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Episode Summary:

Are you tired of investing in math resources for your school or district only to see them gather dust on shelves?

In this episode, we tackle a common challenge for math coordinators, district leaders, and administrators: how to make smart, impactful decisions when faced with sudden grant opportunities, new curriculum mandates, or unexpected funds—ensuring your investments truly support teaching and learning.

• Learn how to align new math resources with your district’s vision and goals for maximum impact.

• Discover a clear four-step framework for evaluating, selecting, and implementing math resources effectively.

• Understand how to avoid overwhelming teachers while building their capacity to use math resources with fidelity.

Tune in now to uncover strategies that will help you make the most of every resource and dollar for lasting improvement in math education!

Resources:

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

Attention District Math Leaders:

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

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

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

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jon Orr: In this episode, we are going to unpack how to make good decisions around the resources and the availability of those resources that you have. So for example, it’s likely that all of a sudden you get some grant money or you get a money bomb or all of a sudden there’s a new curriculum at your fingertips that you need to adopt. And how do we make the choices that we make? Like how do we make good choices around what resources to implement and what resources to buy?

what curriculums that we should be adopting. We want to talk about this in this particular episode for you math coordinators, you district directors of mathematics, or maybe superintendents or administrators for say specific schools or specific buildings. But, you know, how do we choose those? Because Yvette, we’ve heard, you we hear stories, you know, about, you know, buying resources.

and then they’re sitting on the shelves. It’s like, hey, we bought this with this money bomb or this grant money. And it’s like, but the last time I saw it was, I went into this classroom, it’s sitting on the shelf. How many resources are sitting in shelves, in classroom closets that we all spent money on over years past, they failed to be adopted? That’s what we’re talking about here, Yvette. Where do your thoughts, where do you wanna begin?

Yvette Lehman: Well, I think you make a really good point. What is the point, I guess, of purchasing something that’s not going to be used to support student learning? And so you’re right, sometimes it’s the end of the year, there’s money to be spent and it can’t be spent on teacher release time. We don’t want to send the money back. And so we end up buying yet another resource. But the challenge there is that if we don’t have a plan in place to support implementation of that resource, if we don’t know how we’re going to

roll out the resource, provide training on the resource, help teachers understand how to integrate it into their existing program. You might as well, I always say this, it’s a little bit drastic, but like you might as well light them on fire because they’re just taking up space and space and buildings is always tight. So they sit in the corner and they collect dust.

Jon Orr: Well, it’s not even that. It’s like they sit in the corner, they collect dust, they’ll be, you know, if you don’t have a plan, like you said, if you don’t have like an actual detailed plan, and I know when I say that, it’s like, my gosh, that’s time, effort, you know, things that I have to dedicate, you know, structure to. How am I gonna make sure? And then not only that, but like, you’re going to need to figure out if you’re gonna use this particular resource.

where is the impact lie and what impact are you looking for and what changes are you looking for and how are you going to measure that? Like that’s a lot, right? Like that’s a lot. So it’s like when you get these resources or these money bombs, it’s like you’re basically being asked if you’re going to do it well, you’re going to be asked to put in some effort here to figure out a plan forward. Otherwise it is going to sit on the shelf and it’s not even going to do that. Like it’s going to sit in those closets. It’s going to sit on the shelves, but then…

The other thing is you’re gonna basically you’re doing the spaghetti at the wall approach, right? It’s like, I’m gonna grab this because I have access to it. Why not, right? But then what we do is we toss it and it’s gonna sit on shelves. It’s also gonna like, you’re gonna feel like you’re going to say, spend some of your professional development time to help implement it. But you again, if you have not created the plan around it of where the impact and what impact you’re hoping to achieve with this particular resource.

Then you’re still just throwing spaghetti at the wall and then teachers are going like, well, why is this important? I don’t understand where the important is. How does it fit in? I see that you’re demonstrating this or you see that you’re showing me how this works, but there’s a disconnect there. And then why they sit on shelves is because of that disconnect, teachers aren’t seeing how this fits in with the bigger picture of like what the vision of mathematics is or how it supports them in the class to clear their pebbles out of their shoes.

if they’re not making those connections. And if you haven’t made those connections, then that’s why it sits on the shelf. But then the other thing is it can alienate your teachers, right? It alienates you because it’s like, here’s another thing to put into your lesson planning, but you haven’t done the legwork to like figure it out. Like it’s almost like, when I say this Yvette, the money bombs are almost like a curse and a blessing at the same time, right? Because it’s like, you don’t want to turn it down, but you also know that in order for you to use it, should do a, you know, you have to do all this work to actually make impact.

