More Math for More People
CPM Educational Program is a non-profit publisher of math textbooks for grades 6-12. As part of its mission, CPM provides a multitude of professional learning opportunities for math educators. The More Math for More People podcast is part of that outreach and mission. Published biweekly, the hosts, Joel Miller and Misty Nikula, discuss the CPM curriculum, trends in math education and share strategies to shift instructional practices to create a more inclusive and student-centered classroom. They also highlight upcoming CPM professional learning opportunities and have conversations with math educators about how they do what they do. We hope that you find the podcast informative, engaging and fun. Intro music credit: JuliusH from pixabay.com.
More Math for More People
Episode 8: Where Joel and Misty finish their conversation with Tom and Marcus and discuss all of the great things about spoiled dogs
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In Episode 8 of the More Math for More People podcast, we pick up where we left off last time with our conversation with Tom Stricklin and Marcus Blakeney about supporting minority students in the classroom. We also get a little carried away in our discussion of dogs for National Spoil Your Dog Day (Bella and Wendell are NOT spoiled!) and Tom and Marcus help us demonstrate a Traveling Salesperson study team and teaching strategy.
It's good stuff, so listen to the entire thing!
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It's August 10th, 2021, National Spoiler Dog Day, and it's also episode eight of the More Math for More People podcast. Cheers! Woof woof!
SPEAKER_04Okay, here we go. Hello, I'm Joel. And I am Misty. And this is More Math for More People brought to you by CPM Educational Program.
SPEAKER_01This podcast supports middle and high school teachers with best practices, relevant research, helpful hints and tips, and anything else that randomly comes to our minds.
SPEAKER_04We hope you find this podcast both entertaining and informative for your math teaching practice.
unknownBoom.
SPEAKER_04Today is national spoil your dog day. And so uh the end of last episode, Miss D.I. was talking about your dog Bella. You are a dog person. And uh so I'd love to hear some ways that you spoil Bella.
SPEAKER_01Some ways that I spoil Bella? Well, I guess that's a matter of uh perspective. Um I don't think that Bella thinks she's spoiled. I think she just thinks she's getting what she deserves. I would say Bella is probably pretty spoiled though. She has um she has two giant fluffy beds, uh, one here in my office, one fluffy bed on my bed that she sleeps in. Uh she does think that she owns the couch. And she gets, as part of my subscribe and save from Amazon, she gets a new squeaky toy every month uh to chew up because she loves to chase them and squeak them and then eat the squeakas out.
SPEAKER_04How long does it take to get the squeaker out?
SPEAKER_01Um, it depends. Sometimes she just likes to chase it for a while and then she gets bored and she just starts eating it. Um she likes to chew off the eyeballs, and then that's how she gets at the squeaker. She's she's kind of perfected her ability to get to the squeaker now because I get her the same kind of toy all the time. So she's like, this is how to get to it. But she loves to just chase them a little bit and and chew them up, particularly when when people come over, then she likes to go and get all her toys and you know, show them off how she can rough them up and do all those kinds of things with them and shake them, so on. One of the ways that some people might say she is spoiled, and I I know all of our co-workers are well aware of this, is that when the mailman comes by or any other package delivery, it turns out now, anytime the UPS or the FedEx or the Amazon delivery person comes by with their truck and then is gonna come up, she thinks they're gonna come up onto the porch. So she she's now when she just hears the truck, she gets prepared. Um, but whenever anyone, an up a delivery person or the or the postal carrier comes to the porch, she gets a little treat. Like I just take those little greeny treats and I cut them up into little tiny pieces and she stops barking. Because I actually do want my dog to bark if people come up onto my porch. I don't want her to not do that. It's a good point. Yeah, she needs to know that yes, you've done your job. Thank you. You don't need to bark anymore. I am aware of that person, and they are not going to kill us today.
