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 4.21: Teacher Conference Reflections and IGNITE!
It's International Scrapbooking Industry Day!
Plus on this far side of the CPM Teacher Conference, we reflect on amazing event and look forward to the next one.
Then we have a live recording of the Ignite talks from the Teacher Conference. So enjoy!
Speaker proposals for 2026 CPM Teacher Conference on February 21-22, 2026 in San Francisco will open on or about April 1!
Send Joel and Misty a message!
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
X: @cpmmath
Facebook: CPMEducationalProgram
Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
you are listening to the more math for more people podcast an outreach of cPM educational program.
Speaker 2:Boom. Okay, so here we are. It is March 4th.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 2:What is the national date today?
Speaker 1:Is it March the 4th? No, that's May the 4th. We're in March.
Speaker 2:Oh, may, is that.
Speaker 1:Well, that was like a Star Wars. I was trying to make it. Yeah, star Wars. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Nevermind.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was like a Star Wars joke. I was trying to make it a Star Wars joke. Okay, never mind, it's March 4th and it's International Scrapbooking Industry Day.
Speaker 2:Wait, it's International Scrapbooking Industry Day.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Not just Scrapbooking Day, no, scrapbooking Industry Day, scrapbooking Industry Day it's not about doing the scrapbooking it's about people selling scrapbooking supplies to you.
Speaker 1:It's about the whole industry.
Speaker 2:Oh, the whole thing, which would include doing the scrapbooking, correct?
Speaker 1:When do you think the? Term scrapbook became official. When do you think that happened?
Speaker 2:Was there some kind of a certificate that made it official?
Speaker 1:I have some information here. I have more questions about the questions than anything usually. What do you think?
Speaker 2:When did scrapbooking come into parlance? I'm going to guess 1850.
Speaker 1:Well, you're probably right, because it says the 1800s Nice it was. Yeah, it was quite.
Speaker 2:That's pretty vague the 1800s. Plus or minus 50 years 1872, a famous scrapbooker Famous.
Speaker 1:He patented self-pasting scrapbooks.
Speaker 2:Self-pasting scrapbooks.
Speaker 1:Can you think of who that might be?
Speaker 2:Is that? Like a sticker so is that like a sticker? Sorry, I, that's how I read it.
Speaker 1:Yeah okay, self-pasting would be like a sticker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who did it? Yeah, uh, elmer mark twain?
Speaker 1:I don't know, there's zero connection or reference for you to ever guess that.
Speaker 2:That's that, but I to guess, like you know, somebody who made glue or 3M 1872. 1872. I imagine 1872. Self-tasting scrapbook Yep Interesting.
Speaker 1:I like to celebrate this day because I have some history with scrapbooking. So in one of my many experiences in my life I was a flexography printer Flexography so it's basically rolls on adhesive sort of thing, and so you got to get the plates, you got to mix the colors the cyan, the magenta, the yellow, the black and our biggest customer was medical labeling. So anything on a bottle, anything on a label. Our second biggest customer wine, wine labels were a big deal. Third scrapbookers.
Speaker 2:They were putting stuff on.
Speaker 1:They had ideas, maybe themes, like maybe I myself am a National Park Junior Ranger, they were putting stuff on. They had ideas, maybe themes, like maybe I myself am a National Park Junior Ranger and there might be Junior Ranger scrapbooking stickers or things like that. And here in Utah there are many scrapbooking parties. Oh yeah, All sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to figure out what it had to do with it going on something that was round well, is that part related or not.
Speaker 1:Oh, I round because like a pill bottle is what your vitamin.
Speaker 2:But then how did like, but they didn't have to go on something no, it could go on something flat as well, yeah okay, okay, that part was just superfluous, yeah yeah, got it kind of like Mark Twain, I guess. Kind of like a lot of things on this podcast. It's a national day of.
Speaker 1:True, true. Perhaps Do you have any experience with the scrapbooking.
Speaker 2:When I was little like I would say seven to 12, I kept a quote unquote scrapbook but it was just like where I put my like little school awards and things I'm sure I had an award for like my math facts or whatever you know little things like that. I get little certificates or whatever and I'd put them in there. I kept things. I used to have that somewhere Nice, but I didn't ever get into the like, the like swanky scrapbooking that people do now, or it's like it's a big deal.