Yvette Lehman: Well, you make a good point. It’s like how many resources do we realistically expect teachers to implement for a single subject? Because again, if we’re talking about elementary teachers, this isn’t, they don’t usually only teach math. So let’s say you have four, five, six resources that you expect teachers to implement just to run the math program. So maybe you have your core resource or a curriculum. You have online platforms for them to use with students. You have resources for small group intervention.

How deep is the implementation of any one of those resources? And I often say it’s like if we’re going to add another resource to the teacher’s plate, what are we removing? What is it replacing? Because if we’re constantly adding and never removing, we talked a little bit about the fact that like then it becomes almost like you don’t use any of them because it’s so overwhelming to figure out how they fit together. And another thing that we struggle with, of course, during the math block is time.

Nobody has enough time for math and I have yet to meet a single teacher who says yes, you know, I have sufficient number of minutes of math in a day to meet the needs of my students. So what is really the expectation for all of these different resources? Where and when do they fit within the let’s say 60 minutes or 50 minutes a day that teachers have for math?

Jon Orr: Mm hmm. So when we want to answer that, it’s like, do we handle, you know, the grants that come down and how do I think about choosing, you know, the right resource and then structuring support around that resource? And this comes back to something that we talk about a lot here on our podcast and the work that we do with our district partners is it almost like rolls back to

your vision for mathematics, your objectives, your key focus zones, your priorities, your key results. Like sometimes we overlook, you know, this component because of the, you know, the fires that you have to put out on a regular basis. We think, you know, we’re just going to get into it. We’re just going to, we’re going to give professional development. You know, oftentimes you say, I know what good math learning looks like, and I’m going to help my teachers get there. So I’m going to provide professional development at this tier and at this tier, at this tier and

What, you know, what happens is you, if you don’t have the clarity that you need on where you’re trying to go and you’ve clearly mapped out that clarity and what your steps are, and then knowing when impact has occurred, which means you set up some measurables along the way to go, Hey, using this plan, I anticipate to see this level of impact across the district or this level of impact.

at target grade levels or this level of impact at school sites, or maybe it’s these two or three school sites. It depends on, you your resources at hand, like your coaching staff, or is it just you or your levels, you know, the levels that you have access to, your channels. Like we have all of that to think about, but you have in order for these decisions, these resources to not be wasted, you know, for money bombs to actually be impactful, that work

done at the beginning of the year or, you know, if you’re middle middle of year right now and hearing this message, it’s like, there’s no, you could start right now and get clear on what it is. And it helps kind of formulate where you’re going to go because they become the filter. Like your priorities and your key results, like what are you going to achieve by the end of the year? When you get a money bomb, you’re like, perfect. I know exactly where that’s going to go because I know what impact I’m trying to make. And I know where my holes are because of the clarity you’ve created to get to that spot. 

But when you aren’t clear and when you don’t have those priorities set and you’re doing your spaghetti at the wall approach, then the money bombs feel like they’re a great win because you’re like, hey, perfect, I get more resources. But then you’re in the situation we talked about at the beginning of like why that’s a curse. What are some other, some next steps for them to kind of like think about?

Yvette Lehman: I was just thinking, maybe right now, a next step is to take an inventory of the resources you have made available to your educators and really ask yourself whether that resource is having the impact you were hoping it would have. What are the barriers to implementation? Oftentimes when we have too many resources on our plate, we end up only implementing them almost like at a surface level.

there’s no implementation with fidelity because we haven’t had a chance to do a deep dive into truly the intention of that particular resource. So maybe starting by doing an inventory of what is currently out there in your system. How is the usage and is it serving the purpose that you were hoping it would have? And if the answer to those questions is no, like if it’s one, it’s not being used or two, it’s not serving the purpose you hoped it would then

Is it something that should remain in classrooms? Is it something that should be continued to, you know, that we should continue to support the implementation of if it’s really not meeting our needs? So that would be my kind of first next step is to get a good handle on what is out there, what is being used and what is is helping you get closer to your goals for the district and for student achievement.

Jon Orr: All right. So that’s, know, that’s a good, a good next step. You got any other next steps there?

Yvette Lehman: The other thing that I would actually, I would personally do in this situation is look at where the gaps are. So the question that you have is essentially what do you have out there? What is not being leveraged? And then where are your gaps? And because what you want to ensure is that the resources that you are providing are helping your educators move students towards more achievement. I actually have a fourth one.

