In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis take some time to have fun with math. We share some of the puns, memes, and GIFs about math that make us laugh, make us think, and have been or would be great to share with students.We all appreciate the chance to laugh, and although puns and memes are often silly and sometimes groan-worthy, sharing the lighter side of ourselves and of math with students is a great way to build relationships and classroom culture. No doubt, your students will appreciate knowing what makes you laugh or groan when it comes to math. Bear with us as we describe our favorites, and click below to find the visual images we discuss in this episode. Share YOUR favorites with us using our email address, [email protected]. We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:A snow “angle” Tweet by STEM SparkJoanie’s Algebra 1 textbook with punny word problems (it does still exist!) “Dad jokes” for mathGraph of past relationshipsWhat does Bob have now?Seven-digit numberFactored quadratic expression Tweet by David GlasbergVisualizing the quadratic formula by Lane Walker on myNCTM (NCTM membership required)Schoolhouse Rock! The PreambleQuadratic formula songClock with math expressionsWilly Wonka memeDid you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis build the conversation from NCTM's description of access, described as "ensuring that all students routinely have opportunities to experience high-quality mathematics instruction, learn challenging mathematics content, and receive the support necessary to be successful."Our hosts tackle this challenging topic by considering some important high-leverage components, particularly those that are within a classroom teachers’ locus of control. Ensuring that all students have high-quality instruction from an excellent teacher supports the learning of challenging mathematics content. Joanie and Curtis consider that “support for success” extends beyond academic support, and spills over into the importance of classroom culture in access for all students. Teachers can, with intention, ensure that all students know they are viewed as doers of mathematics with ideas that are valuable for the learning of the entire class.The conversation then shifts to discussing how the Standards for Mathematical Practice can help teachers not only understand what access looks like, but also helps students realize the relevance of the mathematics they are learning. Unsurprisingly, our hosts circle back to the importance of relationships with our students for their successful learning.We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:NCTM’s Statement on Access and Equity in Mathematics Education https://www.nctm.org/Standards-and-Positions/Position-Statements/Access-and-Equity-in-Mathematics-Education/Supporting students’ identity and agency in mathematics https://www.nctm.org/Store/Products/The-Impact-of-Identity-in-K-8-Mathematics--Rethinking--Equity-Based-Practices/ Blog about Minimizing the “Matthew Effect” https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/minimizing-the-matthew-effect/ Skew the Script AP Statistics resources for relevant mathematics https://skewthescript.org/ Implementing the Standards for Mathematical Practice https://achievethecore.org/peersandpedagogy/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Implementing-Standards-for-Mathematical-Practices-Updated-2016.pdf Instagrammer with Bachelor and Bachelorette data: https://www.instagram.com/bachelordata/?hl=enDid you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie dig into a conversation about data science. They start by trying to define what data science is, describing it as the intersection of content, statistics, computer science, problem solving. It is complex, and allows people to interact with information that content, statistics, or computer science couldn’t do alone. In our current technology and data rich world, this topic is timely, relevant, and growing in importance.Curtis and Joanie describe data science as a process by which we start with a question we want to know the answer to, then gather, interpret, analyze, and model data that can help answer the question. Although we acknowledge that data science in school looks different than data science in the world, we recognize it as a valuable way to foster students’ natural curiosity and to build their modeling, problem solving, and communication skills.Our hosts recognize and discuss that not everyone believes that data science is relevant content for K-12 students and educators, and offer the complicating factors that come alongside bringing new ideas such as these to the curriculum. We encourage you to explore the resources to decide for yourself! Blog series in support of data science https://justequations.org/blogArticle expressing critique against using data science in place of calculus-centered courses Jo Boaler and youcubed data sicence big ideas for K-8 https://www.youcubed.org/data-big-ideas/UCLA data science course https://www.introdatascience.org/ Berkeley data science course: http://data8.org/Cal State free Course for teachers Course Kata: https://coursekata.org/Jo Boaler and youcubed data sicence big ideas for K-8 https://www.youcubed.org/data-big-ideas/Data talks for students in younger grades https://www.youcubed.org/resource/data-talks/ New York Times’ What’s going on with this graph? https://www.nytimes.com/column/whats-going-on-in-this-graph Data Science 4 Everyone: https://www.datascience4everyone.org/Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie welcome Kevin Dykema, new President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). As a practicing classroom teacher, Kevin brings practical knowledge to his NCTM leadership. He reflects on they ways that most school systems have historically addressed students who are struggling in math class, to give them more-of-the-same, or a slower-and-louder approach, and how these typically don’t result in resolving students’ struggles.Kevin suggests how to decide which mathematics topics are worth intervening on, recognizing that if we worry about student mastery of every single standard or topic of the grade level or course, we overwhelm the students and ourselves. Instead, if we focus on fewer, more important topics, we can support students’ future learning. He suggests that we use timely and relevant data to determine which students need support on which topics, and anticipating and planning for supports that come just-in-time to support new learning.Acknowledging that intervention structure looks different at the middle and high school level than for elementary