Speaker 2:It's a whole deal, yeah, and that's that's more than I want to do. But I appreciate the people who do it because they look pretty cool, I mean it's it's like a neighbor of love.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, it's one way you can celebrate actually is to browse through your scrapbooks, so you could pull those out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I could go pull my scrapbook out when I did when I was seven, yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is nice.
Speaker 2:I had a little stroll down memory lane. What are you going to do to celebrate then, Joel?
Speaker 1:Well, so one of the suggestions is to join a scrapbook club.
Speaker 4:I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1:I could get a scrapbook. I actually have a lot of samples of stickers still, but I don't have books to put them in, so maybe I'm going to celebrate by getting a book. Put some stickers in there.
Speaker 2:Putting your self-adhesive scrapbook pieces in it. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:Again Mark Twain. It says he made a fortune about $100,000 of his scrapbooking technology Back then. That was a lot of money. That's really interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a lot of money. I mean, it's still a lot of money now, sure. So they had more money. I would appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You're 50 years ago.
Speaker 2:Wow, all right, well, enjoy your, is it international or national.
Speaker 1:It is International.
Speaker 2:Scrapbooking.
Speaker 1:Industry.
Speaker 3:Day.
Speaker 1:And I hope you indulge in however you do Exactly.
Speaker 2:Okay, so here we are. It is March 4th.
Speaker 4:It is March 25th Doop-de-doop.
Speaker 2:What is the national date today.
Speaker 1:Is it March the 4th?
Speaker 2:No, that's May the 4th we're in march, oh may, is asked.
Speaker 1:Well, that was like a star wars. I was trying to make that star wars. Okay, it's march 4th and it's international scrapbooking industry day wait, it's international scrapbooking industry day, not Scrapbooking Industry Day.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, not just Scrapbooking Day, no Scrapbooking Industry Day. No Scrapbooking Industry Day, it's not about doing the scrapbooking it's about people selling scrapbooking supplies to you.
Speaker 1:It's about the whole industry.
Speaker 2:Oh, the whole thing, which would include doing the scrapbooking, correct?
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:When do you think the term scrapbook became official? When do you think that happened? Was there some kind of a certificate that made it official?
Speaker 1:I have some information here.
Speaker 4:I have more questions about the questions than anything usually. What do you think?
Speaker 2:When did scrapbooking come into parlance? I'm going to guess 1850.
Speaker 1:Well, you're probably right, because it says the 1800s Nice it was. Yeah, it was clean.
Speaker 2:That's pretty vague, the 1800s yeah. Plus or minus 50 years 1872, a famous scrapbooker Famous.
Speaker 1:He patented self-pasting scrapbooks.
Speaker 2:Self-pasting scrapbooks. Can you think of who that?
Speaker 1:might be, so is that like a sticker.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I that's how I read it yeah, okay, self-pasting would be like a sticker. Yeah, who did it?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, elmer mark twain hello there's zero connection Elmer Mark Twain. Oh, mark Twain, there's zero connection or reference for you to ever guess that.
Speaker 2:I certainly guess, like you know, somebody who made glue or 3M 1872. I imagine 1872. Self-tasting scrapbook Yep Interesting.
Speaker 1:I like to celebrate this day because I have some history with scrapbooking. So the in one of my many experiences in my life, I was a, a flexography printer Flexography so it's, it's, it's basically rolls on adhesive sort of thing, and so you got to get the plates. You got to mix the colors the cyan, the magenta, the yellow, the black and our biggest customer was medical labeling. So anything on a bottle, anything on a label. Our second biggest customer wine, wine labels were a big deal. Third, scrapbookers.
Speaker 2:They were putting stuff on.
Speaker 1:They had ideas, maybe themes, like maybe I myself am a National Park Junior Ranger and there might be Junior Ranger scrapbooking stickers or things like that. Here in Utah there are many scrapbooking parties. Oh yeah, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to figure out what it had to do with it going on something that was round. Is that part related?
Speaker 1:Round, because a pill bottle is what they are vitamin.
Speaker 2:I understand, but then how did like, but they didn't have to go on something.
Speaker 1:No, it could go on something flat as well, oh okay, okay, that part was just superfluous information. Yeah, yeah, got it Kind of like Mark Twain, I guess.
