Episode #185: How To Create An Authentic Math Class

Jun 13, 2022 | Podcast | 0 comments

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In this Math Mentoring Moment Episode, we speak with Jonathan Lind, a high school math teacher currently teaching at an American school in Qatar! Over his career, he has been working to build a more authentic math classroom starting with assessment as he leverages the power of problem solving and communication.

This is a Math Moment Maker Reflection episode where we talk with a member of our fantastic community who is working hard to continue reflecting and refining their practice to Make Math Moments with more students in their math classroom.

You’ll Learn

  • How you can organize and synthesize  different pedagogical “moves” while embedding them in your classroom;
  • How focussing on assessment first can change everything; and,
  • What changes you can make to your classroom now so you can build problem solvers and communicators. 

Resources

Building Thinking Classrooms [Book]

Make Math Moments Problem-Based Lessons

The Five Practices For Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussions. [Book]

Learn more about Jon Lind at https://LindJonath.com 

Find him on Twitter @LindJonath

 

Are you a district mathematics leader interested in crafting a mathematics professional learning plan that will transform your district mathematics program forever? Book a time to chat with our team!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jon Lind: ... It's a lot more important that they leave being able to solve problems and communicate their understanding clearly than it is that they do any of the specific math skills, because I'm an adult. And I understand kind of what people use in the world. And also because the literature and the professionals have told us what they want students to be able to do. And it's not proved that triangles are congruent to each other, it's communicate and solve problems. So-

Kyle Pearce: In this episode, we speak with Jonathan Lind, a high school math teacher who's currently teaching at an American school in Qatar, over his career. He's been working hard to build a more authentic math classroom, starting with assessment. As he leverages the power of problem solving and communication.

Jon Orr: This is a math moment maker reflection episode, where we talk with a member of our fantastic community who is working hard to contribute, reflecting and refining their practice to make math moments with more students in the math classroom.

Kyle Pearce: All right, Jon, you ready to do this? Let's hit it. Here we go. Welcome to the making math moments that matter podcast. I'm Kyle Pearce.

Jon Orr: And I'm Jon Orr. We are two math teachers from inaudible who together-

Kyle Pearce: With you, the community of math moment makers worldwide, who want to build and deliver math lessons. That spark curiosity, you will-

Jon Orr: Sense making.

Kyle Pearce: And ignite your teacher moves. Math Moment Maker, friends. We are inviting you into the middle of the night on the other side of the world, as we-

Jon Orr: Let's take a trip.

Kyle Pearce: With Jon. Jump in my friends. We're going to be having a chat with Jonathan Lind here tonight, who is from the Math Homemaker community has been on a journey of learning and continues that journey right now. And we're super eager to dive into this conversation and share it with you to touch base, learn a little bit about that journey, where it began and where he is now as he moves into the next stages of his teaching career.

Jon Orr: Yeah. Jon joined us in previous cohort for the online workshop, the Make Math Moments That Matter Online Workshop. So we spent his six module, six week course changing and learning how to change some of his practice. You're going to hear some of that transformation of what he was working on before, what the classroom looks like for him now, what are some of his big takeaways? Where does his journey go? And where is it going to go next? We've got some big takeaways that we want to share with you about Jon. We've got some great transformation happening here that I think is going to hit home for you. So we don't want to waste any more time. Let's get to that conversation with John and take it away.

Kyle Pearce: All right, here we go.

Jon Orr: Hey there, Jon, welcome to the Making Math Moments That Matter podcast. How are you doing? And our listeners don't know this, but we chatted before we hit record. You are staying up super late, because you were on a different side of the world than us. So Hey, let us know how you're doing and fill everyone in on where you're coming from.

Jon Lind: Yeah. Hi everybody. And thanks guys for having me here. My name's Jon Lind. I am teaching in an American school in Doha, Qatar right now. And it's about 2:30 in the morning right now. So yeah. Good to be here. Good to see you guys.

Kyle Pearce: Well there, Jon, it's so awesome to have you and we are doing our best to try to keep this a Zippy episode because you're coming to us from the other side of the world. So I'm super curious. What sort of landed you on the other side of the world, teaching at an American school? Tell us a little bit about that before we dig in here.