SPEAKER_04I can attest to that. I've seen you give those treats, and also I've seen Bella react in a way where you would say, Oh, that's not really coming to our house, but here's a treat anyway. So I've seen that as as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's yes, it's one of those unfortunately it's like one of those escalating things, right? Where she she learns more and more which things she gets treats for. So then she's like, What about this? Do I get a treat for this? Do I get a treat for that? She also gets a a treat whenever someone uh comes to the house or whenever uh I come home, she gets green treats. And somehow she has decided that she gets two treats whenever someone new comes to the house. And I think that's because I would give her the green treat that I give her when I come home. And then I she was not satisfied. So I started giving her like a little like rawhide. It's not really rawhide, but one of those like chew-up rawhide treats that's safe for dogs. And so I give her that also. And now she expects the two treats.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think that makes sense actually.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Totally. She barks and barks and barks, and I give her the first treat, and then she'll just keep barking, and then I'll give her the second treat, and then she's quiet.
SPEAKER_04Well, and then she can go get a toy to demonstrate the skills of removing the squeaky. Absolutely. So that makes total sense to me. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01If you think like a dog, it totally makes sense. How about Wendell? How is Wendell spoiled?
SPEAKER_04So Wendell, and and like you said, it's a matter of perspective. So anything I'm about to say that's spoiling, I kind of think is normal, and I'm sure Wendell thinks is normal too.
SPEAKER_01Well, yes, because it's his life. It's very normal to him.
SPEAKER_04That's right. So Wendell is uh we rescued him from a rescue place, and he was found in the desert of Arizona. And some sort of maybe abuse, maybe trapped, but his teeth were completely ground out. They're ground down, did not have teeth. And he was about one year old.
SPEAKER_01Wait, he didn't have teeth or they were they were just ground down, like they're busted.
SPEAKER_04Um I'm pointing at my mouth like you can see, but you can't.
SPEAKER_01I can see it. Like right here. They're like the lily like this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And so I would say this was like kind of almost necessary, but the orthodontist of the Phoenix Zoo gave them some new teeth. And so for Wait, okay.
SPEAKER_01First of all, there's an orthodontist at the Phoenix Zoo, which I guess makes sense. Like I obviously animals' teeth are really important to them. Probably next more important than their wings or their claws, even, unless they're a bird, they don't have teeth. True. But yeah, like that's that's okay. Uh okay, continue on.
SPEAKER_04Yep. And so he had those teeth for quite some time.
SPEAKER_01Wait, wait, were they like little doggy dentures? Were they like implants? Yeah. Did he could he take them out? Do you have to put them in a jar, like in a like in a little cup with with polydent overnight?
SPEAKER_04What we we would only do that on National Spoiler Dog Day is when we would take out the teeth. That's the only time you got clean teeth. That's right. But no, they they were like not like surgic caps, but surgically in there.
SPEAKER_01Like extensions to the other teeth, maybe. That's right. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Even even the canines, all of the teeth. And so in the years that he's been alive, those teeth are now gone, and he seems to be okay with just the teeth he has. So that's kind of interesting. But uh spoiled him for the last however many years for sure. And then like Belly, he owns the couch, he owns the bed, he owns his own bed. Like anywhere that he is, he just owns the space. And if you actually walk into that space and catch him off guard, he'll bark at you and let you know this is my space. Oh, hey, you go you're welcome in my space. It just takes him a moment to kind of do it. Um we can't give him treats, he has a little upset tummy, but he is well taken care of. And I think that's spoiling for Wendell for sure. Have you heard any other crazy stories about spoiling dogs?
SPEAKER_01Oh, in the world? Yes.
SPEAKER_04In the world. I know you're a follower of some dog stuff.