Speaker 2:Kind of like a lot of things on this podcast. It's a national day of True, true.
Speaker 1:Perhaps Do you have any experience with the scrapbooking.
Speaker 2:When I was little like I would say seven to 12, I kept a quote unquote scrapbook but it was just like where I put my like little school awards and things. I'm sure I had an award for like math facts or whatever yeah.
Speaker 2:You know little things like that. I get little certificates or whatever and I'd put them in there. I kept things. I used to have that somewhere Nice. But I didn't ever get into the like, the like swanky scrapbooking that people do now or it's like it's a whole deal. Yeah, and that's. That's more than I want to do, but I appreciate the people who do it because they look pretty cool. I mean it's, it's like a neighbor of love.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, it's one way you can celebrate actually is to browse through your scrapbooks, so you could pull those out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I could go pull my scrapbook out when I did when I was seven.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is nice.
Speaker 2:I had a little stroll down memory lane. What are you going to do to celebrate that, Joel?
Speaker 1:Well, so one of the suggestions is to join a scrapbook club. I'm not going to do that. I could get a scrapbook. I actually have a lot of samples of stickers still, but I don't have books to put them in. So maybe I'm going to celebrate by getting a book. Put some stickers in there.
Speaker 2:Putting your self-adhesive scrapbook pieces in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go Again, mark Twain. It says he made a fortune about $100,000 of his scrapbooking technology. Back then that was a lot of money.
Speaker 2:That was a lot of money. I mean, it's still a lot of money. Now you had more money, I would appreciate it. Wow, all right. Well, enjoy your international or national.
Speaker 1:It is International Scrapbooking.
Speaker 4:Industry Day.
Speaker 1:And I hope you indulge in however you do Exactly.
Speaker 6:Alright, come on in and find your seats. You can hear me out in the hallway. Come on in the room. The weather's fine, not as good as I thought, Alright thanks everybody for coming to the 2025 CPF Conference Ignite Session. Did you all have a good day today? Excellent, I had a good day too, my feet actually kind of hurt.
Speaker 3:Somebody told me just yesterday today all that kind of a thing. Within one day there's a lot of walking here.
Speaker 6:I think they walked over like seven miles or something. So I don't know if you've checked your watch yet. I don't think I'm that close to seven miles, but that's a lot of walking for sure. So lots been going on here at the conference. If you do get a chance to post, on social media if you're on social media hashtag those things.
Speaker 6:We'd love to see what you've been up to this weekend for sure. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce our first speaker. So Brent McLean is our first speaker. He comes here from Oregon.
Speaker 6:He's part of our professional learning team here at CPM and he's been supporting CPM teachers since 2016. One thing I can tell you about Brett is he loves records and everywhere I've gone with him, he always takes a few minutes to find a record store to go find those records. So if that's of interest to you, you can go ahead and ask him about that. So let's give it up for Brett McClain.
Speaker 7:Alright, thank you very much. Let's get this real and start Alright well. Thank you so much for letting me share some of the things I've been thinking about lately, but first I want to let you know it truly all started with football. It really did. I learned at a very early age that four touchdowns is 28 points, so I learned my seventh Pretty sure. That's why I became a math teacher.
Speaker 3:But first, before we talk more about what I'm going to think about.
Speaker 7:I'd like to get some of your thoughts. So think about this problem 56 minus 19. No pencil, no paper. Look at that. No brush, no pen. What do you visualize our traditional pencil and paper algorithm Crossing out the 5 and making it a 4? Anybody yeah, there's always some, absolutely Did anybody do it more like the 56 minus 20 at 1? Nice, very good. What about this? Anybody do 57 minus 20?. It's really only kind of backwards from the last one, but I guess that used to be explicitly taught in school.
Speaker 7:Me, I actually did 56 minus 10, then took away 6, then took away 3, kind of as I was going. But what if I asked you what is 56 minus 14? Would you get it? 56 minus 14? Would you get it the same way? No, no, that's amazing. Okay, that's what we get to hear. So did anybody go left or right? Did I take away 10 and then 4? So, as you might guess, I've been thinking about math fluency and what that means. So first a couple of stories. A while back I went to the movies here and I got two tickets to the movie, got some popcorn, got some. The bill was $43.97. Okay. So what did I do? I gave him a $50 bill at two pennies. He didn't know. I gave him the two pennies right, so he didn't realize I wanted five cents back. You guys got that. I appreciate that, all right.