school, Kevin shares his thoughts about intentionally targeting math interventions that will support students for the long term, and finding time to intervene that doesn’t take away from their regular math instruction time. He shares the problems behind teaching “tricks” or gimmicks for helping students get answers quickly, but not understand the meaning of the mathematics behind those tricks.Ultimately, building relationships with our students and attending to building their mathematical identities and agencies is what matters most. We know that every student brings “math brilliance” to the classroom, and finding and tapping into that creates wins for all of us. This episode is packed full of important ideas and resources – we think you are going to love it!We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Rules that Expire blog and link to full article from NCTM journal (membership required)Nix the Tricks by Tina Cardone, free online book and resourcesProductive Math Struggle, Kevin’s book co-authored with available for purchaseThe Math Pact series of books by Barbara J. Dougherty, Sarah B. Bush, and Karen S. Karp, available for purchase Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie welcome Juliana Tapper, Math Intervention Specialist and Founder of CollaboratEd Consulting. We start by apologizing for mispronouncing Juliana’s last name when she is introduced at the start of the podcast! Please note that her last name is Tapper, rather than Trapper. We are so sorry, Juliana! Juliana brings her experience teaching and supporting middle and high school math teachers and math interventionists to help us consider ways to break what she calls the “struggle stigma” in math class. She grounds our conversation with powerful results from research around math anxiety, which suggest that math anxiety activates the same fear centers in the brain as seeing a snake! When teachers use this understanding, we can create more effective responses to students who are experiencing math anxiety in our classes.Along with Juliana, your hosts discuss the importance of establishing a classroom culture that makes space all the “mathematical baggage” that students might bring with them. Providing the opportunity to talk about past experiences, positive and negative, allows students to understand that our classroom is a safe and welcoming place, where struggle becomes a normal and expected part of the learning process. Juliana has some practical tips for using instructional protocols with no math to build that classroom culture. She also shares how she established participation as an expectation rather than an option, and how those expectations along with appropriate scaffolds create small successes for students to build on.We know you’ll walk away with some great ideas that will help you better reach more students in your classroom.We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Juliana’s website with resources and much more information about supporting students in math www.Collaboratedconsulting.org, or email Juliana directly at [email protected] youcubed® article Valuing Difference and Growth Juliana refers to the findings in this paper about how math anxiety lights up the same centers of the brain as physical fear such as seeing a snake.Juliana mentioned this The Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction Course from Student Achievement Partners; the third course of the series will be available in the fall and you can take it without having taken the first two.Juliana suggested this Good Groupwork activity for helping to build a classroom culture that supports all students’ learning from youcubed.®Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie tackle ideas around rigor in mathematics. We start by defining what we mean by rigor, acknowledging that it’s a frequently used term that invokes different ideas and meanings! We believe that it means something different than just “difficult,” but frames a way of describing deep, robust, and applicable understanding of mathematical ideas, and we share a couple of visual images that help make sense of this complexity. Through our exploration of rigor as an integral part of learning math, we connect it to previous conversations about productive struggle, making connections in math, and student agency and identity. Rigor isn’t just for high level math courses and high-achieving students, rigor is for everyone and may even be an unexpected approach to overcoming struggle in learning mathematics!We believe that the best way to address rigor in the classroom is by intentional, collaborative planning, where teachers decide which obstacles they want to steer students around and which obstacles they want to steer students straight into! We hope you enjoy the episode and hear a new idea or two to consider for your own setting.We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Definition of “rigor” from Achieve the Core: College- and Career-Ready Shifts in MathematicsThis report from the Dana Center at the University of Texas, Austin: What is Rigor in Mathematics Really?This archived (free) blog post from former NCTM President Linda Gojak: What’s All This Talk About Rigor? myNCTM discussion about rigor (membership required): Archived HERE Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie consider assumptions that we make during math instruction and how these have the potential to interfere with students’ understanding of the mathematics. Teachers know more math than their students, and as a teacher, it can sometimes be a challenge to remember what it was like before we knew and understood a math concept. This can lead us to inadvertently assuming that students are following our thinking or considering external knowledge that they actually might not yet have access to!Our hosts get into some math content, specifically talking about the equals sign, solving systems of equations, and the standard algorithm for multiplication. In each of these examples, the common structures of instruction can lead students to an incorrect or incomplete understanding, or can force a focus on procedures without the concepts that back up these ways to doing. Curtis and Joanie had some personal “ah ha” moments during the episode as we discussed these math topics. Frequent listeners know that Joanie and Curtis don’t claim to have silver bullet solutions, but they suggest that slowing down when planning and teaching, regularly collaborating with other teachers, and stopping to identify assumptions can all contribute to better teaching and learning. Listen to hear more about why Joanie recommends teaching “for big circles, and not pinpricks.”We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Teaching Children Mathematics article (subscription required) The Equals Sign: A Balancing ActElementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John van de WallePresentation of From Student-Invented Strategies to Standard Algorithms: What’s the Rush by Fran HuntoonDiscussion about teaching algorithms on myNCTM (membership required)Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