Jon Lind: Yeah. So I had an unusual journey to becoming a teacher. I always kind of knew I wanted to be a teacher since high school. Math was kind of easy for me and I enjoyed helping, like my friends do it. So that was sort of my path, but I got my math degree and didn't really feel like I was ready to be in a classroom or anything. So I took a couple years off. Then I went back and got my teaching license and I ended up after student teaching landing a job in a private tutoring center where I worked one on one with kids who, for a variety of different reasons weren't hacking classroom learning. So some pretty serious learning difficulties like Asperger's and autism, emotional problems, substance abuse, stuff like that. And so I was for eight years, I was a one-on-one teacher with students like that.
And that taught me a lot. That also took me out of the sort of classroom teaching circle. And so I was kind of a blank slate after eight years there and I was ready to get back into the classroom, but I didn't really have any idea how I was going to be as a teacher. So I also wanted to travel. So I looked into international teaching and I got pretty, extremely lucky and landed a job in a brand new school in Southern China. And that's really where I learned how to be a classroom teacher. They had some pretty excellent professional development opportunities. And I learned all about standards there.
I hadn't really ever heard about standards during my teaching training. And about three months into that job, I attended a workshop in Hong Kong led by Dan Meyer. So that was my introduction to sort of that universe of math education. And that got me into 3 Act Tasks and into teacher blogs and eventually Twitter. So that's where I started like really sort of forming my idea of what a math teacher could be, because I knew I didn't want to be the math teachers that I had. Right. I didn't really know what that looked like though. And that sort of gave me some sort of models for steps issue and some great resources too, for sure.

Jon Orr: Yeah. The great models to have. And I know that Kyle can echo this is that we had some very similar starts. And I think without what got us on our kind of pathway is going to a session that is super inspiring. Like Dan always delivers very great at igniting teachers into their next kind of thing to do. And that also got us on the kind of teacher blogs slash Twitter slash blog sphere, all that kind of stuff. And my pathway actually even kind of similar to yours, Jon.
I taught international schools when I first started as well. I was in the Caribbean for a couple of years teaching down there before I kind of ventured back home and you've got I'm sure so many great stories teaching abroad in China, in Qatar and in you've probably got tons of moments that are sticking with you, teaching moments. I'm sure. But I'm wondering if you could stretch back before that as a student, like when we say math class, what comes to mind? What is that image that sticks with you since young age and young age of what math class is or what math class was to you when you think of math class, which is your math moment Jon?

Jon Lind: Yeah. I have trouble thinking about a moment. I have a general idea about math class, which is a pretty standard and traditional setup. Kids facing the board teacher in front. I had a memorable seventh and eighth grade math teacher, Dan Blair. You're still out there somewhere, shout out to you. But I was thinking in preparation for this, about why he was a favorite and it was more about his personality than about anything else. He was a fun guy. He taught straight from the front of the room. He had a role of transparencies that he just went through and added to the notes every day. And that was it. Once in a while, we'd go outside and measure how high a light pole was or something, but nothing spectacular, but he was just a great guy and a nice person to be around. I had some negative experiences in high school. I remember a pretty dry geometry class where we had like, this is my takeaway from that class was the notebook. We had a prescribed notebook that we had to keep and we had to turn it in periodically to make sure-

Jon Orr: Oh, I might check inaudible all the notes were in order and all the right notes?

Jon Lind: The right notes, the way that she had put them on the board. And yeah, so that was something I was against and kind of going into China. All I knew for sure was that I didn't want to be boring. I didn't want my class to be boring for me or for the kids. And that's sort of where my foundation started.