Speaker 7:So then, a little bit later, I went to McDonald's this was just a couple weeks ago Got breakfast. The bill was $16.50. I want you to think about maybe what I did. I gave you a $20 bill and two ones. You looked at the machine, saw $16.50, looked at the bills and immediately gave you my two ones back. Didn't realize I wanted the five back. I didn't want the ones, All right. So I've been teaching a long time, been in education a long time, and I've been wondering about, so what's up with? Math fluency.
Speaker 4:Why, during my career, does it?
Speaker 7:not seem to be getting better and better and better, especially since we've been concentrating on it.
Speaker 4:There's a lot of things we've been trying to do, so I've been asking myself this question, so I decided to ask some English teachers about English fluency.
Speaker 3:And here's what they said about reading Pretty much everything.
Speaker 7:Read accurately, with expression and with comprehension. This is comprehension aspect. Okay, that's good. What about language? So language, my favorite word, anticonultimate. Now, if you don't know, what anticonultimate is.
Speaker 4:The anticonultimate letter of the alphabet is X.
Speaker 7:So through that, because you're fluent in the language, you could probably figure out what that means. Now some people will speak many languages fluently, not many more fluently. We're about fluent drivers, right? I know we weren't fluent when we got our driver's license, probably, but we definitely want to be.
Speaker 3:If there's an emergency we don't want to be thinking a foot off on.
Speaker 7:So I'm thinking a lot about what math fluency is, what it means, and a lot of times the first thing people say is accuracy and speed. Nothing about comprehension, so this book that I showed you can get through in the CTM great book talks about four components of fluency, accuracy, efficiency, flexibility and the ability to apply strategies appropriately.
Speaker 3:You know cutting the grass with a pair of scissors, not a very efficient strategy.
Speaker 7:It'll get you there, but it's not very efficient For me. Six plus seven was always hard. I had a hard time with that one on a gender and you know I had to do those timed tests and I wasn't very good. 6 plus 7 always ended me up. So what did I do?
Speaker 4:I did 7 plus 7 minus 1.
Speaker 7:That's the strategy I learned Because I love my 7s. It's a true story. Alright, now you do a timed test really assess fluency. They do let you know, maybe, if somebody has developed fluency, but they don't help students learn their math facts or actually get to fluency.
Speaker 4:And really they don't even test everything.
Speaker 7:So what do we need? When do we ever see a math marketing campaign? You're a math person. Right, we don't see that. We should. We see reading campaigns all over the place. We should read. I watched Quincy's show the other day and it was all about a guy who couldn't read, and that was terrible. Well, my mother used to tell me I was a bad person, and I think that's why I became one. So what can we do?
Speaker 7:We're a room full of secondary people we often think of fluency as an elementary thing. I'm going to play that teacher trick and just turn right back. What can we do? And I want you to think about that as you're going through CPM things and all that sort of thing, what can you do to help kids become fluent and flexible? For me, I'm going to keep taking my pennies to the movie theater.
Speaker 4:I can see my wife rolling her eyes right now and me saying that I'm going to do that.
Speaker 7:I'll probably do a better job of trying to explain my strategy. You need to transfer that. Oh, and of course, I think I better keep watching football. Maybe I encourage the others to because maybe I'll be able to help them with their sentence.
Speaker 6:Thank you very much Thank you Okay, Okay, so now our next speaker, dr Judy Kish. We're going to do these no introductions, so as a member of CPM, I know just a personal story. She said don't talk very long and things like that, but I'm just going to tell a quick story. When I first met Judy, it was my first teacher training that I did with CPM and she was in my group. We got to sit together work out some math problems together.
Speaker 6:It was about crossing a bridge and it's just really stuck in my mind how welcoming she was to me and I think that embodies everybody. I've never seen again so I'm really happy that Judy is here today to do this event.
Speaker 3:CPM was born in 1989 when Tom Salee, elaine Casamattis and I got $600,000 from the US Department of Education. But the story starts with the Russian launch of Sputnik.
