LISTEN NOW HERE…

OR JUMP TO YOUR FAVOURITE PLATFORM

WATCH NOW…

Episode Summary:

Are your mathematics coaching strategies aligned with your district’s goals, or are outdated structures holding you back?

This episode dives into a common challenge for district coaches and coordinators of mathematics: balancing widespread teacher support with deep, meaningful impact. 

If you’ve ever felt stuck between fairness and effectiveness, this discussion will help you rethink your approach.

• Discover how to realign your coaching structures to maximize impact on district-wide mathematics goals.

• Learn why a focused approach can build capacity among educators and create future district leaders for mathematics.

• Gain actionable insights on evaluating and redesigning systems to ensure they work for, not against, your mathematics objectives.

Don’t let ineffective structures limit your success in mathematics—tune in now to learn how to optimize your coaching strategies and drive real change!

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

Yvette Lehman: Hi, John. We are going to dig into a coaching call that I actually had this past week that I definitely had a lot of takeaways from. And I think as a team, came back together and were able to just really think through ways that we could support this district and support this coach. So just to kind of give everybody listening a summary of that call, I was supporting a coach who’s working in a district with some really clear goals. They have been a part of the program. They have clear objectives.

They know exactly what they’re working toward and what they’d hope to see, what change they hope to see in the next five years, let’s say. There are zones of focus and they’ve really put in the work too. They’ve drafted a scope and sequence and they have a lot of supports in place for their educators K to eight. But when I was in this conversation, one thing that we always ask people, it’s one of my favorite questions to ask is at the end of this year, what change will you contribute to?

that will make you feel proud of the work you’ve done, help you believe that you’re getting closer to those district goals and that your role has had an impact. And what the coach communicated is that in the scope and sequence that they’ve established for their educators, they have basically, you know, a day one and two structure where day one they deliver a task-based three-part math lesson, but on day two, that’s when they are

providing really explicit instruction in small group. They’re giving opportunities for purposeful practice. Students are engaged in games and activities to reinforce the concepts. And what the coach articulated is that, you know, by the end of the year, she’d love to see teachers and she’d like to support teachers in being able to use formative assessment in day one to drive that targeted small group instruction in day two. So that students are receiving, right, that timely

Jon Orr: Okay, sounds good.

Yvette Lehman: effective instruction to address maybe misconceptions or gaps. Which again, like a really worthwhile goal and really powerful work, particularly when you’re talking about strengthening tier two instruction. But then when I was just asking the coach to describe their typical week, they only visit each site once a week. And so then, you know, my initial wondering was,

If your goal is to support assessment and support this two-day model where assessment formative assessment from day one is driving instruction on day two, does it make sense to only be in that classroom once a week? And that was kind of where our conversation stemmed from.

Jon Orr: Right. so their, their goal was to obviously like, and I think that’s the other part of, I think what we’ve heard from this district’s coaches before is, and this is common from, for many school districts across North America is one of the most common things we hear when we hop on, say a first call of, to hear about what’s happening and where, some of the pebbles are is that they don’t feel that there’s traction.

like traction and the changes they’re trying to make. I think this coach also expressed that I’m trying to like get in there and help teachers, you know, understand the goals, also reach the goals, but also really, you know, give these students the experience that they need to have to strengthen their understanding of mathematics. And it was a two day process and we really wanted that two day process to happen.

in as much as we can. they just weren’t seeing traction. And what you uncovered, and when asking, it’s like, tell me about your day. Like, what does your week look like? And when they said that we’re hitting one school, you know, a week, and then we’re bouncing from class to class inside those schools, it sounds like they’re not, you know, they’re not in that two-day process to help a teacher see what it looks like on day one.

and then what it really looks like on day two. So they might be doing a lot of day ones and then leaving off day two and then not seeing them until a week later or sometimes longer than that. And then they go to another school and do the same thing. And so, you know, I get why the structure, you know, happens is because it’s like, okay, I got five schools to support. I got five days of the week. I’m just gonna do some easy math here and that’s one day per week. And we wanna blanket.

you know, the support we have, because we don’t want to leave people out. We don’t want to like, in a way you want to cover as much ground as possible. And it makes sense to structure that way. And it’s also possible like this is the way maybe if they’ve had coaching in the past, I know this particular district, you know, brought on some coaches in the last, you know, couple years. But, but if they’ve had just, you know, support in the past, maybe this is the way that they’ve structured in the past. This is the this is our coaching model structure. And

Jon Orr: And it makes sense to kind of blanket everybody to kind of go, I’m to basically try to widespread my time. But what you’re doing is you’re going a mile wide and an inch deep. that sometimes, and especially in this case, because their structure doesn’t actually align with their goal, that’s a huge issue. So it’s not even like just trying to widespread approach the support.

this particular district, you know, in stage two of our program is called optimize and sustain. So we look at what are the structures you’re currently using to support your goals. know, stage one is goal setting and designing and measuring. But in stage two, it’s like, what are we doing if our support, our time, our calendars are, you know, our sessions, our channels to actually put us in a great position to hit the goals. And it sounds like what you kind of uncovered with this group in this call.

was that, wait a minute, like we’ve got a one day approach per week, but it’s likely we’re not seeing the two day lesson from start to end through with a teacher, which means like we’re going even wider. know, we’re going half an inch deep because we’re not even getting to that second part of the lesson.

