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Do you ever feel like your school’s math improvement goals are like chasing a moving target? (Spoiler: You’re not alone!)

The Struggle to align math teachers and leaders on what effective math instruction looks like is real! 

In this episode, we speak with Brenda Grier, a math leader and coordinator from Wisconsin. Listen in as we tackle the challenges of building a shared vision for effective math instruction, bridging the gap between pedagogical practices and teacher confidence in math content, and addressing the ever-present struggle of limited time and resources for professional development.

• Discover strategies for engaging administrators and teachers in collaborative efforts to improve math teaching practices.

• Learn how to balance pedagogical goals with strengthening teachers’ understanding of key math concepts.

• Gain actionable insights on using tools like self-assessments, staff meetings, and early-release times to create lasting change in your math program.

Tune in now to uncover practical ways to align your team and build a thriving math program—your next breakthrough might be one listen away!

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

Hello. Hi. How are you? I’m good. How are you? Excellent. Excellent. It’s a nice Tuesday. You know, we had a holiday yesterday, so you know, it’s always nice to have a holiday and then get back to work. Yeah, that’s true. The weather here is kind of shifted to be cooler. I don’t know where in Wisconsin. I don’t know where you’re located, but we’re starting to switch into the actual fall temperatures.

So we are as well. Where as well? I’m just outside of I mean, Canada, but outside of Detroit. So, you know where Detroit is a little bit more easy, but that’s where we’re located. So we also had a very, very full day today. Yeah. Tell me what’s what’s going on in math in your world? Well, so we started our self-study a couple of years ago when I was fortunate.

We have four elementary buildings in our district and I was fortunate to pull a teacher per building, per grade level to really analyze our data and what we’re noticing. And then the next year, we really Wisconsin revised their standards. So we were able to revisit our learning targets and the progression of those targets and really just have more conversation around content standards.

We kind of left off last year with also revisiting math practice standards and what good instruction should look like. So that that pushed our teams into thinking about what resources would best support us and helping all teachers have a more in-depth understanding what math should look like. So we came to the conclusion of looking at Bridges, third edition and illustrative Math 360 As our top two choices.

Those teams really decided that collectively so our plan was to pilot this school year. But due to L.A. and Act 20 and all the changes in legislation, math got put at hold. And that’s kind of where we’re at. We can’t pilot it until the following school year. That being said, knowing we were in this process of moving towards full implementation of a new program, I was also trying to be proactive even last year, and it brought a grant for how many teachers did that be?

I want to say approximately 10 to 12 teachers and building principals. And that was focused on really best practice in math, those math teaching practices. So we have this small little group from that and we partnered with UW Lacrosse on what those teaching practices. Now, would you say that that’s for two hour sessions? Right? So good stuff, but in terms of, you know, tons of PD time, it’s not like it was weeks upon weeks, right?

Yeah. So we do have some momentum going with that team and our our three building principals that were involved in that grant, they have building goals this year around one of those teaching practices. We have a little bit continuing. I think I’m concerned it’s not enough to really, you know, make change. I’m super excited to talk to you and get your thoughts and how I can.

So when you say like you’re excited about the principles that made that part of their improvement goals, you’re hoping what more like is your is your main problem or I like to use a pebble, you know, a main pebble problem, the pebble rattling around in your shoe right now, would you say, is that you’re wanting more leaders to, you know, to have this same kind of epiphany that this these these people had because they’re a part of the grant?

And how do you do that when you don’t have a grant, or is there another pebble that’s rattling around in your shoe? I think the biggest thing is just kind of getting back on the table a little bit that I know Our executive director of instruction just recently met with each building principal and our math data is a good and I feel like I’ve kind of been steady my wheels for multiple years, but math has really taken a backseat consistent lift.

So just getting that grant going last year and now the fact that we have three principals that are on board and understand there’s a need and an emphasis on math are all good things. But I think at the end of the day, like I was looking through your workbook tools and kind of going through that, but in five years or even three years when we had full implementation, would really love all teachers to understand what those best practices are and how to implement them in the classroom.