Speaker 3:But the story starts with the Russian launch of Sputnik when I first started teaching in 1962, the sine wave rises with dollars of policy support for teaching reasoning, understanding and problem solving and falls with a focus on back to basics and basic skills testing. My teacher prep class was solving problems with my colleagues. My Algebra II new math test posed sets of problems my students could solve in their groups using the math they had learned called group-worthy tasks. Meanwhile, tom Salih was becoming a UC Davis math professor, concerned that his highest scoring calculus students could not solve problems.
Speaker 3:He started work on a book with his daughter's fourth grade teacher In 1983,. A Nation at Risk led to support for reform. California Math Project brought teachers together to work on mathematics and share their best lesson ideas. Tom taught a problem solving course for K-16 math teachers.
Speaker 4:You may recognize.
Speaker 3:Elizabeth Koiner and Susan Hoffmeyer. The teachers struggled to incorporate reason and problem solving and time for their understanding. They realized that their textbooks did not support this and demanded new ones. Cap was an early example, but that wasn't enough.
Speaker 4:Something had to be done about the university's sacred cows algebra geometry, algebra 2,.
Speaker 3:Cpm started as a five-year grant to create three courses with by and for teachers to use instead of their textbooks. Within the traditional high school program, 20 to 30 teachers met each summer to write first drafts and revise. The authors were field testers, but the teacher notes were really sketchy. We met during the school year to provide professional development for the units we had written. We learned the importance of memorable problems. Students began transferring their learning by learning mathematical structures, abstracting. Oh, the amusement park problem is just like the phone plan. Word spread, demand grew.
Speaker 4:You had to come to the professional development to get revised materials.
Speaker 3:University reprographics couldn't keep up and the university van we drove to the county office was riding on its axles. In 1993, we became a non-profit corporation and started printing books, and Brian Hoey was our CEO. Leslie Nittiker joined us to work on calculus, but we signed her up to revise algebra and everything else. Teachers moved to other states and took CPM with them.
Speaker 3:My haunting memory of the math wars was the parent who said to her school board I never understood algebra and I want my daughter to have the same opportunity. We persevered and grew with new additions, grades, sixth, calculus. And we grew state to state, teacher to teacher. The teachers who moved led the PD in their new states and became regional coordinators.
Speaker 4:So by 2008.
Speaker 3:It was difficult to gather all of our teachers in one place, so you can barely see Sharon Rendon standing back there against the wall. Starting from problem solving and what students know, then developing conceptual understanding and language does work. Currently accepted math assessment does not, and the 1990 CPM students did a little better on most math tests but way, way better on constructed problem solving tests. The heart of inclusion is engaging students in understanding. You can't shortchange the right side of the learning cycle and that sign way is really a growth and learning curve, with more math for more people.
Speaker 6:How great was that? Okay, this is the portion. This is my first year being the emcee for this event and I thought maybe it would be fun if we did something new. So I thought you know what Misty when everybody registers we could get their names and put them in this jar. I'll make 20 slides and then that person will just come up Bruce Russo.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, just a minute, darren, just shut his whole brain down.
Speaker 6:Sorry, I'm not a speaker. This is Daniel Zayasua, south Central Los Angeles. He's part of CPM's Teacher Research Corps Academy of Best Practice. He enjoys antiquing, with a special interest in vintage Coca-Cola. He's known to be synonymous with. Diet Coke. He likes to listen to comedy. Motorcycle riding I've got two pages. Teaching has always been his dream, and in the next phase of life he either wants to be a jungle cruise skipper at disneyland or retire old as someone who sweeps with all the disney kids. So let's welcome Daniel Little test, test test.
Speaker 4:Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 9:COVID started my senior year of college, so after getting sent home I spoke about it for a few days and my stepdad recommended that I make a post looking for any odd jobs. So I did, and I even mentioned that I could do tutoring, but ironically, all the jobs I ended up getting were landscape. It was the perfect social distance job. I would be in my little bedroom teacher corner, student teaching over Zoom, and then on the weekends I would be doing some sort of work.
Speaker 9:And that work was either landscaping, helping my stepdad and my grandpa build things for the houses, or even learning how to work on cars. So I learned a lot during this COVID year and I realized now, in my fourth year teaching those lessons, that I learned doing all those things can actually be applied to the math classroom. Earlier today, my research group and I presented on the relevancy and connection of math and I want to continue that conversation by talking to you about the hidden curriculum of your mathematical toolbox.
