S3-03: Instructional strategies for integrating science and literacy
We’re continuing our investigations around science and literacy with Doug Fisher, Ph.D., professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. We talk about the importance of integrating science and literacy, as well as practical guidance for teachers who want to unite the two disciplines in their own classrooms.
Listen as we discuss how science and literacy can be powerful allies and specific strategy areas to focus on when integrating the two disciplines. 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!
Douglas Fisher (00:00):
It’s not that you have to become a reading specialist to integrate literacy into science. It’s how our brains work.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. This season, we’re making the case for our favorite underdog, which of course is science. Each episode we’re showing how science can be better utilized in the classroom, and making the case for why it’s so important to do so. In our last episode, we examined the evidence showing that science and English instruction can support each other. And now on this episode, we want to give you some more strategies for really making that a reality in your own home or classroom or community. So to help me, I’m joined on this episode by Dr. Douglas Fisher, Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Dr. Fisher is actually someone who has conducted literacy training at my own school, so I’m excited to be able to share some of his wisdom with all of you. Oh, and just a heads up, Dr. Fisher dropped some gems about the ways teachers can integrate literacy and science in their classrooms. So you may want to have a notepad. Ready. And now here’s my conversation with Dr. Douglas Fisher.
Eric Cross (01:12):
Well, Doug, thank you for your time and for being willing to come and talk about literacy and science. I know you’re busy, all over the place, and so I was super-excited that we were able to lock you in and talk about this. And, on this episode, we’re gonna talk about the ways that science and literacy can support each other. And one of the reasons why I’m really excited for you is because you said some really key things for me as a science teacher, when you talked about literacy and supporting students. That just resonated so deeply in me. And I was like, “I need more Doug!” Because we’re on that same frequency. And I know it’s a subject that you’ve spent a lot of time writing about. So can you tell us a little bit about how this became an area of interest or a passion for you? Just literacy, and all of the work that you’ve put into it?
Douglas Fisher (01:54):
Yeah. So I’ve wanted to be a teacher for a really long time. And I went to San Diego State as an undergraduate, and I was taking English class and we were assigned topics. You know, like, you’ll do an assignment, you’ll write a paper for this English class. And I got the topic “illiteracy,” and I was a freshman at San Diego State reading all of these things about adults who don’t read very well or not at all. And I ended up writing my very first college essay on illiteracy — at the time, you know, called illiteracy, at the time. And so I got super interested in this. And so as I moved through college and into my teaching career, literacy became a really important thing for me to think about, because it’s the gatekeeper. You know, you can be taken advantage of, if you’re not very literate. People can use vocabulary against you, if you’re not very literate. We know that people who have higher levels of literacy have better health outcomes. They have better lifespans, longer lifespans. I mean, there’s just — literacy impacts so much more than “Are you reading your fourth-grade textbook?” It really has lifelong implications.
Eric Cross (03:01):
That part that you said about being taken advantage of … I just got a flyer in the mail yesterday. It was one of these mailers that looked like it was an authentic debt-reduction type of thing, but it was really just like a marketing email. If you read the fine print at the very bottom, it had all of this jargon about “This is a paid, you know, for-profit company.” But when you look at it, it had official stamps all over it. And I could imagine if someone’s receiving that, that probably fools a lot of people. Is that kinda like what you’re talking about, like being taken advantage of?
Douglas Fisher (03:28):
Yes. I had a student turn 18, got a letter from a “credit card company” that was offering her daily compounding interest. And if you don’t know what that means — at 23 percent! — if you dunno what that means, you are gonna be a victim. Literacy really influences a lot of our life. It’s also how our brain works. We have a language-based system in our brain. We read, write, speak, listen, and view. And the things we learn, we learn through speaking, reading, writing, listening, and viewing. From what we know, we are the only species that has an external storage mechanism. Like, we have the ability to store complex information outside of our body, in the form of notes. We can type them. We can write them. And we can then go back and retrieve that information, that complex orthographic information later. And it means the same thing. We can say we have a storage system and we’ve been doing this for a really long time. Way back to, you know, hieroglyphics and messages on cave walls. And throughout the ages of humans learning, how to store information that they can re-access again later. That’s become a super-complicated system. It’s how computers operate. And we send messages to each other and we text each other and we write things down, and we’re really good at putting ideas, information out there. Now, if it’s just speaking and listening, then we can forget it. We can say, “No, you said this,” or “I said that.” But when it’s written, and it’s print literacy, you know, it’s the orthographics there, you can go back to the same message and over and over again. Now, you might change the interpretation of it, but the message is still there.
Eric Cross (05:16):
Right. And that is such a key element, at least of modern education, is this written element of it. It’s what many schools live and die by. They’re quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by it. It’s public. They can see it. And so there’s this heavy emphasis. And why do you think science and literacy can be powerful allies together?
Douglas Fisher (05:38):
Awesome. Well, it’s hard to learn science if you’re not literate.
Eric Cross (05:42):
This is true.
