And, like like I said, it’s a good curriculum, but our goal as a school is more based off of, like, test scores at the end of the year.

But that’s kind of like our holistic, like department goal. But then within that we’ve said, like through using the math language routines in the curriculum. And so more like locally as a school, our goal is to get more student to student conversations and like less teacher talk. You know, we’re more the facilitator is guiding them, but the kids are doing all the work and thinking, right.

Jon Orr: Right. That’s not that’s a very good goal to to have. It’s actually, you know, really, really great that the school has identified that as a kind of a mini goal inside of a, you know, the bigger, the bigger kind of typical goals most schools or school districts will create. Right. How are you measuring like basically how do you know you hit this goal?

Keri Whitaker: Right. So I think that’s kind of where we’re at. We have like learning walk is what we call it where like we me and another resource teacher and some admin kind of go in and fill out like forms and provide feedback. We also have like our PLC, our I’m assuming you have all the same letters, but I don’t know.

But like our document has like where the teachers put how they’re going to put student to student discourse and plan for that. But as far as like actual data, we don’t really have any specific like at one point I went in and kind of just did like tally marks of how many times students talked versus teachers and shared that, but it was more like informally.

And that was just like once, you know, it wasn’t like all the time, right?

Jon Orr: So you’re saying, like, we have some things in place that we could make, make use of, but really what we don’t have is a clear target that we know we’re working towards. We just generally think, I’m going to feel that we’re on the right, like we did. We had an impact this year. Instead of saying like, here’s a piece of data or evidence that says, we were here.

Now we’re here and we’re we hit the goal we set at the beginning of the year, or we’re closer or we’re way far apart.

Keri Whitaker: Right? Exactly right. Yes. It’s more arbitrary, right?

Jon Orr: Right now, I guess the question I ask most people on, on calls like this is like, what do you feel like would be a success by the end of the year?

Keri Whitaker: How would like teachers to like, really dive in and use the curriculum and those language routines and the instructional routines? And I mean, like really just like, let’s try them, get used to them, make them more of like a habit or routine rather than just like they’re going to do it because they know someone’s coming in to watch, or they’re going to kind of try to do it.

But I really want them to, like, dive in. Because when they do it, the kids do respond, you know, so like, they do it and then it’s terrible. I think it’s just a lot of stuck in like what we’ve always kind of done and like what their comfort comfortability is. And now like in January, you know, we’re halfway through the year and the kids are kind of just like waiting for the teacher to just tell them the answer instead of, like, figuring it out.

And there’s pockets of kids trying in pockets of, like, classes that will. But we would just kind of want to be more like streamlined and more of like what’s happening for the majority of the group and not so much like pockets know.

Right, right. So I think you get a sense of what you, you want to do by the end of the year. So the question is how will you know you got there.

Keri Whitaker: Right? I definitely want to do some sort of like I mean, I’m we’re obviously math people. So I want to do is I like the data of it. And that kind of speaks to us like we have like, you know, is your learning goal posted and have you referred to it? And at the beginning of the year kind of low.

But now like that’s kind of data showing like we went from, you know, 60% to now it’s 95%. And for math teachers especially that like clicks with them. And so now they’re more likely to do it because they can kind of see that growth. But I think sometimes the student to student it’s a little harder to like like a it’s not always like a yes or no.

They did it or didn’t do it right. So sometimes they’re like working on problems one through five with the partners, with the teacher says. But really, like this kid’s doing one and two, this kid’s doing three and four. And then it’s like a copy thing. So you’re not really talking together, you know.

Jon Orr: Work up to get the work done as quickly as possible.

Keri Whitaker: Yes. Which is efficient, and I love it, but not quite like. Yeah, right. So I definitely like that’s kind of like they might think that the kids are talking and that that counts, but in my eyes that’s not quite what we’re looking for.

Jon Orr: And that’s and that’s a in sometimes that’s a problem with let’s say some measurables that we typically think about is, is, is a lot of times when we think about designing some sort of system to, to tell us we got to a goal. We think quantitatively. We think we think we have to count the number of times someone has put the learning goal on the wall, which is not the actual indication of whether that learning goal is being useful, because I think, you know, what we would all argue is that if we’re counting a learning goal target, is it is it that we’re using the learning goals to streamline learning, facilitate learning, use feedback within

those learning goals, and students understand where they are and say a certain trajectory of a, say, a strand or a unit. And they can and can see, you know, that tie with their learning to what that particular going goal is and self-assess, you know, like these are the bigger things I think about learning goals that get miss often misdiagnosed when we say start counting and it just becomes routine to just do it without thinking about it.

