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 5.9: More getting real with Rafael del Castillo and NEW Join Them on Their Journey!
What does it mean to build authentic trust in educational settings? How do we create working agreements that evolve with changing circumstances rather than remaining static? These questions form the heart of this deeply reflective conversation about leadership, classroom dynamics, and the complex relationships that underpin effective education.
Beginning with a playful discussion about Collect Rocks Day, Joel and Misty explore how their fascination with collecting connects to building memories and relationships. This seemingly simple topic evolves into a profound metaphor for how we accumulate experiences that form the foundation of trust in our professional lives.
For new leaders, establishing trust requires consistency and transparency over time. As Rafael insightfully notes, "You don't trust people, you trust their habits." This perspective highlights that meaningful trust emerges not from singular actions but from patterns of behavior demonstrated consistently across situations.
The conversation examines how working agreements function across different educational contexts. Rather than treating classroom norms as immutable laws, we consider how to build agreements that can be revisited and revised as circumstances change. This approach not only creates more responsive learning environments but also teaches students valuable lessons about democratic processes.
Joel, Misty, and Rafael share their experiences with CPM's mathematics curriculum, which fundamentally redistributes power in the classroom by positioning students as capable mathematical thinkers who can engage with concepts independently. This shift requires building trust on multiple levels – teachers trusting students to take ownership of their learning, and students trusting that this collaborative approach will benefit them in the long run.
What emerges most powerfully from this discussion is the recognition that authenticity forms the bedrock of effective education. Whether in curriculum development, classroom management, or leadership transitions, genuine belief in what we're doing resonates with others and creates the conditions for trust to flourish.
Then we have two new installments of our Join Them on Their Journey from two Academy of Best Practices participants. Jessie and Chi talk about how they've started the year and we appreciate them sharing their enthusiasm and dedication now and throughout this upcoming year.
How are you building trust in your educational setting? We'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments or on social media.
Send Joel and Misty a message!
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
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You are listening to the More Math for More People podcast. An outreach of CPM educational program Boom. An outreach of CPM Educational Program Boom.
Speaker 2:All right, it is the 16th of September already.
Speaker 1:Do you remember? No, that's 21st.
Speaker 2:This is the 16th. This is the 16th, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's good. That's a good throwback, though the earth is the 16th. Yeah, sorry. Wow, that's good, that's a good throwback, though the earth, wind and fire. Yeah yeah, the year's almost over. Oh my gosh, like we're in the last. We're almost in the last quarter of the year.
Speaker 1:I wonder if that's could you think of it pessimistically or optimistically that this is the last of the year, like it feels definite, like the last of the year, like when you said it it felt pessimistic to me but optimistically we're in the fall. I see we're in a new season, a new beginning.
Speaker 2:I think it's more just as I get older, the passing of time that feels like it goes so much more quickly.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh yes.
Speaker 2:It just like.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, I don't really want time to go more quickly, right now?
Speaker 2:No, I don't. Sometimes, most of the time I don't. All right, so it's the 16th of September though it sure is so what is our national day today, joel? It is Collect Rocks Day. Oh, I like rocks.
Speaker 1:I do too.
Speaker 2:Collect rocks day.
Speaker 4:Yeah, what yeah?
Speaker 2:When I feel like, well, when I was a kid I we would go to the beach and I would come home with like all kinds of things. I was always just picking up stuff, put it in my pockets and I'd bring them home Bottle caps. And they didn't always oh no like rocks and sand, dollars and other small things that didn't always smell so great when they got home, because no, that seawater, sand embedded in those rocks is not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or in the formerly living things, or I would pick up all these rocks because they look super cool, but then when they dry they don't look as cool. They look cool when they are wet and you can see all the shiny coolness of them, but I I do like rocks. I think in some other version of my life I'm a geologist of some kind. I think that's true.
Speaker 1:I wonder if the one that learned about geology before they were 25 but I just thinking are we all geologists, maybe at different phases in our life Well in the multiverse, everyone in some version of the multiverse is a geologist. So this will be a three-part episode of the multiverse. Well, okay, but we're really talking about collecting rocks.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are yeah, I have to. I have to, like now, be intentional about my collection of rocks how are you? Intentional more in that I like, I, I really I'm more into like collecting, like particular rocks and stones and crystals, and things now and and I like to know why I have that rock.
