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What does it look like to build Bridges in real time?

In this episode, we highlight the story of a district leader who knows she can’t do the work of math improvement alone. She identified her Bridges—instructional mentors and department chairs—and committed to building their capacity in two intertwined ways:

1. Deeply internalizing the district’s math objective around discourse 
2. Equipping Bridges as instructional leaders 

We break down the specific moves that were made to build this capacity, including modeling math discourse strategies, using monitoring tools for growth, and creating space for Bridges to practice facilitation. We also share how she is defining success for this school year—and why her compound approach matters.

By building up her Bridges, she ensures the work reaches classrooms consistently. She knows she’s only one person, but by positioning these leaders strategically, she multiplies her impact across the system.

Key Takeaways:

• Why Bridges are essential to scaling math improvement
• Two strands of capacity building: deep math understanding and leadership practice
• Specific strategies for equipping Bridges to lead at the school level
• How monitoring tools and facilitation practice help Bridges grow into instructional leaders
• Why a compound approach (building others to build capacity) creates sustainable change

Attention District Math Leaders:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Yvette Lehman: In Monday’s episode, we talked about this idea of bridges, the people that are positioned within the organization to translate the what into the how through PLCs, through staff meetings, through classroom observations, through school goal setting in collaboration with the school level leadership team. So I wanted to just talk through an example that I’m seeing with one of our district partners currently. So we have a district partner who is responsible for supporting math.

for middle and high school within their organization. So they have a partner at the elementary level, and then this is one person who supports grades six through 12.

And I think that this person had this realization that, you know, this work is too big to own on their own. Like without having this explicit conversation about bridges at the time, because at the time I didn’t think I had this language and we didn’t have this language to share with them. She identified that it’s like she needed shared ownership of this work. She couldn’t get into classrooms frequently enough. She couldn’t get into every single PLC. She wasn’t at every staff meeting to be able to support this work. But who is?

And that was kind of the question, like who are the people within the organization that she could build the capacity in to be able to internalize the objective? Their objective in particular is around discourse. And then, you know, how could, what work did she have to do with these people? Like what capacity building did they need? She had to identify them and then she had to provide explicit capacity building.

Jon Orr: Right, who’s the team? Yeah, and it’s it fits perfectly in what we’re trying to teach our teams because we oftentimes after like, let’s say we talk, we’ve already established stage one, which is objectives, you know, vision, key results, we are getting into the nitty gritty of like, how we’re going to carry out, you know, these big moves that we want to make. Oftentimes, we have to help our teams say, come to terms with going more narrow than they originally thought. And then one of the ways that we say like going more narrow, which means like, like we have to almost like put

put our own mentality around trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number all the time when it’s just one or two of us doing the work. We need to get narrow so that we can give intensive support to some goals, some people, some team members, so that we can amplify the work, we can compound the work. And so when she’s saying, I need to actually, I can’t do this alone because otherwise you are just focusing on the greatest good for the greatest number, you will never get there.

who are those people, who is the team that we can then give the intensive support. So that goes in line with getting narrow, but it also goes in line with what we talk about, about bright spots. It’s like focusing in on bright spot teams, bright spot individuals that can amplify the work, do this work so that you can compound from year to year to year. So that just falls in line with exactly what she’s trying to do and what we would recommend.

Kyle Pearce: Well, and it brings me back to in the last episode where at the top of the episode, we talked about the what and then we talked about the who and there’s a big in between there as well. And it’s like, if people don’t actually understand the what with clarity, when we try to, you know, reach and and try to touch everyone in the district, you know, and and trying to have that impact because we want the the the greatest good for the most people.

what we end up doing is we actually perpetuate the telephone game, right? So it’s like a lot of the work that we’re actually doing actually isn’t going to be helpful for what we’re trying to accomplish, even though we’re working really hard. You know, it feels great to be able to be working with different, you know, people across the district, might feel like things are working really well. But then at the end of the day, we don’t see any actual systemic change, right? You might get those pockets of success.

But imagine if we took those pockets of success and we actually spent more time with those individuals. And ideally, those are the who’s that are going to be our bridges and really strengthen them so that when you leave that building or when you are not around that you feel more confident that the message is not only clear, but they’re actually feeling confident that they can share it.

because the worst thing we could possibly do is be someone who feels like they’re in a leadership capacity or leadership role, but they’re actually not clear on the messaging. So what do you do in that case? You usually don’t push it as hard because you’re not confident, right? So you need to have that confidence. And I think this just speaks to, we say it all the time, but it’s really, really important to remind us that it is not a bad thing to be. focusing on less so that we can ultimately in the long term get way more.

Yvette Lehman: what this district leader had to come to terms with last year was that it’s okay if I spend this year focusing on these bridges. Like it’s like they had to give themselves permission to say this year will be a success if by the end of the year these individuals are better positioned to support this work moving forward. So instead of it being one person positioned to do this work

It’s now seven. So the first group that they targeted were their instructional mentors. And so again, this district leader had to give themselves permission that they were going to put their energy, their time, their observation opportunities into building the capacity of the instructional mentors. And one of the structures that I love that they used in this district to build up that understanding of internalizing the objective. So remember, their objective was around increasing discourse, student to student discourse in classrooms.