And my goal with the principles being embedded in that grant was that in order to really help make change, our leaders really need to understand what good math looks like as they’re the evaluators that are classrooms and can help push and sustain that change. So that was the intention with the math grant that it wasn’t just teachers understanding it, but really our leaders also knowing what it looks like completely agree, completely agree.

It’s it’s essential if you are after sustainable change and teacher practice to include and have alignment across the different levels of educators, you know, administrators, teachers, parents, even students. Right. We need we need alignment across what matters. And and the decision making process, which is like we have to if we have to create, we have to, you know, bring that bring those people into into those those sessions.

And oftentimes they’re you know, they’re left out because of time or we don’t have you know, we can’t pull away from our, you know, our duties as administrators to engage in that work because there’s so many other things to do. And what about all the subjects? You know, is it just math that gets the focus or not the focus?

So I definitely applaud you for, you know, getting that program going. I think it’s it was absolutely critical to have those administrators and it moving forward, you know, you’re going to want to continue that process. It’s like how many more administrators can we bring into the fold and how do I now I think your your bubble here is like, how do I do that more is is probably right is like how do I how do I bring more more leaders into the decision making process?

Is is that would you say a pebble you know keeping in mind that you also want, you know, all your teachers to have these effects like know what the effective use of these practices look like in a few years time. Yeah. I would say so. Three actually, all four of our elementary principals I think are on board and understand and want to do that.

I think the biggest so I’m not so concerned about administrators buying in as much as how do we really do that well in such little snippets of time or little opportunities to make an impact, know what has the support look like in the past. So so I know you had a grant in. You had four sessions for two hour sessions, but what was what does it look like going into this year?

You know, like let’s say for a moment we waved a magic wand and our administrators were all on board. They all have a clear vision of what mathematics is supposed to look like. They also are aligned and where the focus happens to be for this year and next year and say, the third year. So let’s say that that was all aligned.

What does support for teachers look like? So this year one of our buildings call is on productive struggle and another building is doing by using connect math representations. And then the third building is doing elicit and use evidence of sort of thinking. Okay, so they’re having teachers we looked at and CSM has like a continuum, the shift continuum with explanations of what that looks like.

So we’re asking teachers at each of those buildings to self-reflect before they implement a task and on where they’re at with that understanding. And then right now, principals have said about one task per quarter, which I’m not super thrilled about that That seems like very little, but it is a starting point. So after a teacher implements a task with the around productive struggle, for example, they would then reflect in written form how that went and then again where are they at on the continuum so that they’re using that by the end of the year they can see that each teacher made some growth in getting further along the continuum.

What are you seeing from the teachers right now? Having this in place right now is one task per quarter. What are you hearing from the teachers? What do you what are you seeing when you’re in the classrooms? Well, so I would say it has it happened yet. So that’s their building goal. And Mike, one of the principals is not planning that.

They even do their first task until December. That would be the first time that they implement. So what’s happening in the meantime? What does classrooms look like now? Right now, it sounds like we’re treating tasks as some event that we’re going to bring in and do as a as like a showcase of something where it’s exceptional. It’s not normal.

It’s it’s something that we’re going to try or it’s just like we do this once in a while. And and it’s not actually like the thing we’re doing on a regular basis, like what is math instruction supposed to look like? So what I was saying is like, what does math instruction look like right now? And if you’re looking at your goal of having teachers understand what practices are supposed to look like in 3 to 5 years, what are we doing in the meantime to give them the glimpse that it’s not just this like, hey, we just do this once every quarter once in a while, but effective teaching practices are designed to be like, these are things you were supposed to be doing regularly every day. 

Not all eight every day necessarily. And it’s great that they’re picking like, I really like that they’ve picked one practice to focus on for the year. Like, I think that’s a a realistic goal is to go, We’re not going to worry about all of the seven, but we’re going to look at this one and we’re going to make sure that we work on strengthening up here in this particular one.

I really like that because too many times administrators, coordinators, folks focus on too many things. And when you focus on too many things, you know, we always say is focusing on nothing because you’re giving too many things to a teacher and they don’t know which one is important, you know, is it that one or is it that one?