Douglas Fisher (05:42):
But that’s a one-way direction. And yes, science teachers and scientists do a lot of reading, writing, speaking, and listening and viewing. They use the five literacy processes all the time. When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of their time reading the work of other scientists and writing their findings, writing grant proposals, presenting at conferences, you know. So a huge part of the work of a scientist is not just at a bench conducting experiments. But even if you’re conducting experiments, you’re using your literacy processes to think about what you’re seeing in your experiment. So that’s a one-way direction. And I do think literacy has an influence on science. But since science goes the other way, it influences literacy. As you learn more and you understand more about the world, your background knowledge grows, your vocabulary grows, you become more literate in those different areas. And how you think. So if I’m learning about life science; I’m learning how the world works in a more, biologic physical world. And that knowledge helps me think about when I’m reading a novel, and there’s an appeal to some science knowledge or a concept that gets played with, you know, perhaps time-space continuums … well, if I don’t have the science knowledge of how I think the world works, it’s hard for me to understand what this author is doing. So it does go both ways. They feed each other. And the more literate we become, the more complex science information we can understand. ‘Cause our background knowledge and our vocabulary influence how much we understand about what we read. And as we access more complex science information, it starts to change the way we think about other things in our world.
Eric Cross (07:23):
There was a couple of things that you said in that, but one of the first things that kind of perked my ears is when you said grant proposals. Because I have friends that are scientists — and this is one of the things that when I was in school, they don’t talk about — but how much of their research is reliant upon getting funding —
Douglas Fisher (07:37):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Eric Cross (07:38):
— which you don’t think about if you’re becoming a chemist or a physicist or a biologist or working in the field, is that that funding, coming from the NSF or anywhere else. And sometimes students ask in class like, “Why am I writing so much? Like, I want to go into science!” Or “I wanna do this!” And this is a real-life example of how the writing could actually apply, in addition to all of the things of collecting data and conclusions and results. But that grant proposal thing just really perked my ears, yeah.
Douglas Fisher (08:01):
And if you can’t write a grant proposal, your ideas and experiments are not gonna get funded. And if you can’t write a strong proposal, that compellingly convinces your readers to fund you, you’re not gonna get funded. But then once you get the grant, you have to write publications. You have to share your work with other people. Make PowerPoint presentations and write journal articles or books or whatever. So it’s a cycle that literacy influences the things we do, including the things we do in science.
Eric Cross (08:31):
Now to get in maybe some data, if you were trying to convince someone that like this happy marriage can exist, what would be like your number one piece of evidence to support this, this back and forth of supporting each other?
Douglas Fisher (08:44):
Awesome. So the quote I’ll often say — and this is from studies from more than two decades ago now — but in general, in high school science, students are introduced to 3000 unfamiliar words, 3000. Each year! Because there are words that are used in a scientific way that are used commonly in other places. And there are discipline-specific words. So 3000 words a year in high school science. The Spanish 1 textbook only has 1500 words in it. So science teachers have double the academic-language vocabulary demand that a typical introductory world-language class has. So just the vocabulary alone should say to us, literacy is gonna be important if you’re gonna learn science. And if you don’t understand these technical words, and you don’t understand the way science uses this particular word in this particular way… . When you say the word “process,” it means something very specific In science. “Division” — cellular division is not the way we think about it in mathematics; there’s a similar concept, but cellular division is different than dividing numbers. And those are words that get used in multiple areas. Then you have all these technical terms that you have to be able to use, to understand the concepts. To share the concepts. To talk to other people. Whether you’re in, you know, fifth grade and talking science, or you’re a university professor, there’s a shared language, appropriate for our grade level, that we have shared meanings of.
Eric Cross (10:22):
And we’re essentially … what I’m hearing you say is … most of the people that are listening to this are science teachers. We’re we’re also language teachers. In a sense.
Douglas Fisher (10:29):
So my frustration is when people say, “Every teacher’s a teacher of reading.” And I don’t like that. I’ve written against that phrase. I don’t think all teachers are teachers of reading, any more than all teachers are teachers of chemistry. Or all teachers are teachers of algebra. But what I will say is the human brain learns through language. And all of us — every teacher that I’ve ever met understands that language is important in my class. If my students don’t have strong listening skills and speaking skills; reading, writing, and viewing skills; I’m gonna have a hard time getting them to learn things. If I can help them grow their speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing in my content area, I’m gonna do a service for my learning of my subject and also their more broad literacy development.
Eric Cross (11:16):
- So, at a high level, what does it look like to integrate science and literacy? We’ve done education for the last, what, hundred years?
Douglas Fisher (11:24):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Eric Cross (11:25):
—kind of pretty similarly, right? Kind of siloed way. What does this look like at the 30,000-foot level? You’re a professor, department chair. Run schools. Speak everywhere. Like, when you think about this from that high level, what does it look like?