Speaker 9:So let's start by defining some terms, starting with the hidden curriculum. Now, the hidden curriculum is essentially what we teach without teaching it, so that can be collaboration, communication, emotional regulation or even the math practices are a great example of this in the sense that we do those things kind of in the background. And your mathematical toolbox is one of my favorite analogies I make with my students. Everything we do in math is a tool in your toolbox and it's not only important to have the tool, but you also need to know how to use it.
Speaker 9:Now, not everything I did during that time was hidden. There was a lot of applied math, like stuff I called napkin math. I call it napkin math because it's stuff you just quickly do on a napkin and you can toss it away. So whether you're hanging place evenly, cutting lumber or figuring how much fence to buy, there's a lot of math in planning. And speaking of planning the big job, this was a lot of math because I needed to figure out how many days it would take and now that I had that number, I could figure out a fair price to the client that was fair to her but also allowed me to fairly pay the people I hired to help. But I don't want this talk to just be about all the applied math.
Speaker 9:I want to focus primarily on two of the math practices that can really get us to that hidden curriculum and those connections from the outside to the inside and we're going to start with using appropriate tools strategically.
Speaker 9:Is it a job you're doing by hand or are we using tech, slope triangle or Desmos? Am I braving out the rake or do I get to use one of the tractors? And if I'm using the tractor, which implement? There's a lot of decisions, because you have to use the appropriate tool, because if you use the wrong tool, things fall apart and, as you see, sometimes literally I love using that thing as a pick and I vote it, just like how, if you use the wrong tool for a math problem, you break the math problem, and breaking stuff isn't fun.
Speaker 9:Now part of using the appropriate tool is making sense of the problem Because, let's be honest, math is a lot of work. You give them that and they gotta do all that, so there's also a big piece of perseverance. When I did a lot of the artwork, it looked like a lot because it was, and this was actually a job where I was a little overwhelmed because I had to go all by hand. But once you persevered through doing it, I made sense of it. Look at those lines Attending to precision and making sense of the problem.
Speaker 9:And that's easy to say, mind you, I can give the students a system of equations and say, hey, kid, five steps, but that's a lot. They still need to persevere in doing the work, and I related to that when I was working on my car and I got stuck.
Speaker 4:And my stepdad pointed out.
Speaker 9:It was literally just two bolts and a screw stopping me from doing what I had to do.
Speaker 3:But I was still nervous.
Speaker 9:I was still stuck and a big part of that is mindset We've all seen students get frustrated with a math problem and all of a sudden, they're not a math person. Just like how, when my 30-minute break job turned into a two-hour break job, I did not feel like a car guy. Now it's funny how a moment of frustration undoes a lifetime of experience. Our students have been doing math their whole lives and shoot. I've been changing breaks or helping change breaks since middle school.
Speaker 9:So something that helps us with mindset is being open Us our job as mentors, because students are going to get problems wrong. They're going to fall down and it's up to us to remind them that they need to get up and keep getting up.
Speaker 9:And as we're doing these things, we don't want to be the stereotypical parent with a yelling at the kid because everyone will flash that wrong. Even though I have that envy sometimes, we want to try to model positivity right. Bring back that angry and I want to leave you with this. When students are working on the math problems, they're going to drop an average. They're going to drop two and they're going to drop an alphabet. They're going to drop two and they're going to be embarrassed. But what's important is to remind them that it happens and all that matters is you complete it.
Speaker 4:Awesome, all right, so we have one more speaker for you tonight, robin Kubasik, is with us.
Speaker 6:And Robin's taught mathematics at both middle school and high school levels for 24 years. She has a passion for mathematics education and continues to innovate her teaching with research-based routines that allow students to become mathematical thinkers. She is currently the mathematics department chair at Sturgis High School and teaches core connections, geometry and algebra too. She is a Desmos fellow and a math consultant at St Mary's Assumption School. Robin likes to share her thoughts about teaching on her blog and is a 2024 Desmos Classroom Spotlight Activity Builder winner. Let's give it up for Robin.
Speaker 8:Today I wanted to talk about my journey as an educator and then describe why I am so excited to be at the CPM conference with you this year. My journey started 26 years ago, in the late 90s which was an exciting time to teach NCTM released these documents to guide math instruction and the National Science Foundation funded universities to write curriculum based on these standards.