And they have a hard time deciding that all of them are important and we probably can embed all of them if we focus on one of them. Well, the other ones kind of fall into place anyway because they’re so interconnected. But so I like that they’re focusing on one. But my wonder here is, is the message that we do with this one thing once or a couple times a year and and that’s it.

And or is there is there a bigger purpose here? And are we actually aligned in what we think is important in math instruction And and what are we doing on a regular basis to improve this process or improve math instruction every day and not just three times a year or four times a year? Yeah. And I think that you’re bringing up a really good point that it’s making it seem like it’s this magic event that happens just a few times and it’s so big and so daunting that we can’t ask you to do it more than three times a year because it’d be so impossible.

That puts that a good perspective for me. They picked, I think, where it’s only three times and because of the reporting aspect of it, like that’s when a teacher would actually self-reflect. But that’s really good feedback that helps me think about how do we message that? Because I agree with you, I feel like this should not this should be what our classrooms look like every day.

Like if you think about productive structure or connecting representations, there’s nothing saying that you have to do a full blown event task where it looks completely different to what we’re already doing to engage students in those practices. They can be small bite sized chunks of your already existing time period. Do we want more of that and less of that?

Sure. But when you have a, say, an army of teachers who maybe have not engaged in this type of, you know, what is what is productive struggle look like, you know, or connecting rep members like if they’re not sure what those lessons could look like, how do we help them? How do we help them embed components of their existing lessons so that they they’re working at it and that they can get more comfortable, set up a full blown hey from start to end?

This is a completely different experience because the kids are going to pick up on that anyway, right? Like it’s it’s it’s kind of saying like, hey, we only do this once in a while and and the kids are like, What’s going on here? And then it’s completely disjointed from their normal experience. We’ve we’ve seen that it’s not that effective like teachers will self-sabotage or they’ll they’ll not, you know, they’ll not take it seriously because they’re like, let me just get through this.

Unless you’ve got teachers who are actively excited about it coming and they’re spending a lot of time preparing for this particular thing. And if that’s the case, they’re probably already embedding a bunch of the things in any way to their realized lessons. What are the principles or how are the principal? Do you know if the principals are using any sort of measurement?

When I say measurement, it’s like almost like an indicator that we have success or improvement other than just waiting for the student data to show up. Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s just those it like we built a Google form on that continuum. So our teacher does have to like write a written narrative. And then we talked about having a Likert scale for where do you fall on that continuum?

So they would have to numeric really picked up by two right now, but by the end of the year I’m an aid Looking at the continuum. Do they have goals designed around those issues or is it just we’re just want to monitor that like the goals I think would be improved by at least two points on the Likert scale, I think is what about it?

Got it. Okay, so what does it look like to support those teachers during the year to like, help them prepare, give them glimpses like we’re trying to if we’re trying to on the Likert scale, move people down the line here. And I don’t know, I you said you were using the principles to action kind of sliding the continuum.

What does it you know, what does it look like when a teacher is doing this? What does it look like when students are doing this particular practice? I assume that they’re kind of self assessing themselves along. I’m closer to this and what teachers are looking like in a classroom than this. So what is happening during the year to help that teacher move themselves down the line So we have, so like one of the buildings already had a staff meeting in September and I went and presented productive struggle and we had conversation around what it is and what it isn’t.

And we actually shared from the Productive Struggle book, from Jonsi and Giovanni, some of the ways to elevate a task or just a math problem. I think part of me feels like maybe the word task is not the right word to say anymore. I was talking with UW all about this a little bit to to your point of making task, the teachers will say, Where do I get these tasks?

To me? Well, we can like the problem seven times eight could be a really great task or a really great problem depending on what we’re doing with it. So the different representations that kids come to the table and how we facilitate that conversation could be a great math conversation. And it doesn’t have to be considered a task that we find in a book or on a website somewhere.

So that made me think about that a lot. But so in the productive struggle, meeting with that team or that building we talked about here are problems that we already have existing in our lessons. And I gave them examples of here’s one and then how we can change it, and then I gave them another one. Should the same strategy create different representations?

Was one of those strategies in the book. And then they had to, within that staff meeting, talk about how they would change the question that already exists in their lessons so that it was based on kids are going to create multiple representations with that. So that was one of the buildings. Now, Prairie View, another of our elementary buildings, has two different staff meetings set up and their goal is using connect math representations.