Speaker 2:That's kind of my intention. If I get to the place where I'm like I don't even know what all these rocks are, then I have too many rocks, yeah, or stones, or crystals, or do you want to call them, but so it's. It's kind of like keeping track and knowing what. What is the representational nature? Of this object that I have. That's kind of my intention.
Speaker 1:I think that's true for me too. If I collect a rock, it's because it's attached to a memory. So it's not really a geological thing, but as a junior ranger, we're taught that you don't take a rock from a place. You leave it where it is.
Speaker 2:You appreciate it in that space. If everyone took a rock, there wouldn't be any rocks left for anyone else, as my grandmother always told me which I never really believed.
Speaker 1:Well, it's true.
Speaker 4:True-ish? Okay, there would still be more rocks, and they're still there.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they wouldn't be as many for people.
Speaker 1:They'd just be in different locations. Yes, but I do attach them to memories and I just I find geology fascinating because of the.
Speaker 2:It just tells a story to me Of the earth, yeah, of what happened here at some point Weird. I also like to collect or bring home rocks that look like hearts, like that's.
Speaker 4:I do too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that would be the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another collection. I didn't know that about you. Just, I do that too Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's not, it's, it's national collect rocks day.
Speaker 1:Collect rocks day. Yeah, so it's National Collect Rocks Day, collect Rocks Day.
Speaker 2:So what are the suggested activities other than taking rocks from national parks?
Speaker 1:Don't do it, Just don't do it. You could visit a natural history museum. Oh.
Speaker 2:I love natural history museums.
Speaker 1:I do too. You could get creative and display your rocks maybe paint your rocks. I've done that before. Let's see. Those are kind of suggestions. I'm trying to think of what I would do?
Speaker 1:What are you going to do? I think that I would maybe look at my rock collections yeah, and by collections I don't keep them in one space, I have them kind of all over. But I mean, and rocks, there's moon rocks, there's all sorts of types of rocks. So it's my mind's kind of like thinking how can I celebrate that too? How would you celebrate?
Speaker 2:I think, like similarly, I think you know, I like I want to look through the rocks that I have and why I have them. I might even go collect some more rocks, which might mean buy some more rocks. But I might collect some more rocks, we'll see, yeah, rocks, we'll see, yeah, no, I I think I think there's something really just particular kinds of rocks have like particular just feeling to them, right like they're just pretty, but they also have like sense to them.
Speaker 2:I just I think that there's think there's a good reason we're enamored of rocks I agree with that and I like also that like some rocks look really cool when they're all like polished up and shiny.
Speaker 4:I have a rock polisher and other rocks are really cool when they're just rough right, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're just craggy or whatever. You have a rock polisher, I have a rock polisher Dude.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. So to celebrate you could send me some of your rocks and I could polish.
Speaker 4:There you go, I'm gonna send you some rocks to polish for me and then next time I see you in person, yeah, I'll get them back, yeah sweet.
Speaker 2:Well, it's nash, not whatever it's collect rocks collect rocks or not collect rocks, let's just all do it. Let's just all do it, yeah there you go, go out and collect some rocks.
Speaker 5:Give me sound with your editing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can edit all the sound. I have a lot of trust.
Speaker 5:After one time I have a lot of trust with you guys.
Speaker 2:So we don't know what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 5:No, I have a lot of things running through my mind. How about if I start there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds great, I'd love to hear them.
Speaker 5:Let's see what's doing that. You know, running a back burner is the latest horrific incident in Minneapolis. I mean, you know, I don't want to like be one of the people that claims the space just because we're going there. And yet we're going there, we're going, for you know we're anticipating team building and positivity and connection and we'll be entering a space that I suspect will still be reeling.
Speaker 5:You know from sure what happened well and we have many team members who live in the area that's right and you know that was the gist of my post. I didn't want it to go without path. As head of school over two schools, I found myself sometimes it felt like I was overposting, Like there were so many situations that we should be attentive to that we should be marking as problematic, beyond problematic, you know. And that post I put in Slack today was this commitment like let's not make it normal, right, let's not ever normalize it in a way that it goes without being mentioned or noted or what have you.