They were trying to, as an action step, support the implementation of five practices for orchestrating productive discussions. So when they came together during their meetings, they worked through five practices. And it wasn’t like they were talking about five practices, they actually lived it. So it’s like they identified a task, they established the learning goal, they then would do a mock classroom, just the seven of them.

where they would actually have somebody play the role of the teacher that day. They would work through the task. They would talk through the monitoring, selecting, sequencing. And like they did this multiple, multiple times, like over and over again, so that they really deeply understood this structure for planning to position teachers to facilitate discourse in their classrooms. They weren’t even going and doing it with teachers yet. Like they didn’t feel that they as a team had the capacity yet to

replicate this in their PLCs or with teachers, they needed to really internalize the planning structure themselves. So like these are examples of when we talked last time about we need to internalize the objective, but we also need to practice coaching moves, coaching conversations. And the interesting thing in this particular organization is that these instructional mentors didn’t all have math backgrounds.

So imagine the added complexity, right? Where you’re going in and you’re coaching a math teacher on discourse in the math classroom, but you have a science background or you have a language background. And so really supporting them and having confidence to engage in these conversations with teachers was a part of the work as well. So that was stage one.

of identifying bridges was building the capacity of the instructional mentors who had more touch points with teachers who were in classrooms more frequently who had the ability to participate in PLCs. But go ahead and then I’m gonna tell you who, well, I’m gonna tell you, I thought was really interesting is that was year one and part of the work in year one.

was co-constructing with this team this look for document of like what it looks like now and what it looks like when it’s fully implemented. And that look for document becomes like a monitoring tool, a conversation starter, a self-assessment for the teachers that we’re supporting. This year though, and then I’ll let you guys jump in, they are expanding their team to include department heads. So now we have the central office coordinator, the instructional mentors.

and also department chairs or department heads from each of the sites who are now being brought into these conversations, into these training sessions. They’re being brought in to provide feedback on the look for document. They’re getting into classrooms and using the look for document and then giving feedback on it. And so this team went from one to seven and now we’ve added, you know, seven more people onto this team this year.

Jon Orr: Right. And you can see the compounding happening already in that district by just going narrow and then slowly building out and widening. Think about it like this too. And to be honest, many of our district partners take this approach. Sometimes they have the seven. Somebody’s calling it the magic 50. Somebody’s calling it the math council or the math task force. People are saying, I’m collecting a…

few that I can support individually because I know there’s only one of me, two of me, and we can support that many to carry this workout and make sure that they look, you know, they are exemplifying exactly what we’re trying to do in our classrooms across, but what you’re doing is you’re doing the repeated reps. there’s this idea that we always strive for quality first, and this is again going to the greatest good for the greatest number is like we want quality, we want everyone to have quality.

And sometimes there’s these ideas that volume negates luck. Like quantity sometimes makes quality. Which means like, can I support these seven? And she’s doing this well, right? Can I support these seven to get clear and more clear and even more clear and even more stronger at what we’re really trying to do here in the district? Like she’s getting the reps in by supporting the seven and then continually supporting the seven in year two and then supporting them to support others.

is just slowly like almost like little test groups. It’s like I’m testing that this is the right thing that we’re working on and we’re building up our quality because we’re doing more quantity on a faster scale. And that’s such an important idea to kind of think about because you can, and also I know you want to jump in here, Kyle, but think about this. If you weren’t clear on the objectives at the first place, if she wasn’t clear on like what it looks like and committed to saying those are important for 10 years of work, you can imagine that

Why that’s so important that when you roll into year two and all of a sudden you’re branching from seven, because you got hundreds of teachers in your district and you’re going, well, we have to commit this long because this is the work, this is the compounding effect and if we switch two years from now, then the seven are gonna be great teachers and then maybe the expanded circular are great educators as well, but it’s like now we have to go back to the drawing board because maybe all of a sudden these other pieces need to be strengthened. sticking to the work is important and having those objectives. Okay, Cali.

Kyle Pearce: Well, the vision, the vision that I had in my mind is like just this impatience we have in life with anything that takes time. And I go back to, know, everyone knows on the, on the, the podcast, how much I loved, I love teaching compound interest, you know, to, to kids and showing like you could turn a penny a day doubled for one month into millions and millions of dollars.