So they have a small team, five teachers that participated in the math grant, and we haven’t set up that they’re going to share out and talk about how many use the word task that they implemented in their classroom and then talk with the rest of the staff about what that look like and how the use of connect representations followed with student work.

And then again, I think it’s January or I can’t remember the meetings, but two different staff meetings where that will happen. So three of the teachers and one built in one meeting, two in the other, where there will be an a leadership role of present day non use and connect and I’ll be there as support and help with that.

Our third building is a little wishy washy. I don’t really know what’s happening right there or there right now, so I need to investigate and find out more. So we have some staff meetings. We do have three early release times, so those are two hour each and that’s what UW Lacrosse is scheduled to come in and work with us, actually plan with that team this Thursday, where we’ll be talking about what do those windows look like to help all of us be moving in a good direction?

My current thinking around the UW all times is around the five practices so that all of those building goals and the building that doesn’t have a mass goal can relate to whatever problem we’re doing. How do we keep thinking about it? Anticipating pseudo work, selecting, sequencing, monitoring, all of that? Yeah, if I practice, this can be a great structure to help, you know, help align, but also help focus your efforts on, say, each of these, each of these practices because you can you can be, you know, using the five practices to help obviously engage teachers with implementing a productive struggle in their classrooms.

And again, you can do small bursts of that. You can you do, you know, full a full lesson where it was five practices from start to end or you can say do many you know how many lesson that way to be. You can do it with connecting representations where you ended up for, say, focusing on when you’re doing your connect stage, like how are we connecting the or the representations that we’re seeing in our classrooms and what, what particular model or strategy are we highlighting for the students to take away and practice?

And you know, as they say with their principal learning goal is so so it’s it’s always a kind of a, a great framework that you can embed those practices in because it allows for those those practices to come out more say than most other structures. So what I’m hearing is, is that we’ve got some goals. So we’ve got each site generally has goals.

We’ve got principals who seem to be aligned with these goals as a priority. We’ve got support. And it sounds like some of the professional development that’s happening, some of the support that’s happening is always about refocusing towards these goals. We’ve got some measurement tools in place that helps kind of teachers align themselves to like knowing what success looks like.

What does it look like? Was it sound like when I’m doing this particular practice? Well, these are all really important components of effective programing for mathematics. You know, some of you know, the work that we do on a regular basis to support districts in creating what you got is, is many districts don’t have alignment across the schools that they’re supporting.

They don’t have a math vision. They don’t know that these are the three things that we want to support this year. So a lot of them don’t have a reason or a measurement tool outside of student student data to go, Are we making progress on the things that we think are important? You’ve got, you know, even just just a survey for teachers to continually reflect on that practice is important for them to do as long as we’re supporting them and understanding what that practice is supposed to look like.

So it’s quite likely that they read. So, you know, this is something you might want to just check because this is a great tool to have. As I say, most districts don’t even have this tool. But the way we coach that using that particular tool would be the tool itself is is fine for like kind of tracking. But the real power in a tool like that is creating actual alignment around what the practice like.

When we say productive struggle, do we both know what we’re talking about? Are we saying the same thing? Because when we use language around practices in the classroom, like you might say, effective use of discourse in the classroom, but your teacher might have a completely different view of that than you do. Tool When we have a self assessment to other risk, there is that we we are speaking different languages and so they’re giving themselves a ten or a five.

When when you will view it, you would give them a two. And that’s because they’re saying, Hey, I’m doing discourse well, because I ask questions in class. But you know, discourse means something different. So where the power of the actual tool comes in, as long as as long as we’re helping teachers understand the language of the tool and what it looks like when we’re performing at five versus when we’re performing at one, that’s the real power in creating alignment and structure because you’re helping them see the success criteria.

Like these are effective practices and these aren’t. This is what it looks like when we’re doing the practice. Well, this is this is maybe what it might look like when we’re not. So the descriptors are important, you know, having them see what examples look like are important experience lessons that feel like that are important. So using that tool to go, hey, at one of, let’s say those two our release times, it’s like let’s bring up say that self assessment where would you mark yourself today on production struggle and then go and then maybe part of that is is making unpacking what it would look like what it doesn’t look like.

