S1-05: How does coding fit in the science classroom? A conversation with Aryanna Trejo of Code.org

Podcast cover titled "Science Connections" featuring Aryanna Trejo, Season 1, Episode 5. It includes abstract illustrations of a globe and telescope, discussing coding in the science classroom.

In this episode, Eric sits down with Aryanna Trejo, a professional learning specialist of Code.org. Aryanna shares her journey from working as an elementary teacher in New York City and Los Angeles to teaching other educators at Code.org. Eric and Aryanna chat about computer literacy within the science classroom, problem-solving skills, and ways to model productive struggle for students. Aryanna also shares ways to teach coding and computer literacy in schools, no matter the classroom’s technology level. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.

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Aryanna Trejo (00:00):

I would hear teachers saying things like, “Well, I just can’t do coding; this is too hard for me; the time has passed.” And I would ask them, “Would you say that to your student about math or English?” And they would always sheepishly go, “No.” And I’d say, “Well, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your student.”

Eric Cross (00:19):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Aryanna Trejo. Aryanna is a member of the professional learning team at Code.org. Before joining Code.org, Aryanna led computer science professional development for elementary school teachers, and served as an instructional coach for new educators. She also taught fourth and fifth grade in both New York City and in Los Angeles. In this episode, we discuss Aryanna’s journey to Code.org, where she helps educators connect coding to real life, how to use a rubber duck to solve problems, and how coding and computer science principles can be taught to students in areas without access to the internet…or even a computer. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Aryanna Trejo. So I was born and raised here, and I saw that you went to UC San Diego.

Aryanna Trejo (01:11):

I did, I did. I actually just put a deposit down on an apartment in University Heights, ’cause I’m moving back.

Eric Cross (01:16):

You’re coming back?

Aryanna Trejo (01:17):

I’m coming back. Yeah.

Eric Cross (01:19):

So if you need a classroom to visit….

Aryanna Trejo (01:21):

I would love to do more classroom observations!

Eric Cross (01:24):

Are we doing this? Let’s do—we’re making this happen.

Aryanna Trejo (01:26):

We are. Yeah. So I’ll be there. I’m moving there in April. I actually grew up in Orange County too, so I’m like a very diehard SoCal person.

Eric Cross (01:35):

So I feel like I know the answer to, hopefully—Tupac or Biggie? ‘Cause you’re on the East Coast, and you’re on the West Coast.

Aryanna Trejo (01:40):

Yeah. I like Tupac, but I have more Biggie songs committed to memory. Which is not a lot. I have “Juicy” and “Hypnotized” memorized.

Eric Cross (01:53):

All right. So you’re just memorizing, and you have the Biggie songs memorized, but not the Tupac ones.

Aryanna Trejo (01:58):

No, but I do love Tupac songs. You know, it’s like, Biggie has the flow, but Tupac has the lyrics. Nobody’s—they both have something really amazing about them.

Eric Cross (02:06):

You know, I can respect that you broke it down into both of their strengths.

Aryanna Trejo (02:11):

Thanks for buttering me up before this interview. And not….

Eric Cross (02:15):

<laugh> Oh, we already started.

Aryanna Trejo (02:16):

Huh? We already started?

Eric Cross (02:17):

We’re already started. Yeah. We’re already into this.

Aryanna Trejo (02:19):

We’re into it.

Eric Cross (02:21):

You were in the classroom, fourth and fifth grade, and you were doing TFA.

Aryanna Trejo (02:26):

I did. I did Teach For America. I was 2012, New York City Corps. Right after graduation. ‘Cause I graduated UC San Diego in 2012. So graduation was on June 17th, and I touched down at JFK on June 19th.

Eric Cross (02:40):

Even though I wasn’t in TFA, I know a lot of the fellows that are in it. And there’s just some phenomenal teachers in there. How long were you doing elementary school when you were teaching?

Aryanna Trejo (02:49):

Yeah, I taught for—well, I did, three years of teaching fourth grade. Then there happened to be an instructional coach opening in my fourth year. I took that, did some instructional coaching within the same network, and then I moved back to LA and I taught fifth grade for a year.

Eric Cross (03:11):

And what was it like now? Did you go to Code.org right after the classroom?

Aryanna Trejo (03:17):

No, I didn’t. No. I transitioned after teaching fifth grade for a year in downtown Los Angeles, in the Pico-Union neighborhood. I ended up getting this email out of the blue from someone who had actually found me through the Teach for America job site. ‘Cause I was hitting the pavement; I was really looking to transition out of the classroom. And she invited me to interview with this company called 9 Dots. And they taught computer science to kids K–6 throughout Los Angeles and Compton. And I was like, “Sure, no problem. Let’s do it.” So I interviewed, I got the job, and yeah, that’s how I transitioned to 9 Dots. And then after almost four years there, I transitioned to Code.org, with the same person. Actually, she moved over to Code.org first, and then she helped me get this job.

Eric Cross (04:07):

Oh, that’s happened a lot—like, that relationship kinda carries over.

Aryanna Trejo (04:11):

Yeah. We’re meant to be coworkers.

Eric Cross (04:13):

Yeah. Are you still? Is she still there? Are you both still together?

Aryanna Trejo (04:17):

Yeah, we’re on the same team and it’s nice. I saw her last night for Happy Hour, with another coworker who’s in LA. So we’re tight. And she’s a wonderful, wonderful mentor to me.

Eric Cross (04:28):

That’s great. Did you have computer-science background, when you were doing elementary school teaching? Did you have—

Aryanna Trejo (04:34):

No. <laugh> Not at all. When I was teaching in New York City, I had like four desktop computers in my classroom, and we rarely used them. Which was such a shame. And then when I moved to Los Angeles and taught fifth grade there, we were a one-to-one school, and the joys of that are just amazing. It was just really wonderful to, you know, get the students used to typing on the computer, using different software to submit their assignments. Getting creative—as creative as you can get—with Google Slides. You know, to show off what they know. And stuff like that. That’s all I had, though. And you know, when I transitioned to 9 Dots I was like, “Sure, why not? Let’s give a shot.” And I learned a lot. It was really interesting, yeah.

Eric Cross (05:26):

And so now at Code.org you are…well, so my journey with Code.org, I’ve been in the classroom for eight years. Still in the classroom as of…an hour ago, I was there. <Laugh> And I use Code.org, and I feel like I’ve checked it periodically, and I feel like it’s evolved over the gaps. And I’ve seen it. It’s become more robust in the things that they offer, over the years I’ve been an educator. Just to kind of…could you give a thumbnail sketch? Like, what is Code.org? Who’s it for? Who’s the target audience? What resources are there?

Aryanna Trejo (06:00):

Yeah. So it’s for everyone. It is a nonprofit that provides curriculum and training and a platform for teachers and students. We provide curriculum for K through 12. It’s completely free. And it comes with lesson plans, slideshows, all that. We focus specifically on underrepresented groups. So we have targeted measures for Black students, for Native American students, for students who identify as female. That’s a huge part of our mission. But we’re really working to expand access to computer science to as many students as we can.

Eric Cross (06:41):

One of the things I’m hearing in your story is you were teaching in Compton; you were in Bronx, New York. One of the reasons why I got into the classroom is because of educators, and the impact they made on me in exposing me to science and technologies I’d never had access to. And that intentionality, that you’re going about it…are there…not just the code, but how you bring that across to different groups…are there strategies, or are there ways to connect this idea of coding to diverse groups and diverse audiences? Or is it kind of, the curriculum applies for everyone? ‘Cause in science, when I’m teaching, I’m always trying to make what I’m doing relevant to the backgrounds of my students.

Aryanna Trejo (07:28):

Sure.

Eric Cross (07:28):

So I’m teaching biology, and I’m trying to make this kind of connection. Sometimes it’s more organic; sometimes it feels kind of forced. Because it’s just not always a nice fit. But it sounds like Code.org is really about inclusion. And in the numbers that I’ve seen for representation, in especially computer science software engineers, the groups that you’re focusing on are not necessarily represented in the professional workforce. At least disproportionately.

Aryanna Trejo (07:54):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s correct.

Eric Cross (07:57):

And so how do you go about being intentional about reaching groups that we don’t see in, you know, the Silicon Valley software engineers? How do you start that? Like, at a young age, do you look for specific schools in specific areas to say, “We are going to bring this to the school. We’re going out to these populations of the cities”? Because we’re just not seeing…you know, on the map, we’re not seeing anybody really doing anything with coding here. Or we’re not seeing the numbers come out of these areas, out of these cities, of students who are going into STEM or going into computer science fields.

Aryanna Trejo (08:41):

Yeah. I don’t necessarily work on the recruitment side of it, is the issue, in my position. But I do work on the professional learning, that is brought out to teachers. And we have a huge focus on equity throughout the workshops that we create from K–12. It’s something we’re really passionate about. We definitely aim to prepare teachers to teach computer science. That’s a huge part of it. Knowing the content, but also thinking through, “What does recruitment look like at your school to make sure that the demographics of your classroom match the demographics of your entire school?” Also, thinking through, “How can we make sure that female students feel included in your classroom? How can we make sure that we are, giving students creativity to think about, or we are setting students up to be creative and think about the problems that are in their community, and how they can use computer science to solve them, or at least work towards them?”

Eric Cross (09:39):

So solving real-world problems and that inclusion aspect…are there things like…you were saying “female or students who identify as female”…are there things that teachers can do to ensure that they’re being more inclusive? Or to recruit, or encourage more female students to take part? One of the things I was thinking of, that I’ve seen, is I’ve seen coding kind of camps.

Aryanna Trejo (10:06):

Sure.

Eric Cross (10:08):

That were specifically for a female audience. And that seemed to help with recruitment. Is that something that you see on your side?

Aryanna Trejo (10:16):

That’s not something that we set up, no. But the curriculum that I work with is CS Principles. And it’s offered as an Advanced Placement course, as well as an AP class. So that’s a curriculum that’s designed for students who are in grades 10 through 12. And so at that point, we can really talk to teachers and ask them what the recruitment strategy is. But in terms of strategies that teachers can use to recruit those students…I mean, I’ve heard over and over from lots of different teachers who identify as female that they didn’t think that computer science was for them, until they saw a role model in that position. And so just being a role model for those students is really wonderful.

Eric Cross (11:00):

And I see it too, with—like, we do “Draw a Scientist” activity, which is like a popular science thing—

Aryanna Trejo (11:05):

Sure, yeah, I’m familiar.

Eric Cross (11:05):

But it’s the same thing, right? Like, it fleshes out. My students don’t draw themselves as scientists. They draw what they perceive, based on what television says. I imagine with computer science, it’s probably really similar, when you think about “What’s a software engineer look like?” Do students tend to draw themselves? Or is it even a mystery? Because I don’t even know what a software engineer looks like.

Aryanna Trejo (11:28):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things we love to do with our professional learning workshops is talk about understanding yourself, your identities, how they show up in the classroom as biases. And, you know, things like stereotype threat. We see that as really important to understand, and think through, and consider, before you step into the classroom. So that you’re not, you know, coddling certain groups of students because you don’t believe that they are able to be successful in computer science. Holding all the students to the same expectations and believing that they can succeed. And computer science, I think a lot of the times people have this conception of it being this utopian, bias-less, technocratic field. When in reality, everything has bias. And people talk about algorithmic bias and facial recognition, but also the people who created computers and computer languages have their own bias that comes through. And I think it’s really important to show students that. So that they can, one, know what they’re working with, and two, make sure that they can create products that reduce that bias.

Eric Cross (12:50):

It’s like…it’s not objective, just because we’re creating software. Like, once it gets to a point of being so sophisticated…I think, like, AI software, right? With facial recognition? And we’re seeing more and more articles come out about, you know, predicting trends based on historical data.

Aryanna Trejo (13:12):

Sure.

Eric Cross (13:13):

But then, the trends and things that they’re seeing tend to target things that have happened in the past. But it also doesn’t take into consideration a lot of other factors that can lead to certain groups or populations being identified. And I’ve seen some articles lately about how your code is really just representation of what you put into it. And like you just said, your bias—if you have that, conscious or unconscious—you’re gonna put that into your code. And the input is gonna be an impact, is gonna impact the output.

Aryanna Trejo (13:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Or even just—and I’m ashamed to say this, ’cause this is an idea that came to me just recently, through an article that I read—but computers themselves have bias. The hardware assumes that you have vision, that you can see the screen, that you are able-bodied, that you can use your hands to work the keyboard, the mouse, et cetera, and that you don’t have to use assistive technology. You know, there are small things like that, where we think that technology, like I said, is this utopian, futuristic science…but there are biases throughout.

Eric Cross (14:19):

You’re absolutely right. I’ve never even—I’ve never even considered that. Even though I do use assistive tech, and figure it out, I’ve never thought from the ground up, the process is built for an able-bodied, sighted, hearing person.

Aryanna Trejo (14:31):

Exactly.

Eric Cross (14:32):

To be able to engage with the hardware. And then these other things, these tertiary things that we kind of add on, so that you can do this, but it’s not designed from the ground up for people who are, you know, different audiences, physically. So I’m glad you brought that up, though. Now I’ve seen—and I haven’t done this—but I know Hour of Code is a big thing. And this is something that’s ongoing. Can you talk a little bit about what Hour of Code is? I know it’s, it’s a big thing for the classroom teachers.

Aryanna Trejo (15:08):

Yeah. So Hour of Code is really exciting, and it’s just blossomed from something small to something tremendous. This year is gonna be the 10th Hour of Code. So what it is, is it happens during CS Education Week in December, during Grace Hopper’s—or to honor Grace Hopper’s birthday. She was a computer scientist and Navy Admiral. And basically the aim of it is to get as many students on the computer doing an hour of code, and demystify what coding is. You know, to do seed-planting. To show teachers that this is something that you can facilitate for your students. And also to show students like, “Hey, computer science is something you can absolutely do. Not just for an hour, but more if you want.” So, yeah. Now it’s worldwide, and it’s really exciting.

Eric Cross (15:58):

That’s awesome. And I think about teachers and I still hear the apologetic—when I’m helping teachers in the classroom with education technology—the self-deprecating “I’m a dinosaur; I’m not good with tech,” which is never true. Like, they’re better than they even realize. And I feel like sometimes there’s still a stigma, too. It’s like <laugh> The Simpsons’ Comic Book Store Guy. The condescending tech support person—

Aryanna Trejo (16:27):

Sure.

Eric Cross (16:28):

—who has that tone. And so I feel like some people have been so negatively impacted by that person. So I know when I’m helping people, I actually try to go full-spectrum the other side. But I’m thinking about teachers’ barrier to entry. Sometimes code is like, “Whoa.” And I don’t teach computer science. Do you see those barriers to entry, or at least the perception of them? And then, what’s the reality for like someone listening, and going, “I’m a fourth grade teacher,” or “I’m a humanities teacher in ninth grade.” What’s the perception that you see, versus reality, with the teachers that you train? Is it much more accessible than we think? Or is there a level of sophistication that you have to have coming into it?

Aryanna Trejo (17:10):

No, not at all. I know computer science, and that says a lot! <Laugh> You know, I know my own corner of computer science. And you know, that’s me being self-deprecating, too. But I think learning computer science has helped me in so many different ways that I wasn’t expecting. I recently took the GRE in hopes of, you know, getting back into grad school. And I think just the way that computer science teaches you to search for bugs in your code, or errors, and kind of tirelessly look at a problem from multiple different angles, I was able to carry that into the math that I was doing. And I noticed just a huge difference in the way that I approached it, and the way that I was open to it. But you asked a great question, in regards to the barriers to technology. In my position at 9 Dots, I was working directly with teachers to lead professional development with them. Sometimes it would be a full day; sometimes it would be an hour after school. And the one thing that I always had in my back pocket that was really useful is that I would hear teachers saying things like, “Well, I just can’t do coding; this is too hard for me; the time has passed.” And I would ask them, “Would you say that to your student about math or English?” And they would always sheepishly go, “No.” And I’d say, “Well, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your student.” You know, it takes some patience and nobody’s gonna get it perfect 100 percent of the time. Have I banged my head against the wall trying to solve one tiny little syntax error in my code? Absolutely! But it feels absolutely phenomenal to fix that. And I was an English major in undergrad, and I had never done computer science before. So it’s something that becomes really satisfying.

Eric Cross (19:07):

Yeah, I imagine. I had someone—a trainer or a presenter—one time bring up the fact that our students rarely get to see us learn in real time.

Aryanna Trejo (19:19):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (19:19):

So we don’t get to ever really model failure. I mean, unless we’re in a classroom situation <laughs> in our failures, with classroom management. Then they see it, they see it! But they don’t get to see us model learning failure. And I don’t mean like failure—and yes, I know, “first attempt is learning,” and “no such thing as failure”—that’s not what I’m talking about. But just when we’re not successful with our code, and then we experience real-time frustration.

Aryanna Trejo (19:42):

Yep.

Eric Cross (19:42):

And they said that is actually a great learning experience for your students to watch you go through productive struggle. And that was really liberating for me. Because now I’m in the classroom, and I’m trying to go through it with my students, and the beautiful thing was, they started helping me. We were all trying to solve the problem. And then we had this authentic problem-solving experience. I think it was like a Scratch program, where we were trying to solve, trying to embed it somewhere, or something. And then, in the background of the class: “Mr. Cross! I got it! I figured it out!” And it was this really neat bonding experience. And I felt that—your ears get red, and you get hot, ’cause you’re not—

Aryanna Trejo (20:19):

Oh yeah.

Eric Cross (20:20):

You don’t know it! And you’re in front of 36 kids! And I said, “OK, I need to tell them how I feel.”

Aryanna Trejo (20:25):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (20:26):

So I said, “Now I feel really frustrated.” Like, “I want to go through this, and here’s my thoughts.” ‘Cause I knew that it would be helpful if they saw and would hear my thoughts. So I just did a quick think-aloud and I said, “In my head, <laugh> I want to just quit,” I said, “But I realize that this is the part where my learning’s happening. So I just want you all to hear what’s going on in my brain.” And now I feel like when I’m doing coding with my students, and it’s just basic coding, I feel much more comfortable, like, not knowing. But I needed someone to release me from that “I have to be the expert in everything” to do it.

Aryanna Trejo (21:06):

And teachers are used to being the experts. Right? And they should be. And coding is just such a different landscape. But I think once you kind of give over to the power of tinkering, I think it’s really gratifying. I love being able to…you can revise a sentence, and then read your paragraph back to yourself in English, and say, “OK, I get it.” But there’s something so gratifying about changing a line of code or a block and then being able to hit play and watch your program come to life, and say, “Hmm, that’s not quite what I wanted. Let’s try something different.”

Eric Cross (21:39):

I love your connection to tinkering. ‘Cause—I had never thought about it—’cause I love tinkering with my hands. But I always think about physical things. But coding is exactly that. It’s tinkering.

Aryanna Trejo (21:47):

It’s exactly that.

Eric Cross (21:47):

That’s exactly what it is.

Aryanna Trejo (21:49):

And a lot of it is, for me, especially when I’m trying something new, it’s guess-and-check. It’s like, “OK, that didn’t work. What if I add a semicolon here? Will it finally work? Or what if I add a ‘for’ loop? Will this get me what I want?” And it’s wonderful because you have that with students as well. Like, you have that record of their thinking, and you can ask them to go step-by-step and tell you, you know, “First, I added this, because I wanted the program to do this,” and so on and so forth. And so you have that record, but you can always get rid of it. Students often wanna get completely get rid of it. That’s something that I’ve noticed a lot as I’ve taught computer science. But, once you can get them to target the specific parts of the program, tinker with that, and continue, that’s a really wonderful learning space. There was also something you said about modeling failure. I love the fact that in computer science you can model failure for your students. You said to your students, “I’m getting frustrated.” I love that, because I never got that in math. Nobody ever showed me what it was like to be frustrated with graphing a parabola. Right? Like, my math teachers were always like, “Doot, doot, doot, here you go, you’re done!” <Laugh> And I would get so frustrated, because it didn’t come that easily to me. And I think there’s two parts to that. So there’s modeling the learning and the thinking and the productive struggle, but also there’s the identity of being a computer scientist and modeling what that looks like. So for me, when I get really frustrated with a program, I walk away. I take five minutes. I take a deep breath. I say, “I’m not gonna think about it in these five minutes.” And I come back to it. And I think once you start teaching computer science, you can facilitate that for students. And there’s so many different strategies that they can pick up. They can pick up rubber ducking, which is where they pick up a rubber duck or a similar object, and they talk to it as if they were a partner and talk through their code. And oftentimes, as you’re rubber ducking, you’re gonna find that error, because you’re explaining it to someone who’s a stand-in for a novice. And rubber ducking is a well-known strategy for computer scientists who make it their career. You know, there’s pair programming. Some students love pair programming; some students hate it. But the students start to build this identity about how they problem-solve. And how they approach failure. And I just love that.

Eric Cross (24:31):

I’m writing this down. Because the rubber-ducking strategy, I love. I just imagine my seventh graders, a bunch of 13-year-olds with, like, rubber on the desk. And not necessarily in coding, but I was thinking in my science class. And they’re working through a challenge, and they’re all looking at this duck, and they’re talking to it. But I just love the the idea of externalizing your thought process and talking through it yourself so that you can hopefully arrive at a conclusion. But it’s such a great practice, and this is something that’s been around for a long time, apparently. So.

Aryanna Trejo (24:59):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a real thing. And you know, you can go low-fi. It doesn’t have to be a rubber duck. You can have students talk to their pencils or their imaginary friends. That’s not the issue; the issue is, you know, talking to somebody.

Eric Cross (25:10):

I know you support teachers. But I just wanted to…I was just curious about your typical day, what that’s like. And then what you do, how you support ’em.

Aryanna Trejo (25:15):

So, at my previous job at 9 Dots, I was in there with the teachers in the classrooms. I was coaching our internal staff who went out to co-teach with teachers. And I loved that. And I had such a great impact on a local scale. But now at Code.org, I have a much broader impact. But I don’t get to interface with—that’s such a tech-y word!—I don’t get to interact with—

Eric Cross (25:42):

You work at Code.org! You get to—

Aryanna Trejo (25:42):

I know! But I’m a teacher at heart, forever, right? That’s my identity that I forged when I was 22 years old. And a typical day looks like opening up my computer, taking a look at my calendar. I often have meetings to talk about, different things that we’re doing to support our facilitators who go out to our teachers and lead their workshops for them. I recently worked on a product that was designed for CS principles, teachers, to onboard to the course if they weren’t able to get into an in-person workshop. And it’s completely self-paced, so it gives teachers an on-ramp into the course. And now I’m working on some in-person workshop agendas. So I feel really wonderful that my work is going out to thousands of teachers. But at the same time, I really, really miss talking to teachers. Because that’s something that energizes me so much.

Eric Cross (26:46):

When should students start learning computer science? I feel like we see it in this kind of narrow lane. Like, this is computer science if you make an app. Can it be more than that? As far as like the benefit of computer science? And—I guess two-part question—when should students, one, start being exposed to it? And then two, what are some of the benefits beyond just, “I wanna just make an app”?

Aryanna Trejo (27:08):

I taught coding to kindergartners. It can start as early as you as you want it to. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be on the computer. A lot of students that I worked with didn’t have computers at home, were interacting with computers for the first time. And that’s a huge barrier, of course, to a lot of teachers. But there are so many unplugged lessons that you can do to start to start to have students think about algorithms, which is just a series of steps to complete to solve a problem. As long as a student can use a computer, I think they can do computer science. There are products out there like codeSpark, where students—and Code.org has these products too—where students are moving an avatar around a board, kind of like a quadrant to…you know, they feed the directions to a computer and then the computer enacts it for them. And with that, they can learn algorithms. You know, that is computer science. And a lot of people don’t see it that way, but it really is. And it starts to set students up for more complex thinking as they move on.

Eric Cross (28:13):

One of the biggest underserved communities, geographically, are students in rural areas.

Aryanna Trejo (28:20):

Yep.

