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In this episode we chat with Jake Hickson, the System Math Lead for the Provincial and Demonstration Schools Branch of the Ministry of Education here in Ontario, Canada. Jake and his colleagues service students who are deaf/hard of hearing, blind/low-vision as well as students who have one or more identified learning disabilities.

We chat with Jake about the challenges he faces as a district mathematics leader who is mentoring educators across three (3) buildings that span great distances. While Jake has access to some built-in professional learning structures, the amount of time and delivery format is certainly less than he would like in order to engage in effective mathematics professional development. 

Stick around and listen in as we help Jake shake his district leader pebble out of his shoe!

This is a Math Mentoring Moment episode where we chat with a Math Moment Maker, just like you and guide them to some next steps in pushing their classroom or district leader practice forward.

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Take the Make Math Moments Math Program Assessment Tool [Classroom Teacher & Leader Versions]

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District Leader Resources:

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The Make Math Moments District Planning Workbook [First 3 pages] 

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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 us!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jack Hickson:

They’re used to not really having to think. Actually, the one question that you asked in the survey I wrote down, and it’s on my bulletin board, and it was, who’s doing the thinking in your classroom? And it was like zero students and five teachers, or something like that. I might be botching it. And I said, “It was teachers, 100%.” We’re just basically getting the kids as puppets to just do the math and give you the answer.

Kyle Pearce:

In this episode we chat with Jake Hickson, Assistant Math Lead for the Provincial and Demonstration School’s branch of the Ministry of Education here in Ontario, Canada. Jake and his colleagues service students who are deaf, are hard of hearing, blind and low vision, as well as students who have one or more identified learning disabilities. We chat with Jake about the challenges he faces as a district mathematics leader who is mentoring educators across three buildings that span great distances. While Jake has access to some built-in professional learning structures, the amount of time and delivery format is certainly less than he would like in order to engage in an effective mathematics professional development. Stick around and we’ll listen in as we help Jake shake his district leader pebble out of his shoes.

Kyle Pearce:

Welcome to the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast, I’m Kyle Pierce.

Jon Orr:

And I’m Jon Orr, we are from makemathmoments.com.

Kyle Pearce:

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 Orr:

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

Kyle Pearce:

The trunk represents leadership in your organization or the classroom pillars in your math class. The roots of your tree represent mathematics content knowledge and what it means to be mathematically proficient.

Jon Orr:

Like a tree requires soil, water, and sunlight, your mathematics program requires a productive mindset and a belief system so that all students can achieve at high levels. Your professional learning structure or your professional learning plan represents the limbs of the tree.

Kyle Pearce:

The branches of your tree represent the development of educator pedagogical content knowledge, including effective teaching and equity-based teaching practices. And finally, the last section of the tree are the leaves, which represent the resources, tools, and the classroom environment.

Jon Orr:

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

Kyle Pearce:

Every week you’ll get the insight you need to stop feeling overwhelmed, gain back your confidence, and get back to enjoying the planning and facilitating of your mathematics program for the students or the educators you serve. This is a Math Mentoring Moment Episode where we chat with a math moment maker just like you and guide them to some next steps in pushing their classroom or district leader practice forward.

Kyle Pearce:

Hey, how’s it going there, Jake? I don’t think I was on the last call, but nice to see you.

Jack Hickson:

Agreed, nice to see you for the first time, and nice to see you again.

Kyle Pearce:

Right on, right on.

Jon Orr:

So what’s on your mind? I know that our last chat we were chatting about how we could support you and the work that you’re doing at the ministry, but where’s your head at right now, and fill us in on some details since that call back in September.

Jack Hickson:

Well, we’ve got an assessment going right now. We’ve picked an assessment program, which is good. I’m dealing with all kinds of staff turnover, and literally right now, I just got done yesterday listening to the most recent podcast you guys put out. I forget the name of the teacher, but she said she was new, in her second year, and she’s really struggling. And I was like, okay, that is a snapshot of every teacher in my board.

Kyle Pearce:

I bet.