Here’s a lesson here’s not a lesson like the glimpses back and forth. So sounds like you’ve got that tool in place which can be helpful. And then just structuring do are we supporting the use of that to actually get to the actual goal, which is alignment and also improvement in the use of because, because it would be great when they say five, it’s actually five.

Like your assessment and their assessment match. That’s the ultimate goal that you’d want to get. And that’s usually the first thing you have to do before you actually see improvement on the actual scales. Because what’s going to happen is they’re going to give themselves for it sometimes, but they don’t know that they’re really twos and threes. And then when they when you shrink the gap, they’ll all of a sudden regress on the next time you use the tools or feel like you went backwards.

But then you’ll know that that’s the actual reflection, like these are the actual results. And then moving forward from there as real results, sounds like you’re like you’ve got some of those things in place, which is great, I would say, and I haven’t asked you this, but where we see where the biggest say hurdle is, we focus on the pedagogical moves, but we forget that teachers really need strength and practice and understanding of the mathematics component.

So you’ve got to you’ve got a group that’s focusing on connecting representations, which is great because it gets you a way to talk about pedagogical moves, but also like, do we know what happens when we’re subtracting and the four different, you know, the four different strategies of subtraction? Or do we know that there’s two different types of division and when do I use part of and when do I talk about part of the when do I talk about qualitative and how do I represent both of those and what model do I use here and what model do I use?

They’re really what happens is we focus on pedagogical moves like the eight effective teaching practices because we all want to see it because it’s easy to see those things. But the underlying where teachers don’t move, like where we know that we’ve given them some glimpses or we’ve given them like this is what it looks like, but we still aren’t seeing it in the classroom is is because you’ve got an army of teachers that learn math a very procedural way like I’m sure you did, like I did.

And we had these epiphanies, these math epiphanies along the way that allowed us to feel more comfortable about stepping back and not reading the script or following the general teacher guide and going off book a little bit, which is exactly what’s required when you do a five practices lesson or when you give students the the, you know, the freedom to productively struggle in your classroom is you have to be really strong with the math that you’re going to see around the room and be able to weave that tail to get to the actual learning goal that you want and to be ready for, for all those things, which is a lot of flexibility on a teacher’s end. 

In order to be flexible like that in the classroom, we have to really feel like we know the mathematics well because we’re trying to we’re trying to create these connections in a sense, making for math. Usually that’s what we’re seeing is like, Hey, we’ve got a great structure, a great plan to move these, move these, these, these practices.

But we’re not seeing any change because you’ve got a lot of pieces that are great, like you’ve got a lot of puzzle pieces that are in the right spots. But I would maybe maybe you can speak to this, but like have like how many times this year or last year did you say, use those to our release times to really like unpack a particular strand that’s coming up or a mathematical concept so that the teachers could just feel comfortable with doing the math without translating it into a pedagogical move in the classroom.

That’s where we see some of the districts really start to flourish, is when they they really they really spend time there because once once you spend time there and with the other things in place and you do that consistently for year to year, that’s when you’re going to start to see change. Can I ask your suggestion and how do you build in the content time?

Like I think some of the greatest professional development we’ve had, our state mass used to be called Whiz Me, but now it’s like I can’t even think of the name of it. Wisconsin math, whatever it is. But they have like week long progressions of learning for teachers. So you could attend in the summer an entire week and 40 hours of like on a key to operations and algebraic thinking domain and have the exact depth and really awesome conversations you’re talking about over time.

Even the Math Institute, it’s really gotten less and less and less because I think just the money and the funding and such an education to be able to send teachers to, you know, that many days of trade and that cost. Yeah. That people aren’t even doing it as much anymore. But so what does that look like or what do you feel like in other districts?

That has really been a great way to go about that. It’s it’s about being like every the constraints are different from district to district, school to school, right? It’s like, but it’s about deciding. And this is where we come back to the vision and also the objectives that are we in agreement on what’s important for mathematics. So we’re not even just agreeing that mathematics is a priority, but we’re agreeing that these three to 2 to 3 things are the priority in mathematics.

