The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
Twitter: @cpmmath
Facebook: CPMEducationalProgram
Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
Twitter: @cpmmath
Facebook: CPMEducationalProgram
Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
Well, here we are. It's October 31st 2023, halloween, and it's episode 14 of season 3 of the More Math for More People podcast. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Hello, there, I'm. Joel.
Speaker 1:And I'm Misty.
Speaker 2:And you're listening to the More Math for More People podcast, an outreach of CPM educational program.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of conversations about math and math education on this podcast. We're passionate about continually improving the way math is taught and we hope that you learn something in every episode that helps you become better at what you do.
Speaker 2:And we hope that you have some fun and laugh as well. That always makes things a little more interesting.
Speaker 1:Yep, we're pretty passionate about having fun Joel.
Speaker 2:So please have a listen, and we think it'll be well worth it.
Speaker 1:Boom, knock, knock. Who's there? Guess what day it is.
Speaker 2:National treat your cat well day.
Speaker 1:No, you're supposed to say guess what day it is.
Speaker 2:Who Guess what day it is? Who?
Speaker 1:Hey, it's National knock knock joke day.
Speaker 2:Of course it is, of course it is oh my goodness, Knock knock jokes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you love them or you hate them.
Speaker 2:I love them, but I don't know a lot. Like I'm, I like to be that who guy? Oh, you like to be asked a lot of knock knock jokes. That's right.
Speaker 1:I feel like I knew a lot more knock knock jokes when I was a child than I do now.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Like I remember only a few knock knock jokes Like let's see, I remember. I remember the banana one.
Speaker 2:Which one's that.
Speaker 1:Knock knock. Who's there? Who's there? Banana, Banana, who Knock knock. Who's there Banana?
Speaker 2:Banana who.
Speaker 1:Knock knock.
Speaker 2:Who's there?
Speaker 1:Orange, orange, who Orange you? Glad I didn't say banana, again I do remember that one.
Speaker 2:I really didn't remember that one.
Speaker 3:I really did, I really did.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that is so funny yeah.
Speaker 1:No, but my, so you got to remember that one. Yeah, no, there's a lot of. There's a lot of like reasonable knock knock jokes. I think my favorite knock knock joke Tell me Of all time? Yeah, okay, it goes, knock knock.
Speaker 2:Who's there?
Speaker 1:Interrupting cow. Interrupting cow Moo. Oh, it's hysterical that one's very funny, Not not?
Speaker 2:to not to. Not to the one asking. Well, maybe not You're interrupting me. Well, the first time the first time.
Speaker 1:I heard it someone else said it and I thought it was pretty funny because they were just so excited. Moo yeah, I think you have to have like eight year olds around to really enjoy knock knock jokes.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm enjoying them right now and I am not eight.
Speaker 1:Well, if the eight year olds could tell them they probably know a lot more knock knock jokes than we do. Definitely, as a middle school teacher, I could tell there are certain things that children, as they grow older, they become aware of and find really funny because I would hear the same jokes every year. And I would always act like I'd never heard them before.
Speaker 2:Right, same way, and I always felt like, well, it must have been that teacher before that. They had me that, told them that joke, that, and now they're telling me, so I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah, I think it is like there's age there's age appropriate. Totally, totally.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that knock knock jokes are for children, but that is something about the humor. It's like that surprise, that little bit of like oh, I didn't expect that. Knock knock jokes definitely play up on. We didn't expect that surprise bit of jokes.
Speaker 2:And I just did get surprised with that orange one, but like that, that's a good one when you're surprised. So maybe surprise is part of a knock knock joke.
Speaker 1:Well, surprise is definitely part of a joke, something that we didn't expect. Like. It is not a knock knock joke, but it's one of my other favorite jokes of all time what's green and has wheels.
Speaker 2:Green, has wheels a car.
Speaker 1:No grass, I lied about the wheels.
Speaker 3:See.