Speaker 8:I taught middle school connective mathematics, and our high school taught core plus While many educators were excited about having new resources many traditionalists were not, and the math wars continued, while test scores went up in my district and failures went down my community was not impressed since the books were full of math examples.
Speaker 5:After, teaching middle school for nine years.
Speaker 8:I needed a new challenge, so I moved to the high school, High school teachers were tired of fighting with parents over the textbook and adopted a traditional text with lots of examples.
Speaker 4:I thought.
Speaker 8:I could add in problem solving, but I went back to the old show them what to do. Unfortunately, test scores started to decrease and I was very unhappy with this way of teaching so I looked for new ways to make math interesting for my students. I found clickers, joke worksheets and scavenger hunts which weren't great.
Speaker 3:So eventually I stumbled across Desmos Activities, which helped bring investigation back into my classroom and led me to be a fellow.
Speaker 8:And that was an exciting time. The next year I left teaching and became a digital interactive curriculum developer and created digital lessons for Eureka Math. I loved having time to create exciting lessons, but I missed teaching. So after three years I went back to teaching.
Speaker 8:I ended up back at the same school in the same classroom, but now I had a few tools in my toolkit that I was excited to try out and we were adopting a new curriculum. The first tool in my toolkit was building thinking classrooms. The school is now using packet math, which I turned into then slicing tasks and I got students up to the board. This helped students talk, but they didn't know, the words to express what they wanted to say, because they weren't used to doing that. So these two made a tough year better, peter.
Speaker 8:Lillendahl because of BTC, made teaching exciting again, and Pam Lindemer, who took the weight of CPM at my school and did a wonderful job supporting us. So teaching CPM last year was like coming home. I finally didn't have to search for problems that were problem-based and incorporated thinking and collaboration into my classroom.
Speaker 8:And now I'm going to say why I love CPM. So the first is the free implementation. Support is so important. The switch to a problem-based curriculum can be difficult without continued support on how to use it. The three pillars we were missing these pillars in the drill and kill resources we were using. It's very easy to make practice problems when needed, but it's near impossible to create lessons with these qualities. It's easy to combine BTC. I didn't have to remake anything Every CPM lesson.
Speaker 8:I have taught works well with BTC and CPM takes care of the thinking tasks and BTC takes care of making students collaborate. The intentional storyline of CPM is impressive. Each lesson builds on previous lessons and this is just an example of MindMaps my students created connecting geometric sequences with exponential functions. The area model is amazing.
Speaker 4:With diamond methods.
Speaker 8:My students finally can factor and prove that all students can factor, because I didn't know, if I always believed that the support of teachers in this program is amazing. The support of teachers in this program is amazing. The fact that CPM will pay to bring teachers together and learn from each other truly speaks to the value of this company. And here are my wonderful TRC people Test scores went up. Students are learning.
Speaker 3:My.
Speaker 8:NWA scores showed improvement with BTC, but combined with CPM they improved even more and we saw improvement throughout our district with the NWBA scores and I. That look, lets students understand the why. Cpm includes the why in the lessons. In the past we students knew the steps to solve problems, but they never knew why they were using those steps. And at last, cpm is only as good as its teachers teaching it.
Speaker 8:It takes a community of teachers to believe that students can learn math at high levels and become math people. So please be proud of your work, the work you do because you are creating a nation of math people.
Speaker 6:That was awesome too. Alright, let's just give. This process is not easy by any means. To put together five minutes of something you're passionate about and share it with everybody, and I hope that next year, if you're interested in participating- in the Ignite sessions please let us know so we can start working on that as soon as we can. If you want to do it this weekend, I'll even sit down with you.
Speaker 5:But it is a stressful situation, so let's give our speakers just one more Thank you. So that is all we have time for on this episode of the more math for more people podcast. If you are interested in connecting with us on social media, find our links in the podcast description, and the music for the podcast was created by julius. It can be found on pixabaycom. So thank you very much, julius. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 1:It'll be March 18th, Awkward Moments Day, and I know just by me saying Awkward Moments Day, you're probably already thinking of awkward moments that have happened in your life. Please feel free to share, but we'll be sure to include a few good awkward moments that we have gone through and touch base on what those might be. I'm excited to hear what Misty's gone through and all sorts of stuff. There's some suggestions here as well for others and we hope to hear from you.