The problem is, is it at the beginning, seems like nothing. And actually for half of the month, it’s nothing. It’s the second half of the month where everything starts to happen, right? So, you know, for those who don’t know, had an episode on this way back when you double a penny a day. It’s like, you know, you get to the second week and you’re still going like, my God, I’ve only got like a handful of dollars here. By the last day, you have something close to $30 million by just repeating this process. So when I hear you say that about

you know, the quantity, the reps, right? It’s about doing it and continuing to do it and continuing to believe and continuing to do it with the same group. Because if we do it with the entire group, that compound effect doesn’t happen, right? You stay in that first week of doubling the penny with everyone and you’ll be lucky if you make it to the second week of doubling the penny with people in, you know, in a couple of years and therefore,

What ends up happening? We as humans, we’re impatient and we move on. We start moving and changing our goals saying it must be the goal. It must be this. It must be something else magic. When in reality, really what it comes down to is by trusting the process and saying like, if this is good work, if we understand the work and we’re all clear on the work and then we move to that next level and we find those people that we can truly support and put those reps in that compounding effect will take effect.

And over the long term, it’s gonna win. The hardest part is convincing ourselves and trusting and then not losing trust when you’re in the second week of compounding, knowing that those next couple of weeks are coming soon. Now, unfortunately, it doesn’t just take us a month, right? We have to take that month of compounding the penny and we have to stretch it out over a longer period of time, months and even years in order for us to start to see

you know, the fruit of our labor actually sort of taking effect. So hopefully these analogies that we’re using is helping people to, you know, convince themselves and then reconvince themselves. This might mean that you’re gonna have to meet with your leadership team and remind each other of why you’re doing what you’re doing because it gets hard. And sometimes it feels like nothing’s happening when in reality, a ton of things are happening under the surface and you just have to be patient and follow and trust the process.

Yvette Lehman: this leader, said, how would you define success for yourself this year? Like what would be a win if I come to you in May and I say was this year successful for you? And she said, this year will be a success if my department chairs by the end of the year see themselves as instructional leaders. Like that’s like right now they see themselves as managers or they do you know ordering and organizing and pacing, but it’s like if by the end of the year they see themselves as instructional leaders,

that will be a win because they have far more opportunities to engage with teachers than she does. They have department meetings. have periods where they’re free, where they could be in classrooms observing and providing feedback and team teaching and co-teaching. The structures are in place for this person to be a leader in their building. It’s not being leveraged that way currently. So the wins are, I want my department chairs to see themselves as instructional leaders and I want us to have a

more aligned understanding of what discourse looks like in the classroom. Because right now, what we all say discourse is doesn’t look the same, sound the same, feel the same. And so we need to get closer and more aligned in our definition of true mathematical discourse. And if that happens this year with just this group of middle leaders, that will be a win for this district leader.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. Yeah. To me, it’s beautiful because it’s actually a perfect example of how those two key pieces, those two strands are intertwining. So we’re talking about internalizing the objectives. So we’re hearing that and getting clear on what mathematical discourse looks like, sounds like, and is in our math classrooms. And it’s supporting the bridge to be a leader, to be a coach.

because I do remember, I vividly remember this as a department head that you’re in a position that’s supposedly a leadership position, but I interviewed for it and then I was it. And that was it. I didn’t have any support. So I didn’t want to, a lot of times people feel like they don’t want to be bossy. They don’t want to tell people what to do, which is they shouldn’t do these things. These are not leadership skills, but.

where do we get that from? Just because we wear a hat doesn’t necessarily mean we’re ready to do that work. So it sounds to me like, you know, they’re doing both and they’re doing them in tandem, which is really important. And the key piece here is that if the department head doesn’t feel like they are the bridge, even though they might’ve been told, you know, you’re the department head and you’re gonna be the bridge, if they don’t feel like they’re able to do that work, then it’s gonna be difficult for that to take.

to take force. So really focusing on helping them with those leadership pieces and those coaching skills is going to, you know, go quite the distance along the way. So great example here.

Jon Orr: Yeah, and what I love about the pathway she’s on is that by setting her key results that you just defined, these two wins by the end of the year, she’s also set up methods for her to track her progress on these so that she can answer this fundamental question that we all need to answer or be accountable to is that when we look back on the year, like when we get to June, we get to May, or we get to July, is that what were the things that moved the needle? What were the things that got us closer to our

and our vision for mathematics, and how do I know that we’re closer? And if we can answer that, we’ve got wins. And because you’ve collected the wins, and she’s on a great pathway to collecting those wins because she’s defined them, but also she’s moving on the right pieces to see that progress. So if we’re, you know, we talked about this particular example, if you also are wondering, you know, how to structure.

a math improvement plan in these ways. We talked a lot here specifically about kind of this combination between stage one and stage two for us. Stage one is vision objectives, know, key results. Stage two is about aligning the right pieces and the right team members. But the fourth stage is also about inspiring growth. And a lot of times when we, get to that part of the work we’re doing with our teams, we’re talking about motivation, but we’re talking about team structure. We’re talking about setting up sustainability for long-term success. And this is where these compounding ideas come from is

is we have to sometimes have these mindset shifts as leaders to take these new initiatives on. So if you’re looking for some guidance there, you can always head over to makemathmoments.com for us as Discovery. Hop on a quick call with us and we can steer you in the right direction in terms of all four of these stages for math improvement. thanks for listening and we’ll talk soon.

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