SPEAKER_01I follow a lot of dog Twitters. It's actually the my main Twitter feeds are dog accounts, accounts supposedly run by dogs. One of the so this is a this is not spoiling your dog necessarily, but one of the things that was very cool that happened a couple weeks ago is one of the accounts that I follow is called Um I've Pet That Dog.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01And it's a 12-year-old boy. He lives in Iowa, I believe, and he posts pictures every day of dogs that he pet at the dog park. His name is Gideon. I don't know if he has a dog himself, but he goes to the dog park and he loves to pet dogs. And during the when everything, during COVID, when things were shut down, he would just post pictures of dogs he wished he could pet. And he tells a little story about them, you know, like, oh, I pet so-and-so, and they're this kind of dog, and their caregivers do this and that, and the other things or what the dog likes to do and so on. And a few weeks ago, he retweeted a fundraiser from the Animal Rescue League in Iowa. It was called Poorly Drawn Pets. So if you donated $25 to the Animal Rescue League, then you could fill out this form and send a picture of your pet. And someone who was not a trained artist would draw a picture from your picture. And people, oh my gosh, like the next like two weeks, like every day, there's just all these pictures of people like, I love my picture of so and so. And they'd show the original picture and they'd show this like little, very like cartoonish picture. I mean, they were hysterical. Some of them were, some of them were decent, you know, nice pictures and things, but other ones were just like these silly little, like, you know, kid drawn pictures kinds of thing that would be like what I would draw because I draw like a child. And but it was just it was really great, and it was really awesome. You like go to the hashtag poorly drawn pets, and you could just see like all these, and they must have made a bunch of money because people loved it. It was awesome. That's awesome. So those were all, and I think every one of those dogs was probably a spoiled dog.
SPEAKER_04I guarantee every one of those dogs was a spoiled dog. Celebrating National Spoiler Dog Day.
SPEAKER_01Go out and pet your dog.
SPEAKER_04Well, now listen to part three of our three-part conversation with Marcus Blakeney and Tom Strickland. And if you've missed parts one and two, please go to the previous episodes to take a listen. And here we go.
SPEAKER_01So as we're wrapping up, you guys have both said a lot of really fabulous things. And I want to give you an opportunity uh, real quick here, if you have something else that you feel like hasn't been said that you really want to uh convey to our listeners, what would that be? What are your parting words, so to speak? Do you want to go first, Marcus?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I want to go first because I recently had some reflection. I know this is the work that's gonna be heading in my district's direction in terms of equity. It's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to sit in a situation own how you feel as a professional. Because at the end of our day, our job is to teach all students, right? Our job is to provide a meaningful experience. And so, as many districts and many curriculums are heading in towards this direction of equity and access, be uncomfortable. Be reflective of your practice and how it is impacting students. And be okay of saying, yeah, I had some flaws in the past, but I'm willing to work towards a more equitable approach. Because as you said earlier, Tom, yeah, it's critical for some, but everybody's gonna benefit from the practices that we do. And if I could just do a quick cheap, uh a cheap uh plug here for our for the CPM May newsletter, that that article that Dr. Jason wrote, I mean, it just hits home. It's gonna make some people uncomfortable, but it's grounded in research. And I promise us, if we start looking at our practices and start approaching our classrooms to benefit our students, it's going to get better. I promise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love it. I love it. I would just say my closing thought is um new learning, the uncertainties of new learning is risky, right? It's it's challenging, and it's it's a risk for our students to step into those uncertainties. And so if I want my kids to extend themselves into a risky place, they've got to trust me. And so the time that I spend building rapport, creating community, fostering independence, like that is time that I am intentional about. So in my lesson planning now, I'm I'm intentionally thinking, how am I building community and rapport? How am I creating trust? It's in my lesson planning as well as my content and my math goal. Because I know that it's it's through the door of trust that they will extend themselves and take risks. And so um it's part of the work. It's just as much a part of the work as the study team and teaching strategies, the closure question, and and the and the flow. So I'm I'm I'm needing to be intentional. And when I am, I've got more kids feeling like they belong. So um uh another shameless plug. Um at in our next CPM National Teacher Conference, uh Marcus and I are wanting to do round two, kind of a second iteration of of this talk. And one of the things that I'm really interested in going into is the uh the research and cultural responsive teaching in the brain. Um it's been uh I've been reading through the book and thinking through its its um its directives and its encouragements towards equitable instruction. And I'm hoping that um that that research um compiled with Marcus's and my continued experience in the classroom will just have some new and fresh things as well as some strengthening and clarify and fortified ideas uh for our for our continued session. Any thoughts, Marcus?