Speaker 5:So that was my intent.
Speaker 5:I can actually think of places events that we were having across different parts of the country that I was participating in that were impacted by these horrible acts and I think, as teachers and educators an educational company we have a viewpoint. You know it's horrific for all people, period. Educators have this like different window into what that looks like. It feels like right. Any educator who's been through any kind of intruder practice, whether it's with children, god forbid. I mean, I tried to keep children, especially little ones, out of that. But with or without it's it, it marks you forever, like you know, and then when you see something happen it it really drives home how frustrating and powerless this whole situation is yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah if there's, I I don't even know what kind of response to make to that.
Speaker 2:There isn't.
Speaker 4:There's no appropriate words right now.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 5:Exactly.
Speaker 1:You said the unique role of education in things too. I feel like it's unique in that we are connected to people's families and we're connected to different aspects of people's lives as teachers in different ways. Like as a math educator, you kind of put the math down.
Speaker 5:Maybe for that day and talk about something different. Yeah, no, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier. It's that, it's that theme. I always go back to stop, like stop whatever you're doing, yeah, and think about this. Is this thing that happened?
Speaker 5:And, and I think for teachers you're right, joel it's this notion of like we know that we, we can imagine the family right and we don't have to reach far for that. So so that's been on my mind. I, I, I would argue it's on the minds of all educators whenever it occurs. And, you know, not all of them make headlines anymore, which is another tragedy.
Speaker 5:So, as a new leader, you know one of the things you you navigate is is developing relationships. So really you're not developing relationships for the sake of friendliness and collegiality. I mean that's nice, that's really a nice byproduct, but ultimately, you want to have some trust in the bank on both ends of the equation, right, so that we can work together in the future, so that we can collaborate, so that we can go through tough stretches of collaboration, right, and disagreements and all of that. And so that's been on my mind a lot and you know I'm certainly working on it from my end. We've been having a lot of conversation at the leadership team level where you know we're developing these charters that will soon be very public and the charter is not just a piece of paper that we check off, it's an ongoing one of the leadership team members described it as an ongoing non-trivial conversation, like how do we give it non-trivial time?
Speaker 5:And I thought that was so wise to point out, because if it is trivial, if we're just kind of checking it off and we're fitting it into 10 minutes of the agenda, then it's going to be deployed in a trivial way, but we're giving it a lot of thought and we are building the agreements of how we're going to be with one another as leaders, as we have the conversation about the charter, as leaders as we have the conversation about the charter. If that makes sense. And then you got to make it public because that's the accountability piece.
Speaker 5:Right, you don't want the smoke-filled room, so to speak. You know where decisions are made. I don't even know if that's a thing anymore.
Speaker 2:Like who's having smoke-filled rooms.
Speaker 5:I guess it's now a non-smoking room where secret decisions are made, or vaping room, I don't know. I'm going. The analogy metaphor is losing its credibility when these decisions go. This is where these decisions go and what's the cycle of accountability, transparency and also revision, Like I love that our charter currently has it. Every six months, we're going to revisit our charter.
Speaker 5:We're going to think okay, is this still working? Have times changed? Are we in a different situation? Did a thing happen? Like I would argue that if a thing happened, right, you should go to the charter for a minute and say, okay, can we actually operate this way? Because we've just entered, you know concrete example, a pandemic. I wonder how many of us really stopped and said, all right, we got to respond, but, like, how does this impact our working agreement?
Speaker 4:Right, right Right.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's so interesting, that whole the crafting of agreements, right, working agreements are so interesting to me because we want to start with well, what are our working agreements? Right, here we have this new team, this new class, whatever. Right, like I'm in my class, I'm like, okay, great, we're going to have some working agreements, what are our class agreements?
Speaker 2:But we haven't done anything yet we might have some ideas of what we want, but until we start living them, then we know if they fit or not. Like we might go, oh, we want this and that and the other thing, whatever. We might, you know, say some things. And oh, we want this and that and the other thing, whatever. We might say some things, but then as we start with, well, actually we want this to be a little different, or this isn't working as well, and that ability then to say I want to shift the agreements and how, like, if there isn't a way of, it's not a grievance, but if there isn't some way of being able to do that, then you kind of get stuck in this.
