A Framework For Coaching Math Teachers

When planning the rollout of your district’s math program to teachers, coaches, and administrators, creating a unified vision for mathematics is essential.

At Make Math Moments, we facilitate this by guiding educators to actively shape the future of mathematics education in their classrooms. Our approach combines top-down planning with bottom-up feedback to meet in the middle, ensuring that every stakeholder has a voice in the process.

Our coaching at Make Math Moments focuses on what we want to see transformed in our classrooms. This transformation is driven by the mathematical practices we aspire for our students to master, dictating the core of our educational goals. When we look ahead five years, we envision students who are not only engaged in productive reasoning but who also exhibit a productive disposition and strategic competence when solving math problems.

This ideal classroom environment is rooted in effective teaching practices and a strong understanding of mathematical proficiencies. We base our work on well-researched teaching practices (Principles To Action, NCTM) and the five strands of mathematical proficiency (Adding It Up, NRC) as well as many other research based practices to ensure our programs are comprehensive and effective.

We’ve adapted the Learning Mathematical Proficiencies Framework from McGatha and company’s book “Everything You Need For Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader.“

In the middle stages of our adapted framework, we concentrate on pedagogical shifts necessary for enhancing instructional approaches in mathematics. However, we also prioritize the mathematical proficiencies of the teachers themselves.

It is crucial for teachers to have a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics to effectively guide their students. By focusing on these proficiencies, we help teachers develop the skills they need to foster a supportive and successful learning environment.

Our model, which has been successfully implemented in various districts, emphasizes ongoing learning and planning for a unified vision that supports all stakeholders—students, teachers, and administrators alike. This comprehensive approach ensures that our district improvement programs are effective and that the teaching practices we promote lead to significant educational enhancements.

If your math program hasn’t yet made direct support in teacher capacity building in the areas of conceptual understanding then it might be time to re-think your program’s objectives, key results, and action plans.

For those looking to implement this model or seeking further guidance on enhancing math education in their districts, we encourage booking a discovery call here.

Our goal is to support every educator in making math moments that matter, fostering an environment where mathematical epiphanies are commonplace and profoundly influence pedagogical strategies.