SPEAKER_00You said it all, Tom. Sweet.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Marcus. Thanks, Tom, for coming on the podcast and talking with us today about your experiences and the work you're doing. We really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. It's an honor. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01So that concludes our conversation with Marcus and Tom. That was the last part. So we're gonna do a little bit of a wrap-up and kind of summarize our thoughts. And Joel's gonna start.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, of the three parts, I mean the whole conversation was so great and such an important topic. And what I really love is that it's just the beginning. And they're and we're talking about it being just kind of let's get the conversation going, and then how do we continue this conversation moving forward? Some of the things that struck me for sure is Marcus had said that he's glad we're here all together talking about it. And Tom had said it's about equity and it's about collaboration, and it's about those relationships. Some other high points for me were just high expectations for everybody and creating an identity, a math identity. It's okay to be uncomfortable when talking about uh working with students of minority or any kind of student. It's okay to be uncomfortable in our conversations, and then that's how we learn, and that's how we grow. And that's where we've really stood up to.
SPEAKER_01I think that, yes, in order to move forward and grow, we have to we need to be a little bit uncomfortable. And that doesn't mean that we just have to throw ourselves to the wolves or to the wind or to just, you know, always feel like I'm out of sorts or anything like that. But growth does require being uncomfortable. And we can try to find ways to minimize that uncomfortableness so that we don't trigger fears in ourselves and and sort of any kind of like a, you know, very uh emotional response in it. And so finding ways to sort of settle into that uncomfortableness and and and work through it together, I think are really important and super challenging. That's it's not an easy task. If this were easy, we would have done it a long time ago, right? The other thing that I think uh really stood out for me is that building relationships part that that is true for every kid and person, and in particularly important for underserved, minority, you know, disadvantaged kids so that they can grasp and have that sense of being able to move forward in their own lives. I think Tom and Marcus both really talked about how ways they try to build those relationships and ways that they try to connect with their kids and in particular their minority uh students. I love the thing that always that stuff stood out for me so much was uh that it's critical for some and beneficial to all. It's the kind of thing that everyone benefits from it, but it is absolutely critical for some of our kids.
SPEAKER_04So true. And the more that they get that support, it's and I think you just said it great, is it's gonna help them not in their math class, but in their life, like in their learning, in their school experience, in their work experience, in their relationship experience.
SPEAKER_01If it doesn't turn out perfectly the first time, we can keep keep working at it, right? I I can guarantee none of us are perfect at doing this. No, I haven't gotten there yet. I'm not. Um I'm working really hard at it. But yeah, it's an ongoing process and it will be a thing we it will we will do it for a long time, so we should get started.
SPEAKER_04Totally agree.
SPEAKER_01So since we have Marcus and Tom here, they're gonna help us demonstrate a traveling salesperson study team and teaching strategy. So to do this, let's imagine that we're in a core connections algebra class. And Tom and Marcus and I are a team of students who've been working on problem 2-68 of lesson 2.2.3, which is the big race finals. So this lesson is a culminating lesson for work with slope and rates and multiple representations of linear equations. It's also an informal look at systems, as that work really occurs in chapter four. So in problem two-sixty eight, students work collaboratively in their teams to share clues about several riders in the final heat of the big tricycle race. They draw graphs and write equations for each writer and determine who wins the race. Then in problem two-sixty-nine, they answer some questions about the race and the results. And one of the strategies that is suggested for sharing this problem within the class is a traveling salesperson. This is a strategy that could be used in place of a whole class discussion as closure for the lesson. So as we join the class, already in progress, Tom and Marcus and I have already had our other team member leave to go explain our results to another team. And we're waiting for Joel to join our team, and he's gonna share his team's results for problem 269.
SPEAKER_02Good luck with your team.
SPEAKER_04So I just need to tell you about what my team got for problem 269. So, first, let me just show you our graph of the tricycle riders. So you can see that we graphed each rider here, and some were maybe more steep than others, and we kind of said maybe that means that they were riding faster, and of course, vice versa. And then we also made some equations for each of the riders.
SPEAKER_00Oh man, that's cool. So, how did you decide where the line for each rider should start, Joel?
SPEAKER_04Oh, you mean the y-intercept? Well, we used clues, for example, if it said that they got a head start, then we put the start of their line at that distance on the y-axis.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense. That's kind of what we did too. Why is Leslie's line starting on the x-axis, though? I don't get that part. I'm glad you asked.
SPEAKER_04That's because she had a late start of two seconds, and the time change moved her line to the start at two, zero, which means zero meters after two seconds. And then we used her rate from the clue to draw the rest of the room.