Speaker 2:I don't see. They're not the thing. That's what's so funny.
Speaker 1:Or they have a strong pun right, so they're like clever word play. That's the hallmark of a dad joke.
Speaker 2:Well, I may or may not.
Speaker 1:Have just looked this up and by that I mean, I just did, that's what I figured.
Speaker 2:So here we go, knock, knock.
Speaker 1:Who's there?
Speaker 2:Tank. Tank who You're welcome.
Speaker 1:See, well, on that note. So if you would like to send us your favorite knock, knock joke please do, please do. Cpm podcast at cpmorg you can send us your favorite knock, knock joke. It'll be. We're not going to email it back and forth here, we're going to send us the whole. Thing one time, as if you were talking to us, but that would be great.
Speaker 2:Email would be great. We can reenact them or even send a voice recording.
Speaker 1:It could be even better if you telling it to an eight-year-old.
Speaker 2:That would be great.
Speaker 1:Great, we can't wait. All right, on this episode of our podcast we have a few more sneak peak previews of sessions for the 2024 CPM Teacher Conference. Keep in mind that the early bird discount deadline is November 15th, just coming up in a couple weeks. If you want to save $75 on the main conference and $75 on the pre-conference, get yourself registered by November 15th. Here you go. Thanks, We've got another sneak peek for the teacher conference.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, sneak peek, sneak peek. This sneak peek is we're here with Kathy Williams, and Kathy is a member of the professional learning team who lives in Louisville, kentucky, and I think you're the lead speaker for this session called now. I'm gonna forget it again.
Speaker 3:Have you planned?
Speaker 1:an equitable lesson.
Speaker 3:Yes, have you planned an equitable lesson? How do you know? How do you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah okay, See, I got it. Ha ha ha not really Well. So, Kathy, we wanna know a little bit more about where did the idea for this session come from and what's the session gonna be about.
Speaker 3:So tell us, please, all right. Well, we've been doing some book studies and really looking at equity in the classroom and wanting to hear more student voice and provide students with a way to have an identity in the classroom, and so we started looking at our lesson plans and so are we even planning to make that happen. But if, unless we're intentional, it's not gonna happen by accident. So in our session we're gonna look at a video so we all see the same thing and we've got some tools that we're gonna use. One of our resources that we've been using is catalyzing change, and they've got books at the elementary, middle and high school level. So we use the middle and high school books, and so we have found this crosswalk that they created, that is, the math teaching practices and supporting equitable mathematics teaching, and it really started to resonate with us because not only do we have these math teaching practices from NCTM's principles to actions, but now we've added the equitable teaching practices as well.
Speaker 3:So as we watch this video, we're gonna look and see do we see evidence of these in this little video snippet? Later we'll look at a lesson plan. Are we seeing evidence there? And then we have some questions. So how do you know that your lesson's equitable, so each of those teaching practices, we've created a series of questions to help teachers be able to determine have I included an equitable piece in this part of my lesson and so we feel like by having some touchstone videos and lesson plans to look at that, that's really gonna help us spark that conversation. So the teachers will be able to take the materials back which we will be providing them with the crosswalk, the questions to support equitable mathematics teaching, as well as the lesson plans, and we have them at every level, pretty much through middle and high school.
Speaker 3:So we're just really excited to be able to share this content and promote more equity for all of our students.
Speaker 1:I like that approach of starting by looking at another person teaching right At video of a lesson and looking at other lesson plans as a way of getting at then looking at what I'm doing as a teacher, right, it's often hard to look at ourselves right away, and then if we look at and see it in other places, then sometimes it's easier to look at what we're doing as well. So I like that approach.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I had the same thought of looking at a lesson plan, ensuring that I have some of that practice in the lesson plan. That's really interesting. That'll be a good session.