Eric Cross (28:21):

They can be reservations; they can be places just not an urban area. Is there a way to serve our communities of students and bring these skills in an unplugged way?

Aryanna Trejo (28:32):

Yeah. Yeah. If you typed in “unplugged computer science lessons” to Google, you’ll have a ton of hits. And there are so many students out there—not just in rural areas. But there’s incarcerated students. It hurts my heart to even say those words, but in urban areas too. Like in my classroom, where I only had four desktop computers. Access is a real struggle. And there’s things, like I said, instead of moving an avatar around a grid on the computer, I used to have an actual mat that I would take out to my kindergarten classrooms, lay it out, and it would have a grid on it. And we’d have one of the students act as the avatar and the rest of the students would give them directions to get to a different point on the grid. And there, you’re building an algorithm or just a series of steps. Like I said, it’s not some fancy term to solve a problem. And there’s multiple ways to solve that problem, too. And I think investigating that can be a really good way to stretch those lessons.

Eric Cross (29:32):

It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but this low-tech computer science strategy. Develop these skills and then transfer that once you have access to the tools.

Aryanna Trejo (29:39):

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s a good way for students who need kinesthetic means to start to understand something, or just different learning styles, to start transferring that over.

Eric Cross (29:53):

I probably have students in the classroom where those kinesthetic moving things would help be a great way—or WILL be a great way—for them to learn the principles and the fundamentals of coding. Instead of only giving the option to just do the computer, actually giving them some choice. Or giving them a way to be able to manipulate things. We’re still in the system of education that’s still very siloed. It’s been the same way for a hundred years. We got math and then we got science and we got English. I’m wondering, how can a teacher fit this into their daily lessons? And then, do you have any experiences or stories or things that you’ve seen, just really creative ways that you’ve seen teachers incorporate this? Outside the norm of, “This is a computer science class; we’re just gonna code.” But have you seen it branch out? In the trainings that you’ve done?

Aryanna Trejo (30:40):

I’ve seen examples of that. I’ve seen a teacher use Scratch to demonstrate different climates of California, and show the different climates. This past year for Hour of Code, my friend Amy—the one who helped me move to 9 Dots and at Code.org—she created this incredible tutorial called Poetry Bot. And it was a way to get students to match the mood of the poem to some of the elements that were happening in the stage. So they would have different backgrounds show up at different parts of the poem. When the words would show up, they would have different sprites show up. They would have, sometimes, sounds. Or the text would show up with different animations. So there are cross-curricular opportunities everywhere, if you can be creative enough to find them, or if you beg, borrow, steal from other educators who are doing this incredible work out there.

Eric Cross (31:36):

Yeah. I say this all the time, but I’m an educational DJ, not an MC.

Aryanna Trejo (31:44):

Oh yeah.

Eric Cross (31:45):

So MCs write their lyrics and DJs remix with things that other people have done.

Aryanna Trejo (31:48):

Absolutely.

Eric Cross (31:48):

I was like, I’m a DJ. I was like, all day. Sometimes I’ll write a lyric, once or twice, but most of the time I’m remixing things. So teachers, if you’ve been out there and you got an awesome interdisciplinary thing, or you’ve incorporated coding and it’s something that’s traditionally not seen, please send it to us. Share it with us.

Aryanna Trejo (32:03):

Yeah. And there are so many different places where you can find that. We have a forum for Code.org, but there’s also CSTA, the Computer Science Teachers Association. You can join your local chapter and get to know other computer science teachers out there.

Eric Cross (32:19):

I guess…to wrap up, I’ve been using Scratch programming, the MIT website. My students do the basic animated name, CS First, stuff. But over the years, I’ve noticed that my students are coming in with a higher level of sophistication in Scratch to where now the differentiation…some of my students are just doing very basic…and then I have other students who’ve created full-on video games with complex…like, you look at their Scratch page and it’s just an amazing amount of blocks and integrations and things that they have. Is there anything on Code.org that could be a next step? That takes them beyond, maybe like the visuals? And if so, what would be a good next step, to take students to advance them to another platform? There’s so many coding languages out there, I feel like. Or I might not even be thinking about that the right way.

Aryanna Trejo (33:20):

No, I think you are. You know, we have three different curricula out on our website right now. We have CS Fundamentals, which is probably more in line with what you’re talking about. We have a free CS Discoveries curriculum, and that is designed for, grades, I believe, 6 through 10. And that would be a really good entry point, for both teachers and for students.

Eric Cross (33:44):

There’s a lot of new stuff that I hadn’t seen yet, a few years ago.

Aryanna Trejo (33:49):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (33:49):

So I was really excited.

Aryanna Trejo (33:50):

One thing that I do know is that CS Discovery has just added an artificial intelligence slash machine-learning unit, that you can just pick up and give to your students. You don’t have to go in order with CS Discoveries, like you do with CS Principles. And I’ve gone through some of those lessons. They are really rad. And I would’ve loved to have learned that when I was in middle school or high school. So yeah, we’re constantly thinking of how we can make things one, relevant to our students, and two relevant to what’s going on in the world.

Eric Cross (34:20):

So would I be overselling it if I said, “If you go through this, you’ll be able to create an AI or a neural net to do all your homework”?

Aryanna Trejo (34:26):

You would be overselling it.

Eric Cross (34:27):

I would be? OK. So what I’ll do is, I’ll wait until the end of the school year, and then introduce it, and then by the time they’ve realized it’s not true, they’ll be eighth graders.

Aryanna Trejo (34:35):

There you go. Good old bait-and-switch.

Eric Cross (34:37):

You’re amazing. Thank you for serving teachers, and for being part of such a great organization that puts out great stuff. So much free curricula for teachers to be able to use. Especially nowadays we hunt and scour the internet for those types of things. And to be able to bring computer literacy into the classroom, and with your focus of serving communities of underrepresented groups, it feels good to know that not only is it high-quality material, but it’s also trying to raise everyone up. Because ultimately when we have more people trying to solve a common problem, we come up with better solutions. And I was talking to somebody who was a materials engineer somewhere in Europe, and he said one of the things about the U.S., As he was critiquing me on this flight, critiquing the U.S., He said, “One of the things about your country is that you have a heterogeneous group of people who, in a group, when you have multiple perspectives attacking a problem, you come up with more novel solutions.” He says, “That’s one of the great things, is that there’s not necessarily just a hive mind.” And I think that that’s one of the great things. We uplift different communities, and we uplift women, people of color, people who, have backgrounds that parents didn’t go to college but have these amazing qualities and strengths. And we put everybody focusing on the same issue. We come up with novel solutions that we wouldn’t have come up with if only select groups were trying to look at it and solve it. And so—.

Aryanna Trejo (36:22):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (36:23):

And we couldn’t do that without organizations like yours, that help empower teachers. So.

Aryanna Trejo (36:27):

Yeah! You really said it.

Eric Cross (36:29):

You’re coming to my classroom when you’re back in San Diego?

Aryanna Trejo (36:31):

Yeah! I totally will. Yeah. Let’s make it happen.

Eric Cross (36:34):

Last question. If you think back in your schooling, your own schooling, K through college, is there a person or a teacher that had a big impact on you? Or a learning experience that had an impact on you? And it could be, you know, positive or negative. But something that impacted you, even to this day, that stands out to you, that you remember?

Aryanna Trejo (36:56):

This is a big diversion from the topics that we’re talking about. But in grades 10 through 12, my drama teacher, Mr. Byler, who I still talk with, was such a huge impression on me. Really wonderful. And I couldn’t tell you the teaching moves that he did that were wonderful. I don’t know much about his management. But I can tell you that he gave me space to be confident, and grow into myself, through drama productions. They were high school productions, so they weren’t amazing. But I just really came into myself in high school, because I had the confidence to get on stage. And he was just such a wonderful mentor to all of us. So, props to Mr. Byler.

Eric Cross (37:39):

Shout out to Mr. Byler for creating space for Aryanna to fly! Thanks for making time, after your workday, to talk with us and to share Code.org with teachers.

Aryanna Trejo (37:54):

Of course. Happy to.

Eric Cross (37:59):

Thanks so much for joining me and Aryanna today. We want to hear more about you. If you have any great lessons or ways to keep student engagement high, please email us at stem@amplify.com. Make sure to click subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And join our brand new Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community for some extra content.

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What Aryanna Trejo says about science

“I would hear teachers saying things like, ‘Well I just can’t do coding, it’s just too hard for me.’ And I would ask them…Would you say that to your student about math or English? Be as kind to yourself as you would be to your student.”

– Aryanna Trejo

Professional Learning Specialist, Code.org

Meet the guest

Aryanna is a member of the Code.org Professional Learning Team. Before joining Code.org, Aryanna led computer science professional development for K-6 teachers and served as an instructional coach for new educators. She also taught fourth and fifth grade in New York City and Los Angeles. In her spare time, Aryanna loves taking advantage of the California sunshine, creating wheel-thrown pottery, and hanging out with her dog Lola.

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About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. Listen here!

S3-05: Thinking is power

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Join us as we sit down with Melanie Trecek-King, college professor and creator of Thinking is Power, to explore how much of an asset science can truly be in developing the skills students need to navigate the real world. You’ll learn about “fooling” students and the importance of developing critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy in the classroom. We’ll also share real strategies and lesson examples that help build these essential skills and engage students in learning.

And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!

We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Trecek-King (00:00):

We say knowledge is power, but it’s not enough to know things. And there’s too much to know. So being able to think and not fall for someone’s bunk is my goal for my students.

Eric Cross (00:12):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. On this third season, we’ve been talking about science’s underdog status. And just this past March at the NSTA conference in Atlanta, I had the chance to speak with science educators from around the country about this very topic.

Hermia Simanu (00:28):

Right now, there’s only two teachers in our high school teaching science.

Shane Dongilli (00:32):

I have 45 minutes once a week with each class. The focus is reading and math.

Alexis Tharpe (00:38):

Oftentimes science gets put by the wayside. And you know, I love math and I love my language arts, but I also think science needs to place be placed on that high pedestal as well.

Askia Little (00:46):

In fifth grade, oh, they teach science, because that’s the only grade that it’s tested.

Eric Cross (00:50):

That was Hermia Simanu from American Samoa. Her team flew for three days to make it to the conference. You also heard from Shane Dongilli from North Carolina, Alexis Tharpe from Virginia, and Askia Little from Texas. All of these teachers were excited to be at the conference and had a lot to say about the state of science education in their local schools. Throughout this season, we’ve been trying to make the case for science, showing how science can be utilized more effectively in the classroom. We’ve explored the evidence showing that science supports literacy instruction. We’ve talked about science and the responsible use of technology like AI. My hope is that all of you listeners out there can use some of this evidence to feel empowered to make the case for science in your own communities. And on this episode, we’re going to examine how science can help develop what might be the most important skill that we try to develop in our students: Good thinking. On this episode, I’m joined by a biologist who actually advocated for eliminating the Intro to Bio course at her college. Instead, Professor Trecek-King created a new course focused on critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills. In this conversation, we discuss why the science classroom is such a good environment for helping students become better thinkers. Now, I don’t think that you can make a much stronger argument for science than using it to develop the skills that Melanie describes in this conversation. So, without further ado, I’m thrilled to bring you this conversation with Melanie Trecek-King, Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College, and creator of Thinking Is Power. Here’s Melanie.

Eric Cross (02:29):

Well, Melanie, thank you for joining us on the show. It’s so good to have you.

Melanie Trecek-King (02:34):

I am so happy to be here.

Eric Cross (02:35):

Now, I went to your session at NSTA in Chicago … I think it was two years ago. A couple years ago. And I was listening to your session, and as I was listening to you, I started Reverse Engineering in my mind what you were doing with your college students. I started reverse engineering the K–8. I was like, “This is amazing.” Where has what you’ve been doing been hiding? We need this not just in the college, higher ed. We need this all the way up and down. Because I hadn’t seen it before. So I think a good place for us to start is gonna be like the story of how and why you as a biologist wound up making the case to actually eliminate the Intro to Biology course at your college. So can you start off and tell us a little bit about that story?

Melanie Trecek-King (03:20):

Sure. So I started teaching at a community college in Massachusetts. And I absolutely love teaching at a community college. And I was teaching the courses that people who don’t wanna be scientists when they grow up have to take to fulfill their science requirement. And that course was Intro Bio. And I tried every way I could figure out to make that class be useful,] relevant to students. I mean, the thing is, our world is based on science and you have to understand science to be a good consumer of information, to make good decisions. And I’m a biologist, so it pains me to say this, but you know, somewhere in the middle of teaching students about the stages of mitosis and protein synthesis, I thought, “Is this really — like, if I have one semester that’s gonna be the last chance that someone’s gonna get a science education, is this really what they need?” And I just decided, “No.” So, to my college’s credit, they were very supportive. I went to them and said, “You know, I think we should assess the non-majors courses. Like, why do we teach non-majors science?” And we all agreed, well, it was for science literacy. OK, great. Do our existing non-majors courses do that? And so we evaluated each of the courses. I made a case that Intro Bio was not doing it. And so we actually replaced it with a course that I call Science for Life. And the whole course is designed to teach science literacy, critical thinking, and information literacy skills.

Eric Cross (04:48):

And so you did this while you were looking at mitosis. And you’re looking at students who may or may not be science majors. And then kind of asking that question. I know every educator asks this, and whether or not it’s welcomed or supported is a different question: “Is what I’m teaching actually gonna be relevant and useful later on down the road for this group of students?” And you actually got to run with it and then create this course, this new course. So, what were the skills that you were hoping to achieve with the new course you developed, and and why were those skills so important?

Melanie Trecek-King (05:21):

Well, if I just go back for a second to what you said, ’cause it, really hit me: I remember the actual moment — it had been building up to that point, but the actual moment that it hit me — I was teaching students the stages of mitosis. And I was applying it to cancer, because the thought is that if we use issues that are relevant to students to teach concepts, that it will be more meaningful to them. They’ll learn it better; they’ll be able to apply it. And they just looked absolutely deflated. They didn’t wanna be there. And I had this moment where I thought, “You know, if, if these students ever have cancer somewhere in their lives, is what I taught them going to be something that they remember? Is it going to be useful to them?” And quite frankly, like, no. <Laugh> They’re not gonna remember proto-oncogenes. And quite frankly, is that really what they need to know at that moment? What they need to know is, “What does this mean? Who is a reliable source of information here? If these treatments are recommended, what is the evidence for them? What are the cost-benefit analyses? Where do I go to find reliable information?” And in that space, cancer in particular, we have this whole field of — I wanna say charlatans, ’cause they may not actually be lying, but they’re pedaling false cures, false hopes. And people need that kind of hope, and so in their time of need, they’re more likely to fall for that kind of thing. Which leads me to the skills that I teach students. I call them this tree of skills. And the order is important. I start — and there’s a lot of overlap to be fair — but critical thinking, and then information literacy, and science literacy. The idea is that students carry in their pockets access to basically all of human’s knowledge at this moment in time. And if they needed to access it, they could. The question is, do they know what they’re looking for? Are they aware of their own biases that are leading them to certain sources, or certain false hopes? Are there certain things that are making them more vulnerable to the people that might prey on them? Are they able to use that information to make good decisions? There’s a great Carl Sagan quote, and it’s something like, “If we teach people only the findings of science, no matter how useful or even inspiring they may be, without communicating the method, then how is anyone to be able to tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?” So yes, the process of science is a process of critical thinking. However, we do tend to present science most of the time. Like, here’s what science has learned. And to be fair, those things that we’ve learned from science are really useful and inspiring. But if we don’t teach the process, so you’ve got somebody now who let’s say has been diagnosed with cancer and is on their phone and they’re scrolling through social media and everything looks the same. And of course the algorithms learn who you are. Next thing you know, there’s all of these like pseudo-treatments popping up. It all looks the same. Somebody who says that acupuncture can be used to cure cancer can feel the same, from someone who doesn’t understand the process of science, as a medical fact. And so the process is the process of critical thinking. My class everything is open note. The quizzes are open note. The exams — and I say open note, they’re also open online, because I know for the rest of their life they’re gonna have resources available to them; I want them to be good consumers with that information, which to me requires metacognition and critical thinking and information literacy and all those skills that I’m trying to teach them.

Eric Cross (08:58):

You’re basically taking what … we’ve taught science for so long. And more recently, it’s changed to more focusing on skills. At least in K through 12. But a lot of it was just memorization of a ton of different things that now we can pull up our phone, go on the internet. You can pull up a lot of those facts. But those facts don’t necessarily translate to actual real-world skills. When I listen to… I kind of make this analogy sometimes: students say … it’s funny, I have 12-year-olds that say this. They go, “How come they don’t teach us how to do our taxes?” And you know they’re regurgitating what they hear from adults, right? “Teach us real-world skills!” And I was like, really, if we taught you right now how to do your taxes, how many of you would really be like, “Oh, this is an awesome lesson! We’re really engaged!” But their point is that “I wanna learn something that I could actually use later on, that’s that I’m gonna carry on.” And in your course, you’re talking about these skills that actually can apply. Like you said, if I had cancer and I’m looking at different types of medical procedures, do I have the skills to really be able to evaluate and make informed decisions on that? And that’s, that’s not something that I’ve seen explicitly taught really anywhere. And I hadn’t heard anybody talk about it, really, until I heard your session, where you’ve kind of unpacked this, and over the last couple of years, have created some programs or resources for educators, where they can take this into their classroom. So what were some of those skills, again? What were were some of the skills that you thought, “I wanna make sure that my students can walk out and they know how to do this and apply it to maybe several different fields”?

Melanie Trecek-King (10:35):

Oh, that’s a really good question. Because the whole thing was a process for me. Like, when I finally let go of Intro Bio, I was so glad to see that class go, by the way. ‘Cause I just felt like I was beating a dead horse. So when I let go of it, I thought, “What do they need instead?” And for me, what I realized was I was trying to make the class I would’ve wanted to take. I realized the things that I personally didn’t know, that my own education maybe let me down a bit. But things that I thought were important. So then I took all of those, synthesized them, tried to figure out the best order. The class is currently in its third iteration. And I hope every iteration is an improvement. But I’m thinking about the students that I taught before the pandemic. It was Intro Bio. Up to just maybe the couple years before the pandemic, and during the pandemic, we had a new virus and we had a new vaccine and we had new treatments. There was hydroxychloroquine and there was ivermectin and then there’s masks. Are masks effective? Well, you know, in what circumstances? What kind of mask? There are all of these questions. And that whole thing was we saw science playing out in real time.

Eric Cross (11:50):

Absolutely.

Melanie Trecek-King (11:51):

And so were my students able to follow that? And then what happened in that process is that science became politicized. And in a time where things are uncertain and we need answers, ’cause it’s scary, people want certainty and science doesn’t tend to provide that. Especially when it’s just starting out. And then when it becomes politicized, people decide that they’re going to — it’s not necessarily a conscious decision — but they retreat into what people in their camps are saying or their groups are saying. Which actually leads me to one of the more important parts of information literacy skills in there, which is most of our knowledge is shared. We tend to have overinflated senses of what we individually know. And studies actually show that with Google, if you have access to Google, you think you’re smarter than if you don’t have access to Google. But we all have access to knowledge in our communities, and that’s one of the reasons humans are so successful, is that we can each specialize in different things and share our expertise and become greater than the sum of our parts. The problem with that, of course, is that we forget what we don’t know, and we assume that we know what the community knows. And so recognizing the limits of your own knowledge and how different communities produce knowledge, like the different epistemic processes that communities use to come to knowledge. When it comes down to it, an important part of knowing is knowing who to trust, right? Knowing where the source of knowledge lives. And in order to do that, you have to understand the processes that they’re using to come to that knowledge and the limits of your own knowledge. And then how to find who has that knowledge so that you can use that to make better decisions.

Eric Cross (13:38):

So, when I hear what you’re doing with your college students, and I think about what I’m doing in the classroom, in the middle school, we are really focusing on literacy as skills. Reading, writing, speaking, listening. And then when I think of the next step of the journey, your information literacy and the literacy you’re teaching is really the application of those things in the real world. And the examples that you gave are very critical examples. Evaluating claims about Covid. Making informed decisions about a medical procedure that you might need. And we all get that applied to us. We’re scrolling through social media and somehow social media is listening. It’s figuring out exactly what I’m doing, because all of a sudden the ads are telling me … how did you know I was alking about KitchenAid mixers now? I just said KitchenAid mixers and it’s gonna show up in my feed! But <laugh> I take that in the same way from the same place that I take in maybe an oncologist. So it’s it’s coming through the same channels. So now I kind of wanna pivot. So we’ve talked about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, the connection between “am I really teaching the skills that my students need in the science class? Is it really critical thinking explicitly or is it just kind of implied?” Now I wanna ask you how you do it. What’s the annotated, abbreviated kind of syllabus of your course?

Melanie Trecek-King (15:03):

So the course is called Science for Life. And the premise behind it is the kinds of skills and understanding of the process of science that they would need to make good decisions to be empowered in a world based on science. And so the very first lecture, I say, “OK, I’m gonna tell you a story and I just want you to listen to the story. And at the end I’m gonna ask you why I told the story.” And the story that I tell them is some of the history of the witchcraft trials in Europe. And I start with the Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of Witches, from the Pope, and about how people would accuse witches of causing birth defects or storms or crops dying. And, the best evidence that they had to absolutely know somebody was a witch was if somebody accused them, and then if they were accused, if they confessed. OK? But the problem is, to get them to confess, they would torture them. Roasting over coals, or splitting until somebody broke. And so I tell my students, “OK, this was absolute proof that someone was guilty of witchcraft. I don’t know about you; I would confess to anything, right? Make it stop!” So this is where I get to ask students, “Why would I ask you this? Why would I tell you this story? And traumatize you on the very first day of lecture?” And they see the reasoning, right? They thought they had evidence. The question was, is that good evidence? And so, you know, I’m getting students to have a basic understanding of epistemology, right? Without calling it that, or without going into all of the philosophical background of epistemology. Apply this to your own reasoning. What are you wrong about? Well, you probably wouldn’t know. OK, how would you know if you were wrong? Like what kinds of things do you feel that you’re so right about? How good is your evidence for that? So what I want them to do is internalize the thinking about thinking, and analyzing how they come to conclusions, and proportioning how strongly they believe. Their confidence in how right they are. So I think starting with that kind of misinformation, and getting students to internalize that process is important. But I think the example is really useful, because most of my students don’t believe in witchcraft. Right? So it’s not an issue that would immediately threaten them in some way. So when, when a belief is tied to identity or how we see ourselves or is really important to us, then it’s very difficult to be objective about that belief. And so by starting with witchcraft, it’s not triggering. I get them to think about thinking and practice that muscle so that when we get to those more important issues, they have the skills they need to evaluate them.

Eric Cross (17:55):

So would it be fair to say that your Science for Life class is really applied scientific thinking for the real world?

Melanie Trecek-King (18:01):

Absolutely. That’s the idea. I mean, science is too good to keep to ourselves, right? And it’s everywhere. So how can you understand the world through a scientific lens?

Eric Cross (18:10):

What are the nuts and bolts of how you teach your students these strategies? What do you do? What are some strategies and techniques that we can maybe share with listeners? And then where I want to go after that is I wanna ask you, how early do you think this can be started? So lemme start off first with, what do you do?