Speaker 2:Well, I agreed to a thing and now I'm trying to do a thing that doesn't feel right for me, right? So I like what you're talking about, with the like thinking about it, sort of living it as you're doing it, having a revision, the timeframe like a timeframe in mind where we're going to revisit it, so that's not just a. Well, I have to wait until it gets really uncomfortable before I say something. Right, because I know I'm, I know I'm disrupting by saying something I I love that connection to the classroom.
Speaker 5:You know I'm sure we've all had those agreements.
Speaker 5:Call it what you will right at some point I think we call them norms and those became that word and that approach became, I think, problematic. But yeah, it's also interesting in the classroom let's focus there how quickly the agreement, whatever you call it, the agreement becomes like the law and you know we forget, like constitutional amendments, and you know changing circumstances and I sometimes wonder if we've actually missed an opportunity to teach a bigger lesson. Right, like, okay, these are agreements and, yes, they're going to be revisited. They're going to be revised and not like in your next grade.
Speaker 2:The next time you have a new class, Like next time you're like yep, sorry.
Speaker 5:You know we agreed to that in September. And that's the way it's going to be. I think a more valuable lesson is to show both the value and power of working agreement, as well as how you revisit right and I think in a cpm classroom where in in my mind we, we are about redistributing power, authority, positionality, the relationship with mathematics in the in the classroom like to me that was with mathematics in the classroom.
Speaker 5:Like to me, that was back in the 90s and I think it still is. So we're not just reconfiguring the physical classroom, we're saying to kids hey, you have the power to engage with mathematics without me. Wow, like I'll be over here.
Speaker 2:That's right, and I think that You're going to have to do something while I'm not there. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5:You have to do something while I'm not there, and I would argue that CPM working agreements are just a huge opportunity to do exactly what we're talking about Right To think about revision and change and student poison and student poison.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, we're touching on all the points of real life, but a student might go through seven different agreements in a day, right from class to class to class. We go through different agreements, maybe in a different group that we're doing like Misty said, or the whole school has some agreements of how we interact with each other. So as much as a student can feel like they have that power, have that voice, I think only benefits them, while I run anyway.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, that's really interesting. That's a great reminder, joel. Right, like they're actually having to navigate, like it's almost like they need a passport, right? Oh, I'm in Mr Jones' class, so, like the law here is different, you know.
Speaker 5:I was at a school that, in its founding years, developed a constitution and a Bill of Rights for the entire school right and it was. I mean, it was cool because, of course, the first class got to sign you know the documents and they remained enshrined on the wall. I don't recall any amendments. To be frank, it was a pretty broadly drafted document. I remember it included the right to a class pet which, as the subsequent head of school, I I raised my fist to the creator of that right but.
Speaker 5:But my point is that that it was referenced like all kidding aside, there were some really good items on there that could be referenced across the experience, like hey, remember, we say that we have a right to, and then it opens up the conversation to. You know, with great power comes great responsibility, and with right, the history social studies teacher just used it as a great vehicle.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sure, oh man, teacher just used it as a great vehicle. Oh, I'm sure, yeah, sure, oh man, I didn't. And I think about, like when we would start our class agreements at the beginning of the year. And it's been all this time that back in the day, I always had like in mind, like okay, here's how we're gonna like summarize them anyway, like to make it simple and straightforward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so many pieces, but I want to think about that trust piece too. You were talking about trust, and I think trust is such an interesting thing, right, because it's really easy to well, it's really easy to break trust.
Speaker 2:It's very hard to reestablish trust, right? I remember I raised middle, I'd raised teenagers right and well. Once you've broken the trust, it's really. You can't just like do it right once and now trust is back right. So that how to build trust again before you've like you're talking about like I've just arrived into this position and the things that I'm building trust, but like I have, I have done very little yet. I mean you've, you've done a lot. I'm saying you haven't, but you have like. Trust is something that's built over time as much as anything, right, it's consistency over time. And so trying to like you have to like almost figuring out like what's the trajectory of my consistency that I'm then going to maintain right, what's the sustainable interaction that I can that I can do, so that I'm not like doing a whole bunch a whole bunch that I can't then maintain, which then loses that trust.