Kyle Pearce: Love it. When you mentioned that, going back to the teacher, you referenced Dan Blair. And I feel like I have a similar experience in that I didn't necessarily have any teachers that were doing anything radically different, but those teachers that stick out, it brings us back to first and foremost, but before anything else, ensuring kids know that you care about them and you're there because you want to be there. And I had some fantastic teachers, sometimes I reflect on and I hope that some of my former teachers, if they ever did ever hear an episode, don't believe that I didn't enjoy that experience because I actually had some teachers that you could tell their hearts were in the right place. They cared like one of my teachers, one of my favorite teachers actually like played in his band at my wedding and was my calculus teacher and had taught me a few times earlier in my high school career.
And again, cared about the kids had a good sense of humor. It was like made the learning fun. Despite it being still like fairly, we'll say traditional in its approach. But I still remember moments from those classes. Right. So it's kind of an opportunity for us to sort of reflect on what matters more than anything else I think is exactly that. And then from there we can look to try to engage students more and try to help them understand the mathematics a little more conceptually when we learn better as we go and all of those things. So that's a big piece for that. I'm taking away from your experience, having my own little reflection here. I'm wondering if we were to look back maybe a year ago, maybe a handful of years ago. So you talked about your journey and how you had actually gone to a workshop on the other side of the world led by Dan Meyer.
I'm sure you know, and many know that we referenced Dan's work quite a bit because he had a huge effect and a huge influence on the work that John and I currently do. I'm wondering like, what was your classroom practice like a handful of years ago? And then I'm wondering if we can sort of take that and talk a little bit about what you were working on and sort of where you are and we'll kind of lead up to that. So take us back a little bit. What did your classroom look like? Like you said, when you went to China and you were like the one thing you was that you wanted to make sure that students were engaged, that you enjoyed it so that you enjoy it and the kids enjoy the experience. Paint us a picture. Where were you at back then?

Jon Lind: Yeah. So in China it was really a hodgepodge because like I said, I had no idea what I wanted to be. And I was just finding all of these resources from all the other great teachers out there and just throwing them into my classroom and trying to do stuff that I heard about online. I came into that experience thinking I'm going to be the tech guy. I was really into technology. I sort of was a director of technology at the tutoring center and it's still an important part of my practice. But when I discovered the idea of standards and standards based assessment and curriculum, something about it really spoke to me. And during the time in China, I really became a curriculum nerd and my focus turned a lot more from technology and more towards this idea of standards based education. And I also met my wife in China who has been a pretty important part of my journey.
And by the time our five years in China had come to an end and we were ready to move on. She had been involved in some professional development, she's an elementary teacher and she hooked me up with Irma Anderson. And I got invited to this thing that the US department of overseas schools does, a one week workshop in DC every year where they invite a bunch of international teachers in American schools and just go through the curriculum and they run inaudible standards and things like that. And Irma was running a special session. So we worked with a small group of K to 12 math teachers. And we stayed in dorms at a college. And it was a straight week of working on this stuff. And we came up with a profile of a math student in international schools and worked on building assessments that were really looking at the common core clusters in a pretty focused way.
And that experience was a real big turning point for me. I was also switching schools. I moved to Pakistan in Lahore. Yeah. And for the next two years in Pakistan, my focus was pretty hard, poor on assessment. And I worked on all kinds of different strategies for assessments and worked on my main, it ended up being one or two problems per cluster in the common core. And I did rolling assessments. I got a lot of help from Twitter again. That was really heavily involved with Twitter during that time. And think Jonathan Clayton was a big inspiration. He did some rolling assessment stuff that I used, but I was really focused in on how to assess these particular standards through the lens of problem solving and reasoning and communication. And so that's what I was very strictly focused in on in Pakistan that, and building up a relationship on Twitter with a lot of different math teachers, I kept working with Irma on a fellowship of international math teachers about problem solving and reasoning and standards.
And it was just a really great professional experience because I got to work with a bunch of teachers from all over the place. And we just sat there and wrote problems or adapted problems or found problems and shared sources and talked about how students could show different aspects of problem solving skills and reasoning by answering these problems. And we brought student work and we tested stuff out in our classrooms and brought it back three months later and stuff like that. It was a really, really cool experience. And that really changed how I do things. But then after two years of Pakistan, I moved to Qatar and that was a huge change because before, up until this point, I had been the math department basically. In China, I taught six through 10, then seven through 11, then eight through 12. And then I stuck with eight through 12 for the last three years of the school.
So it was a beast of a workload and there wasn't a lot of person to person collaboration going off because there was one other math teacher and he had six classes too. And same kind of idea in Pakistan. There just wasn't a department, but then I got to Qatar and it's a huge school and I'm working with 10 other teachers teaching 16 different classes, including IB and AP. So it's a really different experience and it's really great to have a department around me and to have people like right next to me that I can talk to about that stuff. So I was really excited about that and it's turned out to be a great experience and then COVID happened. So it sort of just crashed everything. But anyway, by that time, back to your question, but-

Jon Orr: Yeah, I want to interject here just for a sec, Jon before you give us another nugget to nibble on here, when you talked about your transformation, one of your biggest transformations around assessment. And I think that piece there is always a stumbling block for a lot of folks. Some people come at it from one end, like, "Oh, I've changed my practice in my classroom, but my assessment still look the same." Or maybe they're like you and they've changed their assessment practices and then realize, "Hey, I got to do a lot of work here." Jon, what would you say from the learning that you've been doing around assessment is probably the most impactful in your classroom? You've been talking about standards base grading for those of folks out here that are like, they might have heard of it. They might know all about it, but maybe just talk about your view or your experience using that in the classroom and what that has done for students on their learning journeys.

Jon Lind: Well, yeah, and that's the key, the kernel of everything, right? Once you really think about what you want students to do, to show you, to be able to do at the end, when it's time for an assessment, then that really informs how you teach them or what you ask of them in a daily session in class. So the work with Irma and all the international math teachers really changed my focus on like, what do I want kids to leave my classroom being able to do? Is it being able to prove that two triangles are congruent to each other? Or is it being able to like solve a problem that they haven't seen before or at least attempt to solve a problem they haven't seen before in some reasonably appropriate way. And is it be able to answer lots of questions that they've seen before, or is it to communicate their understanding of something?
And to me it's a lot more important that they leave being able to solve problems and communicate their understanding clearly than it is that they do any of the specific math skills because I'm an adult. And I understand kind of what people use in the world and also because the literature and the professionals have told us what they want students to be able to do. And it's not proved that triangles are congruent to each other, it's communicate and solve problems. So once I changed the focus of my assessment from looking that students could do skills and I don't get me wrong, of course skills still got to be there, because they got to go through the rest of high school. Once I changed the focus to problem solving and communication. First of all, it felt better to me, it felt more authentic. And this is, I'm asking kids to do something that's useful.
No matter what they're going to be doing, this applies everywhere. We problem solve every day. Sometimes getting out of bed is a problem that we have to solve and we have to communicate all the time inaudible all problems man. We got to out a way through it. That shift happened in my mind that I'm not really my main focus. The big takeaway is I want problem solvers and I want people who can communicate. It just changed what I ask kids to do in class. And the way I talk about the problems we do and it turned my class from sort of a hodgepodge of trying to be interesting activities. I still am about engagement. It's a big deal for me to have students engaged. I want that. But now I have some more focus around that. And now it's all about problem solving and then communicating how you got your answer basically. And that all came from understanding the assessment part better.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. And so like starting with assessment is so key. I've heard so many things, I was kind of jotting down a couple things I wanted to sort of speak to and kind of working backwards, this idea, some people call it almost the activity trap, right. Where we almost it's like we look at these problems in our math classroom as completely unrelated things when actually they're very connected, right? So like trying to engage students if we do it just for engagement, but then we sort of forget why we need them engaged in math class. Right. Jon and I have been on that journey where we're like, "Okay, let's keep them interested." But then it's like, but if we're kind of missing the mark and that's where fueling sense, making sort of fits into our three part framework. It's so key that we're engaging students.
So we can in the hope of fueling that sense making. And as you mentioned by starting with assessment, that is such an important piece because if we don't think about what it is that we're actually looking for really makes it difficult to make our lessons intentional, even if we're working really hard to engage our students. So I love that. And actually recently you have participated in our online workshop. So you've been a part of that learning experience. I'm wondering what sort of attracted, I almost feel like you've sort of touched on it a little bit when you talked about problem solving and communicating, what sort of got you thinking about that as a next step in your journey? And I'm wondering if we can sort of dig in and maybe hear a little bit about what that has done in order to inform your practice or help you elevate to that next place that you were hoping to go to in your classroom.

Jon Lind: Right. Well, I've been aware of you guys since I don't know, 2013 or something, since I started digging around online for stuff you guys have been around for a while. So I was familiar with both of your work and I've used both of your activities in class before. And I was coming out of the COVID funk basically and working on getting back into the classroom full on all the kids in front of me. We've been in a hybrid for most of the year before this. And that's the worst of all worlds. And so I wasn't feeling great about anything in teaching and it's around this time that my wife also introduced me to Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms. And that book got me kind of excited to get back into the classroom and to try some of the structures that he had set up.
And it is turned out to be another game changer for me. But I had been Twitter dark pretty much since I had been in Doha. And since COVID and just not really engaged with the profession. And I wanted to get back to some of that excitement that I had been feeling when I first discovered Twitter and the blogosphere. And I looked at sort of the outline of your course. And I was like, "Okay, this is kind of the repository of a whole bunch of things that I think are super important and super useful." And what your course did for me remind me of all of these things that had sort of been flashing by three, four or five years ago in my perusing of the internet. And it really sort of like brought them together really nicely. And I really like the progression that you guys have set up and things like the Hero's Journey are really good sort of frameworks to keep in your mind about lessons.
And so it helped along with the Building Thinking Classrooms, sort of physical structure, your course was like a sort of a refresher on ways of doing all of the things that I wanted to do and gave me a couple of really good touchstones like that Hero's Journey for how we structure our interactions with students. So I'm really happy that I found it. I had a couple other people in my department have either been through it or through it at the same time I did. So yeah, it was very helpful. And like I said, helped sort of get my head back in the game and get me excited about things again.

Jon Orr: Yeah. Glad to hear it. And I'm so glad it came to you at that time when you needed to get your head back in the game or was looking to get the head back in the game and it fit right for you. And I think you nailed it with some of the big ideas that we try to make in that workshop is that there's a lot of different ideas floating out there and for the classroom use and how to use standard based grading and how to use these other pieces that are around and how do I fit that together in my classroom? What does that look like? How can I build all of this so that they jive together, main reason why we built that workshop. And so again, so glad that it fit right for you at that time. I'm wondering, Jon, what would you say was a big struggle for you prior to the workshop? What was a struggle you had in class prior to the workshop, but then after the workshop that struggle was lessened?

Jon Lind: A struggle for me was starting class. When I implement something, I sort of just go full bore and like go all for it. And so with the Building Thinking Classrooms thing, it was always like I have to get the kids right. Doing a problem immediately. And making that a thing I had to do every day was a little bit exhausting and it got me away from some of the things, like I said, that I'd done before that I heard about that I'd been using that I really enjoyed like some of the introductory math talk discussion things, which one doesn't belong. What's the other one? Sorry.

Kyle Pearce: Oh, maybe like, would you rather, and we did a few others there.

Jon Lind: Yeah. That kind of stuff. Oh man. What's the other one? There's one more, that's like a-

Kyle Pearce: Maybe visual patterns we talked about. What were some other ones there Jon that we threw in inaudible

Jon Lind: Anyway. Yeah. It'll come to me right after I sign off with you guys inaudible. For sure. The idea that sometimes we need to chill out and talk about math with the kids to start off with, it's a good way to get into a lesson. And like I said, that the idea that your class should have a sort of trajectory, the Hero's Journey really stuck with me. And it's something that fits in really well with my ideas about problem solving in general and the way I kind of, I want my kids to struggle like that. That's kind of got to happen in every class, but I also want it to be resolved somehow and to come to some sense of understanding. So I think that really helped me tighten up like, yeah, stop throwing stuff at it and start thinking about how it fits together. And I think the activities you put together really helped solidify that and helped me be a little bit more organized about how I put stuff in front of my students.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. And that's definitely one of our intentions with that online workshop is really to kind of bring in the framework in general is to try to bring ideas together. And throughout that online workshop, we try to be very specific, very particular about referencing the work of so many others. And five practices comes in Peter's work comes in there, Stan's work comes in, there's all kinds of different quotes that we bring together.
And we try to sort of synthesize it into sort of a repeatable process that we can use in our classroom. I wonder before we sign off here today, what would you say is maybe the part of your practice that you're maybe still working on still thinking about and still tinkering with? Because let's be honest, we're always tinkering with our practice will never be done. I think all good professional learners like yourself, like Jon, like myself, are always going to be thinking about that next thing and how we can sort of bring our practice to the next level what's on your mind lately. And we'll start wrapping to a sign off for the Math Moment Maker community here.

Jon Lind: Well, the most interesting problem in being a math teacher for me remains assessment. I don't feel great about all of my assessments. I don't feel like I have the right way of assessing and I certainly don't feel like I have the right way of grading. I think grading is a structural thing that you have to deal with whatever school you're at. And for me, that changes quite a bit, but it's also, what's most important to the students and to the parents. And I understand that.
So that sort of connection between assessment and grading is one of the toughest things in my opinion that we have to deal with. And so that's sort of a constant source of sort of not feeling like I'm done, if that makes sense. So it's something I'm always struggling with and thinking about how to do better is one, really makes sure my assessments are assessing what I want them to making sure that I'm giving students opportunities to show that they can approach an unfamiliar problem show that they can reason their way through something, but then also figuring out how to communicate that in a productive way to them and to their parents and to their next math teacher. So grading, reporting and assessment are just a really interesting set of problems for me.

Jon Orr: Yeah. And I think it's such an interesting topic to explore because it can go in lots of different avenues and it can bring about such a change in your practice when you focus on that as like, "I'm going to nail this." And it can bring out more things than you expected. And it's great that's your next question. And is part of the reason, when you took the workshop, the last module in the workshop, we talk about some assessment practices there. We talk about standards based grading and what kind of looks like. But that's kind of a taste. We knew that in the workshop was simply focused on kind organizing the pedagogical moves around our three part framework so that you could do this in the classroom on a regular basis. But we knew we had way more to say, and especially on assessment, which is where we went next.
We actually have another course that's fully on assessment and about our assessment journey. So we tackle problems like, "How do you handle assessment or standards based grading in your classroom? What does that look like? What does that look like with portfolios? How do you set up portfolios? Should I set up portfolios? How do I talk to parents about standards based grading?" Because most likely those parents didn't experience that in their schooling. So there's a lot of questions about that. We talk about assessment practices that help organize these ideas together.
So that's the next course and John, hey, we would love for you to join that next course. It's actually an academy course. So we're actually going to send you an invite to join the academy for a year to kind of hang out with us. And you could explore that course and I'd love to get your feedback on that course on where you think you are on your journey in there and what you think about some of the ideas we're sharing, because we're all on this journey. We're all at different points of it. So yeah, we're going to send you some information a little later to get you hooked up in there, but I want to thank you for chatting with us here this evening. And if it's okay with you, if you dive in a little dive into that course, we'd love to check back with you next year to see how your journey's going.

Jon Lind: Absolutely. And thank you so much. That'd be great. I'd love to check that out. And I want you guys to know that this has been a real treat. Like I said, I've been aware of you for quite a while now, and you are kind of instrumental in my journey as an educator. So it's a pretty special thing to be asked to do this. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Kyle Pearce: That's fantastic. We appreciate you and the rest of the Math Moment Makers. I'm telling you, it is folks like yourself, folks like those who are listening right now that inspire us to keep doing this work and continue to share. And we love connecting with folks from all over the world. And we must say, not only are we super thrilled that you're digging in trying to improve your practice, but you're getting up in the middle of the night, chat on the Making Math Moments inaudible.
Absolutely. My friend. Well, listen, we don't want to hold you up any longer on behalf of the Math Moment Maker community. Thanks for coming in, letting us know about your journey, how the progress is going for those who are listening in from home right now. Just remember that we're all on different journeys. We're at different places in that journey. So just keep in mind that wherever you are, there is a next step. Talk to a colleague, talk to your friends, and of course, feel free to reach out to the Math Moment Maker community, to try to help get you to that next place in the journey. It's so much more enjoyable when you can do it with others than completely alone. So thanks again, Jon, for taking the time and you deserve at least another couple hours of sleep.

Jon Lind: I agree.

Jon Orr: Thanks, Jon.

Jon Lind: inaudible. All right. Thank you so much, guys. Have a great day.

Kyle Pearce: Well, Math Moment Makers as always Jon and I learned so much. We love reflecting with the Math Moment Maker community, oftentimes chatting about pebbles in their shoe. Here, you hear that Jon's been on this particular journey, sort of started with the idea of assessment and continues to work on that moving forward, but sounds like he's made some great gains with problem solving and really bringing it all together to make sure that his math classroom procedure, his math classroom setup is sort of more of a routine instead of feeling like he's just jamming in everything. So it's so good to hear that structure is working, that he's able to implement that three part framework and continues to seek ways that he can offer a more equitable, a more responsive assessment and evaluation process.

Jon Orr: Yeah. I'm excited to see where he goes next year when we bring him back, talk to him again, because he's taken that next step to on his assessment journey. So excited to see that and hear about his current journey. And so I wonder what your journey looks like right now. What struggles are you going through? What pebbles do you have in your shoe? We'd love to hear about it. We'd love to kind of talk to you about those. This is actually why we have the podcast, right? Kyle, as one of the big ideas of the podcast was to talk to teachers to figure out what's going on in their classrooms. How can we brainstorm together? Because we don't always have the answers, but how do we brainstorm together where the next step for that teacher might look or white might go. So if you are looking to chat with us, we'd love to hear about it.
You can reach out to us, head on over to makemathmoments.com/mentor. That's make mathmoments.com/mentor, fill out our form there and we'll reach out and we'll start a conversation. We'll chat with you about a pebble you have in your shoe. Looking forward to that conversation.

Kyle Pearce: Awesome stuff there, John and friends, remember if you have not hit that subscribe button, if you're watching on YouTube, awesome hit subscribe. If you're on apple podcasts or Spotify or Google podcasts are now on, even on Alexa on Amazon music, make sure that you're hitting that subscribe button.
Not only does it help to keep you up to date as to when the podcast episodes are released, but it also helps us reach a wider audience of Math Moment Makers. And of course, keep those ratings and reviews coming in. You don't know how much it makes us feel so great and so inspired to continue this work as we try to impact and influence more students in classrooms around the world. So thanks for hanging out with us friends. And if you want some show notes, links to resources, transcripts, and other awesome goodies, make sure you head over to the website, makemathmoments.com/ episode 185. That's make mathmoments.com/185. Well, Jon, until next time I'm Kyle Pearce.

Jon Orr: And I'm Jon Orr.

Kyle Pearce: High fives for us and a high five for you.

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DOWNLOAD THE MAKE MATH MOMENTS FROM A DISTANCE CHEAT SHEETS

Download the Cheat Sheets in PDF form so you can effectively run problem based lessons from a distance!

MMM From A Distance Cheat Sheets Smaller.001

UP YOUR DISTANCE LEARNING GAME IN THE ACADEMY

There is a LOT to know, understand, and do to Make Math Moments From a Distance.

That’s why so many Math Moment Makers like YOU have joined the Academy for a month ON US!

You heard right: 30 days on us and you can cancel anytime. Dive into our distance learning course now…

Make Math Moments From A Distance Course
LEARN MORE about our Online Workshop: Making Math Moments That Matter: Helping Teachers Build Resilient Problem Solvers.

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ONLINE WORKSHOP REGISTRATION

Pedagogically aligned for teachers of K through Grade 12 with content specific examples from Grades 3 through Grade 10.

In our self-paced, 12-week Online Workshop, you'll learn how to craft new and transform your current lessons to Spark Curiosity, Fuel Sense Making, and Ignite Your Teacher Moves to promote resilient problem solvers.