And one of those things probably should be strengthening teacher capacity for their understanding of math up. So build building their own proficiencies around math. So when we agree that that’s important, then it comes down to how are we utilizing our channels and our, you know, our access to teachers so that we’re always working towards strengthening those up and how do all we know so so for example, you knew that these three components of pedagogy were important.

You’ve got schools that are putting in monitoring or or self assessment to help kind of keep tabs on when we’re measuring it, we’re usually keeping it in the forefront. So this is a reason why you might have that survey in place for the pedagogical moves. But we also want to measure our growth on, say, the proficiencies as well.

So the question is, when you think about when I said before, it’s like, well, what support is in place? It’s like now look at the support and go, can we use that those structures, those channels and steer parts of that some of that time to giving teachers, you know, the experience of doing mathematics just to do mathematics and then help them build their own confidence up.

Because really you can you can spend all your time on, say, what does it look like for productive struggle or the five practices, right? You can give them the guidance of the five practices, but again, they’re still need the math content before they can do it. They’re not going to do it on their own. And less and less they have that confidence that when they go to say, do the multiplication actually connect up, like when I’m selecting and sequencing, do I even know what I’m looking for?

And then also when I go to connect at the end, am I going to weave this lesson and do I know what my learning goal is? I should because I plan that out in stage one or stage zero, and then do I also know what model or strategy I really want to highlight today and why That’s that fits in the bigger picture of the math content, which is a lot.

That’s a lot for a teacher to know. So usually so some of the other districts that we support, we’ve you know, we’ve helped kind of structure what those look like. But we we kind of like I’ve done an audit, it’s like what is out there? Like what have you done in the past? Tell us more about your coaching cycles.

Some of them have coaches, some of them don’t, some of them have, you know, on site or in school teachers that are, let’s say, lead teachers and how do we do a train, the trainer model and how do we get in more classrooms? So there’s a variety of different things you can do, but it comes down to knowing that the priority is that and then that kind of like a think of it like a waterfall technique.

Whereas if you make content knowledge for a teacher, the priority then what happens is it just spills over into the pedagogy. Because if you focus on the pedagogical move first, like productive struggle without focusing on the math content, sometimes a teacher will go on like realize on their own in order for me to like, do this, I actually have to know the math inside and out.

Therefore, I’m going to take the extra step on my own to like, dig in to the math just so I’m prepared to do it because I have to be flexible here. I’m like, if I’m going to have a great discussion about it, like I have to know why. That’s a great discussion. Like, I have to know which which questions I should be asking my students so that we all have a great discussion about math.

Otherwise, there’s no point in having a great discussion. I’ll just teach them how to do it and that’s faster. And that’s why they all do it that way, because they don’t know how to have a discussion about it because they don’t know the math that well. And I was like that for a long time. So it’s like, I’m not I’m a high school teacher and I have a degree in mathematics, and I taught very procedurally for a long time.

And it wasn’t until I started to unpack and have these epiphanies that, my gosh, I didn’t know that you could represent that way. I didn’t know that you were allowed to do this type of math, to do that type of math like it was. Most teachers just don’t have that comfort. So when you focus on the math first, so let’s say the teachers are multiplying coming up and we’re just going to help them with strategy On multiplying today in a session in a two hour release time in a PFC at a staff meeting.

And then what happens, though, when a teacher has an epiphany, when the teacher says the I didn’t know you could use that drawing to do that, I thought you had a stack. You know, I had I had to carry the one. It’s like when they have the epiphany, you’re like, No, that’s great. Like, do it again. Get comfortable with it.

Here’s another one. Practice it because doing it once isn’t enough. It’s they have to do it as if like, imagine, imagine you you gave them a math test and said, Here, we want you to do this math test and we want you to use these strategies like they have to be comfortable enough that when they go to do calculations and use numbers, since they do it that way.

So we have to we have to keep, you know, almost like teach them like they’re our students, but so that they have that comfort. So what when they have the epiphany, what always happens is it sparks the pedagogical change immediately because they’ll say, I didn’t know that. And then now they feel the power of it and then they do it again.

They’re like, my gosh, I got it right. Like they feel it. And then they go, I want to do that for my students. How do I teach this? Like, they’ll ask. They’ll ask how to teach it. And then now you can talk pedagogy. But we always start with the math and you always want to start with that math.

So okay, so, so it’s like, so your question was like, like, well, how best to I structure that? It will depend on like what channels and access you have. But usually the question that you can get more clarity on is let’s look at them all and let’s, let’s decide that we’ve probably been misusing this time in the past and we should use this time better and we’ll just make sure that we do these things to help teachers build their own confidence in mathematics.

Do you feel like there’s potentially still a way to get some content work alongside knowing the buildings have already created their goals for this? Because you would just do it through that, right? So it’s like, so what I what I would do is start anytime you’re doing anything, you’re going to do the math part first and then and then give them the epiphany and then tie it to productive struggle and then tie it to like, but create the epiphany first.

So to decide on what strand is is is really important for, say, that particular grade or say, collection of grades vertically and then go can I give them a math epiphany? Sometimes we don’t know what about the epiphany to give them. So if if that’s the case, there’s some some good resources. I don’t know if you have, say, teaching developmentally, it might not look like this.

This might be the case. I do manuals book, you know, like the figuring out fluency series from Jennifer Williams. Like these are all good content books not say even though she has pedagogical routines built into her book. These content books give you some great insight on like trying to find these like hard to teach. That’s usually the way we pick them.

What’s a hard to teach topic that most people just do it systematically or procedurally and go, okay, let’s unpack that. Like division or division of fractions or adding fractions like these, these things people complain about anyway, or if there’s any sort of algorithms that you’re like, that’s a black box algorithm, like the long division algorithm, right? It’s like, like, do you hasn’t, you know, do you know that you could, you represented differently and really what you would be doing a long division algorithm, you’re doing repeated subtraction, but not also all division is repeated subtraction.

So an epiphany where people just say, my gosh, like I had this is new to me. That’s what you’re going for. Because when you do that, they’ll not only gain the math knowledge to keep doing it and then go, All right, here’s what it could look like in a lesson. And then the now highlights the math knowledge as the priority, but also connects to, say, productive struggle.

Yeah. Nice. Okay. The other question I wanted to ask you is one of the principals had asked since his goal his goal is on using connect different representations. So I had I hadn’t mentioned that I could help with providing it with. We talked about those tasks that you can elevate. In other words, just switching the problem a little bit, like agree or disagree, why justify your thinking kind of thing?

And then like creating that context around their current content? And then he had asked if I would also provide different student solutions to that problem so that if I was a teacher that didn’t know the math for that, that I would have the example to then maybe try in the classroom as a teacher. So it’d be like a digital email communication.

Ideally, as a math coach, my hope would be to get to be in the classroom and help with that. Right. But that he’s saying they would at least have a starting point to look at to potentially improve it. But I don’t know. That’s probably not great coaching practice. Are you asking whether you would want to provide that or are you saying like, you know, I don’t have a resource that does that.

Like, no, I’ve actually looked at some of your problem based lessons and units. I feel like those would be great ones that where you already have have built some of that. So that would help me without having to get on the digital whiteboard and do it myself. But the principal is asking me to do that and I’m kind of like as a coach, typically we would talk through and work through where you know what I mean?

I would question through it and sort of just hand somebody that, okay, I get it, which saying so is is then there an opportunity for you to do that work or not? Hopefully it all depends on if the person you know, if they’re teacher or teachers there’s you know lots of teachers. But if they would reach out and say, well, come help me implement this or tried for sure, it does open the door for that too.

Right. So yeah, maybe that’s a positive. Yeah, it’s kind of like we always look at it as there’s a hierarchy and this is one of the things we help guide our leaders through too, is that is when you’re making decisions. There’s a hierarchy of like the support level that you’re providing, right? Like one on one coaching support is the say the if you can always work that in to any sort of professional development model, you opt in for that is like let’s let’s work as much one on one coaching cycles.

Now why I say cycles is because you want follow up. You want to you want to get in there with the teacher, you want to experiment, you want to build trust, you want to kind of model, but also see what they’re doing. And that almost like cottage and more than once, right? So it’s not just a one time only.