Jack Hickson:

They’re all brand new and most of them aren’t math people, although I’m not sure if she was a math person, but the lack of understanding of the developmental trajectories and the concepts, the way you can stagger it. And for my board, you really have to know your trajectories in order to differentiate appropriately.

Kyle Pearce:

Absolutely.

Jack Hickson:

And you have to go back quite aways sometimes, so that really resonated quite a bit. And then when I filled out your survey asking us to self-assess, I was like, man, we are bombing this.

Kyle Pearce:

Hey, don’t feel bad.

Jon Orr:

Yeah, yeah, don’t feel bad.

Kyle Pearce:

Because it is across the board a tough one. And it’s funny, when we were developing this screener we were really concerned about that because we of course don’t want anyone to beat themselves up over it, so we had two routes, we can maybe not ask some of the harder questions, but then will we actually make progress towards what we’re trying to achieve? So we choose to look at it, and when we’re discussing with district leads like yourself, we choose to look at it as think of all of the upward potential there is, all of the upside, the growth, the things that aren’t happening that may, or I say may, but I would argue does actually describe why we have the challenges we have in mathematics.

Kyle Pearce:

Now doesn’t make it an easy thing to fix, necessarily, but if you can see that, and then as we’ve broken it up into the six parts of the tree, as we like to call it, and then start honing in on one area to at least start making progress towards filling out the other areas, we’re seeing a lot of really positive things happening in the districts that we’re doing some work with.

Kyle Pearce:

So glad that it resonated with you, we’ve really tried to clarify things., I think, since the last time, Jon, that you and Jake had spoken, we were doing this work, but it’s much harder to articulate and that’s why we’ve spent a lot of time really trying to narrow down and trying to help people see maybe some of the places that things are heading in the right direction, I’ll say, because in a lot of cases not everyone’s doing everything, but you’ll see some positives there, and then you’ll also see some areas that maybe are some low hanging fruit that you can work towards as a team and start crafting more of a longer term plan so you can see some shifts in the right direction.

Jack Hickson:

Yeah, in one sense I wish there was more of a team for my board, but it’s literally just me now.

Kyle Pearce:

Congratulations.

Jack Hickson:

Hey, a team of one. Yeah, we always have unanimous decisions, but it’s not nice because you don’t really have anyone to bounce ideas off of.

Jon Orr:

Right, right.

Jack Hickson:

But I would say the six areas, content knowledge is probably our biggest area of need. And then I think there was a question in the screen where it was like, how often do you get to meet and discuss these things? And the answer is not often at all because there’s no supply teachers. So I’ve been trying to tackle, how do I get the content knowledge out there while being unable to have these lunch and learns, and all these things, where teachers either are just burnt out, they don’t want to do it, or there’s no release time?

Jon Orr:

They think they know everything.

Jack Hickson:

Right, that could be even worse, right?

Jon Orr:

Yeah.

Jack Hickson:

Right.

Kyle Pearce:

Or maybe it’s efficacious, we like to say, sometimes people think that things are rolling along smoothly, like maths-

Jon Orr:

I’m good there, I remember my math from school.

Kyle Pearce:

Right, right. A lot of times what we’ll see in certain areas-

Jon Orr:

Don’t know what you don’t know.

Kyle Pearce:

Exactly, is that they’re like, “Well, I can turn the page, I’ve got a textbook and I just turn the page, it’s the easiest one for me to plan.” But the real question is how effectively is it going in, and how do you know? And those questions are obviously a little bit harder.

Jon Orr:

How many are in the NTIP program, Jake?

Jack Hickson:

I think we have 13 right now. 13 out of 70 teachers.

Jon Orr:

Right, right.

Jack Hickson:

It’s pretty wild.

Jon Orr:

Yeah, that’s a lot.

Kyle Pearce:

Now, do you have any interesting, and obviously being in Ontario, but you’re in a unique situation given the focus of the group of students that you’re working with, are there any opportunities, we’re hearing supply teachers isn’t a thing, that’s an issue. Do you have PLCs that can work into the timetable? Is that something that is happening? Is there other creative structures that potentially you’re able to tap into i.e., staff meetings? Obviously unions say you can do, what is it? For elementary I think it’s 90 minutes a month, or 75 minutes a month, and that might be local depending on where in the providence you are, but what does that look like and sound like?