Yvette Lehman: Yeah, and so really, I guess our question is, it’s like a backwards design approach to lesson planning. It’s like if our goal and what we’d like to see happen, the impact that we want to have this year is this, and we can articulate that change that we want to see. we know how, and another important part of course of phase two is how will we know that it’s happened? So having a really clear vision of if the change we’re hoping to achieve,

occurs, then this is what we’ll notice. This will be the observable behaviors that will be happening in classrooms. Then ensuring that we’re leveraging our structures in a way that are going to, like it’s going to, structure needs to work for us, not against us. And so kind of the question that I pose to you is, you know, do we sometimes get so stuck in a structure or this idea of fairness or, you know, wanting to be routine and regimented? that we actually sacrifice our goal for that routine, that fairness, that predictability.

Jon Orr: Yeah. And it’s not, and I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s like on purpose, right? It’s like, I don’t think it’s like we’re sacrificing our goal. Like I don’t even think that we realize that we’re actually like putting our goal farther away because we’re concerned with, with fairness and, equal, equal access to support. and if, you know, you listen to one of our previous episodes where we talked about going narrow, then you know that like going a little bit more narrow, which means you’re not widespreading this approach. Like,

this, think, you your suggestion to this particular coach was, is it possible that we restructure, you know, the way that you’re supporting so that you could, you know, at least at a minimum, be there two days in a row so that you could see start and or part one, part two and work through that with that teacher or the teachers that they’re gonna bounce around to. Like the other thing is that they were bouncing

from classroom to classroom. Is it likely or is it possible that we actually help and know that we’re gonna be there to start the lesson, middle of the lesson, end of the lesson, day two parts of the lesson with that teacher instead of trying to bounce around to create the actual, know, capacity that for say that teacher in that particular grade band. Like I think that’s where we wanna go a little bit deeper but not as wide.

And I think when we get scared about that, I’m like, well, what are we going to do about all the other teachers that we don’t get to if we do it this way? And how do we support those teachers? is it okay that we don’t support these teachers? So I think we get worried about that when we’re making these types of decisions. What are your thoughts about like that dilemma that we have? I know I got some thoughts, but your thoughts on the dilemma of like, should I focus in on some teachers to get depth versus leaving some teachers without support? this year.

Yvette Lehman: I guess I always wonder if our impact is on many, but the impact is very small, does it matter? Like, will that amount to a lot in the long run? Or would I rather spend the time this year, not, you know, not, the same teachers for many years, but maybe this year, I’m going to really dedicate

a lot of time to teachers in a way that feels very authentic, that’s very meaningful, and I’m going to build the capacity and let’s say those, even if for one coach, maybe it’s 15 educators, like maybe that’s realistic, maybe it’s 10 educators. I’m going to really co-teach, we’re going to co-learn, we’re going to be a partnership. Because if I can really support those educators in deepening their content knowledge, shifting their pedagogy,

we’re now building capacity across our district. So rather than, and you already, you know, kind of gave this example where it’s like, I can move everybody a little bit, but that’s not really going to get us closer. mean, it’s getting us closer, it’s so such a small margin that it’s not going to amount to much over time. But if I really work,

Collaboratively with let’s say these 10 educators. Those are potentially future leaders in your district. Those are teachers who may step into specialized roles like interventionists or learning support or coaches in the future. And so I think we would argue that we would rather because we know resources are limited, time is limited, we can only do so much. I think that our recommendation would be really becoming, as you said, more narrow in our focus.

having a really clear understanding of the impact we’re hoping to have this year, and making sure we achieve that by leveraging our structures that are going to maximize our time and our effort.

Jon Orr: Yeah, it is possible that the structure is not there to optimize. It’s making it harder than it needs to be. And we have to be okay with being flexible on changing structure, redesigning structure. We have to decide, is the structure worth it? Is the redesign of the structure worth the goal that we’re actually after? Is the structure more important or is the goal more important? Because sometimes that’s the hard conversation that you’ll run up against, be like, well, we can’t change

that. And then you have to ask like, why? Like, why is it that we can’t change that? Like, let’s hear the reasons that we can’t change this particular coaching model structure, or maybe it’s a PLC structure. You know, like, why can’t we change a component of this to make it easier for us to strengthen our goal or get towards our goal? And we have to just ask that question. Like, is this structure more important for you?

or is the goal more important for you? And that’s one of those like, questions that we have to ask each other. And we have to ask the important people who help make these decisions with us.

Yvette Lehman: So guess the question we’ll leave you with to consider is have you thought about the impact you want to have this year in your role? So whether that is, you know, at the district level in a coordinator role or you’re in a coaching role, have you clearly defined the change that you are going to support? And then ask yourself, are the structures available to us being leveraged in the best way? to maximize our chance of having that intended impact? And if the answer is no, what changes might be available to you?

Jon Orr: Awesome. Great, great question to leave behind. And also when you answer that question, the other thing is, is if you’re also going like, Hey, I need, I need, and we talked about this in a previous episode too, is like, it’s, irresponsible for us to like, just assume we know best, you know, like based off our own experience or what we’ve seen in our own districts. It’s like, well, what is the research out there around appropriate structure or appropriate models or

How do I design this or what to focus on first? Like if you’re needing some of that support on decision making, then we encourage you to reach out to us. Head on over to makemathmoments.com for such discovery. Like we always set aside a few slots in our calendar a week to meet with leaders like yourself, to look at what’s happening in your district, hear what the pebbles are, where we always want you to leave that particular call going like, here’s my next step.

We reserve some time for that every single week. So head on over to makemathmoments.com for us as Discovery and then you can be chatting with me or Yvette around like what it is that you’re working on and what it is you could be working on or should be working on. So we encourage you to do that if you do need that say push or that next step.

Thanks For Listening

• Book a Math Mentoring Moment
• Apply to be a Featured Interview Guest
• Leave a note in the comment section below.
• Share this show on Twitter, or Facebook.

To help out the show:

• Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.
• Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.