The follow up is is is accounts for 90% of the adoption. So you want to come back, you want to follow up, you want to kind of build it. That’s why it’s a cycle. So not knowing that that’s a cycle, you know, that you can’t do that with everyone. So you decide, can I do that with a certain amount?

And then how many times can I do that throughout the year and how many teachers can I actually do that with this year? And then being like, if I did that this year with that, like would I be happy with that? Would those teachers move on the, say, the three goals that we thought were important? If so, then you make that happen.

Now, if you can’t say, let’s say we’re in the case where we don’t have the support that way, where we don’t have a teacher or a co teaching model or a coach helping and those those cycles, then if you can’t say support through the PSC process or say at the staff meetings or like any sort of other kind of touch points then then yeah, like our digital methods of support come into play at that point and one of those same where say a non touch point human to human touch point can be effective is in the actual curriculum supporting documents that you have or that you know the curriculum that you choose.

Like you’re going through a selection process right now. What what what a good solid core foundation curricular them does is provide, say, the resources, the exemplars, the teacher guides. That kind of brings everybody up to a certain level and then it gives you this kind of like flexibility or this confidence that if if I if all else fails, I can turn the page on the resource and it’s going to give me the my next steps.

As long as we select that well and it meets, say, our goals and it’s aligned to the objectives that we’re after, that, you know, this year, next year, for the next five years, it aligns to the vision that you set. Then it also what it also does is because it’s that foundation, it allows for teachers to go above it and go, Let me grab from that and then use that instead, because that actually like fits my need better for this particular group.

And you see that as teachers start to supplement. But it also gives all the teachers who are new or new to the grade level, that foundation that they can rely on so that they’re not grasping from nothing. So when you think about think about when we don’t have the coaching model, we want them to have resources like that, resources where they can look at exemplars, they can look at effective teacher resource guides that guide them through that process.

And you’re right, like that’s how we designed our resources is to provide that kind of baseline foundation, but also focus on the things that matter, which is our resource guides are really speaking to helping a teacher not only navigate the pedagogical moves, but understand the math. So when you look at our, say, connecting stage or our consolidation stages in the Teacher Resource Guide will unpack the strategies, the models like here’s what kid might do and here’s what it means and this is what you should do next.

So because we want the teacher to also understand the math, just, just so they’re prepared in the classroom to deliver that those connections to their students. So that can be a great a great tool to use. If we can’t, say, be there to coach them. It so it’s not it’s not the end of the world. It’s actually better than say letting them just do nothing is it’s about the selection of a good resource to provide and when there’s a lack of, say, one on one interaction, which just happens most of the time, right?

We’re not going to see majority of our teachers throughout the year. Well, especially to be able to put the depth in where you like you said, it’s more than just a one time like let’s work at this or chip away at it in a cycle more than just necessarily a one time show up that day. So good. Okay, I think, yeah, that gives me a lot of great ideas and places on where to go.

I think that can be of help here today. Yeah, totally appreciate it. I’m excited to explore some of your resources a little bit more to I have that if you needed any other advice, let us know if you need any other resources. Like I said, we do this with schools and school districts and organizations and support them to meet their goals and we help them in different You have different supporting models that work for different different schools and different budget models too.

So if that’s of interest to you, let me know. We can make and share some some resources too, to see if you need any more support to keep things going. Okay, that sounds great and I appreciate your emails too, like reading other districts stories a little bit, or just like I’ve been getting the emails around the district improvement program for quite a while now.

And every time I see one, I keep thinking, okay, I should maybe reach out and then, you know, go back to the drawing board. And so the persistence and the breadcrumb idea of sharing what you are, I think it does help people too. Sometimes it’s hard in school systems, like we just don’t have any money. Everything is going to L.A. right now.

So I love to be able to fully work with you in a lot, you know, bigger, larger scope. But the reality of what we have, the ability and being a coach, I have zero control over the budget, so it makes it even harder. I get it. We get it. No worries there. Now we’re here when you’re ready. We’re here when you’re ready.

Thank you so very much. Okay, Brenda, thanks so much. Yeah, take care again.

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