Speaker 5:Yeah right, yeah, no, I I really love that framing and and the truth is, a new leader hasn't done a lot like, yeah, you can do a lot, but is that body of work really connected to trust building? Like, are, like, are they trust building worthy activities? And some of the activities you have to do you just have to do for continuity, for passing the baton, but it's when you start getting into decision making and committing to something and sometimes you have to react to new data Like it's this notion of you know, I've never been that leader who's like, well, once I make a decision, I have to go back to what we were just talking about. Like it's a forever right, forever, or I'll be perceived as a weak leader. Like I feel like that also is a I hope is is a declining model of leadership.
Speaker 5:I think leadership is about making the best decision moment with it, with the data you have, and then you have to be vulnerable and share with folks. Hey, like, actually, at the time, I think that was a decent decision. Now, same theme. You're like things have changed, we have new data, what have you? I really have loved the characterization that I heard from a colleague years ago that you don't trust people, you trust their habit, right that? Ultimately, like we, we fall into a lot. But, joe, you know.
Speaker 5:Susie I trust her with you know my life Right. And then, if you, if you kind of go deeper, what you typically find is a long-term relationship where that trust has been built through habits, right, Showing up, proving to be transparent, proving to be confidential. It applies to kids in middle school and beyond who are developing friendships. But that's always spoken to me and I really keep that in mind. You have to have a body of work.
Speaker 2:And so it goes to agreements.
Speaker 5:I mean trust and agreements sort of go hand in hand. Often it's the agreements you break because you had no body of work. Hang them on, that break of trust. And then you have to be present work to hang them on. That breaks the trust.
Speaker 1:And then you have to be present too to receive the opportunity to be there. It's not just going to happen. You mentioned you're not going to manufacture something or anything like that. It's got to be in that moment, like you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like trust is something that is. I have trust because of what's happened. It's a past right, it's a, it's a reliance on that. The past will continue into the future, and so like to be able to think about, oh, how do I? And then? And then, if there is enough past right and there's bobbles because there's always noise right In the pattern then I can trust it's oh, it's just an inconsistency, as opposed to oh no, that's how this person is right, because we'll all drop the ball at some point, different things. We won't do it all perfectly all the time, and so that history is what allows us to build that. But how to get to that is such a challenge and I think we face that in our classrooms. We face it when we're working with teachers. Right, we come into a classroom with someone implementing and want them to trust us, to give them feedback and to be compassionate and all these pieces, but they don't know us at all, necessarily any reason to have that until we can like to.
Speaker 5:So we're always in that position of trying to build it right, trying to build rapport and connection and a relationship that is trust that's so interesting because I I think our longer term commitment, commitment we want to develop and grow more and more every day, is part of the success of CPM. Right Like, like we don't just show up one day with a teacher box, right Like no offense, the teacher boxes.
Speaker 5:But what I have seen from my own experience is that, like some folks are really good at sort of engendering trust in that moment for that session with the teacher box and you're excited and new, but then it's almost like if it doesn't work out, you feel really betrayed by the for the box, the box and the box person because you like, like it's, that's how we are, like we're excited about new things as a profession, I believe, and we want to do right by students.
Speaker 5:We want to do better in the classroom, but with CPM getting that long-term support, that over time there is a body of trust data and we can start seeing oh, this is an outlier. But overall this journey has been really valuable and so to me that's one of the strengths and I think it also gets conveyed or translated into the classroom Right, like I'll never forget the first time, you know, I restructured the classroom and I think some of the students thought they were being set up to be honest. They were being set up to be honest, like because, if you think, when I think back, it was like oh wait, we get to be in group, okay, like, we get to talk, like I thought talking wasn't allowed right right, like you know it's right.
Speaker 5:So so it. It's just a reminder that whether we're coming into an organization, whether we're coming into professional development, or with students with a new structure for learning, a new structure for district power, the first reaction is going to be a little like what do you mean, right, and are you for real?
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 5:Is this really going to?