Jack Hickson:

So I’ve got a PLC going up in Belleville, that’s one of our schools, up in Belleville. And so I go up there monthly, and I’ve been doing a PLC on visual models and context. Because our students have language deprivation, my teachers are ignoring word problems, which is the biggest sin. It’s everything. So I’m telling them, “Guys, you’re just giving them this abstract concept that they can’t really apply to something.” Even when kids are learning to count, they don’t know what three is, they don’t know something as simple as three because the threeness is abstract. So I asked my teachers-

Jon Orr:

Yeah, the symbol abstract.

Jack Hickson:

Right, I was like, “Show me three with these colored tiles,” and 50% of them just drew the numeral three with the blocks and I was like, Jesus. There was like 12 blocks in there, and I was like, okay. They didn’t even do three groups of four to make the three. So I was like, okay, so this is where I’m at. But other teachers did that and I was like, okay, so here’s where we’re at. Now If we’re trying to apply that to even higher end concepts, even addition is a bigger jump, right? These kids need to understand addition means something’s coming together, quantities are coming together and we’re looking for a total here. So I’ve been really focusing on how to break down the word problems. You guys had a good workshop on there, so I’ve been watching that and using that.

Jon Orr:

Which one, the Word Problem Workshop?

Jack Hickson:

Yeah, so I watched that one and I was pulling a lot of things from that, but I haven’t used any of that yet. I made a lot of notes about, I really liked some of the terminology you guys used, like naked problems. Everybody’s using naked problems at my school, and it’s all naked problems of one context. I have students that know how to add if it’s horizontal, but they don’t know how to do it if it’s vertical. That’s weird, but it’s not weird when you look at what’s happening, they’re getting the same, you know how there’s those websites that just randomly generate problems? That’s what they’re getting. And so I try to tell these teachers, “Hey, what you’re doing is great. It’s super easy, there’s not a lot of words on it, I get why you’re using it, and they can do it, but you’re basically giving them the Eliseo Pizza every day for dinner. Yeah, it’s easy to make, it’s easy to eat, and it’s done, you’re full. But you’re going to be blocked up, you’re going to have the runs, you’re going to feel sick in a week.

Jon Orr:

That’s funny, we had a meme like that, eh Kyle? We had a meme where it was shrink-wrapped pizza, it was a gourmet pizza, it was like, “Teaching with these tasks and teaching with these tasks,” it was exactly that meme, and it’s hilarious that you brought that example up.

Jack Hickson:

Right? I’m like, oh my God, you’re doing this but you need to have some veggies, you need to have a piece of chicken. Yeah, Eliseo pizza’s good once in a while, and sometimes you need to have it, but it’s not going to get you anywhere. So these are the problems that I’m dealing with, but PLCs, I am running one. Staff meetings, I’ve been to a few, but so far it’s been an uphill journey, for sure.

Jon Orr:

Where do you think some of the issues may be coming from? You’re saying there’s a high turnover, so obviously we’ve got a bunch of brand new teachers who are trying maybe to try something and they’re probably thinking, overwhelmed for sure. That’s understandable that we can help them with developing those. The teachers who aren’t brand new, what would you say is the reason they’re getting the Eliseo pizza every day? You said it was easy, but is it because it’s like, I’m going to focus on this other area? Usually when we have, especially elementary teachers, they will teach to their strength, or they’ll teach to where they feel like the most need has to happen right there. Is it behavior, is it how to help these particular kids wrap their minds around other things than these school subjects? What would you say is the reason that teachers are turning to the easy get problems versus the, let me actually try to figure out how to go deeper?