SPEAKER_01What was your answer? Who won? That's what really matters.
SPEAKER_04Misty, I'm getting to that. So, like Miss N says, it's not just about the answer. I wanted to explain how we got the answer also.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate that, John. Tell us how you got the answer and what it was then.
SPEAKER_04Please do. So the questions were who won the race? And as you can see from the graph, rider D gets to the finish line at 25 meters at the earliest time. Elizabeth came in last because her line would get there last, and it wouldn't even fit on our graph because she was going so slow. We now join the team at the end of Joel's shareout. So we also found that four of the riders, Leslie, Elizabeth, and riders A and C were all at the same point at twelve meters, eight seconds after the race had started. And you can see that because all their lines intersect at that point. How they didn't crash, we don't we don't know that.
SPEAKER_00That's so funny, Joel. Hey, thanks for sharing that with us, because that looks a lot like what we got.
SPEAKER_01So I guess I guess we're done then.
SPEAKER_04And yeah, before Miss Anne sends us back to our team, I'm totally going.
SPEAKER_01I'm totally going. Oh yeah. And I hope there's a dance afterwards.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Oh man, I can't wait. Go to the Steve, are you dancing? Jacob?
SPEAKER_01So, Joel, I was looking at this blog the other day about podcasts. And do you know one of the things that apparently we're supposed to do on podcasts is to ask people to give us a rating and a review in the podcast directories. Yeah. I did not know that. So apparently, this is an important thing. It's important because It gives our show some like uh social cachet right that other people might say, Oh, is this show worth I don't know, this mo more math for more people? Is it even worth listening to at all? And people could look at the reviews and they would say, Oh, this show is amazing and Misty and Joel are so entertaining and you will learn so much. And then people would download it and start listening to it.
SPEAKER_04That's good to know. So how how do they rate or how do they podcasting service is different?
SPEAKER_01So it's I couldn't tell you how to do it exactly on any of the ones, you know, but like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Pindar and all of them, like all of them have a place where you can rate the podcast. It might even pop up in the app, right? I get that all the time. It pops up. Would you like to re rate this app? Mama's like, not now. Right? So there's a place where you can rate it, you know, probably like one to five stars. Of course, we would, you know, hope you would give us many stars. And then you can also write a review. And it said that writing the review is probably just as important, if not more important, because then that tells some people some reasonable things about the show and what they might expect. You can look in each different kind of directory and do that. And then the other piece is that of course you can subscribe because then, like push notifications, right? You don't have to wait and go, wait, is this the week that more math for more people comes out or is it next week? It'll just come right to you and say, Hey, new episode. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04And it'll just remind you right there. I wonder, can you adjust the five-star rating? In other words, well, can it could it be some sort of rating like where on the sign curve are we? Or we're more math for more people. So I'm wondering if you can adjust that if it's just a sinew.
SPEAKER_01I hope that we don't have a sign curve because that would mean people would like, we're great, and then we're really terrible, and then we're great, and then we're really terrible. I'm hoping more it's like an exponential curve, right? A positive, not a decaying one. That would be terrible, also. So yeah, we would uh we would love it if you'd go give us a rating and review. That's awesome to know I might go do it myself.
SPEAKER_04That'd be fun. For more information and to stay connected with CPM happenings, you can find CPM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
SPEAKER_01Our intro music is one of the very talented contributions that you can find on pixabay.com. Thank you, Julius H, for your creation. Join us for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, Joel?
SPEAKER_04It'll be August 24th, which is Pluto Demoted Day. And at first I was really scared to hear that Pluto the dog had got demoted, but it's actually Pluto the planet. And it was really interesting for me to find out that Pluto was only actually a planet for about eight years, because I always grow up grew up not like that. I'm planeting eight. It just seems like such a small time frame for it to be. What's really interesting is there's five. So not just I want to go on record and say that Marcus looks great, like normal.
SPEAKER_00You should have seen me last week. Last week I looked really good. This week I'm like, I'm like trash. It's the end of school year. I'm like, I'm struggling.
SPEAKER_04I think you both look amazing.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02I'm fired up.