Speaker 1:So that session do you remember? If it's on Saturday or on Sunday, it will be on Saturday and it's the second session.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we're really excited about this session. I'll be working with Cheryl Tucker and Sarah. Uh-huh yeah, the two of us are really excited about this and we plan to have lots of materials for people to take away.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, excited to see you there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, thanks for coming on the podcast and telling us about your session, and we'll see you.
Speaker 3:we'll see you there. Thanks, joel. Thanks for this day.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, so we have another sneak peek for the teacher conference before you. Yeah, indeed, we're here with Tracy Jackson and Tracy you teachin', is it Poway? I might get mess it up now.
Speaker 5:I do. I teach in Poway Unified School District.
Speaker 1:Excellent, excellent, and Tracy is gonna be doing a session called HALT the Eight Thinking Thieves. Is that right do I get?
Speaker 5:it right. Yes, yes, that's it so that's it.
Speaker 1:We wanna stop those thieves. Yeah, I'm really curious about this. This is a really good title Me too. Because it makes me go. I wanna know what that is. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about what your session is and why you're doing it for us.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I think part of it is my own journey and some things that I learned along the way that I was unintentionally doing but it was keeping students from really thinking and it took a while to figure out that teaching really wasn't about me and what I wanted to convey. And so, as I went through this whole process and then NCTM came out with principles to action and I read it and just thinking over some of those things that I did prior to understanding everything about students not everything, because we can never understand everything but prior to understanding more, I realized I was doing things to really unintentionally HALT student thinking and using those eight effective teaching practices inside principles to action, I took that and looked at my own practice. I'm also a TOSA for our district, so seeing that in classrooms pulled it all together and thought about the things that we unintentionally do as teachers but actually harms student thinking and so like. Can I give you an example?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was gonna say give us like one great example to tantalize us.
Speaker 5:So my first one is mimicking. So that memorizing and mimicking things, how, when we ask students to memorize things, sometimes it works out that they're actually thinking about the problem, but sometimes it takes away the thinking. And so if a student knows, like, the end of the movie, like if they know the end of the movie already, they're not really gonna think about the plot because they already know the end. So that idea of memorizing and mimicking, and then what we can really do instead.
Speaker 2:That's a great one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm super excited for your session. I think that there'll be a lot of great takeaways for people and, I know, for me and my journey too, there was a lot of those kinds of things around. Oh, I thought I was doing things really great. I went well, lessons went great, but really there's so many more opportunities to share that authority and have kids thinking and doing those things and it can be really challenging to self-examine and change your mind about those things, so I'm excited to find that.
Speaker 5:Can I share another?
Speaker 1:one, absolutely.
Speaker 5:Yes, please. So another one that it took me quite a while to embrace was that idea of mass practice. I used to think that if I gave students enough practice with one particular topic right after they'd learned it, that was the best way Like students would get that muscle memory going on, like going to the gym and doing multiple reps, and that was a big learning for me to realize that actually doing a whole bunch of problems in a row, students weren't thinking after about problem two, and then they were just following a procedure and I wouldn't understand at the end when I'm giving the unit assessment, like, well, why do they not do this? Like they did 50 problems on this? They should really understand this. And so that was one big learning for me that CPM does so well and helps me along my journey with that one as well.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. I'm just thinking about same thing as Misty, Like I've self-reflected on things like this and I'm so interested for your session because I think that will be really beneficial to my own reflection on my beliefs. So that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for being here and telling us about your session. I'm super excited. Do you remember if your session is on Saturday or Sunday?
Speaker 5:I think it's on both.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was sorry, I did it twice for you. Oh, yeah, yeah, you got to get a burly, though it's first of the day. Two opportunities to see this session.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Tracey, have a great day.
Speaker 5:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:We'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:OK, so next up we have Tom Strickland, our next sneak peek. Tom Strickland is a classroom teacher and professional learning team member who works in Salem Kaiser School District and he is going to be doing a session. And remind me the title exactly, Tom. I know it's about Desmos, but it's yeah, basically it's Desmos Art. Desmos Art. That's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's warring functions and restrictions, and the shifts that we can make of our paired functions to create art Cool.
Speaker 1:Cool, so tell us why you came up with this session, how you came up with this session and what people might expect from your session.
Speaker 4:It all started when I'm teaching algebra 2, and even in algebra 1, you start introducing domain and range, how you have.
Speaker 4:Sometimes you have all real numbers or a restricted domain, or you have a parabola where the domain is only in a certain portion of our number set, and I found my students couldn't figure it out, like they couldn't hold on to this idea of domain and range. But when we started playing with Desmos and we would look at a linear relationship or a quadratic function and we would restrict the domain and so then the function only exists between this point and that point, they started to understand OK, the domain is from here, oh, the range is from here. And so we started doing those restrictions and we saw some cool things. Kids started to make sense of it. But then we started to play with art and we, like you can change the circle, only have a portion of the circle, or you can make a happy face. As a teacher I submitted an art sample to our art show at McKay High School and I made a Mickey Mouse at a Desmos and I got third place in the art show. I was excited, that's amazing.
Speaker 4:As you come to my classroom you'll see my third place, mickey Mouse done by Desmos. But now my students have started to create different things using their function relationships and restrictions of domain and range. And so we just play. We make snowmen, we make different designs, we make flowers, we make platypuses, we just we do different cool things. And so I've started. I have a number of activities that start to teach them the relationships, do this first, play with this, what happens, and through play, and they start to oh, I can make some. One of my girls, my students. She took a little happy face. She created a top hat and a bow tie and so, in her own knowledge of functions, she built a bow tie and she restricted the domain and range to make sure that the linear relationship's just one certain place. It's adorable. And so she's learning some cool stuff and she's playing with parent functions and it's all in Desmos and it's creative and kids get to choose where they're going or what they're trying to accomplish. It's just.
Speaker 1:And I imagine that there's some combination of guess and check and then using transformations as well, right Like, over time you get better at figuring out like oh, I just need to change this number and I don't have to just sit and guess and check 100 times.
Speaker 4:So that's cool. You start realizing certain adjustments to the parent function put it in a certain place, and so it starts with just guess and check. But then there becomes this like intuitive understanding of oh, I can move it over here, I can move it over there, and it's fun, and so I'm excited to bring it to the conference and we'll play with it. We'll let teachers play and then we'll give them some activities that I've already got ready that they can just it'll be in word or whatever they can adjust.
Speaker 2:Give it to their students. We'll have to make something in the conference, maybe that when they could come to your session or not. But have this idea display your play somewhere in the conference over the weekend, That'd be fun. Oh nice, we could have like a little bulletin board of white.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's most art to just create.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 4:Nice, so it's your making this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, tom your session, I think, is on Saturday, so people will be able to find it in the program and come in enjoy some Desmos with you. So thanks for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 4:Thank you and giving us your sneak peek Probably wonderful.
Speaker 2:Thanks, guys, I look forward to seeing you at the call you too.
Speaker 1:So this week we didn't get any updates from our journey people, which is fine.
Speaker 3:They're teaching.
Speaker 1:They're doing things, which is great, so we're going to have a conversation. Our observations of teachers on their journeys yeah, how's that?
Speaker 2:That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks. Joel and I have both done some implementation support visits in the last few weeks and so which is a great time we get to go into teachers classrooms in, mostly in their first year of implementation, try to get in there sometime in their first few months to just see how things are in their classroom and support them with questions. They have things they're trying to do. Occasionally we'll give a suggestion or two or a wondering around something they might try that they're struggling with, but the main idea is really to help teachers through that first year in particular, which can be really challenging.
Speaker 2:I'd say so.
Speaker 1:I don't try to pull punches. There's one place I do not pull punches with teachers is that the first year is hard.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:It is super challenging the things you're going to do and, primarily, I think, it's hard In my mind. It's hard because you don't have enough information to make really good decisions and later you discover that you didn't make a very good decision, like, oh, I decided to change this, I decided to skip that, or I decided to do whatever. And then later like, oh, I wish I had done that differently.
Speaker 1:That's right, and that's just what it is. For me, it's around accepting that you don't have enough information, you're going to make some mistakes. Then our job is to help teachers make better bad mistakes.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so they're making ones that have a little more information, that's right, and it's not just around being a teacher.
Speaker 2:I'll look at people that I've worked with. They're wonderful teachers and make good decisions and things like that. But I think when you adopt a curriculum and when you adopt CPM. It comes with a lot of resources, so you're navigating the resources. It comes with a lot of suggestions, so you're listening and making judgments on suggestions. All sorts of different aspects.
Speaker 1:And then for some teachers it depends on how you were teaching beforehand, right Before you adopt a CPM. But there are a lot of instructional shifts. For some teachers it's the collaborative learning. They've always been a teacher who lectures and talks and probably does a good job at that and then shifting to how do I change and let kids work together and have those discussions, and then what do I do? There's sometimes teachers are like well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. You can ask the same questions, Ask them to the teams, that's right.
Speaker 1:That you would have asked in a whole class discussion. Just ask them down at this level, at the team level, instead of the whole class. Right Things like that? For some teachers, it's the mixed-space practice. I think that is the hardest one, like figuring out how to do assessments, figuring out how to help kids understand that they just started looking at this today and that you don't expect them. I don't expect you to know that right now because you just started learning it, but that's a different way of thinking. I think Tracy was talking about that mixed-based practice and the massed practice.
Speaker 1:I think that's really, really true. We get this idea that, well, I did a whole bunch of them, but at some point you stop to think like oh, yeah, I understand how, like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop boop, which in the long run yeah, I don't want kids to have to think super hard to do the tasks but that kind of long-term retention of that automaticity takes a long time.
Speaker 2:Well, and if we back out even more and think about learning? We wanna become efficient, but not thinking doesn't mean efficient. We want them to think while they're in that process.
Speaker 1:Right, well, not thinking in the moment, right Like so, if I'm doing those 50 problems or whatever, right, when I get to problem 20, maybe I'm not thinking so now I'm more efficient for doing the rest of them, maybe, but I'm not more efficient in the long range, right?
Speaker 1:Because a week from now I'm like, oh crap, I'm back to problem one. Yeah, I think that when I was doing my support visits a couple of weeks ago, the thing that there were a couple of things that I think were themes that came up that I wanted to share.
Speaker 1:I have some conversation around here is that one is the teachers I was seeing were about five weeks into school and they were feeling reasonably discouraged in some areas around their kids not working in teams as much as they would have wanted, right? And they're like, oh, they're still doing this, oh, they're still quiet. And I changed teams and now they're not talking or they're not using their roles yet. All these little things. And it was interesting because, from my perspective, I've been in a lot of different classrooms and I walk in and I see what they're doing. Oh yeah, they've only been doing this for four weeks. Five weeks they're about. That's pretty much what I would expect. Right, they are working together some right.
Speaker 1:They are having those bits of conversations. They're not sure about it yet and they're still struggling with some of these things. But you've only been trying it for four weeks and I think that the teachers, like all of us, when we want to do something really well, we focus on the parts that aren't right. Right, because that's okay. If I wanna make it better, I'm gonna figure out what's not right and I'm gonna try to fix that. But we spend so much time focusing on those things that aren't there yet we lose track of the parts that are going well, that the kids were able to sustain these conversations, that they are starting to get it, that they're having these little bits. And then there are pieces that the teachers can still be doing. Well, you just changed genes. Did you give them a chance to talk about something that wasn't math?
Speaker 1:before they had to talk about math, which is hard to just jump right into like I don't understand so little things like that, that then they're like, oh, okay, and they can keep moving in that direction. But that was one of the things I noticed is that the teachers were all starting to feel discouraged or even their kids weren't doing it, even though they've been doing it. They've been doing it since they began school. That's not very long yet. Yeah yeah, that part was.
