Today we speak with Caitlyn Sloan, a high school geometry teacher who is currently in the role of leading a math support class for students who require additional support. In this conversation, you’ll hear Caitlyn reflect on her challenge to stay true to her investigative, problem based approach to teaching mathematics given that her students have been pre-taught to mimick the rules, steps, and procedures. Listen in to see how she might be able to bridge the gap!

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we talk with a member of the Math Moment Maker Community who is working through struggles and together we brainstorm possible next steps and strategies to overcome them.

Today we speak with Theresa Wills, the author of the new book Teaching Math At A Distance. Theresa is an assistant professor of mathematics of education at George Mason University and a past middle school math teacher.

Stick around to hear how to run math routines online with success, optimal strategies for engaging students online, how we collaborate online in meaningful ways, how we can use the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussion in an online space, and guidelines for creating rich online interactions in math class.

Today we speak with Thomasenia Lott Adams from the University of Florida — Go Gators! Thomasenia is a mathematics teacher educator/researcher with numerous accolations for teaching and the work she does with pre-service teachers.

We speak with Tomasenia today about how we can use students’ cultural capital to empower learning, why promoting student voice is so important in math class, and why increasing the number of meaningful “touch points” in math class helps amplify student voice.

Today we speak with Tom Marker, a 14 year veteran sixth grade teacher from Ohio! Tom reached out to us to tackle the big struggle of trying to convince his students to avoid rushing to standard algorithms and instead value strategies that can be more meaningful outside the classroom.

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we talk with a member of the Math Moment Maker Community who is working through struggles and together we brainstorm possible next steps and strategies to overcome them.

Today we speak with Liesl McConchie! Liesl is a former math teacher with nearly 20 years of experience training school leaders and teachers across the globe. She has partnered with over 300 schools to implement the science behind what really improves achievement for all students as well as co-authored two books on brain science and learning.

In our discussion we learn the answers to what is brain-based learning and why we need to use it in our teaching; why there’s no such thing as a motivated student or an unmotivated student; and, how to use brain science to boost student motivation.

That there is Jason Garner, a veteran teacher of 13 years and currently teaching 5th grade. Jason has been diving deep into changing his classroom over the last year. He’s taken the Making Math Moments That Matter Workshop and is currently applying what he’s learned with great success. He chats with us about how to take his learning to the next level.

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we talk with a member of the Math Moment Maker Community who is working through struggles and together we brainstorm possible next steps and strategies to overcome them.

Today we speak with George Garza – a high school teacher who strives to make a difference in his students’ lives is struggling with engagement, pacing, and reaching his students who are falling behind. In this conversation you’ll hear George reflect on his practice and realize where he needs to focus his efforts. Stay with us to hear his epiphany!

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we talk with a member of the Math Moment Maker Community who is working through struggles and together we brainstorm possible next steps and strategies to overcome them.

Today we speak to Kat Hendry a teacher from Jon’s hometown of Kingston Ontario!

Kat has shown her passion for MANY areas of mathematics education, however in particular, she’s very keen on the importance of diagnostics and descriptive feedback in math class and has been digging into why we need to focus more attention in this area.
Stick around and you’ll learn: how to start your journey to implement diagnostics and descriptive feedback effectively without keeping up at night worried with overwhelm, and the 5 phases of a diagnostic so you can utilize them in your teaching.

Do you find students give up too easily when working on math problems that are unfamiliar?
Do you find yourself stuck pre-teaching concepts to students BEFORE they have a chance to truly engage in the problem solving process just so they can “get through the problem”?
Our constant pre-teaching of concepts is just one of the reasons students struggle with word problems and throw their hands up in frustration.

In this episode, you’ll learn 5 reasons students struggle with word problems and what we can do to overcome this common math class challenge including how we can engage our students by planning and delivering lessons that ditch the “I Do, We Do, You Do” model of instruction to teaching through rich tasks to leverage student curiosity and promote resilience through problem solving.

In this episode we catch up with Nathan Vaillancourt who was on episode 28 of the podcast. This time around Nathan unpacks where he was in his journey the last time we spoke and the progress he’s made since then. He also shares how he’s transitioned to more of a standards based grading practice to help him with instruction and the creation of assessments.

This is another Math Mentoring Moment episode where we chat with a teacher like you who is working through some problems of practice and together we brainstorm ways to overcome them.