And the fourth recommendation is if you are considering the purchase of a resource to fill a gap. So if you’re saying to yourself, for example, you know, in our district, we don’t have a resource currently to support tier three intervention in mathematics. If that is something you’re hoping to address, I think we would caution that buying a resource without a plan for implementation, without a plan for teacher training, without time and resources invested. in the use of that resource with fidelity is not money well spent.

Jon Orr: So, you know, and I think when you think about putting all four of those steps together, you know, and I think when you think about getting clarity on what is important and where you hope to achieve and what impact you’re looking at by the end of the year or by the midterm or by two years, like basically having specific goals with measurables tied to them to measure the impact you’re having. If you’re clear there.

If you’ve taken the inventory of see where, what are the resources that we currently have? How are we implementing them? Are we wasting some? Are we maybe not implementing some of the others? Does that resource actually help us on our goals? Does that not help us on our goals? And then going, hey, what are the gaps that we have? Where are some of the gaps to get us to the places that we want to get to in terms of our math instruction or student achievement? That’s the third one. And then you’re saying taking those three into account, what’s the plan?

for that particular resource is now let’s develop the actual plan to use it. And I think when we think about all four of those together, this helps kind of, this helps go back to the clarity. It’s almost like we have a little cycle here, because if you think about that fourth one in the plan, it will help you get more clear on like, where are my next steps to get to where I’m going? And that might formulate, say, your key result in going, this is what I’m hoping to achieve. And then you might go, hmm.

If I’m really after that key result or if I’m after that impact in my math program or at that classroom or in that school or in that grade level, then is it okay that I dedicate the resources, our time, the work that we’re doing to support that particular curriculum or that particular resource? like, does that be, it’s almost like if everything is in alignment there, then it’s almost like you have a perfect scenario to go all of everything we do from here on out is to support that implementation because it actually gets me closer to my goals.

Yvette Lehman: Right? Well, and you brought up two good points. It’s like, if we don’t support the implementation, then what’s the point of spending the money in the first place? So it’s like, that’s the first thing. But then to your point, if it’s worthwhile, if the time and energy and money spent is worthwhile, then we better make sure that the resource we selected is of quality.

It’s like something that you believe in, something that you can say, if teachers implement this resource with fidelity, it will improve teaching practice and improve outcomes for students. And if we can’t say that, then it’s not the right resource. So it’s a challenge, right? Like you’re in this situation where it’s like, I don’t think a resource is the answer to, you know.

Jon Orr: Perfect. Yeah. It’s like you-

Yvette Lehman: all of the challenges we have in math education. think you and I both believe that that’s teacher capacity building is the solution to, you know, seeing improvements in math experiences, but a really good resource that has, you know, good content, good pedagogy built in can help us move an entire district. If teachers are using it with fidelity. But in order for teachers to use it with fidelity, we have to invest in them and we have to invest in the implementation of the resource.

Jon Orr: Totally. And you love a good if-then statement. If I believe this, then this will happen. And it’s like, this is how you want to make some of the structure choices that you’re making. going back, we’ve got four recommendations here when you’re implementing next steps on deciding on, say, spending or implementation of certain things. Let’s get clear.

Yvette Lehman: I do, I love it. It’s so true. So if, yes. Right.

Jon Orr: Make sure you have your plan. Make sure you have, your vision, your objectives. What is it that you’re actually hoping to make impact on? How are you going to measure those? Then take the inventory of where we are on the existing. Maybe there’s that resource sitting in the box that we don’t need to spend this money on because we actually have it and we haven’t been implementing it well anyway. So what’s another one going to be? Then the gap. Where are the gaps we are seeing right now? And we’re going to probably nudge you a little bit by saying like some of the gaps that we’re seeing. And so this is what we get from the conversations.

we have with, you know, talking with site coordinators, district leaders, math coaches every single day is a lot of those gaps are in that capacity around, you know, the math and not just math instruction, but mathematics proficiency of our educators. We do need some strength there and we do need to dedicate and invest time and resources into strengthening that up for our people. That’s where we’re going to make a sustainable impact in our people that are that is

carrying out, say, using these resources and then make sure that plan is followed. We have a plan for that particular resource. Those are four next steps that you’re gonna wanna take next time you get that money bomb or that grant or all of a sudden you’ve gotta choose that new curriculum. thanks for listening. Yvette, any last words here? Big takeaway.

Yvette Lehman: think my big takeaway is that if we’re going to invest in a resource, then let’s actually invest in it. Not just in the purchase of the resource, but in the use of the resource across the district.

Jon Orr: You’re here.

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