Melanie Trecek-King (18:28):

So I use three different strategies. One is, I provide students with a toolkit. And the toolkit is one that I created and it is like my one toolkit to rule them all. It is trying to apply critical thinking and science reasoning all together in one place. So that if students are met with a claim, they’ve got the toolkit with an acronym. They can now start and have somewhere to go. In that if I gave you a claim and said, “Just critically think through this claim,” I mean, that’s a mighty task. But if you have a structured toolkit, then it’s hopefully a systemic way that’s helpful. The toolkit is summarized by FLOATER. I have published it on Skeptical Inquirer. It’s free. So it’s Falsifiability, Logical, Objectivity, Alternative Explanations, Tentative Conclusions, Evidence, and Reproducibility. So I provide students with a toolkit. The next thing I do is I use a lot of misinformation in class. Back to what Carl Sagan says: What I heard was we should use pseudoscience to teach students the difference between a pseudo-scientific process and a scientific process. So, I use science denial, conspiracy theories, and give my students a lot of opportunities to practice evaluating claims with the toolkit. And the other thing I do is, I use inoculation activities. So inoculation theory is based on William McGuire’s original research in the ’60s, which is basically like a vaccine analogy. Where you can inject a small amount of a virus or bacterium into the body, so that it creates an immune response, so that it can learn the real thing. And so in the real world, it can fight it off. Inoculation theory does the same thing, but with misinformation. So, what we can do is, in controlled environments, expose students to little bits of misinformation so that they can recognize it in the real world. There’s different kinds of inoculation, but I’m a big fan of what’s called active and technique-based inoculation. So technique-based means that students are learning not the facts of misinformation, not factually why this thing is wrong, but about the technique used to deceive. So maybe the use of fake experts. Or maybe the use of anecdotes. Or the use of logical fallacies. The other part of that is active, which is where students create the misinformation. So for example, my students, just now, we finished covering pseudoscience. And I teach students the characteristics of pseudoscience. And basically we have fun with it. Where they pretend to be grifters and they sell a pseudoscience product. And so they have to make an ad like they’d see on social media, using the different techniques. And the point there is that it’s supposed to be funny, right? And lighthearted. But in a real way, by using the techniques used to sell something like pseudoscience, it’s opening their eyes. You can’t unsee how every alternative product has, “it’s an all-natural and used for centuries and millions use it and look at this person who says, ‘Wow, it worked for me!’ And it’s certified by some society that doesn’t exist, but this doctor behind it says that it’s really great!” I mean, it’s all the same stuff. So they create the misinformation using their own techniques.

Eric Cross (22:02):

That’s one of my favorite things that you’ve talked about, and I want to dive in that a little bit more. But when you’re teaching the toolkit, FLOATER, what does that look like in the classroom, when you’re actually breaking all of those things down? What does it look like as you’re walking your students through this, and you’re kind of coaching them on all of those different things? ‘Cause I feel like some things might be like, “Oh yeah, I got that.” And then some of them might be, “Oh, what is that?”

Melanie Trecek-King (22:24):

Yeah, it takes me probably a good solid lecture to get through the basis of the toolkit. But then over the rest of the semester, I’ll spend more time going into different parts, different rules, a bit more in-depth. So, for example, logical fallacies and objectivity. So the rule of objectivity basically states that you need to be honest with yourself. I’m gonna quote Feynman here, so: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” We don’t tend to think that we can be fooled. But of course we can. So actually, if you wanna talk about it, I start class by fooling my students.

Eric Cross (23:03):

Wait, what do you do? What do you do for that?

Melanie Trecek-King (23:05):

Oh, so this is really fun. Day 1 of class, after the syllabus, I tell my … so you’re in my class now, Eric. “So I have a friend, and she’s a psychic. She’s an astrologer and she’s pretty good at what she does. I mean, she’s got books and she’s been on TV and stuff. She knows I teach this course about skepticism. And so she’s agreed to test how effective she is by providing personality assessments to students in class. So if you wanna participate, what I need from you is your birthday, your full name, answer a few questions. Like, if your house was on fire and you could take one thing, what would it be? Or if you could get paid for anything to do anything for a living, what would it be? Um, there’s a third one. Oh! If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” So the next class, it’s usually over a weekend. The next class I say, “OK, I’ve got your personality assessments back, but remember, we wanna test how effective she is. So in order to do that, I need you to read your profile as quietly as possible. And then I’m gonna have you rate her accuracy on a scale of 1 to 5. OK? So close your eyes; rate her.” Over the years doing this, it’s about a 4.3 to 4.5 out of 5. They think she’s pretty accurate. OK? “So now, if you feel comfortable, get with a person next to you. And I want you to talk about what parts of the personality assessment really spoke to you and, and why, and why you thought she was accurate or not.” And it takes them 5, 10 minutes before they realize they all got the same one. So, this is not my original experiment. It was first done by Bertram Forer in … I think it was the ’50s. And it’s done in psychology classrooms. James Randi made it famous. But the personality assessment itself is full of what are called Barnum statements. So, named after P.T. Barnum. These are statements that are very generic. So, “You have a need to be liked and admired by people. You are often quiet and reserved, but there are times where you can be the life of the party.”

Eric Cross (25:13):

How do you know this about me, by the way? This is a — I feel like you know me right now.

Melanie Trecek-King (25:17):

“There are times where you’ve wondered whether you’ve done the right thing.”

Eric Cross (25:19):

This is getting weird.

Melanie Trecek-King (25:21):

I’m just on fire, right? So these are Barnum statements. They’re the basis of personality assessment.

Eric Cross (25:29):

Mel, can I pause you right there? You said Barnum. Is that the same Barnum, like Barnum & Bailey Circus?

Melanie Trecek-King (25:34):

Yeah. P.T. Barnum, who didn’t actually say “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but we attribute him with that kind of ethos. These statements though, if you read a horoscope or even like personality indicators, like the MBTI, it is basically pseudo-scientific. And it ends up with lots of these Barnum statements. They produce what’s called the Barnum Effect, which is, “Wow, that’s so me! How did you know me?” I could even do more. Like, you have a box of photos in your house that need to be sorted. Or unused prescriptions. And these can apply to nearly everyone, but they produce this effect where we go, “Wow, that is so me!” Right? So by fooling them this way, I get to … well, so the next thing is, “Yes, I lied to you. And I’d like to tell you I won’t do that again. But I’m not going to, ’cause I might. So be on your guard.” But I did it for free. And why did I do it? “I did it because I could tell you ‘I could fool you,’ but you wouldn’t necessarily believe me. So I fooled you, so that you would learn what it feels like to be fooled.” It’s not fun. But we’re gonna make a joke outta this. And students are almost never upset about this ’cause it’s a fun process and they’re all fooled. And again, the point is, I didn’t disprove psychic powers. I didn’t just disprove psychics with this exercise. But I did show you how easy it was to fake. So if somebody is gonna tell you that they can know these things about you through some way, hopefully the evidence they provide should be stronger than something that’s easily faked. Right? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you claim to be able to read my personality based on my birthdate, then I need more than something that you can be taught to do in 15 minutes. So, I fool them to convince them that they could be fooled.

Eric Cross (27:27):

You’re giving them a practice scenario for thinking. And I was thinking about basketball. I grew up playing basketball. And my coach would have our own team be the defenders of the next team we were gonna play, so that we can be prepared for the defense. We were gonna see. Now, when I’m thinking about education, and what you just said reminded me of this, it’s like we’re often just teaching offense. We’re always teaching the plays. We’re always teaching what to do. But we rarely teach defense. What happens when someone comes towards you and, and they challenge you or they come at you with claims? How do we evaluate this? And I think in pockets we do it. We do claim-evidence-reasoning. We present claims and evidence and reasoning. But we don’t always have practice defending them. And I think there’s great resources. There’s Argumentation Toolkit and there’s all these awesome resources that do this. But does that fit? You’re kind of having them practice defense?

Melanie Trecek-King (28:26):

Yeah. You know, that’s brilliant. I never considered that analogy. But, yeah, in the real world, you don’t just get to always try to score all the time. Someone’s gonna challenge you and give you a claim that maybe you haven’t heard before. So how do you think through it?

Eric Cross (28:41):

Yeah. And you become better. So now I’m thinking about how early could we start doing this? For one, I love the idea of lying to your students, because I do that. And it’s just such a fun scenario. How early could we start implementing these strategies or these ideas or these toolkits? In your mind, what do you imagine? How early could we start this with young people?

Melanie Trecek-King (29:07):

Yeah. I’m so glad you asked that question, ’cause honestly, by the time they get to me, it’s almost too late. And I don’t wanna say it’s too late, ’cause it’s never too late. But, oh, we need to start so much earlier! That example that I gave about the selling pseudoscience argument? I have a wonderful colleague, Bertha Vasquez, who’s a middle school teacher in Miami and the director of TIES at CFI. She did this with her middle school students. And quite frankly, their examples were just as good, or in some cases better, than my college students. And they had so much fun with it, too. And she just said that, you know, <laugh>, they actually are more savvy with the kinds of things that they see online than we — I don’t wanna say give them credit for. But almost that we want to believe. My students give me examples of things that are from corners of the internet that I didn’t know existed. And quite frankly, that’s probably a good thing for my own mental health. But students are on there too, like middle school students, and we need to prepare them for the kinds of things that they see in the wild.

Eric Cross (30:13):

So in middle school, definitely. Now, you’ve also done some work in high school as well, right? In Oklahoma? Did you do some. …?

Melanie Trecek-King (30:17):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (30:18):

…some work with high schoolers? What was that like? Did you see any impact there?

Melanie Trecek-King (30:21):

So I didn’t actually do it in Oklahoma. I have taught the course … actually, you were talking about younger kids. I’ve taught the course to high schoolers in my area that are parts of dual enrollment. And they absolutely ate up the curriculum. And they were wonderful, wonderful students. And it was completely appropriate for … they were juniors, actually. But the course has also been taught in Oklahoma, through a dual enrollment program as well. And it was a small sample size. But we have pre-post testing that showed that it improved their critical thinking, their acceptance of science. But anecdotally the head of the program there said that in his years doing this, he’d never seen a course that helped them improve in their other courses so well. So, I felt very rewarded by hearing this. But apparently their critical thinking skills and information literacy skills helped them succeed in their other courses that they were taking. And I love that the students were transferring those skills to other classes. That’s the whole point.

Eric Cross (31:23):

And that’s a big … I think that what you just said is really the core, especially of what we’ve been talking about this season: What you’re talking about and what you’re teaching can transfer and supports literacy. And this is an example of science doing that across all other content areas. So I think that that’s huge, that that was said. What do people say about this course? I know I went on your website, and I looked at some of the comments that some folks were saying, and I know it’s just a snippet, but what do you hear from the education world about this? Because I don’t see it in many places. I see it kind of embedded, sprinkled into different content areas. But you’re actually teaching it explicitly. Do you tend to find positive feedback, overwhelmingly? Or do you get pushback on on some of this? What’s it been like for you?

Melanie Trecek-King (32:16):

I think the biggest pushback — and it’s good pushback, and I would agree entirely — is with inoculation activities, you do need to be careful to, when you debrief students, you wanna tell them why you did what you did and to use their powers for good and not for fooling other people. And I think importantly, for not putting misinformation out into the wild without having context around it. So if you do these kinds of inoculation activities, like if you have your students create pseudoscience ads, don’t just let them put them on social media. Obviously, you can’t control everything that they’re doing. But explain to them why you wouldn’t wanna do that. As far as everything else, I’ve heard really great feedback. You’re referencing my website. So, when I put together the course, I was trying to find resources for students to read. Textbooks are ridiculously expensive and I couldn’t find anything that I really wanted students to buy. So I just started writing, and I put it on my site. I have a site that’s basically the core of the curriculum. More in progress. And then I’ve got some of the topics that we explore and those are all assigned readings. My students are captive, in that I know they want a grade, and for four months they have to sit with me for the entire semester, in that I’ve specifically ordered the content in a way that would be most conducive to them learning these things. On the internet, though, and on social media, ’cause I post on there as well, people come in from all kinds of entry points, and so the goal would be to have them start at the beginning and go to the end. But people … I’m pleasantly surprised that there is an audience for critical thinking and science literacy content out there. And so that really warms my heart. But I am doing more and more for educators. And so I have a section for educators. I put content on there. I put assignments, the assignments that we’ve talked about and more, are on there. And the educators that I’ve had use it have just been really wonderful. Like, I hear great things. If I might, the biggest issue that I’m having is actually reaching educators. I’ve gone to — I met you at NSCA, actually, that was only last summer.

Eric Cross (34:30):

Oh, wow. Wow.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:32):

Right?

Eric Cross (34:32):

Yeah, you’re right. It wasn’t even a year.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:35):

Yeah, I think it was like July last year. So, um, you’ve been to the conferences. And I just went to the last one as well. But I have yet to figure out a way to really get in front of enough educators to share the content. So if anybody’s listening and is interested in learning more, please let me know! <Laugh>

Eric Cross (34:52):

Yes. And we talked about your website, but I didn’t say what the website was. So it’s ThinkingIsPower.com.

Melanie Trecek-King (34:57):

Yes.

Eric Cross (34:58):

And on there, there’s tons of resources. There is the toolkit. And it’s all free.

Melanie Trecek-King (35:06):

Yes.

Eric Cross (35:07):

And there’s a dope t-shirt on there that I just bought today, that Melanie’s actually wearing right now. It says, “Be curious, be skeptical, and be humble.” And I love that. Because I think one of the things that we can’t forget about teaching people how to think and critically evaluating information, sometimes those conversations can become very dehumanizing. And what I mean by that is it sometimes can become, like, intellectual sport, where we forget that there’s a human being on the other other side. And we lose that empathy and compassion. We can kind of see that. It just becomes this intellectual jousting and arguing. And one of the things I know about you, and when you talk about this or you talk about the work that you do, and even the shirt that you’re wearing, there’s this, “be humble.” There’s this human that is never lost in this. And you said it, too: When you’re teaching your students and you’re equipping them with all of these intellectual skills and all of these tools, to use it for good. So to maintain your humanity, to maintain your character, and then to use it to edify and lift people up, not to go out and do harm. That balance, I think, is so, so important. So it’s something that I really appreciate about you and how you teach.

Melanie Trecek-King (36:19):

I appreciate those kind words. Actually—

Eric Cross (36:21):

Oh, of course!

Melanie Trecek-King (36:22):

—and if I might, I sometimes see people using critical thinking like a weapon. It’s like, “I have learned fallacies and I’m just gonna use the tools of critical thinking to tell you why you’re stupid, or why you’re wrong, and why my position is right!” But real critical thinking involves applying those same standards to your own thought processes. And even something like argumentation: the goal of our argumentation is not to BE right; it’s to GET it right. And so we’re on the same team. If we’re arguing about something, if the idea is in scientific argumentation we’re trying to find the truth, which one of us is making a better argument based on the evidence? Can your perspective help me see my own blind spots and vice versa? And the more different perspectives that we have, the more able we are to find whatever reality is. But we are in this together. And so, yeah, I think … I’m glad to hear that that’s coming through. But if you don’t have the kind of humility that says, “You know, I could be wrong,” then you’re never gonna change your mind anyway. So having the humility to say, I’m wrong. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (37:33):

Yeah. You end up just seeing people just defend turf, as opposed to support “look for truth.” And I know for me, my own education journey, I end up with more questions than answers anyways. So I go in trying to find an answer for something and I end up with 10 more questions. And I go, “OK, this is kind of how it is.” You go down this rabbit hole and you just end up with all these different questions. And it forces the humility, because you’re like, “I don’t know! I think this is what it could be, but it could also be these other answers or explanations. So this is just where I’m at, based on what we know right now, at this present time, which might shift.”

Melanie Trecek-King (38:07):

And that sounds reasonable. Yes. Which might shift. Yes.

Eric Cross (38:11):

And especially for us as life-science biology teachers, our content is something that definitely shifts. I know some of the things I teach now are not things that I learned when I was even in middle school. Just because things evolve. They change. We learn, we get new data. That’s just the way it is.

Melanie Trecek-King (38:24):

<Sighs> And Pluto is no longer a planet.

Eric Cross (38:26):

I know. Rest in — well, no, Pluto’s still there. Yeah. It’s no longer a planet. But that was one part of my kindergarten memorizations <laugh> is Pluto being in there.

Melanie Trecek-King (38:36):

Gotta change your mind.

Eric Cross (38:38):

I know. Any words of advice for science educators out there who want to focus more on honing these critical thinking skills and strategies with their own students, but they don’t know where to start? Where would you point them? Or what advice would you give them?

Melanie Trecek-King (38:52):

I think start with what you want the students to know. And not necessarily the FACTS that you want students to know, but start with the skills that you want them to know. And then really be honest with your process. When I designed Science for Life, I started with, “these are the skills that I want students to know.” And everything was in service of that. So this sort of backwards design, I think, helped me follow a path that was more likely to be useful, if that makes any sense. But it really required doing it all over again. So don’t be afraid to question the things that you’re currently doing, even if that’s all you’ve been taught or all you know.

Eric Cross (39:41):

What I’m hearing is, don’t be afraid to question your own assumptions about what you’re doing. And don’t be afraid to adapt or change or modify. Kinda, pivot. Be flexible.

Melanie Trecek-King (39:51):

Yes, be flexible and pivot. And this is where I’m in a different position than middle school and high school educators. Because I have complete freedom over what I teach in my class.

Eric Cross (40:01):

Sure.

Melanie Trecek-King (40:01):

At the end of the semester, I always joke with non-majors that there’s nothing they have to know, which actually gives me a lot of flexibility, because I could teach ’em a lot of different things. So if there are things that you have to teach students, obviously that’s one thing. But I personally think that the way that we’ve been teaching science needs a refresher. A rethinking. And so I would say, “If you want your students to learn science literacy, honestly ask, what does that mean to you? And what would that look like to get to that point?” For me, though, it was also keeping in mind that maybe I didn’t already know the best way to do that.

Eric Cross (40:43):

One of the things you mentioned earlier is trying to reach out to educators. And I know that when we work together, it’s a force multiplier. And what you’re doing is developing skills. And there’s these skills that are happening right now in academia that you’re doing. And then how do we transfer that into middle and high school. Or, I’m sorry, middle and elementary school, high school. We need to get more people into this conversation to kind of brainstorm and figure that out. We have a Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community, where we have educators that gather. That can be one place we start the conversation. And again, I know on your website you’ve been super active on social media; you’ve grown your presence on Twitter and all these different places, engaging with folks. Which is awesome. ‘Cause I know I see your posts and I’m saving the things that you’re posting and I’m thinking of ways that I can do it in my classroom. I’m gonna take that product. By the way, is that on your website, the lesson that you do with the product?

Melanie Trecek-King (41:43):

No, actually. So the article, “How to Sell Pseudoscience” is … I know Bertha Vasquez wrote up a version of it.

Eric Cross (41:50):

Maybe we can grab that. ‘Cause we might be able to put that into the show notes for folks, because she’s a middle school educator. If there’s already something that’s been done for teachers like us, we’re like, “Yeah, let me get that and let me remix it and make it my own!” if there’s already a exemplar out there.

Melanie Trecek-King (42:04):

Yeah, she’s done it. And so I will absolutely share that with you.

Eric Cross (42:08):

So, all season long, we’ve been talking about science as the underdog. We kind of framed it, you know, science oftentimes takes a back seat to math and English. It’s kinda the first thing to go. Or the first area where time can get cut. Because of what gets tested gets focused on, oftentimes. And then in addition to that, when you’re a multi-subject teacher, elementary science isn’t just one thing — it’s every field. You know, you’re a biologist, which is different than a geologist. And when you’re teaching every subject, that’s a lot. And you might not have had a science class for years. And the realities that we’re seeing over and over with different researchers and practitioners is that science could actually enhance literacy, and building those skills. And I think you really talked about it with the critical thinking skills. Those can transfer. Or the administrator that said, “This is one of the only courses I’ve seen where it transfers to other areas.” Could you share maybe with our listeners, just any advice for advocating for science in their own world?

Melanie Trecek-King (43:13):

Wow, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that question! One of the things that comes to mind though — because I was listening to your last episode and educators … I honestly didn’t realize how little time they had for science. And how often science was then the first to go, to allow room for other subjects. But science overlaps with a lot of other issues. And so I feel like there could be a way to bring in science when teaching these other subjects. So, for example, argumentation and logical fallacies are easy to apply to reading and writing. Information literacy, and being able to find good information online, teaching students how to laterally read, to be able to check a source, or how to use Google effectively, to put in neutral search terms to find sources, or teaching students how to recognize the characteristics of conspiratorial thinking: All of these things can overlap with so many other subjects. So the scientist in me is a little biased towards science being important enough to do this. But try to bring it into the other subjects. It doesn’t have to be completely separate.

Eric Cross (44:43):

So integrating science into other things. And I … big believer. And a hundred percent agree with you. Now I’m gonna ask a question that kinda like takes us backwards. You shared an app with me when we first met that I thought was really cool. And I know it’s a friend or colleague of yours. But as a middle school teacher, I thought it was great, because it was something that my students could download and practice some of the skills that you’re talking about. Would you talk a little bit about the cranky uncle? Is it the Cranky Uncle app?

Melanie Trecek-King (45:17):

Cranky Uncle.

Eric Cross (45:18):

Could you share a little bit about that?

Melanie Trecek-King (45:20):

Yeah. Cranky Uncle is awesome. So, Cranky Uncle is the brainchild of John Cook, who is the founder of Skeptical Science and the author of the 97% Consensus study on climate change. Cranky Uncle … so he’s also a cartoonist. And Cranky Uncle is a cartoon game where … I don’t even have to explain who Cranky Uncle is to my students. Everybody inherently gets the, the character, right? So he’s like the guy at Thanksgiving that you don’t wanna talk to because he denies climate change and he’s just really cranky. But Cranky Uncle uses the techniques of science denial, which are summarized by the acronym FLICC: So it’s Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry-picking, and Conspiratorial thinking. So he uses those techniques. Again, this is technique-based inoculation. So they recognize the techniques in the game, and you earn cranky points. And as you make Cranky crankier and crankier because you’re recognizing his techniques, you learn the techniques of science denial, and level up and open up other techniques. This is another one of those examples where climate change has a lot of science behind it, right? And if you wanted to get to the science behind climate change for any particular issue … so let’s say it’s cold today, so I’m gonna say there’s no climate change. OK? If I’m gonna unpack that at a factual level, and with science, we could be here for a while. But if I told you, “That’s like saying, ‘I just ate a sandwich so there’s no global hunger.’” OK? So that’s a parallel argument. Humorous. Love to use this kind of argumentation, ’cause it makes for some … I mean, it’s funny, but you get the point. It’s an anecdote. And anecdotes aren’t good evidence. So just like that, you could teach the technique of using an anecdotal fallacy for climate-change denial. So, I have my students play this game. You could do it when you’re studying argumentation. You could do it for science denial. I use an inoculation extension with that, where I have my students pretend that … um, actually, back up for a second. So I teach a class on critical thinking. And at the end of semesters I would get emails from students on, well, they’re failing the class, but they really shouldn’t, for all of these reasons. And reading these emails, I’m like, “If you think that’s a good argument, you clearly didn’t learn what I was hoping you would learn.” So I now have my students, early in the semester, after they play Cranky, pretend that it is the end of the semester and you’re failing the class and you’re failing because you didn’t do the work. Use at least four of the fallacies from class to argue for why you should pass. So they have to put it on a discussion forum, and they’ll say things like, “Well, if you fail me, then I won’t get into graduate school and then people will die and it will all be your fault.” Or, “My dog died, and so I was really sad.” Or, um, “You’re just a terrible teacher. And you’re short. So I don’t like you.” Or that kind of thing. So, oh, they love to attack my character. It’s really funny. But it’s supposed to be funny. And the point is, the students are using those arguments, they’re using the fallacies, to argue for something. And so by creating that misinformation themselves, they learn how those fallacies work. But taken together, I mean, everything that we just talked about there, Cranky Uncle, and the fallacy assignment, or whatever iteration you want that to be in, that doesn’t have to be in a purely science unit. Right? That could be sociology. It could be argumentation. It could be English.

Eric Cross (49:01):

Absolutely. That could be totally a prompt in an English class. And practiced in there. And then this could be an interdisciplinary thing, going back and forth between English and and science. Just having these discussions and looking at it from different angles. And you’re practicing the skills in two different contexts. So you get into argumentation. And then that app, I know I had fun with it. And the questions on there definitely resonate with people in my own family. I’m like, “I feel like I’m talking to exactly somebody that I’m related to right now.” <Laugh> Melanie, anything else that you wanna share, or discuss or highlight, before we wrap up?

Melanie Trecek-King (49:39):

So we could talk about lateral reading, if you like. ‘Cause I know a lot of educators use the crap test.