Speaker 2:In our learning events we talk about and for whatever. This line just resonates with me when our working agreements. Just to have grace with yourself and others and I just always pops up in my mind that as teachers we do give our students a lot of grace, but we also don't always reflect for ourselves and give that peace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember when we used to have it as mastery takes time, and practice, or whatever it was, and I was like, including for you as teachers that's the first person to have some compassion for it. It's gonna take some time to figure it out, but one of the things you noticed in your ISPs.
Speaker 2:It'd been interesting because you talked about like within five weeks that you saw. So I've been in the Salt Lake City School District doing support visits and I'm doing a school a week, sort of thing. So I got to see the journey of yes, we're at the end of chapter one through chapter two and then starting chapter three, like I got to see through the various schools, those things.
Speaker 2:And one thing I appreciated about the journey part is that where teachers were wary, they were why aren't, like groups aren't working, the teams aren't working. To now, I think things are going pretty good.
Speaker 2:Like there was a definite like span of discussion there and I'm ready to try some more strategies. I'm ready to so within that short amount of time. There's hope that things are gonna get better. And I remember even this is before even I even knew about CPM that my one of my college professors said to me the first year's gonna be hard for you, but the next year's gonna be better. And if it's not better, give it one more year. And if it's still not better, then we'll think about some things Just wait longer.
Speaker 3:That's right, yes.
Speaker 2:But it's that reminds me of the implementation part of it's gonna be better. It was interesting also to see cause. Each school has its own environment and so the things that we're focused on, and once one school they really are focused on that mixed space practice and how does that coincide with what I've done in the past? They're trying to blend what they've done in the past into that idea of mixed space practice and so that's their challenge. And then in another school they're focused on the collaboration piece. But all of the schools were finding some success, so that was good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see, I think that there were a lot of little things that I think, and those are not things necessary to change in the first year, because you can't eat the whole elephant in the first year. With CPM implementation, it's just, there are always going to be pieces, which is why we try to have continuing professional learning. There's always going to be pieces you take on later and, yes, that does mean that some of the pieces what you're doing now are not as good as they could be. But guess what? I was not as good a teacher in my first year as I was in my 15th year.
Speaker 2:I feel, sorry for the kids in my first year compared to my 15th year, and there were still things I didn't do right. It's the education profession that each year you add to your toolkit and you grow and you learn just as we want our students Just like students.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:One thing that I found is really successful here in the implementation is that I got to meet with the administrators, so the administrators were on board with what as far as supporting their teachers and making sure that they were given ever opportunity to be successful. And then they had coaches who have joined our site based leadership program as well, and I think that that's really been helpful in an implementation and to support, because they're there every day to help those teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that goes along with this. The more people who know and understand what you're trying to do, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, parents and kids Totally Yep.
Speaker 1:Admin know all of those pieces that they can see them, the big picture, that's right, yeah, and it's hard.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:It's just hard and you know what you can do it.
Speaker 2:You can.
Speaker 1:It's going to be fun.
Speaker 2:Great.
Speaker 1:So that's all we have time for on this episode of the More Math for More People podcast.
Speaker 2:For more information and to stay connected, find CPM on Twitter and Facebook. You can find our handles in the podcast description.
Speaker 1:The music for the podcast was created by Julius H and can be found on picsofacom. Thanks, julius. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 2:It'll be November 14, national Pickle Day, and I do love a nice crisp bill-pickled, quartered into spears, have it on the side with a sandwich or just by itself. So I'm excited to talk pickles with Misty. It's funny. It was part of a pickle of the month club for a year. So every month I get two jars of pickles and there are always some kind of obscure place in the country that they would come from, and they were really interesting flavors. I really like how creative you can get when you're making pickles. So come join us on November 14 where we talk about National Pickle Day. Thank you.