Speaker 1:stick. I can tell you, I've done some isvs this week virtually with teachers and, like the, this is a brand new school year, so very new new implementation of cpm. So thinking about collaboration, thinking about mixed space practice, all that kind of thing, and they're the biggest struggle I'm hearing from the teachers are that the students don't quite get how to work together. And I'm well, that's very true, because they don't.
Speaker 4:They just started it. That's right, that's new.
Speaker 1:And my suggestion to the teachers was that one of the best things you can do with students is to be really transparent about why you're doing something and say I'm doing this for a reason and there's going to be some times it doesn't work, but we're going to keep trying. It's worth moving forward. So we're going to remind you again and I'll always be there to help that process. But that's what I'm relating this to is just that newness of a situation. You have to be open to try it, build the relationship. But explain why you're doing something is huge.
Speaker 2:Well, and that always reminds me of the like, having that like belief, that grounding in why you're doing it, that you also that you agree with it. Right, like the, the, the. The thing I feel like is one of the worst things teachers can do is come in and they're like okay, we're doing this. I don't know if it's going to work, but we're going to try it. It's just like chumming the water and kids are like well, of course, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:So, having that belief that it's the right thing to do, and to be able to hear the questions and hear them and say it's going to be all right, we're going to work through it, we're going to get to that place where we are able to do these things and it's new and it's okay Like that reassurance as well. I was just thinking about what you were talking about with the box person too. There's something around the. For me, it comes back to authenticity.
Speaker 2:For me it comes back to authenticity. When the PL department and NCPM in general, people are talking about the curriculum, there's an authenticity that we bring to it because we believe it. We're not just salespeople. We are trying to market it. We do need to market it and it comes from what we believe and it comes from our cores in that way, in our own authenticity, yeah.
Speaker 5:Which people recognize, whether they think they do or not, absolutely, and I think you know one of my favorite taglines, because it's so much more is by teachers, for teachers, and I think that comes across in multiple ways. Right, and maybe we were in the classroom a long time ago, but we still have had that experience in the classroom. We've still tracked current practices and it makes a difference, you know it makes a difference.
Speaker 5:I agree with you, we do need to market and let more people know, but it's centered on an authentic belief by educators. You know, most of our company are educators. The other folks are incredible, valuable colleagues, but we believe in what we do. It's powerful. It's complex, right. It's not easy to explain in a minute, because human beings are not easy. The construction of knowledge is not easy to explain in a minute because human beings are not easy. The construction of knowledge is not easy.
Speaker 5:Mathematics is, you know, a language we invented, right, and to blame the world, I mean, it's complex, right, and it should take a minute. It should take multiple visits, it should take the whole community of teachers to make sense of it. Is that it should take the whole community of teachers to make sense of it. And I feel like we've made a lot of strides in, you know, breaking down the classroom walls, if you will Like. I remember when I started this work Well, I see you remember, yes, as well. The notion of math teachers getting together to talk about mathematics was pretty radical. Like, well, why would I talk to the algebra teacher? I teach pre-calculus, right?
Speaker 2:Hello, they're not related.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know what I'm teaching today. Yeah, so much. Well, thank you so much for coming and having this conversation with us. We didn't know what you were going to talk about and somehow we managed to talk, for 25 minutes, come up with a fun title.
Speaker 1:I loved the first one.
Speaker 4:It was my favorite thing I think at CPM.
Speaker 5:What does he want?
Speaker 4:And what does?
Speaker 5:he want Take me to your leader.
Speaker 2:We know more of that now. Thank you today we are starting a new join them on their journey segment for this year. In addition to our Join them on the Journey with our teacher research community person, andy, right now we have two Join them on their Journeys for you from some of our participants from the Academy of Best Practices. So here you go. This is our first segment. Join them on their Journey with Jessie and Chi.
Speaker 4:Hello everyone. My name is Jessie Todd. I am a math teacher at Astoria High School in Astoria, Oregon. I am just finishing my second week of the school year in the beginnings of my 19th year of teaching. This will be my 10th year at Estoria High School, but my ninth year teaching with CPM. We took a year off because of COVID and then in teaching online, so this year I am doing Integrated Math 1, a class that we call Extended Algebra, which is for our students that need a little bit slower pace.