Eric Cross (49:45):

Please, please, please talk about that.

Melanie Trecek-King (49:47):

So, when evaluating sources, a lot of educators teach what’s called the CRAP test. And I wish I remembered what it stood for. But basically what you do, a lot of us have been taught when you go to a website, to figure out if it’s reliable, you wanna go to the about page. Read the mission; see who they are; maybe read some of the content; evaluate the language. So is it inflammatory? Are they making logical arguments? Are the links to reputable sources as well? And the problem is that if a site wants to mislead you, they’re not going to tell you that it’s a bunk site, right? They’re just gonna do a good job of misleading you. And so, what you wanna do instead … the CRAP test basically is an evaluation of a site. And that’s what’s called vertical reading. So you’re looking through a site to determine if it’s reliable. Uh, I think his name’s Sam Wineberg at Stanford, proposed something called lateral reading. Where, instead of on the site, what you wanna do is literally open a new tab and into the search engine type the source. You could do the claim, too. And then something like Reliability or FactCheck or whatever it’s that you’re checking, and then see what other reputable sites have to say about it. So, in their study, actually, they did a really interesting study where they compared professional fact checkers to PhD historians to Stanford undergrads. And they evaluated — I wish you could … um, there’s two pediatrician organizations. One’s like the American Association of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Pediatricians, something like that. They’re very similar sounding. So you give them to students. I do this with my students as well, the same study. So I give my students those two websites. And I say, “Which one of these is more reliable?” And they do exactly what most of us do, which is spend time on the site looking around. And most of the time, if not nearly all the time, they come to the wrong conclusion. And so then I tell them what lateral reading is: “OK, instead of looking through the site, open a new tab, search the organization and reliability.” Something like that. And it takes probably 30 seconds before they realize one of them has been dubbed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. As opposed to the other one, which is like a hundred year old huge pediatrician organization that produces their own journals and so on. But nearly all my students are fooled. And in the study, none of the fact checkers were fooled. I’m gonna get the number right. It’s something like 50% of the historians and 20% of the Stanford undergraduates got the correct answer. And they spent a lot more time on it. So it’s a great way to teach students how to use the power of the internet to evaluate sources much more quickly and, effectively. And yes, use Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia is not a final answer, but Wikipedia is actually pretty accurate. So if Wikipedia is the first place you stop, then yes, go there, see what Wikipedia says, and then follow some of their sources.

Eric Cross (52:47):

What popped in my head was like, Yelp reviews for websites. That almost sounds like what it was. It’s like when I search for a product, I don’t go and read the product description marketing. ‘Cause that’s all designed to sell me on something. But I’ll go and look in Reliability, if it’s like a car, or just other sites to cross-reference. And that sounds like what you were talking about is like cross-referencing. Seeing what FactChecker [sic] said about this site, versus seeing what a site says about itself.

Melanie Trecek-King (53:14):

Well, that’s a great analogy. Because if I wanted to know if a product was effective, what the manufacturer says about the product, clearly there’s a strong chance of bias. Right? They’re going to be on their best, um, put their best foot forward. Versus, what do independent reviewers say about this product?

Eric Cross (53:35):

Yep. And I am known to research something to death. And I get something called “paralysis by analysis.”

Melanie Trecek-King (53:42):

Ohhhh, yeah.

Eric Cross (53:44):

And it’s so bad that even if I’m trying to buy, like, towels, I need to find the best-bang-for-the-buck towel. I have to defer some of these decisions out, because I’m on the internet for three hours now. I’ll be a pseudo-expert in towels, and thread count, and all of that stuff. But yeah, that maybe that’s just the science person.

Melanie Trecek-King (54:03):

I mean, I feel your pain. I do the same thing. <Laugh> It’s annoying. Like, it’s just towels. What does it really matter? But yeah.

Eric Cross (54:10):

Coffee! It doesn’t matter what it is. I just need to go, “OK, I have to use these powers for good. Otherwise I’m gonna be researching forever.”

Melanie Trecek-King (54:16):

I wanna say one other thing. So, again, this is a college class and I have a lot of freedom. But one of the driving philosophies behind the class is a wonderful quote in a book, Schick and Vaughn, How to Think about Weird Things. And they said, “The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your decisions, and the quality of your decisions is determined by the quality of your thinking.” And I know my students want a grade. But I’m really trying to teach them how to be empowered through better thinking. That’s where the name “Thinking is Power” came from. I mean, we say “Knowledge is Power,” but it’s not enough to know things. And there’s too much to know. So being able to think and be empowered to have your own agency and not fall for someone’s bunk is my goal for my students.

Eric Cross (55:07):

And doing that is gonna help them through the rest of their lives. Not be swindled, not be taken advantage of, be able to make better decisions. There’s so many benefits to building that skill. And I know your students have definitely grown and benefited. I’m sure you’ve heard, long after you’ve taught them, heard back from them and how they’ve applied that course to their lives. Melanie, thank you so much for being here. For a few things. One, for providing and filling this space where there’s such a need. Again, the critical thinking resources, the tools that you used, are so, so important. If we ever lived in a time where they were critical, it was really what we experienced during the pandemic in the last few years. We watched people’s information literacy and science literacy play out in real time. And we literally saw life-and-death decisions being made based off those skills. That highlighted, I think how important this is. And then, taking the time to generate resources for educators like myself, that we can take and adapt and put into our classroom and start teaching our students. ‘Cause like you said, by the time they get to you, they’re, they’re so far downstream or so far in a system that, depending on the teachers that they’ve had and the education system they’ve been in, may or may not have even touched on these things. They might have learned a lot of facts, but they may not have built their muscle to be able to critically analyze and interpret the world around them. And you’ve just — even the last year, it hasn’t even been a year since we talked the first time — I’ve watched your resources continue to grow, and you share them. And so I, on behalf of those of us in K–12, thank you. And thank you for being here.

Melanie Trecek-King (56:49):

Oh, well, thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you for everything that you do, reaching out to other educators and for giving me a platform to hopefully reach other educators.

Eric Cross (57:00):

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Melanie Trecek-King, Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College and creator of Thinking Is Power. Make sure you don’t miss any new episodes of Science Connections by subscribing to the show, wherever you get podcasts. And while you’re there, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more listeners to find the show. You can find more information on all of Amplify shows at our podcast hub, Amplify.com/Hub. Thanks again for listening.

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What Melanie Trecek-King says about science

“Students carry in their pocket access to basically all of humanity’s knowledge at this moment in time. The question is: do they know what they’re looking for?”

– Melanie Trecek-King

Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College and creator of Thinking is Power

Meet the guest

Melanie Trecek-King is the creator of Thinking is Power, an online resource that provides critical thinking education to the general public. She is currently an associate professor of biology at Massasoit Community College, where she teaches a general-education science course designed to equip students with empowering critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills. An active speaker and consultant, Trecek-King loves to share her “teach skills, not facts” approach with other science educators, and help schools and organizations meet their goals through better thinking. Trecek-King is also the education director for the Mental Immunity Project and CIRCE (Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative), which aim to advance and apply the science of mental immunity to inoculate minds against misinformation.

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About Science Connections

S4 – 02. Bethany and Dan share their math biographies

Promotional graphic for "math teacher lounge," season 4 episode 2, featuring photos and names of math teaching guests Bethany Lockhart and Dan Meyer.

In this episode, co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer get personal and share their “math bios”—their early experiences with math and how those experiences turned them into the educators they are today.

Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Dan Meyer (00:00):

We’re recording. What’s up, everybody. This is Dan Meyer with Math Teacher Lounge.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:08):

And I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson. We are so excited to be back. Season Four, Episode Two. Hi, Dan.

Dan Meyer (00:16):

Hey, Bethany, how are you doing today?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:18):

I’m so excited to be talking with you! You know, as we record this, our reunion at NCTM is getting closer and closer.

Dan Meyer (00:28):

The NCTM live show is gonna be bonkers. I don’t think people are ready for it. You think you know what we’re about on MTL from listening to us, but the live show is gonna be outta control. You cannot imagine how many clowns and elephants Bethany wants to have at the live show. We’re still—we’re trying to talk her down from like three to one, but we’ll see.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:44):

All I want is the t-shirt cannon. Because I used to go to these baseball games and they would have a t-shirt cannon. And I thought, I wanna operate a t-shirt cannon! So like, if I could be standing on stage aiming t-shirts at people who are jumping up and down requesting a t-shirt? I don’t know. Doesn’t that sound fun?

Dan Meyer (01:01):

Sounds awesome. High point of my college education was catching a t-shirt. No, it was—it was a burrito. It was a burrito cannon. But I think it was just a t-shirt cannon, but it was a burrito cannon. And I caught a burrito at a game and it was probably the most memorable moment of all of college education for me.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:16):

Was the burrito still warm?

Dan Meyer (01:18):

Oh yeah. I think it got—like, I think it might’ve been warm at one point and then it got warmed back up through the muzzle velocity of the cannon. So it was a pretty great system they had going on there. <Laugh> Yeah. <Laugh> Anyway, I’m off topic, but, we’re thrilled to—I’m thrilled to chat with you and we’re thrilled to be listened to by you folks out there in MTL land. In the lounge itself. We got a fun show today.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:40):

So if you listen to Episode One—which if you haven’t, hope you go back and listen to it—if you listen to Season Four, Episode One, you’re gonna hear—we asked Huon, KT, who is this delight of a joyful teacher. We asked her to talk to us about what’s her math bio. And we want to ask all of our guests—like, I wanna go back and ask every single guest we’ve ever had to tell us their math bio.

Dan Meyer (02:06):

Yep.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:06):

Because, while seemingly simple in nature, our students enter our math classroom already having had this relationship with math and these notions about their role in math or what they think about math. And it impacts our school year with them if we’re a teacher. And it impacts our relationship with math as we move through our education and beyond. Right? And I I’m so excited about this question, ’cause I think it also ties into this theme for Season Four, which is joyful math, and diving into “When has math felt joyful? When has it not? Does it feel like—how do we think about how our math bio, our relationship with math, has evolved into a joyful or less joyful place?”

Dan Meyer (02:54):

I get it. And what’s really key here, I think, is that teaching more than other professions is a generational profession. You know what I’m saying? Like, no one is like, “Well, you know, I sold insurance to you and now you’re selling insurance to, you know, my grandkids; that’s amazing!” But people are always posting photos when, like, you teach someone who then becomes a teacher later. Teaching is a generational sort of thing. So the kinds of joyful experiences that we offer or don’t offer students now affect the experiences that students who haven’t even been born yet will have, you know, some 20, 30 years later. That, to me, is a trip. And well-worth exploring, you know, how we got here, mathematically speaking.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:39):

I remember a friend had sent me this image of an assignment that her son got that was asking for their Mathography. They wanted to know about their history of mathematics. And this was their first assignment. And this teacher, I would like to imagine, read them all and used it to inform conversations about students’ relationship with math. And, you know, some of the questions they asked were thinking about whether you consider yourself, quote, unquote, “good at math.” Like “what kind of experiences have you had? What do you like or dislike about math? What is, you know—what do you expect to learn in math this year?” Just asking students to actually pause and examine and reflect on their relationship and then also looking forward to, like, what kind of a classroom community do we wanna create? And I loved that assignment. And yeah, so today’s episode Dan, guess what?

Dan Meyer (04:32):

What’s going on? What’s happening?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:33):

I figured we should ask each other about our math bio.

Dan Meyer (04:39):

I think the people out there would love to know this about us. ‘Cause you know, we’re both awesome. But also what’s really cool here is that like, I don’t know this about you. Like not, not a lot. You know, the folks at Amplify, they kind of assembled me and Bethany together in the same way that record labels assembled pop boy bands, girl bands, that kind of thing, back in the day. You know, grabbing some stars from screen or film and just like throwing ’em together and saying, “All right, now you’re here to perform together.” And so it’s just a really good moment for us to, like, settle back and just know who we’ve been working with for the last three seasons and change here. I love it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:15):

Well, I don’t know. I don’t actually agree with that, Dan. Because don’t you remember? We knew each other beforehand. And while I would like to think of us as…oh, I’ll say One Direction—well, no, One Direction is now defunct. Who’s another band that got formed by one of those shows and is still together and still—

Dan Meyer (05:33):

BTS! K-Pop, you know! Let’s go!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:35):

K-pop. BTS.

Dan Meyer (05:38):

Let’s go, Bethany <laugh>.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:39):

So can we incorporate some K-pop into the NCTM Math Teacher Lounge live episode? Don’t answer now. Don’t answer now. OK. So not only are we gonna share our math bios, but we want to encourage you listeners to share your math bio with somebody in your life. It could be a child in your life, maybe talking to your kiddo about what was it like. What was math like for you? It could be a student that you have. It could be a partner, a friend, a parent. I mean, the sky’s the limit. Share your math bio. And most of all, share with us. We wanna hear about your math bio and you can share it with us at Twitter, at MTLShow, or in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge.

Dan Meyer (06:26):

Stop on by, please. All right. I’m gonna just share like, just a couple of quick, signposts. Not the full bio. Gotta leave them wondering about something here. But here’s a few quick highlights and lowlights of my math bio and how, maybe, it made me the teacher that I was and the educator I am. Is that cool?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:44):

Wait, I didn’t even, I didn’t ask you yet.

Dan Meyer (06:46):

Ask me what?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:47):

Hey, Dan!

Dan Meyer (06:49):

Is there like a magical word? Like, what’s your math bio? <Laugh> Oh, go for it. No, no, that’s right. They won’t know what I’m talking about. Why is he talking about his math bio? Bethany—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:57):

That whole lead-in that we just gave? They might not know.

Dan Meyer (07:00):

Yeah. We just talked about math bios for the last 20 minutes. But yeah, they might not know what we’re—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:04):

<laugh> So Dan, why don’t you go first? ‘Cause I know you were gonna ask me to go first, but why don’t you go first? Dan? What’s your math bio?

Dan Meyer (07:12):

Oh, wow. Well, thank you for the formal invitation to share my math bio, Bethany Lockhart Johnson. So, I’ll just share—I just wanna share a couple items here, not the full history. Gotta leave ’em—leave a little mystery in there, you know what I’m saying? But here’s a few highlights and lowlights, and I think what it means for me as an educator. So, I was homeschooled for eight years. That was big—did a lot of math learning on my own. Couple of lowlights from that, a lot of highlights, in terms of just like being able to, like, learn at my own rate and just jump on ahead and pursue different wacky things. But I tried to switch into public school in fourth grade and I lasted, um, four hours. I didn’t even go to class. I enrolled and then it was like, boom, I was out of there. Because we went to the school; we met the teacher, saw the room, very nice person and place. But I got the homework assignment and the homework assignment was gibberish. I had no idea what to do and such was this feeling of just, like, despair and hopelessness, I was like, I cannot be a part of this. I remember the assignment. It was about identifying scalene, isosceles, and equilateral triangles. I’ll tell you this: I am quite good at that now. But at the time, like, I didn’t know what those words meant. And you know, at that moment we had Encyclopedia Britannica, could not Google this or even Ask Jeeves or AltaVista this so well back then. It just—it was an entry moment of failure and realizing that so much of math is like a, kind of a social kind of construct. And if you’re not part of that social circle, what can you do? So that was a bummer. Another bummer was eighth-grade math, learned it all by way of videotape. You know, put in the tape and watch—not gonna say the person’s name and not this person’s fault—but it was just like watching someone work on a whiteboard. Kind of a precursor to Khan Academy, kind of a drag. Went to high school—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:02):

Wait, wait, wait, wait. We were—I’m not ready to jump to high school. Wait. Can you pause for just a second?

Dan Meyer (09:06):

Yeah. Rock on.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:07):

I just need you to go back to the triangle thing. So in that moment, what did that mean for you that you had had all these experiences with math and then you encounter math in a completely different sphere, a public school, and it did not have a connection or meaning to you because prior to that, it sounds like it was pretty positive. Right? Explore these things you’re curious about; there’s not, like, a level you need to stick with…

Dan Meyer (09:33):

Yep, yep. Yeah. I think that’s right. Maybe it was a little bit of a classic, like, “Oh, I didn’t have a growth mindset; my mindset was like, ‘Oh, I’m good at math because I am, you know, born that way,’” and all of a sudden, that identity was, you know, thrown into question. And, you know, my foundation was all of a sudden quite shaky. And yeah, that’s—you know, I think I taught a lesson recently where I was like, “Hey, this whole thing with a less-than or equal-to sign and a greater-than or equal-to sign, like what those signs are: it’s just, it’s language. And if it’s confusing to you, it’s not because you’re bad at math; it’s ’cause language is oftentimes confusing ’cause people have to agree on it.” So I dunno, that sort of thing is kind of filtered in, filtered back in periodically, some sympathy for like how a lot of math is like just socially agreed upon ways of working with, you know, numbers, shapes, patterns, that kind of thing.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:20):

OK.

Dan Meyer (10:21):

Anyway.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:21):

And in this home school—I have a lot of questions about that, but I’ll stick to one—were you in a community of people that you talked about these math ideas with? Were you homeschooled solo? You have a sibling, so I think you were together, right?

Dan Meyer (10:39):

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got a twin sister. So we were, you know, like, right on with each other the whole way through there. And yeah, so we had—but it wasn’t, it wasn’t like a—it was a lot of individual work, with my flavor of homeschooling.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:54):

Got it. And the tapes—wait, before you go to high school, the tapes, the VHS tapes, which I’m just loving this image—

Dan Meyer (11:02):

Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:02):

Was that a positive experience? Was that because that was an area of math that whoever was homeschooling you wasn’t that comfortable with? Why was it that route for the tapes, and what was that? Was that joyful for you?

Dan Meyer (11:15):

Yeah, definitely not joyful. Yeah, it was like, if you had questions, you couldn’t really ask them of the VHS tape. It didn’t work out so well in that way. And it was a lot of operational-type math. It was, you know—there was no give and take; it was all kind of take. From the video teacher. And yeah, I was doing that because my homeschool teacher, my mom, who is very smart in lots of areas, did not have the math knowledge or confidence, especially to help with math at eighth grade. And that was a big reason why, flash-forward to the next year, went to high school.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:48):

Nice segue. OK.

Dan Meyer (11:50):

<laugh> You caught up to high school…I encountered just like four years of just crazy-good, just bonkers-good math teachers who just really changed a lot for me. Especially, Mr. Bishop and Mr. Cavender, very cool folks who did a lot. And especially, I think Mr. Bishop and Cavender both modeled for me what curiosity from a knowledgeable adult looks like. Like someone who, you know, now I can say to myself, “Oh, they were kind of like putting on an act of being very curious about answers they were hearing for the 2000th time from a student,” let’s say, but what a powerful experience that was for me to feel like, “Oh, wow, my thoughts are interesting to someone besides myself.” I got like, maybe it’s two real highlights that I’ll just point to, from my math bio that made me the math teacher and person that I am. Let’s see here. Maybe three, if you you’ll indulge me. One is just like the idea that you could do math wherever you have your brain, a pencil and a paper. And so I remember like in high school, I was in church with my family and kind of a little bit bored of whatever’s going on. And I just had the Bolton and I like drew a pentagon, a regular one, then a hexagon, a regular one, and kept on drawing, like adding sides to the shape. And it was like, it was becoming a circle. And, you know, I was able to take the area of each of those shapes and say, you know, “What happens as you send the number of sides to infinity?” And watch as the formula for area of a circle, Pi R squared, popped out. And it was kind of a literal religious experience, in that moment, just like, “Wow, like my brain’s so cool and math is so cool and paper and pencil’s so cool.” And so there’s that. Just that kind of experience was pretty awesome. And then I would just say like, I’ve had some really fantastic experiences with math in the world itself. Stuff like—let’s see, this is gonna invite more questions from Bethany, probably, maybe I should avoid—I got, I have a Guinness—I have a Guinness world record that’s almost 20 years old. This Guinness world record is—it’s old enough to drive basically at this point. And almost old enough to drink. But like it was—it was a record for chaining the longest paper clip chain together in 24 hours. And the only way I was able to break that record was through mathematics. Where, like, I would be finishing a box of clips. And I would say to my buddy who was there, “I just finished a box of clips.” And that person would type in the number of clips that I had just done. And then a mathematical formula that I had created would tell me how many—how long the chain was at that point. It was being rolled around a spool. And like, it’s just like, wow. So math just made this possible. You know, math revealed that the record I was trying to beat was beatable, because I did the math on it. It was, like, thousands of feet long in 24 hours. And other folks might be like, “Oh, like, that’s that’s huge!” But me, I was like, “All right, let’s divide this out. You know, divide by 24 hours in a day, divide by 60 minutes an hour, 60 seconds in a minute. Oh, that’s like one clip every four seconds. That’s really slow.” You know, think about that <counts aloud>, “Clip, two, three, four. Clip two, three…” It was just slow. So math helped me, you know, wreck that record. Which to my knowledge still still stands. Don’t get any ideas, Math Teacher Lounge Folks! Is this news to you, Bethany? You haven’t blinked in the last, like, five minutes. I’m curious if this is new.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:20):

It is news to me. And I have so many questions. Because OK, if four seconds was slow, so then what was your like—so then I’m assuming a hundred clips per box? Like, what was the rate, you know, per box? How long did it take you to complete a box? What did this friend like? Did this friend stick with you for the whole 24 hours? Did you really do it for 24 hours? Or once you beat the record, did you rest? How did you account for biological function? Like, needs? Like a restroom?

Dan Meyer (15:51):

<Interrupting> Like what?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:51):

Eating.

Dan Meyer (15:51):

Like what, Bethany? OK.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:52):

Um, Sleep.

Dan Meyer (15:55):

So yeah, maybe we dive into some of the specifics in a different time.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:59):

Just tell me one of ’em. Tell me one.

Dan Meyer (15:59):

I’ll just say. So as to discourage other Math Teacher Lounge listeners from taking this on—back off of the record, folks!—this was back in college, so I was a little more limber back then. But I did one—I think it was 1.8 seconds per clip. For an entire 24 hours. Just like, so just like think about it, would you? If you’re gonna step to me on this one, just think about that, OK? And then, and then, you know, make an informed decision.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:28):

Wait. Wait, wait, I just wanna tell you one thing. I’m picturing somebody with a straw, and like, giving you water as you keep clipping. I’m picturing, like, music, I…

Dan Meyer (16:37):

That’s not far. That’s not far. That’s not far from—yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:40):

So many questions! OK. Go on. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Go on. This is your bio.

Dan Meyer (16:44):

We gotta, I gotta wrap this up. I wanna hear your bio. But, like, I would just say like this move to this sense that math is actually a thing that’s useful for more than just a grade; it’s useful for more than just, you know, the societal, you know, adulation that comes from being a math nerd. That kind of thing. And so that, I think that affected a lot of math teaching for me. And, if I gotta, like, summarize math teaching itself in a journey, it went from like, “Hey kids, aren’t I awesome?” to, “Hey kids, isn’t math awesome?” to “Hey kids, aren’t you awesome?” And like that journey was facilitated by lots and lots of people, you know, a lot of personal growth, but at this point, at one point I was like, “Hey, math can help you get records and whatnot. It’s really useful.” And now I’m like, “Wow, your brain’s just doing just really interesting things. I can help you understand how interesting those things are, and maybe make them more interesting, or interesting in a different way, with some help here.” Let’s put a pin in that. That’s the math bio.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (17:50):

So I have no doubt that if you ask someone in your life, listeners, for their math bio, that you will discover things about them that you never knew. Literally the questions that I have…I have so many question. And Dan is very good at, you know, bringing me back. Bring me back, like, come on, come on. But I just wanna say, overall, your journey seems pretty joyful. It seems pretty joyful. It seems pretty full of confidence. I don’t wanna say “ego” in a negative way, but I wanna say you were buoyed by these experiences that allowed you to feel like math was a place for you to thrive.

Dan Meyer (18:36):

Right.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (18:36):

Where you could try out things. You could try it out and just, “I could do that!” Right? Like…your relationship just felt very, like…you felt like you had autonomy, agency, perhaps much like you, you operate in this world. Dan, is that, is that right <laugh>?

Dan Meyer (18:54):

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say. And without telling too much of her story, my twin sister with whom I share most things, including genetics, you know—she had a very different experience in math early on. She’s brilliant. She’s a doctor. And not, you know, the book kind of doctor that I am, but like a real, you know, medical doctor. She’s brilliant. But we were—we encountered different messages about who math was made for, early on in, you know, in our entire math learning. And she—we both digested the messages that we were sent, and took, you know, different, different paths because of them, for sure.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:31):

Funny how that works. I thank you, Dan. I do. For in all sincerity, I appreciate you sharing that. And I think that it’s exciting to hear how it influenced your teaching. It feels like you want to cultivate those experiences for your students. And I’ve been in the room when you’ve presented; I was in a room where you taught a class live. It felt like you were making space for the students to have these aha moments. And it feels like in your work at Desmos, and now Amplify, you’re trying to create these products that allow folks to recreate these amazing math moments. Right? And that it’s for everyone and that it’s accessible and it can be very positive. I feel like I have this new perspective on kind of the energy you bring to your teaching. So thank you for sharing that.

Dan Meyer (20:24):

Yeah. Been a pleasure. Thanks for your questions here, Bethany. And it’s been—it’s been fun to reflect on it. And I do—I do feel very lucky in lots of ways. Privileged. Lucky. I know, like—I think the world has been set up for my success in lots of ways, as who I am. But I do just…yeah, I feel—I want more people to experience what it’s like when you walk into a math classroom and it’s like, “Hey, this place is for you. You have interesting thoughts about this. Let’s get ’em out.” So that’s awesome. I would love to hear about you and how you…I mean, we have taught different kinds of kids. You know, I taught kids who I think were somewhat set in, they’re a little bit more solid at secondary in who they are as a math learner. Like “I know who math is and who I am with math.” And I’m really excited to hear what your math bio allowed you to do with students who were perhaps open to the idea that they are very mathematical or at least not yet closed off to those possibilities. So, yeah. What are some of the high, the, you know, the high and low water marks of the making of Bethany Lockhart Johnson, math teacher? <Laugh>

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:24):

Thanks for asking, Dan. <Laugh> I’ve shared aspects of my math bio because I think it really informs the way that I talk to people about math and think about math. And I like to share it because I want folks to consider their own journey with math, as we like engage with problem-solving and sense-making and thinking about the students in our classroom. My dad is a math and computer science major. So he had a computer very early on. I wish he had invested in Apple early on when he had like one of the first Apple computers ever. And, sorry, dad, but it’s true. I do wish you had done that.

Dan Meyer (22:10):

I’m sure he does too.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:11):

Oh, he does. So math and computers and conversations about counting, you know, it felt like it was kind of just normal. Like it was around me. And I went to Montessori, which is a private school that—oh, they have some public Montessori—but it’s very self-directed. And so we would have these kind of charts, these goals for the day that you explored. And so we would explore math in very, I don’t know, very organic ways, with these natural materials. And I feel like I excelled at math, but it wasn’t something that I was conscious of. It was just like, “Oh, well, yeah. Math, it’s, you know, something we do.” And then when I went to—when I left Montessori in fourth grade, I remember that year being a lot of like repetition. I was like, well, we did this. We covered this. And except for the mission project that we hadn’t done, that was all new. And that’s it. For another time I’ll share about that. But <laugh> then, they actually, I was moved with a group of students to the fifth grade math class, ’cause we had already done the work that we were doing. And so, it wasn’t that it felt like it came easily, but it did make sense. What we were doing made sense. And then it all kind of changed. There was a lot of change in my family. There was, like, missed school time. And we moved and I went to a new middle school and I was in this environment with students who—it was like an accelerated program. And so I was in this environment with students who were pretty competitive with each other. And I remember going—and I was not from of a competitive environment; like Montessori is not competitive. It’s not about that.

Dan Meyer (24:02):

Right. Right.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:02):

It’s—it was very strange to me that I would be competing against anyone, even competing against myself. And I, you know, knew how to set goals. But it was a different level of energy. And I felt like, because I wasn’t competitive in that nature, I felt like that kind—I felt on the outside of a lot of the energy. Besides the regular, like, middle-school feeling outside of things. And I remember the first friend that I made. Hi, Susan! She had said to me, this was like maybe our second week of school, she’s like, “Oh, at lunchtime, come with me to math club.” And I was like, “OK.” And I remember walking into that room and I had no idea what was going on. And so that was one of the first times where I was just like, “Whoa, I have absolutely no concept of what they’re talking about or what.” These are my peers. I felt very—it was very—it was strange. It was strange. I was like, “This doesn’t feel like a space for me at all.” When I think ordinarily I was kind of excited about the idea of going to math club at lunch, you know? And over middle school, I kind of just got progressively more and more behind. It started with missing some work and then missing more and then checking out. And, you know, the problem was that I really made it about myself. That, like, it wasn’t something that I was then good at or could do. When really it was that well, pre-algebra, I was having a really hard time in like the rest of my life. And so I wasn’t real present in that class. And so when I got to algebra, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And then if I missed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, well, Thursday is gonna be hard, you know? And, it just got progressively harder and harder. So I had this great idea that between eighth grade and ninth grade, I was going to take this accelerated geometry class. ‘Cause that was the ninth grade class, it was geometry. And I would take it. It was like geometry in three weeks or something. So then when I entered high school, I would’ve gotten this like jumpstart. But I wish I had said, “Oh, I’ll take this, and then in ninth grade I’ll take geometry.” So like I’ve already kind of gotten a preview of the material. But instead I went to the 10th grade math, which was like intermediate algebra, trigonometry. I had absolutely no clue what was going on. And I had a very, very difficult time and I wasn’t ready for that class. But it was exacerbated by the fact that this teacher felt very free to let the freshmen in that class know that they shouldn’t be in that class. That this class was for 10th graders.

Dan Meyer (26:49):

Oh wow. Oh, wow.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:51):

And we had a rather contentious relationship. And I will never forget that we were in the hallway, and he says to me, “You don’t belong here.” And I’ve talked to—I’ve talked to a girlfriend of mine about her experiences with this teacher and she has the fondest memories.

Dan Meyer (27:13):

Wow.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (27:14):

She—in fact, almost everyone I’ve spoken with, you know, if we are talking about past teachers or, “Oh, what was that class like?” I mean, they just have these wonderful memories! And for me, my sense of like belonging was already so on a tight rope anyway, that to have this adult, this teacher, tell me, “You do not belong here,” just crushed me. And in hindsight, I think he was saying like, “This class is too hard for you.” I mean, maybe. <Laugh> But all I heard was “You don’t belong here.” And I extrapolated it to connect to math and to anything having to do with math in general. And it just got worse and worse through high school in the world of math. My next math class was even—I had to repeat that class, and still didn’t understand what was going on, and felt more out of place, and, you know, it’s one of those things that I just kind of had started to accept that, I guess, math isn’t for me. I guess I’m just not a math person. Or whatever these stories are that I started to create and build and find evidence for around me that was informing that this wasn’t for me. And I had always done well in school. I was in, you know, accelerated classes. I felt like I was capable of problem solving. And yet in math, I just felt like I had all of this evidence saying that I didn’t belong there. And so when I went to college, I took whatever two math classes were—you know, I was in performing arts and then I did ethnic studies as well. And I remember you had to take two math classes that were GEs. There were these classes that if you don’t wanna deal with math, you go take those classes. And I was like, “Oh yeah, I’ll take that. I’ll take that.” The gulf widened, you know? <Laugh> And I didn’t feel like anxiety when I had to do things like balance my checkbook or navigate math in everyday spaces. It was just, it would never occur to me that I would like seek out opportunities to engage with math or think about it or talk about it.

Dan Meyer (29:35):

That is—yeah, that’s just so wild, how, I don’t know, like it’s often, from the student’s perspective, it is them in a vacuum with math, and the two of them interact and decide if, you know, if they’re right for each other. But from the grown-up perspective, it’s just, you know, it’s a little bit clearer that your story with math was not just you in math, but you with, you know, various external things happening. With family, various teachers playing their different roles—sometimes, you know, really tragic and horrible roles—and then like the compounding mathematical debt that it feels like you were kind of building up, as challenges in one year didn’t get resolved and moved into the next year and so on. And all that makes me wonder—it makes me, like really, really scared, first of all, because I would bet that your teacher might not even remember that moment, that for you is part of just a pivotal moment in your math story, and how many kids have I played—have I been a part of their story in that way and wouldn’t even recall? You know what I’m saying? So that’s a scary part. And then also I’m just wondering, like, how can we, how can we help kids who are in those moments recognize that, “Oh, this kid is like absent a bunch,” and give them more resources to be successful rather than say, “Well, you just gotta try harder now.” Those are things I’m wondering, hearing your story. Thank you for sharing that. I’d love to know more about how you then became a teacher and what all that did for you as you helped students.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:06):

Well, but to answer what you were saying, it wasn’t that I wasn’t—I was always absent physically, but at least like mentally at that point, because it had become so difficult. It didn’t make sense to me. So I was just really checked out in math class, you know? So in hindsight, you know, as a teacher, for sure I can look back, and especially hearing these stories and these experiences my friend had with this teacher and just like chalks up as one of like her most favorite teachers ever! And you know, he clearly did a great job for so many students. But for me, and I think for some people, they would’ve taken those challenges and, you know, it would have fortified them in a different way or something. But for me, I took it upon myself to mean certain things about myself and about my ability and what I was capable of. And so I think, I think in some ways, you know, yeah, it’s all, it’s all interconnected. You know, when your students walk in the door, they’re not this—the things that are impacting them in their life are coming into the room with them. And I don’t think we can take that for granted and think, “Well, if they just focus hard enough…”

Dan Meyer (32:21):

Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:23):

So let’s go back to my love of Oprah. You know, Oprah talks about living your best life. And something I really appreciate about Oprah is that she encourages you to examine, like, sticking points, right? Like she doesn’t just say, “Well, this…just pretend nothing ever happened, and everything’s fine!” You know, she really talks about making time for reflection. And I kind of got mad that anytime I thought about math, or math schooling came up. Or, you know, whatever, any time that came up that I just felt UGH about it. And I felt like a failure. And I’m like, “You know what, what if I took a math class? And I’m an adult at this point. I’ve graduated. I have—I’ve left college. I have my degrees. But I said, “What if I took a math class?” So I went down to, the city college and I found out that you have to take this exam, like a placement exam. And I went and took the placement exam. And I remember it’s one of the responsive tests where if you get it right, the next question’s a little harder. And so I’m taking it, panicking, because it’s getting more like…I just, you know. And I remember it placed me in like, whatever, Algebra Something, this class that was far more advanced than I thought I should be in. And I was like, there’s been a mistake! You know, and I went to the counselor and said, you know, “I got these results, but I couldn’t answer a lot of the questions on the test.” She’s like, “No, no, no, that’s how it works.” So I go take this class and the class was hard. And I decided that I was just gonna keep showing up. And every day before class, I kid you not, they had a little math…it was like a math center where you could go in and they had a bunch of tables and you’d sit at the table and you could sit and do your work or whatever. If you had a question, you walked up and put your name on a clipboard and then somebody would come and help you. So I did that, every single—like before every single class I would go in. I’d sit there. I’d do the work. I’d go. And I’d get help. Like somebody would walk over and you know, some kid for whom they’re like this…you know, they’re math—it might be you, Dan! It could be you! It could have been you! You know, would walk over and be like—

Dan Meyer (34:38):

Yeah, I was in Help like that. Naw, it’s awesome. Love, love those people. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:42):

And you know, I did it. And I did so well in the class. I did exceedingly well in the class. And I said—

Dan Meyer (34:50):

Take that! Take that, everything! Every other math experience!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:53):

I said, what?

Dan Meyer (34:55):

Yeah!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:55):

Wait a second.

Dan Meyer (34:56):

Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:57):

And it was that I was present. I was not afraid to look at what didn’t make sense. And if something didn’t make sense, it didn’t mean there was something wrong with me. Whaaaaat?

Dan Meyer (35:10):

Yeah. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:10):

So I was just in such a different space. And then I took another math class and that class was even harder. And I did the same thing where I went to the little lab and, you know, and it just buoyed me. And it made me realize that, like, this story, that my experience with it was very powerful and that was a real lived experience, but that it didn’t have to define my relationship with math. But then! I decided I wanted to go back to school to become a classroom teacher. And I totally—this was a couple years after that math class experience. So now, you know, I’m healing my relationship with math through basic positive experiences, da, da, da, you know, doing other work. But fast-forward, for a whole number of reasons, decided to become a classroom teacher. And I freaked out. All of my—like, I’m studying for the GRE and the CSET and all the things you have to the hoops you have to jump through to apply to the masters program and the credential program. And I freaked out. I was so close to quitting, Dan. Because I was convinced that the reason I couldn’t be a classroom teacher is because I wasn’t capable in math. Like I was—it was all that resurfaced. And even though I now had evidence to say something different, to the contrary, it was still so visceral. And I was so scared. But I passed that Math CSET.

Dan Meyer (36:47):

Get it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:47):

I did well enough on the GRE—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:50):

Yes!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:50):

You know, I finished my credential. I worked really, really hard. I had to work so hard in my student placement, when I was student teaching for a fifth-grade class, ’cause I felt like, “Oh my God!” I mean, now I could do the mathematics, but I couldn’t TEACH it to someone, you know? But I had amazing professors at UCI, and my math professors really like just—and my mentor teacher! shout out to Jennifer! shout out to Phil!—these amazing mentor teachers who just loved teaching and who loved—like you said, you have these teachers in your life who you got to see the way that they listened to students. They taught me about that love of listening to students. And then I fell in love with, you know, CGI, cognitively guided instruction, and started learning all about all of these educators who just wanna learn from students’ thinking. And it was just so powerful. And I realize as a kindergarten teacher that I have this really special role in helping to create space for a positive school experience. Like we get to talk about—I talk about my students as mathematicians; they’re writers; they’re thinkers; they’re problem-solvers. And I also want to make space for parents. Some of them, this is their first kid in kindergarten, and they brought all of their experiences, a lot of it negative, that they had had with mathematics. So I felt like it was such an exciting opportunity to help show parents how they could have conversations about math with their students. That also, I hope helped heal their own anxiety with mathematics.

Dan Meyer (38:41):

Right, right.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (38:42):

Like, I’ve not even scratched the surface of math learning. But I just have such a changed perspective and relationship with math. And I just fell in love with the sense-making. And I fell in love with the journey of it. I still experience math anxiety about a wide variety of things, but I do love it. And I feel like there’s a space for me in relationship with math. And that really excites me.

Dan Meyer (39:09):

Yeah. Wow. Listen to that folks. We, we don’t deserve her! Bethany Lockhart Johnson! She got some math game and could have gone off there and, you know, become an accountant or something. And she chose to hang with kids and their parents. That’s so wild that you’re like rehabbing parents and their self-conception about mathematics at the same time. I think that is so cool.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:32):

Well, thanks Dan Meyer. I gotta tell you, I don’t know when or if I’ve ever shared that much of my math story. So there is a certain amount of vulnerability there. But thanks for listening. And I’m glad that, you know—I think there’s space for us to talk about these things that we care deeply about, but that can be really complicated.

Dan Meyer (39:56):

Yes. Yes. And I love how you you’ve really sharpened the point on what I feel like I know in my brain, but not my body all the time: That individual teachers are huge. Like, individual teachers, and individual moments of teaching, are just not something to play with. You know, like that kid that’s in fifth grade having a tough time, like there could be a month or a day-long period where all of a sudden, like, you’re just like, “Oh yeah, I’m back in the mix; like, me and math are still buddies.” And there’s also like moments that you had, where like one casual word from a teacher can just really put a huge wedge between you and a discipline that needs and wants you and your intellect in it.That’s a really powerful testimonial. Not just for math, but for teaching, your teaching bio.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:43):

I agree with you. And I also, I also…you know, I think we can’t put this—we are human. Teachers are human. And so I’m sure there’s things I’ve said to students. Twenty-second story: a student stapled his finger in my class. <Laugh> And I remember holding his hand and saying, “Why did you do that?” And I wasn’t yelling at him, but it was like, I am sure the panic in my face…like, that’s what he’s gonna remember about kindergarten. Right? <Laugh>.

Dan Meyer (41:19):

Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:20):

That. He will remember that. He won’t remember the really cool city project we did. He’s gonna remember his teacher holding his hand, in his face: “Why did you do that?”

Dan Meyer (41:30):

Yeah. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:30):

You know, so we’re human. And yes, it was awful that that teacher said that to me. There were a thousand other ways that he could have said whatever it was he was thinking. And that did deeply wound me. But despite his influence—because teachers do have a lot of power and I think they need to examine that power, ongoing—it still doesn’t have to define us. So I don’t wanna put this pressure, like—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:55):

Sure.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:56):

“So never ever say anything negative!” You know, we’re human.

Dan Meyer (42:00):

I feel like that kid is currently on some office-supply podcast talking about “your office-supply bio” and saying, “Let me tell you how I first got really freaked out by staples. Here’s the deal: I only use paper clips. And here’s why.”

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:15):

“Here’s why.” But then—callback!—he’s going to stumble upon THIS podcast and think, “And because I’m so adept with paper clips, I can beat that record!”

Dan Meyer (42:30):

Though—aaay! whoa! Settle down!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:31):

BOOM.

Dan Meyer (42:31):

Don’t get any ideas, kid. No way. Uh-uh. I don’t like that at all. That’s not what—that’s not what I want to have happen here. No, thank you.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:41):

Well, I’m spent, Dan. I need a nap.

Dan Meyer (42:45):

Yeah. I need a box of Kleenex. I need a nap. I need a—yeah, for sure, a baba. Uh-huh. Definitely. Hey, so look, I’m not expecting you folks out there in the lounge to kind of give us the same depth or breadth. You know, we are here, of course, for your entertainment. Feast on our stories and dramas. But I would love to know at some point, like, what are a few, a few moments that really came to define you mathematically? Came to influence you as a teacher? I think we would do really well for each other to understand that about all of our processes. So yeah, I would just toss in a plug in for Twitter, @MTLShow, or Facebook, Math Teacher Lounge; it would be fantastic to hear from you.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (43:24):

Thanks so much for listening.

Dan Meyer (43:25):

Thanks, folks. Bye now.

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What Dan Meyer says about math teaching

“Teaching, more than other professions, is a generational profession. The kinds of joyful experiences we offer, or don’t offer, now affect the experiences students that haven’t even been born yet will have years later.”

– Dan Meyer

Meet the guests

Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer taught high school math to students who didn’t like high school math. He has advocated for better math instruction on CNN, Good Morning America, Everyday With Rachel Ray, and TED.com. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University in math education and is currently the Dean of Research at Desmos, where he explores the future of math, technology, and learning. Dan has worked with teachers internationally and in all 50 United States and was named one of Tech & Learning’s 30 Leaders of the Future.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson

Bethany Lockhart Johnson is an elementary school educator and author. Prior to serving as a multiple-subject teacher, she taught theater and dance and now loves incorporating movement and creative play into her classroom. Bethany is committed to helping students find joy in discovering their identities as mathematicians. In addition to her role as a full-time classroom teacher, Bethany is a Student Achievement Partners California Core Advocate and is active in national and local mathematics organizations. Bethany is a member of the Illustrative Mathematics Elementary Curriculum Steering Committee and serves as a consultant, creating materials to support families during distance learning.

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About Math Teacher Lounge: The podcast

Math Teacher Lounge is a biweekly podcast created specifically for K–12 math educators. In each episode co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson (@lockhartedu) and Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) chat with guests, taking a deep dive into the math and educational topics you care about.

Join the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group to continue the conversation, view exclusive content, interact with fellow educators, participate in giveaways, and more!

S3 – 05. Developing an asset orientation with Lani Horn

Math Teacher Lounge podcast featuring Lani Horn, a professor at Vanderbilt University, on developing an asset orientation.

In this episode, math education professor Lani Horn shares with us what it means to have an asset orientation towards students, contrasting it with a deficit orientation, and helping Bethany and Dan understand the many ways students experience one or the other. Their conversation hit both high notes and low notes and included a challenge that Bethany and Dan both found extremely valuable for helping a teacher develop an asset orientation towards their students.

Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Dan Meyer (00:03)

Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge, folks. My name is Dan Meyer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):

And I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.

Dan Meyer (00:09):

We’re so excited to be here with you folks and with our guest today, tackling big questions about mathematics. I wanna ask Bethany first though: Bethany, it’s been kind of a challenging couple of years for those of us in education, near education, just in life in general, of course. But I woke up this morning and the sun was out; the weather was perfect and crisp here in Oakland; and I found myself feeling optimistic, a sense of hopefulness. And I was wondering to myself, “What is Bethany feeling hopeful about in math education right now?” What’s got you juiced up a little bit?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:40):

I gotta say, that optimism, Dan, look at that! I can actually feel the sunshine just pouring through the microphone! So I thank you for asking. What am I feeling optimistic about in math education? Hmm. OK, this is gonna sound a little bit cop-out-y, but I have been so completely jazzed about not only our podcast, but the conversations that I’ve been seeing circulating in other math podcasts that are out there around curriculum, around new books coming out. It just feels like despite overwhelm, despite exhaustion, that most teachers really do love learning. And so there’s like that kernel. And so I just feel like there’s books on my shelf I wanna read; there’s podcasts in the queue I wanna listen to; and summertime is the best, best time to do it.

Dan Meyer (01:39):

People still feel hungry out there for learning. They know the importance of the craft and its impact on students. And, yeah, people are tired, but also it is so cool to see people still jazzed about learning more about how to teach students more effectively. Me, I’m excited right now, I have a very specific excitement right now, which is that today we announced that Desmos, where I work, and Amplify, our sponsor, are no longer gonna be two separate things. That we are joining together. That I, and all these people who have done so much work over the last 10 years developing digital math technology, we’re gonna go and work inside of Amplify as a division called Desmos Classroom. And we’re so excited that…what we cracked, I think, at Desmos, is a way of thinking about how teachers and their tools—computers, for instance—interact with students in math. And I love what we did there. But we never really cracked the question of, “How do you support entire school systems in taking up these ideas and tools?” And Amplify has really done that. So I’m super-excited to partner up there. That’s what I’m optimistic about and happy about.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:40):

Congratulations! That’s a huge transition, and I’m just so excited about the amazing work that both Amplify and Desmos do. But then, the idea of Desmos being in more classrooms? Those tools being available for more students? With the reach? I mean, I’m just excited! It’s a big day, Dan.

Dan Meyer (03:00):

Thank you. Yes, exciting day. And I’m excited about also about our guest we’re bringing on today. How’s that for a segue? I’ll be excited to hear what our guest is excited about in math education. I just wanna say that what our guest, Lani Horn, Professor Lani Horn, has exposed us to is this idea of an asset orientation and its importance. And I do think I’m not over-exaggerating or overstating to say that the idea of an asset orientation towards students and their thinking has been possibly the most transformative idea for me in the last five years of being an educator. And adopting it has led to my favorite lessons, my favorite teaching experiences, my favorite relationships with students. I say all that—you know, I don’t wanna gas things up too much; is that too high of a bar here to have expectations? But it really has been tremendous! And Lani Horn gave a talk several years ago called “An Asset Orientation Is Everything,” which really changed the game up for me. And Bethany watched it as well. So that’s why I’m so excited to have on the person who gave that talk. And who’s done so much research around what an asset orientation offers students and teachers. So we’re bringing on today Lani Horn, who is a professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College, who centers her research on ways to make authentic mathematics, ambitious math teaching, accessible to students and teachers, particularly those who have been historically marginalized by our educational system. I think Lani has just a beating heart for students, yes, but also really respects the work of teaching in ways I think are so needed and sometimes uncommon in the world of math-education research. So Lani, thank you so much for coming on and joining us in the Lounge.

Lani Horn (04:41):

Thanks for having me.

Dan Meyer (04:44):

We would love to know what you are excited about and optimistic about right now in the world of mathematics education. What’s got you a little bit gassed up?

Lani Horn (04:52):

Up, gassed up? Hmm. Let me reframe it, ’cause I don’t know if I’m gassed up, but I’m cautiously hopeful that maybe that in the wake of the interrupted learning that’s been sort of widespread during the pandemic that maybe we’ll get some traction around more strategies for teaching in heterogeneous classrooms. Which I think every classroom is, to varying extents: a heterogeneous classroom. And I was talking with a colleague the other day about this idea of hmm, maybe modeling would be a really cool thing to focus teachers on. Doing some more mathematical modeling across the grade levels. Because it just seems like there’s a lot of opportunities for kids to kind of catch up on ideas and understandings that they may not have fully grasped because of interrupted learning, interrupted schooling. But also with room to engage in a lot of ideas. So we were playing with that and I was like, “Gosh, that’d be pretty cool if people took that on more broadly.” ‘Cause I don’t think that there’s been enough conversations about meaningful differentiation in that kind of way, like at the level of curriculum. So I would love to see an upsurge in interest in that kind of stuff, ’cause that’s a big place where I have a lot of passion, so I’m ready! I’m ready for people to ask questions about that. And actually it’s really very, very, very closely related to the topic today of having an asset orientation towards students.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:34):

First of all, I’m so excited to have you on Math Teacher Lounge, have you in the Lounge, and get to talk to you, because when Dan sent me this talk, my first thing was, “Oh, I think I know what asset orientation is and looks like.” You know, you kind of hypothesize about what you think it’s going to be. And then you started talking and I’m like, “Wait, wait, why am I just hearing this now?” So I thought I knew what it was, but really I felt like there was so much to unpack. And I would just love for you to share with our listeners, in case they are like, “Oh, asset orientation, I know what that is. I’ve got it. My students have got it.” What is it? And why does it matter so much to our teachers?

Lani Horn (07:19):

The most obvious point is that asset is the opposite of deficit, right? And we know that deficit thinking is very harmful to students. That there’s a real teacher-expectation bias that that kids pick up on, that we communicate indirectly to students and that impacts their learning and their ability to meet our academic expectations and, other expectations in classrooms. So an asset orientation is looking for students’ strengths and trying to work from those strengths as a basis for your teaching.

Dan Meyer (07:54):

So that’s a really fantastic starting spot there. And I think what’s initially surprising to me about the research you cited in your talk, that is built around an asset orientation, is how…I think if you come at learning from a—I guess in research, they call a cognitivist frame, where learning happens when teachers say the right things that make a transfer from the teacher’s brain to the student’s brain. A lot of what you’re describing is very counterintuitive, I think. The asset orientation describes a teacher’s kind of subtle disposition. It’s not what, like what they’re saying exactly. It’s what they communicate in the subtext and the body language, that all emanates from some perspective on students and the idea that that filters down somehow and students pick up on that—like a smell in the air—and that determines a lot of their learning, I think is one part of your talk and the research that I thought was really surprising. How close is that to like how this actually works? And can you add to that description or pivot it a little bit?

Lani Horn (08:54):

Expansion of the sort of cognitive framing of teacher and student interaction…part of what’s really hard about developing and maintaining an asset orientation is that schools are organized in ways that rank and sort children. And so when we are just using the everyday language of schooling, sometimes we’re injecting these preconceived deficit notions of students into our talk and into how we’re thinking about, interpreting, looking at students. So not only is this interruption a sort of a cognitive lens on teacher-student interaction, but it’s really looking at how the social environment is setting teacher-student interaction to take on certain kinds of framings.

Dan Meyer (09:44):

This is what I mean about Lani having such a generous frame towards teachers and the work of teaching. I wonder, though, if you could help us make concrete how an asset and deficit orientation might play out in a hypothetical classroom interaction.

Lani Horn (10:00):

Sure. A really commonplace example is a teacher has a group of students. It’s October or November. So there’s already been a few assessments. And that gives the teacher an idea who the strong students are and who the struggling students are. And they’re having a classroom conversation. And someone who hasn’t performed well, a kid who hasn’t performed well on those assessments—the teacher poses a question. A kid who hasn’t performed well on the assessments is called on. And they sort of hesitate in formulating their response. And the teacher with that lens of “this is a struggling student” then may have to make a decision: “Do I persist? Do I support this kid? Do I help them formulate an answer? Do I try to draw out their thinking anyway? Or do I move on to a kid who is academically performed better in my class?” And I would say that a lot of teachers in that situation would very understandably say, “OK, I get it. You’re not a strong math student. You’re not confident in my class. I’m gonna move on because I need to get through this lesson to somebody who I know is gonna provide me with a correct answer.” And they do it also out of, sometimes, a sense of care, of not wanting to put that student on the spot. However, part of what is another unintended result of making that choice is instead of trying out that student’s thinking, listen to their sort of, maybe, hesitant answer, and trying to find the kernel in it that maybe could be supported and amplified, that kid then loses an opportunity to have their idea be a part of the whole class’s mathematical conversation. Completely common, completely understandable kind of interaction that I see all the time.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:52):

That feels so huge. And that I can actually picture that happening.

Lani Horn (11:56):

Of course. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all done it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:58):

We’ve all seen it and done it. And I think it’s so key that you mention often it’s from a place of care. Of “I want that student to—look, I called on you; you’re a part of the conversation; you’re a part of our community.” But with it, I brought all of that other information that I think I have about that kiddo. Right? And how I think they’re struggling or navigating the question. And “Here, I’ll help by…” You know? But what I immediately thought of is how much the other students also pick up on that, right?

Lani Horn (12:36):

Of course.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:36):

I remember this time, this student in my class, a student who had struggled on some of the work we were doing, she came up and she shared her work. And then another student kind of like, it was almost like a strange little pat on the back, like, “Look at that! You did it!” And like really said it in a tone of…like, you’re 5, where did that come from?? How had I set up that student to be—I really had to step back and say, “What role have I played in making this student seem like she wasn’t capable of what she had just solved?” It was such a learning moment for me. Because I don’t think teachers do it maliciously, you know, or even consciously.

Lani Horn (13:33):

Absolutely.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:34):

And it was so huge.

Lani Horn (13:36):

Thanks for sharing that, Bethany, wow.

Dan Meyer (13:38):

Even in your description, Lani, you mentioned how the need to keep the class moving to fit, again, a policy that teachers didn’t impose, that we have 45 minutes and way too many standards to cover in that many days…I wanna ask you about growth mindset. It feels like every last teacher on earth has finally got the memo about growth mindset. We all know it’s the good mindset and that the bad one is fixed mindset. And we have the posters. The posters have been distributed. <laugh> A nationwide mobilization.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:07):

I automatically pictured the posters.

Lani Horn (14:09):

<laugh> Of course.

Dan Meyer (14:11):

We’ve got the posters up, people! So we’re good! And now here comes asset orientation, which has some of the similar kinds of happy feelings, good vibes, about teaching and students and learning. So I was just wondering if you could help us kind of differentiate those two kinds of concepts.

Lani Horn (14:28):

I think that an asset orientation is something you’re never done cultivating. I think it’s an ongoing stance that you have to constantly reset and reexamine. And it is recognizing the links to the social categories that students inhabit, the identities that they bring with them, the bodies that they live in, the different abilities and disabilities. And it’s actually a place where, when you really engage this work in a meaningful way, I think it has the potential to make you kind of a better human being. Because you have to constantly say, “Gosh, why did I do that? What is it that my expectation was? Why am I having such a hard time with this particular student, finding something that they’re smart at, something that they’re really good at?” ‘Cause that’s the question. That’s the asset orientation question. You look at your students and you say, “What is it that they are smart about? How are they smart? I understand that school values this; I understand that my assessments value this; but what are they smart at? And how could I bring that into the meaningful work of my classroom?” Which is a very hard question sometimes.

Dan Meyer (16:03):

Yeah. Oh, so many thoughts here. Like one, I just feel like it’s such a value for teachers, for anyone, to have a big, clear, unanswerable-in-your-lifetime question to motivate your work in teaching. If you don’t have that, then the job is too small, basically. So I love that it’s a question that offers ways to dig in every single day. Every interaction is an opportunity, and it will never be answered. That’s wonderful. I love how I just feel like there’s…sometimes we have conversations with Lounge guests, Bethany, where it really gets out of the realm of the school. And it starts to creep on in to the personal life. It starts to creep on in to the spiritual life. And I find, with this sort of idea—the value of a human being—I feel when I have an asset orientation towards my key relationship in my life—my best friends, my spouse, all these things—that that’s an indication to me of a really big and valuable idea. And the question of the difference between growth mindset and asset orientation, I wonder if it’s relevant here that a growth mindset is a concept that was studied and originated by an education psychologist, Carol Dweck, and you are someone who operates with a social-cultural frame that considers more than the student’s mind in the unit of a student, but like what is going on and what are Bethany’s students perceiving in that moment you described, Bethany, that was you and a student, but everyone kind of feels what’s going on. I wonder if that’s a useful differentiator here. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Lani Horn (17:30):

Yes. I do think that the anthropological perspective that I take—where I really look at the cultural sources of these perspectives and these expectations and narratives, I would say, about who can learn math—are really, really important. And they’re part of what sometimes becomes invisible in the classroom. Though those are a really, really important part of the ongoing work of developing an asset orientation. And of course, I come to it from my own personal experience. I was an undergraduate math major. And sometimes by the time I got to my senior seminars, I was the only woman in the room. And you know, I felt that. I felt the stigma of low expectations. I felt the missed opportunities to dig deeper because people were trying to protect me from being wrong and embarrassing myself. And so on. So it’s personal. And of course we see this applying to other social categories as well. We know that the bias is not just against women in math, but people of color, against people with different kinds of abilities, and so on. So I think that that’s why it’s sort of this ongoing personal work. And I think, too, that we will inevitably in the course of committing ourselves to this find students who challenge us, especially in our society right now, the way things are so fractured. You know, what if you have a student in your classroom who holds political views that you find really odious? How do you find a way to engage that student in a way that respects what they do have to offer to your class, while also making sure that the class is a safe place for everybody? I mean, those are really, really complex dynamics to manage. And, you know, I can talk a lot about that too.

Dan Meyer (19:30):

What a job; what a job. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:33):

I was really struck, too, because I feel, like Dan said, we’ve gotten the posters. And not to undermine the power of growth mindset—I think it has impacted many, many students and communities—but it sometimes stops there. The conversation stops there. Well, you know, we have a chant we do every day. We have the poster on the wall. My students have a growth mindset. And I think what I really appreciated in your talk, and as I’ve learned about your work, is the invitation to teachers to be vulnerable and to really look at… I do feel like even sharing that story, you put a certain amount of vulnerability of, like, have I failed in some way? But I care about my students. I’m committed to cultivating a safe space. So I guess something I’m really curious about is: what do you think needs to happen or needs to be possible for teachers to further cultivate an asset orientation? Because even the ability to pause and to be reflective, sometimes it doesn’t seem possible. So I think it’s beyond just the teacher, but in the school, the district…what are some things you feel?

Lani Horn (20:49):

Are you letting me be the queen of designing schools? ‘Cause that’s a job I’ve always wanted! <laugh> OK. So if I were the queen of designing schools, teachers would have fewer student contacts.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:04):

Say more.

Lani Horn (21:05):

When I taught high school, I had sometimes…I think the most I got was 180 student contacts a day.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:12):

Wow.

Lani Horn (21:13):

So when you’re looking at 180 kids a day, that is just sort of a capacity issue. How am I supposed to really look meaningfully at each of those individual people and find what’s valuable and strong and smart about each of them? I think that in the U.S., teachers have more instructional time than any other developed country. We need more planning time. Because that’s an opportunity to consult with colleagues. Sometimes when we encounter students where we do have that personal struggle of, “Oh, gosh, I am really having a hard time connecting with you and seeing your strengths,” wouldn’t it be great to be able to go to their last year’s teacher or their English teacher or some other teacher and say, “Can you tell me about your experiences with this student? Because I’m really wanting to connect and I’m having trouble.” And wouldn’t that be wonderful if we had resources to do that? The other thing I would do is I would get rid of a lot of the meaningless accountability, which I have found has only amplified sort of the sorting, and sort of put a technocratic veneer over kids’ deficit thinking about their own selves. Kids get a printout saying that they’re “below basic” and you say, “Hey, that was a really good idea!” And they don’t believe you ’cause they have this printout that puts them in a different category, so there’s no way they could be good at math. So I think we’ve really done a lot of harm in the annual testing of kids in that way. Especially with the individual reporting. And often the metrics we’re using to do that are not designed to be disaggregated to the individual level. So we have a lot of measurement problems. I’m kind of going back to your question before, Dan, about what’s the difference between growth mindset and an asset orientation. I think that sometimes—I don’t think this is the way Carol Dweck intended it, but I think sometimes—and I’ve seen her rebut the way it’s been used in schools—but I think sometimes the way that growth mindset has been used in schools kind of brings it back to an individual problem: “We don’t have unequal funding in our school system! We don’t have systemic racism! We don’t have childhood poverty and malnourishment! It’s just about having the right mindset!” And we know that all of those other things have a huge impact on who engages in school and who’s able to get access to schooling and the formal learning that goes on there. And so there’s a little bit of an erasure that happens in the way that growth mindset has been taken up, and putting the onus back on students and teachers as opposed to going, “Wow, we’re in this system where the cards are stacked a certain way, and I have to somehow navigate that as a teacher and figure out how to hold you up in a system that is trying to push you down.” Which is a really different kind of job than to put a poster on my wall and do a chant in the morning.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:39):

And I’m wondering, if you were looking at how you would hope that asset orientation gets brought into the classroom…it’s not another poster, right? What do you think would really help make some meaningful change around the way we think about that and teachers and systems take that on?

Lani Horn (24:59):

So I think that the important thing is helping teachers develop a vocabulary for recognizing students’ mathematical strengths in particular. Recognizing a strength is not, “Wow, you did really neat work!” or “You have really nice handwriting!” Those are not authentically mathematical strengths, right? So I try to think about—ah, for color theorem, “How cool! What a great way to be systematic!” You know, that being systematic, developing a good representation, asking a good question, asking the next “what if,” all of these are profoundly mathematical ways of thinking. And there’s more—I’m just giving you a few examples—that are not always recognized in classrooms that are built around quick and accurate calculation. Right? When that is the most valued form of smartness, kids who can do all these other great things, like, “Wow, that that is such a clear way of explaining the connection between that graph and that equation! I love it. That helps me see what’s happening every time that variable increases.” You know? I love when kids do that! That’s not quick and accurate calculation, right? One of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen sometimes is teachers doing a really good job of pumping kids up and helping them feel mathematical and seeing their mathematical strengths in the everyday lessons…but then they get a standard assessment and are told they’re a C student. How do you support the messaging you’re doing in your teaching and in your interactions so that it aligns with assessment? And this is where the sorting mechanism of school kind of inhibits some of the ways that we really should be valuing kids in a way that would support their ongoing learning and their own particular flourishing.

Dan Meyer (26:59):

I love how you describe this whole process as a career-long trajectory, how one does not ever finish creating an asset orientation in oneself. I’m wondering if there is some way for teachers who are listening to start to experience, to enter into that kind of feedback loop, that experience, of what an asset orientation offers them and their students. Do you have some way for us to start digging in here? A challenge, if you will?

Lani Horn (27:24):

Yeah, sure. This is a process I learned from teachers I’ve worked with, so I did not make this up. It’s called a roster check. It’s where you take a roster of one of your classes, and you go through student by student and see if you can specifically name a way that that student is mathematically smart. And it’s a private exercise if you want it to be. And just sort of go through. And then for the students who you really struggle to name how they’re smart, step back and see if there’s some kind of a pattern. And when I’ve done this in PD, as an exercise, I’ve had teachers have some real light-bulb moments where they go, “Oh my gosh, I really don’t know the quiet girls in my classroom,” or “I really don’t know the multilingual learners in my classroom.” So they can sort of start to see a bias in who they’re interacting with and who’s been able to engage in ways that uncover what their unconscious bias might be. And sometimes it’s not unconscious bias. Sometimes it’s not necessarily a category like that. It’s just the kids who are more outspoken, the kids who are high achieving. It doesn’t have to necessarily be linked to an obvious social category. However, I do think that then what you can do with that list of kids who you don’t have a name for their strengths, is you can kind of take a couple of them a week and make that your project to really observe them a little more intentionally and a little more closely. Try mixing things up. Have a chat with them. Say, “Hey, so what do you like to do? What are the things that you like to do in the world? What are your hobbies?” So maybe you can start to get some insight that way. You can talk to other teachers. Most kids have something that they’re passionate about, something that animates them and wakes them up in the morning, and knowing that and finding ways to meaningfully tie that to their mathematical learning can be extremely powerful.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:35):

Lani. I love that idea, taking that time to reflect and allow yourself to be vulnerable as you take a look at your biases and how that’s impacting your classroom space. I have learned so much from our conversation. I know we’re just scratching the surface of the work that you do. So if folks want to learn more, want to continue engaging in these ideas, where can they find you, or where can they find more about your work?

Lani Horn (29:58):

I’m pretty active on Twitter. My handle is @ilana_horn. No “e” on that. And I’ve written a couple of books for teachers. One is called Motivated. Another is called Strength in Numbers. People can check those out.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:17):

I love it. For our listeners, we are thrilled to share this conversation with you, and we wanna hear how you take up this challenge: What do you uncover? What do you notice? What are you learning about an asset orientation? And you can share that by finding us on Twitter at @MTLshow, or you can also continue the conversation with us in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge. We’re so excited to keep learning with you. And thanks for listening.

Lani Horn (30:42):

Bye! Thanks for having me.

Dan Meyer (30:44):

Bye, folks. Thank you.

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What Lani Horn says about math

“An asset orientation is looking for students’ strengths and trying to work from those strengths as a basis for your teaching. ”

– Lani Horn

Professor of Mathematics Education, Vanderbilt University Peabody College

Meet the guest

Lani Horn centers her research on ways to make authentic mathematics accessible to students, particularly those who have been historically marginalized by our educational system. Professor Horn focuses primarily on mathematics teaching in two ways. First, Professor Horn looks at classroom practices that engage the most students in high-quality mathematics. Second, Professor Horn views teaching as a contextually-embedded practice – how school environments, communities, colleagues, and policies shape what is instructionally possible. All of this is unified through a pursuit to understand teacher learning as a situative phenomenon. Follow Professor Horn on Twitter.

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S3 – 06. Bethany and Dan take on Twitter!

Promotional graphic for Math Teacher Lounge Season 3, Episode 6, featuring Bethany Lockhart Johnson, Educator, and Dan Meyer, Director of Research at Desmos.

In this episode, Bethany and Dan take a look at several tweets that caught the most fire on Twitter during the 2021-2022 school year. The pair answer questions about viral teaching methods, the best teaching advice you can give in three words, and if students should use pencils or pens in class. Join them as they take on those questions and several others in a fast-paced episode.

Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Dan Meyer (00:02):

Hey folks. Welcome back to the Math Teacher Lounge. I’m your co-host, Dan Meyer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):

And I am Bethany Lockhart Johnson. And I’m your co-host, Dan! Hi!

Dan Meyer (00:12):

We’re co-hosts! Hey! Great to see you.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:13):

Dan, this is the last episode of Season 3. Three seasons!

Dan Meyer (00:19):

It’s gotta have a cliffhanger. What will the cliffhanger be? You know?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:22):

The cliffhanger is that we love having guests! It’s one of our most favorite things, because selfishly, we love to talk to all of these amazing folks who are doing this interesting research and thinking about amazing things. But for this last episode, it’s just you and I, Dan. Cliffhanger!

Dan Meyer (00:40):

Yeah. I like this. I like this. So the cliffhanger was last episode, and people are all like, “So who’s the last guest gonna be of the season before we roll out into summer?” And yes, as Bethany said, we love all the fascinating guests we’ve had on throughout these last few seasons. And we realized…who is more fascinating to each other than both of us? You know, let’s talk to each other about things, right? <Laughs> You get that! You get that! Or am I alone here in this? We had this idea about what we should talk about here, and that’s this: I am on Twitter a lot. I’m @DDMeyer on Twitter; throw me a follow; might follow back; who knows? I don’t tweet much. Bethany, what’s your handle on Twitter? Let ’em know.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:22):

I’m @LockhartEdu, and I was much more active pre-mamahood. But I’m still up in there. Go ahead.

Dan Meyer (01:30):

Yep. In there. Yeah, great. So I’ve been keeping track of the hottest conversations in math education Twitter, the conversations that the most people who kind of describe themselves as math teachers in their bios and whatnot have been replying to. We’ve got some little things working in the background, keeping track of this sort of thing. And so we are gonna bring you folks some of those extremely hot conversations, and even better than the questions—which we hope you’ll reply to and tag us in your replies—even more than those questions, we’ll bring you our answers—our answers!—to those questions. Can you believe that? We’ll fully settle these questions! Won’t we, Bethany? My gosh, won’t we?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:15):

Jeez Louise! No! Dan Meyer, the point is not our final word on it! The point is this episode, we’re furthering the conversation. We wanna hear from listeners about what do you think?

Dan Meyer (02:25):

Right. You’re right. You all need someone in your life like Bethany who will help you become the best version of yourself. So here’s the deal. We have several questions in a few different categories. We’re gonna bust through some quick ones, pretty quick. And, uh, there’s some meaty ones as well. Let’s get into it! The first questions come to you all, and us, courtesy of MTL guest Howie Hua, who has a renowned knack for just creating math memes, but also conversation starters that really capture the curiosity and answers of of a grateful nation. So Howie’s first question, which I’ll pose to Bethany, is, “What’s your favorite number?” Bethany? And why is it your favorite number?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:14):

Oh, I love it. OK. Well, the first thing that came to my mind is 12. ‘Cause It’s a highly divisible number. I mean, 2, 6, 3, 4—I love it. And it coincides with the day and month of my birth. Which, like, the double-digit…come on, 12, 12, 12, 12. I dunno, am I giving away, like, my bank security code <laugh> or anything by saying that?

Dan Meyer (03:41):

Yeah. What’s your favorite PIN?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:43):

Let me change my PIN. Yeah, it’s just such a happy, happy number. Well, 12 is, you know, 10 and 2. Two more. Anyway. Love it. What about you, Dan? What’s your favorite number and why?

Dan Meyer (03:55):

I’m into it. I’m into it. I think I would choose 16. Because it’s the first number for me when it was like, “Oh, you can keep on making numbers forever!” Where I’m like, OK, 2times 2 is 4. Great. That’s kind of an elemental expression in mathematics. Four times 2 is 8. OK. But then, 8 times 2 is 16, and it’s like, “Oh, you can just keep doubling that thing over and over and over again!” And I can recall feeling pretty excited that numbers are just like, out there for the finding. For the taking. Cool stuff.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:33):

I’m sorry. Wait, I have to interrupt. You went 2 times 4 is 8 and you didn’t go 4 times 4 is 16? You went 8 times 2 is 16? You wanted to keep the 2 the same?

Dan Meyer (04:49):

Yup. Yup. You can keep on doubling. You can keep on doubling numbers and it just keeps on going.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:53):

More evidence that our brain works very differently.

Dan Meyer (04:56):

We learn more about each other…let me keep this rolling with Howie questions. OK? Howie says, “If you could co-teach with one teacher from Twitter, who would you choose?”

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:06):

Oh, oh, it has to be a teacher?

Dan Meyer (05:11):

Or anybody, I guess. I mean, like, I know you love Oprah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:15):

Can I co-teach with Oprah?

Dan Meyer (05:16):

Yup, yeah, so there we are. <Laugh> Yup. OK. Fair enough. We have to work Oprah into every single episode.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:23):

I’d just love to sit and like, we’d read together, we’d read to the students, and then we’d talk…I mean, obviously it’d be Oprah. But if we’re thinking more of like MTBoS, like math Twitter blogosphere-land, I suppose the person I would wanna co-teach with honestly would probably be Allison Hintz. One of our former guests as well. Her book, Mathematizing Children’s Literature, with Antony Smith, that book—I just love the idea of sitting and doing a read-aloud and then diving into some juicy math that’s inspired by what comes out of that read-aloud. So yes, that’s who I pick. Allison! Let’s co-teach!

Dan Meyer (06:00):

<Laugh> Shout-out to Allison.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:01):

What about you?

Dan Meyer (06:03):

I would choose MTL guest Idil Abdulkadir—because, and this relates to Allison and also Elham Kazemi—they talked about, in our episode about teacher time-outs. And I’m choosing someone who I think is—like I’ve never seen Idil teach, but I work with Idil at Desmos and think she’s fantastic. But what I really want in a co-teacher is someone that I can say, “Whoa, time out, do you see what’s going on here? This is really interesting. What should we do next about this?” And have a little strategy sesh in front of the kids and no one gets freaked out by that. And I think that that’d be a pile of fun. Idil seems like she’d be receptive to that kind of interaction, teacher to teacher. So that’s my vote right there.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:48):

Opportunity for you to grow your own practice, Dan.

Dan Meyer (06:52):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. 100%.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:56):

So Dan, I actually have a question for you from Howie. If we’re on the Howie tweet train, I have one from Howie too.

Dan Meyer (07:04):

Howie had some fire tweets, some fire tweets this current year. Yep.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:08):

Dan, I wanna know: Do you prefer doing math in pen or pencil?

Dan Meyer (07:16):

Ooh, yeah. Oh, I see that Howie says, “I don’t mean to start any drama, BUT,” and then asks the question–

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:23):

But!

Dan Meyer (07:24):

I think that Howie lives for drama. I think he knows he’s messy. He lives for drama. He knows what he’s doing this with this question here. He knows.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:32):

DRAAAAMAAAA!

Dan Meyer (07:32):

He knows what he’s doing. Yup. So I would just say it depends. Is that cheating? Like if I’m doing math to learn, or if we are learning in that process, then I want to use pen, actually. I wanna see the tracks of the thinking. And if we’re doing it for presentation, like if I’m presenting something, I wanna…I guess that’s an area where I’d be fine to not erase things. I don’t wanna prep it so it’s, you know…I guess you could use pen for presentation also. Just pen. Period. But I wanna see the tracks of the thinking if we’re doing some learning versus presentation. What about you?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:09):

Well, I heard the voice in my head telling one of my kindergartners, “No, you cannot do that in sparkly pen. You need to do it in pencil.” And I was like, “Wait, whose voice is that?” It was one of my math teachers telling me I couldn’t do it in pen! Why couldn’t this kid do it in pen? Sure! Do it in a sparkly pen! So I wanna say do it in pen. And since usually pen is what I have around…I mean, I do crosswords in pen, Dan.

Dan Meyer (08:36):

Wow, wow. With a piece of paper and math, you have lots of room to re-revise and cross off…but those little, little boxes on the crossword, that says a lot about your commitment to pen.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:46):

I got really good at making an A into an H or a P or whatever we need. So I would say, “Hey, if you’re in the room with your kiddos and you’re doing math, if somebody wants to do pen, let them do pen.” But I do know that I’ve seen teachers say you need to do pen so that I can see all of your thinking. So I think I hear what you’re saying. But do you think it should be like a classroom rule or something?

Dan Meyer (09:13):

Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I’m gonna ask you like, “How’d you get to this destination?” And I wanna know process somehow, and I think you’ll get tired of having to explain it verbally rather than just, like, showing. Just don’t erase stuff. Don’t scratch stuff off. Let’s let’s see how you’re getting there. That is what I’m into.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:30):

Thanks, Howie, for that trio of thought-provoking tweets, because I genuinely wanted to know what Dan thought and what our listeners think. I mean, Dan, I gotta say: Howie, you say you don’t wanna cause drama, but I gotta say I’m with Dan on that—

Dan Meyer (09:50):

Got the gift. Got the gift for drama. We’re still friends though. So I’m happy about that. Our next section, I got a few more questions queued up here and these ones relate to advice for educators, advice for yourself. Good advice, bad advice, that kind of thing. So let’s jump in. I would love to know—this one’s from Pernille Ripp—I’m very curious, Bethany, what is the worst teaching advice you have gotten in your life, ever?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:19):

<Laugh> Ooh. OK. Um, worst teaching advice was: “That’s OK, just move on anyway.” And that was in terms of pacing. It was like, students needed to do a deeper dive and the teacher who I was chatting with said, “No, no, it’s fine; it’s fine; just move on. Just move on to the next chapter.” That was probably the worst advice, because no, I don’t think that’s what I should have done at all! <Laugh>

Dan Meyer (10:48):

Right.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:48):

But I was a first-year teacher and I was trying to figure it out. And I learned that that was not good advice. And I understand the pressure of pacing. But it was totally antithetical to the type of listening to my students that I want to do in my craft. And this teacher meant well, but that was not good advice, teacher! <Laugh> What about you, Dan? What is the worst teaching advice?

Dan Meyer (11:13):

I dig that. That feels similar to one of the replies to Pernille here. Frances Klein says, “Never let them know you’ve made a mistake” being particularly bad advice. You know, just this like idea of like moving along, covering your tracks, not backtracking or admitting mistakes, those all feel kind of a piece. The worst advice I think I’ve ever received, and I wasn’t given this often, but it’s echoed by a lot of the commenters here on this tweet, which is “Don’t smile until X, Y, or Z,” where X, Y, and Z are like Christmas, October, December, January. Just the idea that you’ve gotta develop—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:54):

Wait, what?

Dan Meyer (11:55):

<Laugh> Did you never hear this from anybody? Don’t smile until Christmas? Perhaps this is more—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:59):

I’m a kindergarten teacher! Can you imagine? If I don’t smile the second they walk in? The tears?! The parents’ tears?! The kids’ tears?! If I’m just like, stoic?

Dan Meyer (12:07):

Yeah. Well.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:08):

So explain it to me.

Dan Meyer (12:10):

Well, the idea is, is that, you know, for older kids, they’re scoping you, they’re clocking you for weakness, they’re looking at you, they’re looking to take advantage. And so “don’t smile until Christmas” is like, hey, you can always relax. You can always relax your discipline, but you can’t UN-relax it if you start out, you know, Mr. Happy Pants Meyer. Which—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:33):

Smile perceived as weakness.

Dan Meyer (12:36):

Yeah. Very obviously poor advice. Eventually you come to realize that like having a rapport and a relationship that is trusting and warm and demanding, that has high expectations, that’s the best kind of classroom management. Not some kind of persona built around intimidation or stoicism, that kinda thing. So, terrible, terrible advice!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:01):

I feel like I did have a few of those math classes. Yeah.

Dan Meyer (13:04):

Yeah, exactly. <Laugh> You loved them, right? They were like your favorite math classes. It was a blast, right?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:11):

<Laugh> So we have to ask the opposite. Thank you, Daniel Willingham, who said, “What’s the best advice you got?” But hold on, Dan, he didn’t just want the best advice. He wanted the best advice in three words.

Dan Meyer (13:26):

Oh yeah. He doesn’t, he doesn’t want a book or dissertation or even a blog post or even a tweet. He wants just three words.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:32):

I think maybe that might have been to me. <Laugh>

Dan Meyer (13:34):

This is someone who’s doesn’t have much time for this advice, wants it distilled down. I’m just obviously stalling here as I try to think about this. I don’t know, there’s just like so much nuance lost here. I would say, listen to students, listen to students. I can’t say more that, I guess. I guess I’m done. I can’t say more than that there. But you’re in a bad place if you’re not listening carefully to students. How about you?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:04):

Mine is “Ask…lots…questions.”

Dan Meyer (14:11):

Nice. ‘Cause I filled in the word! I filled in the word! I was able to kinda infer that. I did that. I got that.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:17):

Wait, wait, wait, wait! I could have said many! Wait, I could have said “Ask many questions.”

Dan Meyer (14:22):

Strong, strong.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:25):

So yeah. You know, no isolation, like don’t put yourself in a bubble. Ask, not just, not just your students, but the teachers! Ask a lot of questions. You don’t have to have it all figured out.

Dan Meyer (14:34):

Into it. Very much into it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:37):

Thanks. Daniel. Thanks, Pernille.

Dan Meyer (14:40):

Yeah. Daniel and Pernille, Both great questions there about advice, best and worst. Another fire tweet popped up earlier this year from Dr. Khristopher Childs, which was “Name one thing every educator should stop doing.”

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:57):

Oh, I don’t know. This kind of ties into my best advice about asking questions.

Dan Meyer (15:03):

Stop not asking questions?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:06):

<Laugh> Avoid the isolation. I really love this idea of when we can, popping into each others’ classrooms, co-teaching, building this collaborative nature. Elham Kazemi, in our interview, talked about this idea of, like you said, the teacher time-outs, learning from each other. So I feel like if we could stop isolating ourself…and I don’t mean at lunch—sometimes you need to not be in the teacher lounge at lunch. Like if you need a minute, take the minute! But in general, as a practice, how can we not be isolated and instead be learning with, and from, each other? How can we stop the isolation? That’s what I would hope every educator would stop doing. What about you, Dan?

Dan Meyer (15:54):

I think that educators should…this is gonna require a little bit of elaboration. I think educators should stop taking responsibility for things that are not in their zone of influence. I think that as a society we are asking teachers to do more and more, to become more and more of a central fixture holding together with chewing gum and twine all the various parts of a student’s life. From their health, their fitness, emotional health, that we feed students at school. It becomes very tempting, I think, there’s a lot of pressures to blame outcomes, disparate and unjust outcomes later on in life, on teachers. And teachers should just flatly refuse. And to yeah, understand what the job has been set up to do. What it’s good for. And do that with excellence and intent and a lot of effort. And then not take responsibility for the rest of it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:53):

If I asked five different people about the definition of what a teacher should be doing, I would get five different answers. So I think it’s really interesting that you say that because yeah, many, many hats, which I think, yes, can lead to burnout. Can lead to all sorts of things. We’re asking schools to be all things to all, all people. Interesting. I’m gonna think about that more. I need to hear folks’ response on that, Dan.

Dan Meyer (17:18):

Mm-Hmm. I’m curious too. I mean, yeah, there are definitely things that are in teachers’ responsibility and some that are not. That’s a tough one.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (17:26):

OK, for help, name an example of each. And what’s something that you think every teacher should not and should be doing. ‘Cause I feel like my brain goes to some things like, you know, I had teachers who were saying, “Well, I don’t wanna have my kids have to have breakfast in my classroom in the morning. That shouldn’t be my responsibility to serve breakfast in the morning.” But I’m like, “But then your kids are eating and they’re gonna be able to learn and be more focused.” Should that be the teacher’s responsibility? I’m not saying it necessarily should, but I’m saying…I don’t know. It gets murky for me.

Dan Meyer (18:06):

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that we should, as a country, have a really generous social welfare net so that everyone has food at home. Where a school is not the place where some students have to go to in order to receive nutrition and nourishment. That seems sad to me. And uncommon in developed nations. I think that teachers should watch out for, should be responsible for, the mathematical development of the students they teach, up to a point, they should be responsible for learning math and creating relationships in their classes. I don’t think that teachers should accept responsibility for larger kinds of outcomes, like the health of a democracy or international competition, who goes to the moon first. That kind of thing has historically been placed at the feet of teachers. And it’s tempting when you’re a teacher, I think, to take on that responsibility because it kind of develops your social importance. And I just say, we should say no to that. And get compensation, not in terms of social importance, but rather like in spendable dollars and monies.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:10):

I’m learning more about you, Dan. And you know, this is what I’ve gotten from that answer: If you’re gonna dream, dream big. Right?

Dan Meyer (19:17):

Is that what you got from that? I don’t know. I think I’m trying to dream realistically.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:23):

No, like if we’re gonna say, “Maybe teachers shouldn’t be responsible for serving breakfast in the morning,” well, because we want every child to have access to nutritious and filling food at home and time to eat it in the morning, right? It’s bigger than just, “I don’t want the teacher to have to do this.” So we’re dreaming big. We’re saying this should be the LEAST that students have access to, right?

Dan Meyer (19:53):

Yeah. Yeah. I’m here now. I’m with you. I like that dream. Where we take care of folks in their lives outside of schools. So schools don’t have to be the one linchpin for every kind of social outcome. Like currently a lot of them run through a school ’cause we don’t do a good job of setting up other ways to meet those needs. And we should.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (20:16):

And we’re also recording this in, what, two weeks, a week, after a tragedy where students and teachers were killed in the classroom. And I think both of us are taking some deep breaths and recognizing that there’s a lot of debate that is happening about what teacher’s role should be in preventing this in the future. And I don’t know if you’ve done drills in your classroom that are supposed to help mitigate disaster, but you know—collective deep breaths— <laugh> is where we’re at right now.

Dan Meyer (20:52):

Yep. The idea of “we should arm teachers” is another example of no, we should not do that. We should solve the tendency towards violence outside of the classroom so that teachers and students can teach and learn. That sounds awesome to me.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:06):

Collective deep breath. Whew. OK. So what else you got for me, Dan?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:33):

Ooh. So I feel like I’ve heard that in many teaching PDs. “I Do, you do, we do.” Actually I feel like I’ve seen like more “I do, we do, you do.” Like graduated release. I do it, then we’ll do it a little bit together, and then now you have permission to do it. And I feel like in directed draw, that’s a hundred percent true. Like I’m gonna show you this and then you draw it. And then you cut here and then you do it. If we’re trying to create this, like I’m teaching this new art technique. But in mathematics, I feel like that’s really not what I want my classroom to look like. I want to support my students and set them up for sense-making, and then I want them to try it out and I don’t want them to solve it the way it first comes to mind for me. I wanna see how they make sense of it and how they solve it. And then I want us to share it with each other so we can grow together. So I think time and place for “I do, you do, we do,” or “I do, we do, you do.” Or shoo-be-doo-be-doo-be. Yeah. You?

Dan Meyer (22:44):

I’ve got nothing. I have nothing to add. I thought that was just an excellent summary of a classroom I would love to be a part in, love to teach. I think it’s a certain tool in the toolbox that I think is overused. But it’s also a tool that can be useful in the case of certain kinds of operations. There are some operations that do benefit from “let me just show you how, like one way you might do this.” I don’t know. I’m like helping my kid whack a nail into a board and there’s a moment where it’s like, “Hey, actually, lemme just show you one way you can do this,” and do it, and then that’s helpful in some moments. But for so much of math, a lot of math does not relate to the operational kinds of fluency. And in those instances, it’s a little bit…it’s not a useful tool, I don’t think, for those kinds of skills and ideas.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (23:34):

I’m thinking of tool talks in my classroom. So in kindergarten, many of the tools that we use in math and just in class in general, are new to the students. And if I tell them, this is exactly how you should use this tool, then I feel like I’m taking a lot of the sense-making away from them. But if I introduce the tool, show them how to use the tool safely, show them this is not a safe way to use the tool, chewing on this is not safe. That’s not how we use this tool. This is how we take care of it, et cetera. But then support different modes of using the tool that are gonna help them use it to solve problems and make sense, I think…but I guess—Dan, have you heard “I do, you do, we do,” or is it “I do, we do, you do”?

Dan Meyer (24:22):

I’m with you. And I think that it got clarified post-tweet. But yeah, it typically is “I do, we do, you do,” the gradual release of responsibility it’s often called. And I, I have heard people do what you described, which is…what is it? It’s “You do, we do, I do”? Like an inversion of that? Like have people do a thing that I can do that’s not too, too abstract for them, and then like “We all do something together, and then I’ll offer a summary of what we learned,” is one way that goes. I like that tool as well.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:53):

I think particularly, at least I’ve seen in elementary classrooms, there’s sometimes this fear of letting students just try it out before I’ve really showed them, “but this is how it has to be.” And what I am most excited about is supporting students and creating a classroom environment where students don’t need my permission or need my direct “this is the only way to do it.” Instead, it’s like, yes, there’s lots of things we model. But there’s also like, “Hey, what do you think? How do you think this should be used?” And the joy of that exploration.

Dan Meyer (25:30):

Yeah. There’s a feeling of efficiency that comes from “I do, we do, you do,” for some kinds of math, but it’s undercut in my experience by what it cultivates in the students, which is “I’ve gotta wait until the teacher does before I can do anything.” So it pays off real diminishing returns over time. And it’s, just for me, an exhausting way to teach. Always being the bottleneck for new learning is a total drag.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (25:55):

Ooh, what a great way to describe it. You do not wanna be the bottleneck. You want to be…what’s the other thing? The facilitator? What’s the opposite of a bottleneck? The flowing river? The…The…Help me!

Dan Meyer (26:10):

Hit us up in the replies. I dunno. The opposite of a bottleneck. That’s what you wanna…you wanna not be the opposite? No, you want, yeah. We got this here. We’ll figure it out. We’ll get back to you. <Laugh> OK. Well, folks, those were a few of this year’s fire tweets. It’s been fantastic chatting with you—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:29):

Dan.

Dan Meyer (26:29):

—Bethany, About all those—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:32):

Dan. You know, my favorite thing to do is interrupting you, Dan. I have to interrupt you because we can’t end fire tweets, Dan, without including a tweet from you.

Dan Meyer (26:43):

Oh, that’s true. I do have my moments. Yeah, we should. We really should. <Laugh> Do you have one in mind?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:50):

No. Dan. Yes. I loved…you tweeted recently, “How many years have you been teaching?” Which, OK. “What Has been like the most influential? Like, what, OK, blah, blah, blah.” <blathering noises> You tweeted, “How many years have you been teaching? And at this point, what has most influenced how you teach?” And you gave some ideas: A methods course, PD sessions, curriculum, TV and movies, et cetera, et cetera. And I love that you put that out there because this episode is coming out as we’re wrapping up another school year. And it also got me thinking about summer and what teachers sometimes do during the summer, but what we might need to do this summer for self-care. But I’m really curious. I love that tweet. And I’m curious, Dan, what did folks say was the thing that had most influenced their teaching and what’s most influenced your teaching?

Dan Meyer (27:49):

Ooh, yeah. People’s responses to this one were really fantastic. I came into this, I was flying to the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators conference. And I just found myself wondering, so, the pre-service year, the one year of, like, you’re learning how to teach, is how we did it in California. Like how much of that has still infused my practice? And in what ways? I don’t think I think about that stuff consciously, but I think that did like set me up with a lot of images that I would be unpacking for going on two decades now working in education. I think conversations with people, I think observing classes, I don’t think that like the one-day PDs, the one-day development days throughout the year, four times per year, I don’t think those stuck to me much. I think that this summer, I have learned so much, just an embarrassment of riches, from non-educational sources. From other disciplines. From storytelling, for instance. From how people have constructed movies I like. I am proud of the way…one of the aspects of my character that I’m proud of—it takes a lot to admit this, as I’m sure you understand, Bethany—but to integrate lots of wacky stuff and pick from it and use that to affect my practice and teaching has been really positive. So for this summer, I hope that people read a good beach book and just kinda let your teaching mind rest a little bit. And in doing so, create some openings for new ideas about education from other parts of the world. Kids! Having kids has been helpful. I don’t know! Just everything! It’s such a big job, education. Everything has so helpful. What about you? What’s an influence on your practice that might surprise me or other folks out there in MTL land?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:52):

Well, I don’t know about surprise. I mean, I definitely feel similarly, like methods courses absolutely impacted my teaching. But I feel like opportunities where I was able to observe other teachers and where I was able to have conversations with folks about their practice, that has deeply impacted me. And books I’ve read. I mean, honestly, I’ve learned so much from sharing with other teachers. Like, for example, maybe I’ll bring student work and we’ll talk about it. And we kind of create this conversation together about how we wanna come back to the students based on the work we see. Those type of moments where we’re collaborating and we’re bringing multiple perspectives to the table, that I think, has really often shifted me out of my first initial reaction or what I thought I was going to do in the classroom the next day. So that continues to surprise and delight me. And thinking about this summer, I think there’s a lot of creativity and joy that can come out of the marination process, when you’re just kind of sitting back and healing yourself, whether through sleep or sunshine or time with friends and family or whatever that looks like for you. I think there’s a lot of creativity that can come from that place of fertile, you know, wellness. I never think of that as wasted time. I think of that as getting the soil ready for all that’s gonna come in the fall. And that being said, I also think it could be a fun time to dip your toes into something that you are excited to read, that you might not have a chance to read during the school year that could be teaching-related. So it’s like very low pressure, like, “Oh, I’ve really wanted to read more by this author. I’ve wanted to read this article. I’ve wanted to dip into this topic.” And not with a pressure, but just with a curiosity. And, yeah, I think so often we as teachers love learning, and to give yourself space to learn in whatever that looks like can be a real gift.

Dan Meyer (32:09):

Yes. And if you need book recommendations, hit the MTL back catalog of episodes. Loads of folks that we interviewed have real good books out.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:16):

Yes!

Dan Meyer (32:16):

Think about it. Think about it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:22):

One quick recommendation: Again, gotta plug Antony Smith and Allison Hintz’s book. I read Mathematizing Children’s Literature before we did the interview, but this summer I wanna read all the children’s books that they mention. I just wanna go to the library and read all those children’s books. I wanna read them to my son. I wanna read ’em to myself. So, you know, diving into some good YA, children’s books, just, like, TLC. Dan, thank you for such a rich season and a chance to have so many interesting conversations. It is genuinely a joy to learn with and from you.

Dan Meyer (33:00):

Likewise. And always hope to see you folks on Twitter now and then. Let us know what you’re up to this summer at MTLShow on Twitter or in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge. We’ll be there tuning in now and then. It’s been a treat interacting with you folks over this last season. Take care and until the new season, so long.

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What Bethany Lockhart Johnson says about math

“I’ve learned so much from sharing with other teachers… Those type of moments where we’re collaborating and bringing multiple perspectives to the table, I think, has really often shifted me out of my first initial reaction or what I thought I was going to do in the classroom the next day.”

– Bethany Lockhart Johnson

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Bethany Lockhart Johnson

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S5-05. Math technology & hacks for math anxiety: research-based tips for caregivers

A blue graphic with text reading "Math Teacher Lounge" in multicolored letters and "Amplify." at the bottom, with abstract geometric shapes and lines as decoration.

We’ve been very lucky to have so many prolific and brilliant researchers on this season of Math Teacher Lounge, and our next guest is no exception.

Listen as we sit down with Dr. Marjorie Schaeffer to discuss what causes math anxiety, math hacks, and how the right math technology can make an incredible impact in children and caregivers coping with math anxiety.

Listen today and don’t forget to grab your MTL study guide to track your learning and make the most of this episode!

Download Transcript

Marjorie Schaeffer (00:00):

I think the most important thing we know from literature right now is that high math-anxious parents, when they interact with their children, their children learn less math over the course of the school year.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:12):

Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.

Dan Meyer (00:15):

And I’m Dan Meyer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:16):

We’re onto Episode 5, Dan, of our series on math anxiety. And I wanna say it feels so lovely to imagine all of these people out there doing work to help combat math anxiety. I dunno, it just makes me feel excited about the possibilities. This work is out there; it’s happening! Kids and teachers and caregivers are being impacted by these conversations. Not just — I mean, I don’t just mean the conversations we’re having on Math Teacher Lounge, but I mean, that these researchers are doing. Like, yes, we can change this!

Dan Meyer (00:53):

This is great. Yeah. We have people who are extremely smart, who have dedicated their professional lives to studying math anxiety and resolving it. And each of them that we’ve chatted with — they share lots of ideas in common, but I’ve loved how they each have their own different flavor or take or area of emphasis on a problem that hits everybody everywhere. It’s in your home, with kids and caregivers. It’s in schools. It’s in our places of teacher preparation and professional learning. Every place is a place where we can focus on resolving issues of math anxiety. It’s exciting.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:26):

Yeah, I feel like … if there could be a course in — we all know that our teacher prep programs, in MOST teacher prep programs, there’s not nearly enough math methods or time to cover <laugh> — it’s like ready, set, go! And depending on who your mentor teacher is or what your math methods course … I mean, it can totally shape the way that you are prepared or really not prepared for going out there to teach math! And so I love that we’re having these conversations.

Dan Meyer (01:55):

What I love about today’s conversation is, one, it’s got a little bit of a technology flavor, so there’s that. But I also love, it’s got one of my favorite features about change, which is that it focuses on change to action, change to routine, rather than change to belief. Rather than saying like, “OK, everybody! Everybody stop thinking bad beliefs about math and transmitting them to your kids!” Instead, it says, “What we’ll do is just, hey, we’ll set that aside for a second and we’re gonna do a certain thing every day and watch as those actions make your beliefs change.” That to me is extremely cool. And I think it has a higher likelihood of success than just, like, me telling parents, “Hey, stop thinking these thoughts!”

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:37):

“Ready, set, stop being anxious!”

Dan Meyer (02:39):

Exactly. Exactly. So it’s an exciting conversation we’re gonna have here.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:43):

Right. So it’s not a, you know, “wave the wand and all of a sudden, you’re not anxious about math anymore.” But these incremental changes, these incremental conversations, this validation, can really, really impact change. I’m with you on it, Dan. I hear what you’re saying.

Dan Meyer (03:01):

To help us talk through all of these ideas and more, we’re joined by Dr. Marjorie Schaeffer, Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Mary’s College in Indiana.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:10):

Enjoy. <Jaunty music> So, yes, Dan, we are so excited to welcome Marjorie Schaeffer. She’s Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Mary’s College. Dr. Schaeffer, we’re so excited you’re here. Hello!

Marjorie Schaeffer (03:28):

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Dan Meyer (03:29):

Yeah. We are super-lucky to have had so many prolific and brilliant researchers about math anxiety on our show. You’ll be no exception. And every time, we love to find out about how you came to study math anxiety, which winds up being a really interesting glimpse into your backstory bio. So tell us, what is the route by which you came toward studying math anxiety?

Marjorie Schaeffer (03:51):

Oh, I love that question. I’m really interested in how the attitudes and beliefs of parents and teachers influence children, especially around math. And I actually became interested in this idea in college, when no Child Left Behind was actually first starting to be implemented in schools with high-stakes standardized testing. So much so that I actually did my thesis on this thinking about, “Do children understand the importance of high-stakes testing? Do they have anxiety around that idea?” And so that was really my first foray into the anxiety literature. And that was kind of the entry point into math anxiety for me.

Dan Meyer (04:28):

So you started by studying a very high-stakes assessment, like our students connecting with this. And the assessment is once per year. And classroom instruction is every day. So how did you move from the assessments to the everyday instruction?

Marjorie Schaeffer (04:44):

That’s a great question. So, after college, I actually taught kindergarten. And so from that, I saw the day-to-day impact of instruction and the day-to-day impact of children’s individual attitudes and beliefs. And so I really became interested in thinking about, “How do we understand why some children are really successful from the instruction happening in classrooms and why other children need a little bit more support?” And so math anxiety was one way for me to really think about the individual differences I saw in my kindergarten classroom.

Dan Meyer (05:18):

It feels like you headed … you went farther upstream, is what it feels like. Where assessment … there’s like some kind of anxiety around assessment, let’s say. And then you ventured farther up the stream to classroom instruction and then still farther into kids’ homes. It seems like your research invokes a lot of curiosity about the sources of a kind of amorphous, flowing phenomenon called math anxiety. And I’d love to hear a bit about what you know about how caregivers transfer, transmit — whatever the word is — math anxiety to their kids.

Marjorie Schaeffer (05:55):

For parents … we think that the attitudes and beliefs of parents matter. And we see that for lots of areas, not just math anxiety. But I think math anxiety, we see that really clearly. And so, we can think about it both in terms of what kind of input parents provide. So, how do families talk about math with their children? What kind of support do they provide around homework? And those are ones that I think are a little obvious. But we can also think about the offhanded comments that parents say to children when they’re talking about math generally. Right? So, we see lots of memes going around, talking about how hard math homework is. And so, I think when parents say offhanded comments like, “I’m not a math person,” or “We’re just bad at math,” that communicates values to children. I think the most important thing we know from literature right now is that high math-anxious parents, when they interact with their children, their children learn less math over the course of the school year. And this specific mechanism by which that happens is still an area for a lot of research. And so some people think it’s about input. So maybe if I’m math anxious, I’m avoiding math. And so, when I have an option to read a picture book that has math content, I focus on the colors instead. And so, my child is actually getting less math than other children. We can also think it’s about these messages that are provided. So, when I talk about math, I send the message to my child, it’s not for them, and therefore the child wants to engage in it less. And some of my work looks at things like expectations and values. So, thinking about, “Do math-anxious families actually value math less than other families unintentionally?” And so, we have some support for this idea that they expect less of their children. And so maybe when they struggle, they respond in different ways than a family who’s lower in math anxiety.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:53):

This is so fascinating to me. I also was a kindergarten teacher. And I remember a mom who just … she had such like palpable math anxiety. And during one of our conversations, she was talking about these homework sessions with her daughter. And I may have mentioned this on the podcast before. But she was talking about how every night they would sit together and they would do all this math. They’d do, like, extra math together. And it always ended in tears. And despite her math anxiety, she didn’t want her daughter to experience the math anxiety that she did. So she was trying to pile it on, so her daughter was more proficient and comfortable. And instead, it was perpetuating this anxiety about it. And so, it’s a phenomenon then, right? Even if a parent is saying, like you said, maybe completely unwilling, this mother was actually trying to do the opposite. She was trying to help, you know, imbue the love and comfort with math. Right?

Marjorie Schaeffer (09:01):

Absolutely. This is why I think in my research, it’s really important that we find low-stakes, low-stress ways for high math-anxious families to do math. They absolutely can support their children in doing math. But they need a little support. We want it to be a fun, low-stakes environment, right? So maybe that’s the connection back to high-stakes testing, that I want children to have fun math experiences.

Dan Meyer (09:28):

Yeah. This is challenging, because it feels like the more caregivers know about math anxiety, and its pernicious effects on students, and how easily transmitted it is, one could become quite anxious about math anxiety. And, you know, no one makes great decisions when they’re anxious. So if I’m recalling our various episodes we’ve done, we’ve heard from people say, “Well, you need to validate students’ math anxiety. This is not something to just ignore or brush past. But also, not validate it in a way that says, you know, ‘This is OK and generational and inevitable.’” Which presents parents with a very thin path to follow, it seems like. So I love what you’re saying about how we gotta just de-stress the whole process.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:11):

You’re avoiding the whole, “I wasn’t a math person either” kind of thing. <laugh>

Dan Meyer (10:15):

Right, right, right. Yeah. So I’d love to know more. We’re excited about the technology that you have studied and helped develop, presumably, called Bedtime Math, anapp for caregivers. And I’d love to know more about what that is and what it offers parents who know enough about math to know that they don’t want to transmit math anxiety to their children, but also want to support. So what does that offer them?

Marjorie Schaeffer (10:39):

So Bedtime Math is an app. It’s freely available on iTunes or the Apple Store or Google Play. And what it’s designed to do is to provide a nightly topical passage. So one of my favorites is the one about Groundhogs Day. And so it talks a little bit about the history of Groundhogs Day, and then it asks math-related follow-up questions. So starting at a preschool level, going through late fifth grade. And it’s really meant for parents to pick the one that meets their children where they are. And so the preschool-level question asks children to pretend to be a groundhog and walk to the left and walk to the right. So a skill that families might not think about as being math, but we actually think that IS part of understanding math. Understanding left and right directionality. And then the next question can ask questions like, “If it took the groundhog three seconds to climb out of the hole, and then two more seconds to see its shadow, how much time did it take all together?” So a simple addition problem, but it’s phrased in a fun way. And so the hope is that for high math-anxious families, these interactions are fun and playful. They don’t look like fights over homework. They’re just conversations that families can have around topics that are naturally interesting to children. And our hope is that when families have lots of these positive low-stakes interactions, they actually can see that we can talk about math in unstressful ways. In lots of ways, right? We can also do this at the grocery store. We can also do this while we’re cooking in the kitchen. It doesn’t just have to be fights over homework.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:14):

And I actually have the Bedtime Math — one of the Bedtime Math books. And I was so excited to find out that there’s an app. And I think one of the things that I loved about the book is that these are invitations, right? They’re exactly that. Low pressure <laugh>, and they’re invitations to have a conversation. And if we were just to tell parents, “Oh, just count!” or, “Hey, just count wherever you go!” You know? No. It’s, in a way, I think, like you said, it’s retraining the parents on what math could look like. Like, “Oh, I didn’t even think we could just kind of have this conversation and we’re actually doing math together.”

Marjorie Schaeffer (12:55):

Yes, absolutely. I absolutely agree. We want it to be fun and playful and not stressful. And we want it to also be things that are meaningful to children’s lives. So these are topics children are interested in. It’s not that we are using flashcards or making children practice math facts over and over again. These are things children should wanna do that can naturally fit into a child’s routine. So almost all families read books before bed, and what we hope is that math can also be a part of the nighttime routine.

Dan Meyer (13:27):

There’s something really subtle here going on that I just wanna name and ask a question about. First of all, it’s cool that you started with studying high-stakes stuff and now you are developing low-stakes stuff. And I’m really curious what makes a thing low-stakes? Like, a few things I’m hearing from you is that there’s, like … I have a small child that I read literature to on a nightly basis. And I feel very anxiety-free doing that. And it’s almost as though, because each of the — tasks is the wrong word for this, but experiences — involve some reading, it puts me, the parent, in a mode that is comfortable and familiar to me. I’m curious: Are there other, as you design, what, one per day for a year? All these different experiences. What are some of the principles that you lean on that help make a thing low-stakes for kids and for parents?

Marjorie Schaeffer (14:17):

Yeah, that’s a great question. So one thing we wanted to be really intentional about is that our app doesn’t look like a lot of traditional apps. There isn’t noises that go off. You don’t enter an answer. And so one of the things that we thought made it low-stakes is that while there is a right or wrong answer — there is a correct answer — we aren’t giving children upsetting feedback. Instead, what we wanna encourage families to do is, if you struggle to remember how many seconds it took the groundhog to come out of the hole, you can work through that with a parent. So it doesn’t feel like you’re getting negative feedback; you’re being told you’re bad at math; you did it wrong. Instead, you’re just getting natural support moving forward. And so that’s one thing we wanted to be really intentional about, was that it wasn’t going to be a negative experience for children. And we are trying to build on all of the positive interactions families are having around nightly book reading. So many ways this can look very similar. You get to read another story that’s topical and hopefully interesting. And then do these little questions together. And so for a lot of families, their children don’t actually really look at the question. It almost feels like the parent is just asking them on their own. Like, they just came up with it. They just wanted to know what would happen to the groundhog. If there were three more groundhogs? How many groundhogs would we have all together? Not like it’s gonna be like homework or other parts.

Dan Meyer (15:38):

So my understanding is that there isn’t a blank into which people type a number in, press “submit” for evaluation, receive the red X, the green check. That’s a key part of the design here.

Marjorie Schaeffer (15:50):

Yes, absolutely. And for research purposes, we would’ve loved to know what families were saying. But we think it’s really important that it’s fun, interactive, that families are working together to get to the right answer, that it’s not a test for children.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:03):

In your research, when you were — maybe you could walk us through the study a little bit. But I’m also curious if you heard from parents that it was carrying over beyond the bedtime routine. Because I would imagine, if I am building these skills and reading these questions and learning that I could talk to my kid like this about math in a fun way, that’s gonna happen then, like you said, when I’m in the grocery store. Or when I’m waiting in line for at the bank. Or whatever, you know? People go into banks now still, right?

Marjorie Schaeffer (16:35):

Yeah, absolutely. So in our study, we recruited almost 600 families and we randomly assigned them. So they had an equal chance of getting both our math app and what we call our control app. And that’s really just a math app without the math. We think of it as a reading control app. And that’s because we wanna make sure that families are having a similar experience, that it’s not just that having high-quality, fun interactions with your child is actually impacting children’s math achievement. And so what we then did is followed those children over the course of early elementary school. And so we worked with them in schools in the fall and spring of first, second, and third grade, really to look at their math learning. And so what we find is that children of high math-anxious adults, when they have the reading app, so what we think of as what’s happening in the real world, we see that really classic gap between children of high math-anxious adults and children of low math-anxious adults. So if you have a high math-anxious parent, you’re learning about three months less math over the course of first grade. But for children who receive this math app, we see this gap as closed. Those children look no different than a low math-anxious parent. And so that’s leading us to think that we’ve helped families talk about math in fundamentally different ways. We did a little bit of just talking to families to see a little bit about what might be going on. And a lot of families do report exactly what you’re describing, where they say this did help them talk about math in different ways they were doing it other times.

Dan Meyer (18:10):

That’s a really extraordinary study design. I don’t know … I love that you folks gave the control group not nothing. Like it’s possible that just parents and kids bonding over a thing regularly would be enough to provoke some kind of academic gain. But you gave the control group a thing that had them interacting socially, bonding, and still this large common gap between high-anxious and low-anxious parents, their kids shrunk together. Is that what I’m gathering here?

Marjorie Schaeffer (18:41):

Yeah, absolutely. So we’re basically seeing we can no longer, when we look at children’s data, say that parents’ math anxiety explains individual differences. So these children look really similar. They’re learning more than children who has a high math-anxious parent and just got our reading control app.

Dan Meyer (19:01):

just diving into the study a little bit more here, what is the time commitment? Or, did you guide parents to say, “All right, we’re gonna do this do this delightful story about a badger for an hour”? Or did people do it for five minutes? And what was the time commitment, roughly, for people?

Marjorie Schaeffer (19:17):

So we tell families to do it however they see fit. Because it is an app, we are able to get some sense of how long, and we are talking about three to six minutes for many families. For a lot of families, they’re reading a paragraph, the paragraph and a half, and then answering one or two questions. They’re not going through every possible question. They’re just doing a little bit, really meeting their kids where they are.

Dan Meyer (19:39):

Roughly how many times per week was that?

Marjorie Schaeffer (19:41):

So we asked families to do it as much as it fit. But we’re seeing about two and a half on average in the first year. And so families are fitting it in a couple of nights a week. It’s not every night.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:52):

So what it sounds like you’re saying is what really was powerful about this app is that it was the space and time and prompts between the caregiver and the child, that chance to really sit down and have some of these meaningful and positive math interactions. How did it shift those relationships?

Marjorie Schaeffer (20:12):

So one of the things I think that makes the app effective is the changing of expectations. After a year, families are really using the app a lot less. And I think that’s OK, that they have found other ways to incorporate math into their lives. And we find that we don’t see an impact on their math anxiety, that they aren’t becoming less math anxious from this experience. Which I think makes sense, because they have had a lifetime of math anxiety. But we do see a change in parents’ expectations and value of math. So they expect their children will be better at math, and they also report that math is more important in their children’s lives. And so I think that’s an important part of it, which is, we can change these values for families, even if we aren’t able to change the math anxiety of the adults in children’s lives.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:01):

I want to for a second before — because I’m loving this idea of the app, and I’m excited to find out more ways to cultivate these conversations in my home and also share this with other folks. Because even folks who don’t even maybe realize they have math anxiety … like you said, so often it’s unconscious. So often we’re putting these little snippets into our everyday conversation, like, “Oh yeah, I’m not a math person.” And we don’t even realize how much is impacting our kiddos and ourselves, right? So I am really curious: What do you think … in your research, what were some other takeaways that you feel like are really strategies that we can think about for combating math anxiety in general?

Marjorie Schaeffer (21:47):

So I’m particularly interested in thinking about how math-anxious adults can help tone down their anxiety so that they can have high-quality interactions with their children, that they interact with. And so one of the big takeaways for my research, I think, is that math-anxious families can help their children with math. They just need support. And so I think there are lots of ways for that support to look like. One, I think it can be an app, but I also think reading a little bit about math can be really helpful. So it’s not new. So the first time you aren’t thinking about some of these ideas is as your child has their homework open in front of you. And so you can process your own feelings separately before you have to do it with a child. I also think reminding parents that math is everywhere and that math is actually lots of things that we all love to do. Math isn’t just calculus. Not that calculus isn’t wonderful. But that math is measuring, math is counting ducks at the park. Math is talking about how many times did I go down this slide. And talking about math in this way, I think reminds families that they are great at that. That even if maybe they’ve had bad math experiences before, they can do math. Especially the way their preschool or early childhood, early elementary school student needs them to. And I think that can then set the foundation for being really successful later.

Dan Meyer (23:13):

So is your research then, your subsequent studies, your line of inquiry, is moving more towards how to support parents, then? Is that what I’m hearing?

Marjorie Schaeffer (23:22):

Yeah. So I’m really interested in both understanding how the math anxiety of parents and teachers influences children. And so math anxiety is really common and we know that it’s particularly common in early elementary school teachers. And so it’s very likely that children are interacting with a highly math-anxious adult. And so I’m really interested in thinking about how we can support those individuals in doing it. And so both, I think, things like Bedtime Math, which provide fun, unscripted ways to do that, but I’m also interested in the teacher equivalent. So, thinking about whether having things like a math coach can help teachers have more positive experiences with math. So if you see someone else play math games with your students, can that help you do it as well?

Dan Meyer (24:09):

It makes me wonder a lot about an app for teachers or an app for parents, one that’s not designed to be co-consumed with kids and their parents. But what that would look like … yeah, that’s really interesting.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:21):

If we have a parent who, let’s say they have a third grader, fourth grader, fifth grader, or a middle schooler, right? Outside of early education. And they say, “OK, but what do I do? I’m with my kiddo; I don’t remember this math.” And they’re realizing that their anxiety may be influencing their kiddos’ disposition of mathematics, Or maybe they’re just in the midst of the battle <laugh>. What would you say to those folks, especially if it’s math that maybe they’re not comfortable with?

Marjorie Schaeffer (24:56):

One, I think we should like tone down the stress, right? Remind ourselves that it’s homework and homework feels really high-stakes, but these other outcomes are really high-stakes too, right? And so I’m really interested in the idea that can we help parents feel more comfortable about math by watching their own children teach it to them. So what’s a concept that the fourth grader actually feels really good about? And can they remind their parent how to do it? Can, together, they problem-solve the math homework? And so it’s not just on the parent to give the child the right answer. We know that’s a recipe for communicating some negative things about math. But instead, help the parent-child pair figure it out together. So what are some resources we can do? Can we look it up on the internet together? Can we write an email to the teacher together? Can we think about what are other problems that maybe we know how to do, and therefore we can use that same model here? So I want parents to feel like they are not solely responsible for it. That they can help figure it out with their child together. And so it’s a fun interaction.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:02):

I love that. I love that.

Dan Meyer (26:03):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s wonderful. Yeah. A conviction that I have, and I think it’s true, is that any math that we’re learning at middle school, the attraction can be dialed down to a degree that a very small child, or a parent who has a very small child’s understanding of math, can appreciate. So instead of calculation, estimation. Instead of proof, just make a claim about something. And it makes me wonder about a companion to the work that’s happening in schools that parents feel inadequate to support, that students might not want to teach their parents. But which they could both, on a daily basis, say, “Here’s a way we can engage in this at a level that is comfortable to both of us.” Just dreaming out loud here. No question asked. No response needed. I just love your work. And made me wonder about that. Can you let me know your thoughts about technology? It is very rare that we have someone on the call who is an academic and very well-versed in research, but who also is published not just in in papers and textbooks, but also in digital media. It’s consumed by lots of people. So I am trusting that you have opinions about how math looks in technology. And I wonder if you’d offer some thoughts about how it goes, right? How it goes wrong from your own eyes.

Marjorie Schaeffer (27:14):

OK. That’s a great question. I think that we need more research. I first wanna say that I think that technology has really exploded in the last few years. How children have access to technology and screen times has really changed. And what we need is high-quality research happening. That said, I think that all of the things we know from child-development research still apply to technology. And so we know that children learn best when they are engaging in interactions with their parents. And so when families can use technology together, or at least can talk about what’s happening, it can be really effective. I also think technology, especially math apps, are best at teaching concrete skills with very clear answers. So I think practicing math facts is a great use of technology. So I love that Sushi math app where you solve multiplication problems and then get to quickly pull the sushi off the cart, right? But for higher-level questions, where we’re thinking about word problems or where what we’re helping to teach students is complex thinking, apps have a harder time doing that. Because students can often figure out the answer without engaging in the thinking that we are hoping that they’ll learn. And so I think technology absolutely has a piece. I think technology is helpful for parents. I think the logistics of helping parents live their lives is a good reason to use technology. But I think we need to be conscious of what it’s replacing. And so I think a world in which we think fourth graders can learn math only from apps is not realistic. But absolutely apps can be a great supplement to what’s already happening in the classroom.

Dan Meyer (28:56):

Yeah, that’s super-helpful. We have done a lot of work in digital curriculum here at Amplify, and often face the question on a daily basis, “Should this math be digital or on paper? Should we have the students stand up and talk or type something?” And those decisions are way too crucial and way more sensitive than a lot of the app-based education gives credit to. So appreciate your perspective there.

Marjorie Schaeffer (29:22):

OK. And I don’t think there’s one answer, or one answer for all classrooms. I think it’s like always a balancing act. I do think that one of the reasons our work is successful is because the parent-child interaction. And we want parents to learn from these experiences. And I think the same thing is true for for teachers.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:41):

Dr. Schaeffer, thank you so much for being with us today and for sharing about your research, and again, for inviting us to reconsider ways that we can develop a more positive relationship with math. And that parent or caregiver or teacher relationship with a child, we’re seeing just how incredibly impactful that is. And I really appreciate your work and your voice on this. Thank you so much for your time.

Dan Meyer (30:07):

Thank you.

Marjorie Schaeffer (30:08):

Thank you for having me.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:12):

Thank you again, Dr. Schaeffer, and thank you all for listening to our conversation. You can check out the show notes for more on Dr. Schaeffer’s work and to see a link to the app that we shared about Bedtime Math.

Dan Meyer (30:25):

Please keep in touch with us on Facebook at Math Teacher Lounge Community, and on Twitter at MTLShow.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:32):

We would love to hear … you’ve been listening to this series; we’re dipping our toe into all these aspects of math anxiety. Is there something that you’re still wondering about? Something you wanna share about your own story with math anxiety?

Dan Meyer (30:43):

And if you haven’t already, if this is your first exposure to the Math Teacher Lounge podcast, please subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge, wherever you get your fine podcast products. And if you like what you’re hearing, please rate us! Leave us a review. You’ll help more listeners find the show.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:01):

And let a friend know. But you know, it’s, it’s nice and cozy here in the Lounge, right? There’s no pressure. We’re hanging out. It’s all about learning. We’re learning together. We’re glad you’re here and we want others in your community to join us in the Lounge as well. You can find more information on all of Amplify’s shows at our podcast hub. Go to amplifycom.wpengine.com/hub. Next time on Math Teacher Lounge, we’re gonna be chatting about where we are today that we weren’t a few months ago in this topic.

Dan Meyer (31:31):

We’ll be chatting about this last series about math anxiety, and trading our favorite insights and observations from the run of the season.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:41):

I just love this series, Dan. And thanks, all, for listening. We really appreciate having you in the Lounge.

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What Marjorie Schaeffer says about math

“We want it to be a fun, low-stakes environment, especially in high-stakes scenarios like testing. We want children to have fun math experiences.”

– Marjorie Schaeffer

Assistant Professor of Psychology at Saint Mary’s College

Meet the guest

Marjorie Schaeffer is an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Saint Mary’s College. She received her Ph.D in developmental psychology from the University of Chicago. Marjorie is interested in the role parents and teachers play in the development of children’s math attitudes and performance. She is specifically interested in the impact of expectations and anxiety and on children’s academic performance. Her work has been published in outlets including Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Developmental Science.

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