So same is true about, let’s say, a just, you know, discourse routine in our classroom. If we’re going to measure it by counting what what you’re telling teachers is the quantity matters, not the quality. Right. And and they start to do the exact same thing is to say, okay, well, I did two, you know, discussions or two different things, but they’ll count what you just said as, as a discourse routine when it is not a discourse routine, because they don’t either know what a discourse routine is or they’re just focused on the quantity and saying, I checked it off my list.

So the district’s I think that when we work with developing measurement techniques and measurement tools to tell us we’re getting closer to goals like, you know, having a discourse in our classrooms is is what you want to do is you want to capture the change, but then describe the change. So you have to kind of define that change.

So it’s like where are we now on discourse and how do I and where do I want to be. And usually when we think of it that way, instead of quantitatively, we think qualitatively and we start to go, what does it look like we’re doing? Like what are teachers doing in a routine like that? And what are students doing in a routine like that?

And usually that unfolds a rubric or, you know, a scaling system that we can start to see the moves or the implementation of what does it look like if I’m implementing, you know, I’m beginning to implement a routine. What does it look like if I’m implementing my routine at a high level? So very descriptive words where we’re saying this is what it is and this is what it is.

And so that nice rubric that we’re using in our PLCs, in our coaching and our staff meetings to kind of describe what we’re after, teachers see it, coaches have it, administrators have it. It gives everyone a clear picture of like what change we’re after. And and when you can use that in those in those say professional development interactions.

It not only, you know, only helps measure where we are, but it tells teachers where we’re going right? So you’re saying like it’s not about counting. It’s like we’re trying to get from here to here and maybe you’re already here, which means maybe I don’t have to come back because you’re regularly implementing at this high level, which is defined on this scale. And you can see the words that describe the interactions.

So that would be like a, an important kind of measurement tool to kind of help not only measure where you want to go, because then what you can do is you can define where. Then you need a baseline to make to, to capture that change. Right. So you need if like let’s say right now you’re like, I’m going to go after this call, I’m going to build this look for a document.

And, and then I’m going to next time I’m in a classroom, I’m going to maybe have the teacher self-assess or I’m going to self-assess where they feel like they are on this particular routine. And then now you have this baseline to say, where are we, where we are? And then you can start defining where you want to get to by the end of time.

So it’s like it’s going to be the most times if you do it because you’re in a school and you have how many teachers? I think you said like eight.

So it’s like now you have it’s almost like you have a classroom, you have eight students and you’ve got a grading system and you’ve got a learning target. And now you can kind of monitor their progress on this, this tool throughout the rest of the year to go. You were here at the start of this cycle and we’re going to put things into place, which is then what you have to figure out was, what are we going to do to move the needle if this is where we are and this is where we want to go.

So then at the end, then you can say, okay, by June or by May or whatever your school year ends.

Keri Whitaker: Yeah, you could say.

Jon Orr: I can sense that most of my teachers are implementing at a level two here. Okay. I and it’s defined two is the look. You know, teachers are doing their students are doing this. And then now it’s like I would really I would really love it if we could move everybody up one category okay. Right. And then you can then you can say, okay, now here’s where the average is going to be.

If we move everybody up one level in implementation. So we’re not we’re not maybe defining that we’re moving from wherever they are opted for by the end of the year. We’re just saying one step. And that might be just something you define as your success. You just have to define what is my success and what am I happy with.

So sometimes a question we say is like, imagine you fast forward to the end of the year. If you got this level or this success, would that be would you be like, yes, we did some really impactful work this year, and then you also have a piece of evidence that says, during this year, we move teachers from this implementation level on this routine to this level, on this, this routine.

And here is my my support. Here’s my piece of evidence. Here’s my, my, my document that says we’ve done this. And there and then what it tells you to when you get to the end of the year when you have that success, you’re like, let’s do more. Let’s move them up into the category. And then you don’t flip flop.

Because what happens usually, right, is if you don’t have that measurement tool, you’re going to get to the end of the year and you’re going to still go, I think we did something good. Yes, for some like changes, but I can’t articulate exactly which ones.

And then you’re like, let’s try something new. And then you switch focuses or you try a new technique or you make a new goal and then the other goal gets thrown away. And teachers are like, what about that rule? Was that goal? Yeah, I think that goal was important. And they start to learn that whatever goal is there.