As we approach the end of the school year, this episode of Room to Grow addresses using self-reflection to celebrate the learning of the year. Our hosts use this definition: “Self-Reflection is the evaluation or judgement of one’s performance and the identification of one’s strengths and weaknesses with a view to improving one’s learning outcomes (Damore, 2017),” and start with unpacking this quote from John Dewey: “We don’t learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences.” In the conversation, Curtis and Joanie suggest that reflecting at the end of a lesson, unit, month or school year provides the opportunity to be energized by and to benefit from what we’ve experienced and how we use that learning to continue to improve.After making the case for self-reflection, the discussion shifts to specific ideas for student and teacher self-reflection. Ensuring that students understand the purpose of self-reflection is integral to making the process meaningful for students, and increases the likelihood that their reflective practices will contribute positively to owning their own learning, and to building positive mathematical identities. Some specific reflection questions and protocols are discussed, giving you ideas you can apply in your own setting as we all wrap up the 2021-22 school year. We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Dewey quote and Damore’s definition of Self-Reflection came from this post: Routines for Self-Reflection: https://thinkingpathwayz.weebly.com/routinesselfreflection.html Journal of Practitioner Research article on reflection as a tool for continuous improvement: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=jprEdutopia article with specific ideas for engaging students in self-reflection: www.edutopia.org/article/frameworks-reflection   Tuning protocol as a way for groups of teachers to reflect specifically on student work: http://essentialschools.org/horace-issues/the-tuning-protocol-a-process-for-reflection-on-teacher-and-student-work/ Teachers and Change: The Role of Reflective Practice: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042812039870 Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode, we discuss considerations for providing meaningful feedback to our students. We think this is a great follow-up to our last episode on grading! In preparing for our discussion, we learned about the research supporting effective feedback for learning, which includes suggestions around the type of feedback to give, when to give it, and how meaningful feedback is separate from grading. Our research articles suggest that feedback is not advice or criticism, but information that helps the receive to understand their next actions. Although it makes sense that students must engage with feedback in order for it to be meaningful, we were intrigued by the suggestion that the receiver of feedback should work harder as a result of the feedback than the giver of the feedback! In other words, our students should work harder than us, their teachers! We explore some concrete ideas for making your feedback more meaningful, reflect on our own mistakes around providing feedback, and emphasize the fact that in all aspects of a teachers work, relationships matter most. We encourage you to explore these resources, mentioned and referenced in this episode:Blog post from Edutopia. The five suggestions here are backed by research. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-providing-students-meaningful-feedback-marianne-stengerArticle from the South Carolina Center for Teaching Excellence. This resource is general for all content areas, is a quick read, and includes a list of specific ideas for effective and efficient feedback. https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/cte/teaching_resources/grading_assessment_toolbox/providing_meaningful_student_feedback/index.php Article from ASCD (free if you haven’t already accessed your limit of free articles). Grant Wiggins authors this article that Curtis and Joanie refer to multiple times during this episode.  https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/seven-keys-to-effective-feedbackArticle/research summary from the Tang Institute. Although this resource appears longer than the others, the summaries and graphics make it very readable. This would be a great resource for a PLC or professional learning setting.  https://tanginstitute.andover.edu/files/Feedback-in-Practice.pdfShare your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy. 

In this episode, we discuss grades in mathematics courses. Although we don’t claim to have a recommendation or even an opinion about what might be the right way to handle grades, we hope to bring up considerations for our listeners to talk about and think through as they reflect on their own grading practices.We wonder if many grading practices are in place are just legacy practices, handed down and sustained by teacher teams and departments, or schools with prescribed grading requirements, and we recognize the challenges of balancing grades with academic performance as well as other classroom contributions that we value.We wrestle with what grades communicate to different audiences. What does a grade tell a student? The student’s family? Other school personnel? The student’s next school? How does a student’s participation in the academic work of math class shift based on the value they put on their grade in math class? And we consider the guiding question of “what is the impact of…?” as educators consider the structure and components of their grading practice.We wrap up by reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on our educator friends. We believe that the last two years have brought incredible challenges to educators already giving everything they have to their students and communities. We are in awe of you, we admire you, and we thank you for all that you do each and every day. Additional resources to explore:Blog Post: “Grading Is Due for an Overhaul” https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/winter-2022/grading-is-due-for-an-overhaul/ Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy