Room to Grow - a Math Podcast

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis talk with Rachel Lambert, known for her research on teaching mathematics to students with disabilities. 

Rachel’s passion and enthusiasm is matched by her knowledge, and the combination makes for a powerful conversation full of great resources, ideas, and suggestions for classroom teachers. If you haven’t heard Rachel speak before, you are in for a treat!

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Rachel’s website where she provides free access to her research: https://mathematizing4all.com/ 
• Jay T. Domage’s book on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Academic Ableism. Choose the “Open Access” or “Audio Download” versions which are free.
• General information about Universal Design for Learning HERE and HERE
• Edmund Harriss’ website and a really cool mathematical adult coloring book he co-created 
• Learn more about neurodiversity and what it means for teachers and schools HERE and 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, Joanie and Curtis discuss and asset-based approach to teaching and learning mathematics.

They emphasize that all students bring strengths to learning mathematics, whether it be from a cultural, language, or ways of thinking lens, and that by assuming that all students have and bring strengths, math educators invite even more learners to be successful. As usual, our hosts share their personal experiences, anecdotes and ideas that they hope you’ll relate to.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Classroom practices that compliment and asset-based approach to teaching and learning math https://www.ifl-news.pitt.edu/2021/09/three-practices-that-compliment-an-asset-based-approach-to-teaching-and-learning-in-math-classrooms/ 
• Edutopia article on setting a high bar for all students https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-asset-based-approach-instruction-and-assessment/
• Research from the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education about asset-based mathematics instruction https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5951/jresematheduc.49.4.0373 

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, Joanie and Curtis share a powerful conversation with Dr. Julia Aguirre, co-author of the book The Impact of Identity on K-8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices.

This publication, and additional work led by Julia at the University of Washington, Tacoma, has influenced countless math educators across the country who want to ensure that all students have the opportunities, support, and classroom experiences that lead to deep learning of meaningful mathematics.

She challenges us all to not only bring our personal experiences and passions as teachers to our students, but to also tap into their experiences, passions, cultures, and communities as opportunities to make sense of and engage with mathematics. We think this episode will get you thinking and will give you some ideas about supporting your students’ math identities.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• You can learn more about Julia and her work here: https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/dr-julia-aguirre/home?pli=1
• You can purchase Julia’s book here: https://www.nctm.org/store/Products/The-Impact-of-Identity-in-K-8-Mathematics--Rethinking--Equity-Based-Practices/
• You can find the TODOS paper Julia mentions here: https://www.todos-math.org/assets/images/The%20Movement%20to%20Prioritize%20Antiracist%20Mathematics%20final%203.0_v6.pdf

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, 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 Spark
• Joanie’s Algebra 1 textbook with punny word problems (it does still exist!) 
• “Dad jokes” for math
• Graph of past relationships
• What does Bob have now?
• Seven-digit number
• Factored quadratic expression Tweet by David Glasberg
• Visualizing the quadratic formula by Lane Walker on myNCTM (NCTM membership required)
• Schoolhouse Rock! The Preamble
• Quadratic formula song
• Clock with math expressions
• Willy Wonka meme

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, 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=en

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 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/blog
• Article 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 resources
• Productive Math Struggle, Kevin’s book co-authored with available for purchase
• The 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].
• The 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 Mathematics
• This 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 Act
• Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John van de Walle
• Presentation of From Student-Invented Strategies to Standard Algorithms: What’s the Rush by Fran Huntoon
• Discussion 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.