Keri Whitaker: Right? Okay. Yeah, that helps a lot actually. All right.

Jon Orr: What a what are your thoughts moving forward. What’s your what do you feel like is the next step for you specifically?

Keri Whitaker: I definitely want to like create like the rubric you talked about in like the low to high. Like we do a lot of rubrics like in class. So that makes sense for like me to kind of have one for like my teachers and like just one on student discourse. And because I think in our head we have like so many things we want to work on and so many things on, like our walk through data sheet that, you know, kind of gets a little bogged down.

Jon Orr: So like sometimes those walkthroughs or checklists and it’s not good enough because the other thing you can do is use that same rubric with your administrator. And when you do those walkthroughs, you’re teaching them what it looks like, what it sounds like, you know, make it look like what teachers are doing, what does it look like, what students are doing so that they also get a good sense of like, because when they go into classrooms and they just see what’s there, they might not see, like, is that good? I don’t know, I don’t have any descriptors that say what is good and what isn’t good.

Keri Whitaker: Right? Yeah. Now that helps a lot. Actually.

Jon Orr: I was going to point you to so like principles to action which is effective. So if you look in there, each of the, each of the principles to action. So each one at the I don’t know if it’s at the end of the chapter, chapter or not. Like I’m just looking on page like 5656 is not effective.

Which one is to elicit and use of student student thinking? Well, I was just I think it’s at the end of each section. They have a little it’s not a full rubric, but you will get the sense of like what it’s saying because you they’ll say you’re using a, you know, you’re eliciting and using evidence of suit thinking this is what it looks like you’re doing well on when you’re using what teachers are doing and what students are doing.

So that’s that’s some some helpful guides which can help you unpack maybe what a level like what what does it look like when we’re not doing that. Well. So the opposite or what does it look like in our classrooms in describing that in the same way, so that you’re showing them behaviors or interactions that we like, these are things that you are doing or this is like a what a level one implementation of doing this is two, three, four.

And you can build out your rubric a little bit deeper than, than that. So that’s that’s a good resource. And if you have it handy then then you can build upon that okay.

Keri Whitaker: Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. That actually helps me because I was kind of thinking like what even it would look like. So that kind of helps me understand like the I don’t the teachers doing and like versus students doing. But like what is a low level versus like high level is where I’m going to have to like kind of sit down and think about like what we want to see versus maybe what we’re seeing in the middle steps is always the hard part.

Jon Orr: That is the hard part. And it’s and here’s the thing you could do it too, is, is if you have time with these eight teachers. Right. So if you on a staff meeting day or a department meeting or a school meeting, if you can get these teachers together, you can build this with them. Yeah, right. So you’re doing a little bit of embedded PD when you do that and bringing them into the fold to go, getting a sense of what they think it looks like when you’re using this particular thing looks, well, good.

And then you can start educating them on on what it could look like. And it might involve some modeling. It might involve this is you know, this. You know, let’s let’s look at this example where one of us has been doing this well. And then and then defining what we see, what we don’t see, and using it to kind of like in, in one of our districts did it this way.

And, and kind of like used it that way with their, you know, I think it was a particular grade bank’s cost across a district. They used it that way to develop the rubric in the, in, say, the first six months and then used it in the second, second half of the year, to, to, to implement it with, with their teachers.

But the teachers, because they were part of the process of developing it, they yeah, they almost knew what they were. We were working towards by the time they got to say it being assessed on it.

Keri Whitaker: Right. And there’s more buy in because they had to say, I don’t agree with it. Yeah. You already had your say.

Jon Orr: Exactly, exactly right. Awesome. So is there anything else you you want to chat about. Feel like you got a good handle on what’s to do next?

Keri Whitaker: Yeah. No, I think you gave me, like, some things I can start. Immediately. So I appreciate that.

Jon Orr: No worries, no worries. What would you say is a big takeaway like from today’s call?

Keri Whitaker: Definitely. Like, as the math. Like coach having my own, like, rubric, like I would in my classroom, was my big takeaway. Like, I had some we have, like, data collection, but as a rubric, like A134 scale is, something I hadn’t really thought of so much that.

Jon Orr: Hey, no worries, no worries. We’re always here to, help and provide some suggestions to you. Okay. Carrie, thanks so much for joining. And if there’s anything else that we can do, you know, while you’re on your journey to supporting these teachers in your school, let us know.

Keri Whitaker: All right. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Jon Orr: No problem. Take care.

Keri Whitaker: Bye.

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