Jack Hickson:

Yeah, I would say it’s probably a combination of variables there. There’s a big factor of the language issue. We don’t have effective literacy, so they avoid the word problems, they avoid those contact space problems, and then they don’t have the comfort with the subject to come up with these activities that are the ones that spark the curiosity, the ones that you guys are leaning towards, they’re not comfortable either waiting for a response, or they’re not comfortable saying, “I don’t know, let’s figure it out together.”

Jack Hickson:

And it’s gotten to the point where for some of our students who have been with us for a while, that they’re used to not really having to think. Actually, the one question that you asked in the survey I wrote down, and it’s on my bulletin board, and it was, who’s doing the thinking in your classroom? And it was like zero students and five teachers, or something like that. I might be botching it. And I said, “It was teachers, 100%.” We’re just basically getting the kids as puppets to just do the math and give you the answer. But then when you ask them to apply it, if I ask them, “Hey,” this is why I’m doing bar models right now, because when I taught using bar models students were finally able to identify the operation needed.

Jon Orr:

Yeah, and these are big issues, I think we can address a lot of them. Jake, how do you see us helping in this situation? I think you’re an academy member, we had a chat, we talked about our programming before, got access to the online platform. I think you know that we have a whole side of things that help leaders like you build out the program. So you’ve got all that info at your disposal, where do you see us fitting in on making improvements here?

Jack Hickson:

Yeah, so I loved the idea of the mentorship program. I floated that by my administration, they were like, “There’s no way we can pay $10,000 for that. There’s no way.” And I was like, “Okay, fine. Will you at least consider maybe $700 to pay for my Academy membership?” And they were like, “No.” So then I had to go to the union, they did that. But I do think even if it is just you guiding me, or do you do a school-based one? Is there a pricing that would be just for a school-based leader? I don’t really know, honestly. How could you guys help me? If this is something that’s included for Academy members, then this would probably be great just to guide me, but if it’s not included I’m not going to be here mooching off your time, honestly.

Kyle Pearce:

Well actually, I mean included in the Academy is our Q&A sessions we do once a month, so that’s one opportunity that’s out there, and at least lately has been smaller groups lately, and it can vary, sometimes they’re much larger groups, get into great discussions like the one we’re having here with you today, which is completely awesome. But when it comes to something beyond that, I mean, I guess the other option is getting your educators access to some of the academy content and then helping you to frame a structure. That sounds more like what we would do more in the mentorship program, which is something that we do, essentially we’ll do the mentorship program, whether it’s leaders at one school or a whole district, it works out to be the same, because we’re just working with that team. But that in between would be getting educators set up with their own access, and we do have some pricing that makes that easier, more accessible for those educators.

Kyle Pearce:

Obviously with, I think you were saying, around 70, 75 educators, that’s a significant number, you’re going to still probably be cheaper than having it as a district mentorship program where you get the full support and we help you with actually integrating and implementing the plan that we co-construct. That is an option, that’s possible. And then we’ve seen some schools that are unable to do the mentorship program that do work on the licenses, and then they try to run their PLCs, their staff meetings, using that content or leveraging that content. So some teams will have an optional group where they say, “Hey, we’re going to do a course study. It’s optional, you can join us.” If they’re working online then it could be on a lunch break, or if they’re working after school they could do it online and you could bring a group of people together.

Kyle Pearce:

So there’s a variety of options that can happen to help you support in that work. One of the benefits in either case is going to be that you’re going to have, and those educators would have full access to all of the problem-based units, so that provides them with not only a lesson planning tool, but then also the opportunity to implement in their classroom. So you as a team, you could work with, let’s say, the primary teachers, and when you were talking about addition and students not really understanding what addition really means, the structures of addition, like what is happening when we operate on two numbers using addition, you could leverage one of those units as the focal point, and then you can have them send off and actually try it as more like a lesson study. So lots of options, lots of ideas there, but I’m not sure where your head’s at. Sounds like budget’s probably a constraint for you if they weren’t even going to help you get a license, so that could be problematic, I’m sure.

Jack Hickson:

I think your tasks would go a long way. I’m not even sure if we’re ready to get to those tasks at this point. If I told my teachers, “Hey, these are the kinds of tasks we’re going to be doing,” I think a lot of them would poop in their pants. I think they would be afraid to do it.

Kyle Pearce:

Yeah, I definitely agree. If they are going to go in on their own, very different categories, someone who’s seeking these things out, and that’s like the people who find us on Google and use the tasks, and these are people who are eager to make these changes, it sounds like your group of educators are probably more at this very introductory, trying to get them an awareness piece that hey, there is something that can be done. And I’m picturing, if we’re just trying to give you maybe some next steps from here, from this particular call, I’m almost picturing that you leveraging an opportunity to think of, how can I nudge my way into each of these buildings, whether it be face-to-face or online, and are there, I guess, first opportunities where everyone can be involved who’s teaching math? That might be the staff meeting, the PLC time, whatever it might be.

Kyle Pearce:

But then also looking at a tier two, which would be people who are raising their hands, they’re thirsty to learn more and want to volunteer to maybe join after school once every few weeks to actually do that work. And then through that work, I’m picturing that you could leverage some of the coursework like you have done, like you said, the webinar, the course that you looked at for word problems, you could leverage some of those tools to help create the need so that they’re going, okay, I think there’s a need to change. And then from there you would actually do some of the problems or the units with these groups so that now they’re exposed to it, because like you were saying, I 100% agree, if you just say, “Hey, here’s this unit, go try it,” it’s probably not going to work so hot, it’s like saying, “Here’s a bike-“

Jack Hickson:

If I just give them the task, it’s not going to work, yeah.

Kyle Pearce:

No, totally, yeah. Go, “Here, try this bike out,” to a young child who’s never ridden a bike, and that’s not going to go very well. So getting them aware that, hey, it sounds like you’re already in the awareness phase, right? You’re helping them to see-

Jack Hickson:

I don’t even know if they’re aware of the problem.

Kyle Pearce:

Right, right.

Jack Hickson:

So that’s where we’re at. So right now that’s what I’m doing, I’m sounding alarms, but I agree, I think that’s a fantastic idea. In terms of getting everyone licenses, can you send me information on that?

Kyle Pearce:

Yeah, we can definitely-

Jack Hickson:

Is that just the individual pricing for everybody?

Kyle Pearce:

We would try to put something in there, and based on what you’re saying too, I think we would try to craft something that’s unique for your situation, because it sounds like you’re in a beg, borrow, steal pattern in the circumstance that you’re in, so we’ll try to figure that out on the backend with our team and go, hey, what could we do here to get you friends set up so there’s access?

Kyle Pearce:

The other piece that I think is important to note is that a lot of units, well day one of each unit is pretty much open so that educators can use them. There are parts of the teacher guide that aren’t available, so some of the actual, it’s like mini course in there where we sort of teach them how to teach that section of the particular unit, but the actual contents there, so you’d have full access to it with your account, you’d be able to see those consolidation prompts and all of those things, so you could leverage that for the learning part, for this awareness phase that you’re in. So I think that’s a really great next step for you personally in how you can help them.

Kyle Pearce:

And then we can help you out with the license thing, get you all those details on the backend and see if there’s something that could potentially work, whether it’s using NTI{ funding, we could frame it where we go, “Hey listen, here’s what it’s going to cost for your NTIP teachers, because you’ve got some NTIP funding there.” We’ll frame it that way, but then we will make your coupon code so that all educators have access to it, if that makes sense. So we’ll try to do something creative for you so that maybe it gives you a little bit of leeway or you can get creative with who your superior is that you need to ask for funding.

Kyle Pearce:

You were talking about awareness, and you were saying that you have this gut feeling a lot of people are unaware that there’s a problem. I wonder, you took the district leader version of the screener, I wonder if you were to share the classroom version of the screener, which there’s two approaches, you could just offer it as, “Hey, whoever wants to try this,” make the case why they would want to option optionally do it, or it could be something that you bake into the next staff meeting, where it’s like, “Hey, we’re going to take time in this staff meeting, we’re going to do this thing.” This is not to try to demoralize people, we’re not going to try to do any of that stuff, but you want to give them this opportunity, if you can get everyone to actually do it, meaning it’s in PLC time or in the staff meeting, just the questions they’re asking, you wrote one of the questions down, you might get one of those questions to trigger some of the educators to go, “Oh, I had no idea, maybe I need to do this.”

Kyle Pearce:

And they’ll all get the customized report for the classroom with some actionable steps for them to take. Whether they take them or not is, again, not necessarily the point in the awareness phase, but that could be a really key idea for you. You’re trying to tell them all these things that you know are problems. While these questions aren’t telling them their problems, they’re going to tell themselves when they rank themselves and say, who is doing the thinking in my classroom? Right?

Jack Hickson:

Right.

Kyle Pearce:

Maybe I’m going to be a little lower on that. Or when you ask about some of the other pieces, do you know what the five proficiencies in mathematics are? I’m going to openly say five years ago when I started this journey, I did not know what the five proficiencies were. So it’s just, again, I became aware of it, and I’m like, hmm, I better do some more learning about that, and maybe, maybe Jake might be able to help us with that along the way.

Jack Hickson:

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think that’s a great suggestion, actually. Thanks for that.

Jon Orr:

So any other questions, Jake? We’ll send you a follow-up email that has links to the classroom version, and also we’ll get you some details on getting your licenses for your staff. Any other questions?

Jack Hickson:

No, not at this point. I think I might have some more questions for you specifically about the school for the blind that I service, and then about students maybe with LDs in the future, but I’ll let you guys take a breather from me for a while. I really appreciate the help though.

Kyle Pearce:

No sweat, no sweat my friend. We appreciate your time and the work you’re doing, and obviously I think it starts with when leaders are trying to make the moves like you’re making, even though it might feel like you’re spinning your tires a little bit here and there, a lot of people are feeling in a similar boat, so good on you that you’re doing the work, and if we can be any help along the way, hopefully some of these ideas are going to help you with getting started on the next steps, and who knows, maybe there’s an opportunity there for us to dig a little deeper.

Jack Hickson:

I hope so.

Kyle Pearce:

If you’re a math leader just like Jake, you can head over to makemathmoments.com/grow and take our short assessment screener, which is really going to go through and ask you questions that are related to all six areas of an effective mathematics program, those six areas that we’ve highlighted here on this episode, and on every episode. Head over to makemathmoments.com/grow, you can do that assessment, and then you are going to receive a customized report based on your specific responses that will give you some action items that you can put into place right now. If you’re a classroom teacher, we have a classroom math program version over at makemathmoments.com/report. And either way, whichever page you land on, it’s going to ask you if you’re in the classroom or if you’re leading a district or leading an organization, and you can make your selection from there. So head on over to makemathmoments.com/report.

Jon Orr:

In order to ensure you don’t miss out on new episodes as they come out each week, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you found our podcast in whatever way, maybe you found it through Facebook, maybe you found it because someone shared it, maybe you found it by just searching on Apple Podcast, or on Spotify, wherever you found the podcast do us a favor, share that podcast in that same way. So if you found it on Facebook, share it on Facebook. If you found it through email, share it through email with someone else. If someone shared it with you over a lunchroom table, share it with another person at the lunchroom table. Sharing the podcast helps strengthen other teacher’s pedagogical practices, content knowledges, other teacher’s trees, we’re trying to create that balanced tree, sharing that podcast can help stretch our teachings and our learnings and the work that we’re doing far and wide.

Kyle Pearce:

Hey, show notes, links to resources, and complete transcripts to read from the web, or download and take with you, are over on makemathmoments.com/episode234. Again, that’s makemathmoments.com/episode234.

Kyle Pearce:

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Making Mouth Moments That Matter Podcast, where we help you grow your mathematics program like a treat so your impact can reach far and wide.

Jon Orr:

Until next time.

Kyle Pearce:

Well, until next time, I’m Kyle Pierce.

Jon Orr:

I’m Jon Orr.

Kyle Pearce:

High fives for us.

Jon Orr:

Hi five for you.

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