Speaker 4:That class covers the second half of Integrated 1. I teach another class called Advanced Topics, which prepares our students for Algebra 2, as well as Pre-Counciling, and we use CPM materials for all of those classes. I am so excited to start this school year. Over the summer I was fortunate enough to attend the Academy of Business and I learned so much and just really got reinvigorated for the school year. So I'm taking a few things in this year that I want to try in my classroom as new things that I am hoping my department is going to try along with me, and I'm excited to share that journey with all of you.
Speaker 4:Number one I am going to try to randomize my group. Every single day I'm building up to it. We've done it in some of my classes already and it's absolutely going really good. So I hope that we can keep that energy going through the school year and I also as a PLC, we have decided that we're going to do a book study and go through Building Thinking Blackroom, which I'm also super excited about because that was a book that was talked a lot about. In the academic practice I teach about I think I have about 150 students over those six careers of math that I teach about. I think I have about 150 students over those six careers of math that I teach, and I have three other colleagues that are going on this journey with me as well.
Speaker 3:Hello, my name is Chi and I'm a second year teacher here in Alameda, California. It teaches IM1, Integrated Math 1, to mainly freshmen, some 8th graders, but also some 10th grade, even 11th graders who needed to finish this class for the graduation requirement. This is my second year teaching overall and it's also my second year here at NSNL. It's been quite a journey, I would say it's been five weeks in school and I came into the year feeling very confident and very excited because I feel like I spent the whole summer looking back at year one and recognize and feel like there was a lot of places I can do differently or better. So, coming into year two, I felt that I had plans in place to help with those things, mainly classroom management and also cognitive demand placed on students. We use a CPM curriculum which builds on a lot of group work, but what we're seeing in my classroom is that students do not know how to talk to each other about math. I think that years of math beforehand or just math education in general, has taught students to be compliant rather than to I don't know what's the word to describe, but maybe later on in the year I'll have a better word for this but we have taught students to be compliant rather than to think and critically analyze what are the information in front of them. We have exercised today chapter 2.1.4 of the im1 textbook, cpm, and one of the problem was to give students or pairs a line condition, so something like a line that goes through this point or a line that has a slope of this and a point like this. When I read it out loud to the class, this seems fine. Everyone were on the same page with me. But as I set them off onto the task and I'm circulating the room, I'm seeing students having trouble comprehending what those conditions were and I'm not sure where the disconnect comes from. I think I think it's.
Speaker 3:I think you say something about our education, math particular. I just think that that's the symptoms of how we're teaching math and it's not a fact case. We're basically over and over again. What we see is that we're taking something that students know already, but as we're diving deeper into it they have no idea of what that is, and I think some of it is anxiety that associates with doing math. But I also suspect maybe some of it comes from how we talk about math in our classroom along the way. So when they move from one class to another or even one school to another, the terminology changes how teachers frame the same concept differently. I have students who knew what y equals, mx plus b was, yet they're reciting the wrong thing about what m is. I have students who knew rise over run, but then they're writing the ratio as delta x over delta y.
Speaker 3:So a lot of the work that I feel like I'm doing in im1 is to kind of strip down the foundation so that we can build on this in im2 and im3 and calculus and and hopefully this rebuild is for the student to put in the work itself, because clearly when we tell a student to memorize certain things, it hasn't worked. So I don't know, there's a lot on my mind. Um, it's thursday and you know it didn't go too well today, I feel. But we'll keep coming back tomorrow We'll try again and we'll figure this thing out eventually, even if it takes my whole life. That's it for now. Have a good night.
Speaker 2:Have a good night. 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 H and 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 September 16th, collect Rocks Days, and the day to collect rocks is to kind of think about digging and exploring and finding out about rocks, and we'll give you some ideas of how to celebrate this day. I know in some places it's not a good idea to collect rocks, say, like a national park, things like that. There's other places where it's interesting to collect rocks, but either way, geology is pretty fascinating and I can't wait to talk to what Misty's experience has been with rocks and share my own as well. So we'll see you on September 16th to talk about collecting rocks, thank you.