Douglas Fisher (11:39):
A high level? Every time I meet with students in a science class, you know, biology or fifth grade or whatever? They should be reading, they should be writing, they should be speaking and listening. Every class. So what print do you want them to access? And it can be a primary source document, it can be an article, it can be from a textbook. Are they reading something? Are they writing to you? Because writing is thinking. If they are writing, they are thinking. As soon as their brain goes somewhere else, they stop writing. The pen won’t move or the fingers don’t type. And then speaking and listening, of course, is the dynamic of our classes. So every day we should see some amount of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, viewing in our classes. That’s at a high level. There are some generic things that seem to work across the literacy. So, learning how to take notes. Focusing on vocabulary. Using graphic organizers. These are generic things that as educators we can use in our classes. Then there’s more specialized things. So, scientists and science teachers think differently than historians and literary critics and art critics. So scientists, if you look at the disciplinary literacy work, there’s a whole body of research where they interview and study high-end experts in their field: chemistry, physics, biology, et cetera. And there are some characteristics that were more disciplined, specific. Scientists like cause and effect relationships. They look for them when they’re reading. They like sourcing information. “Where this come from?” “What’s the history of this idea?” Scientists have a long view in terms of time. Historians have a shorter view of time. English teachers have even shorter view of time. Scientists tend to think in long periods of time. And so all of that influences how a scientist reads and how we should apprentice young people after they get past the generic “I know how to take notes. I know how to study my vocabulary. I know how to do summary writing for my teacher in my notebooks and things,” there’s some generic tools. Once we get past those, we need to be looking at specifically how do people in science use literacy.
Eric Cross (13:52):
I’ve never had my thought process of reading deconstructed just now, but we just described how scientists read. I was like, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I read, right there.” I also like how you said how we should apprentice young people. And I feel like you as the literacy guy, you chose that word very specifically, as far as apprenticing young people. That is a view, I think, that’s really important to hold. ‘Cause that’s what we’re doing essentially … is, if we’re doing what we should be doing, we are apprenticing these young people.
Douglas Fisher (14:18):
Yes.
Eric Cross (14:18):
And helping them develop. Now, let’s imagine there’s a listener out there and they’re interested in getting better at integrating science and literacy instruction. They want to start somewhere. Before we dive in, do you have any initial words of encouragement for the person who’s like, “Everything is like a priority right now,” in their classroom or in their world?
Douglas Fisher (14:37):
Yeah. So I’ll talk about elementary for just a moment. When we’re reading informational texts in our literacy block, we should be reading information that is aligned to what kids need to learn in science and history in, in that grade level. Why are we reading things that are gonna be in conflict with what they’re gonna learn in science later that day in fourth grade, for example? So when we look at our standards, our expectations, what is it that third graders need to know in history, science, mathematics, language arts? And when we’re reading text and we’re learning to apply our reading strategies during our literacy block, why aren’t we reading topics that build our background knowledge for our science time? So we’re seeing some synergy there. We should be looking at life cycles in grades that are appropriate for life cycles and knowing there’s more to life cycles than the frog and the plant or the seed. There are all kinds of life cycles. And we call ’em life cycles for a reason. That’s a general concept. Now in science, we’re looking at this particular lifecycle right now. And so that’s a high level. If we could get more connection to the content standards during our literacy blocks, it would be very good. When we talk about the time at which we call “science” in the day, in more of the K–8 continuum, the science needs to include some primary source documents. Some real things that students are reading. Read about a scientist; read about a scientist’s discovery; read about what they discovered. So that we’re building our background knowledge. So when we go to do things, activities, labs, simulations, we have background knowledge and we understand what we’re experiencing. It can’t be like—I watched this awesome lesson on lenses and the teacher had all these different lenses in the room and the students came in and they were brand new. They don’t know anything. They were picking ’em up. They’re exploring them. They’re trying to figure out, and they’re trying to come up with theories about what this is and how it works. And then the teacher gave them a reading, a short reading, on refraction of light. And they read this thing. And the clarity that they had about what these lenses must do, well! All of a sudden they’re putting them up to the lights! They’re asking if they can go get the lights out of the storage unit! ‘Cause there’s — and they’re shining different lights through the lenses to see what happens to the light. Because that little bit of reading turned some focus on for the students. And it allowed them to take what I’m thinking about, what I’m trying to figure out, how this thing works in another direction. That’s the power of using literacy in our classes.
Eric Cross (17:20):
And what I’m hearing essentially is transfer across disciplines, across content areas, ultimately. And in an elementary school classroom, would it be fair to say, probably the teacher has more autonomy to be able to do that, since they’re teaching all the subjects? But secondary, logistically, planning and those types of things … from what you’ve seen, is it fair to say this kind of needs to be like a top-down, full vertical alignment, to teach like this?
Douglas Fisher (17:45):
I think that would be awesome to do that. But if I’m a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher and I’m working with my sixth grade science teacher, the conversation should be, “What units are you teaching?” Because I’m choosing informational text. My job is to teach them how to find central ideas. My job is to teach them how to find the details in the text. My job is to have them make a claim and support that claim with evidence. The stuff I use is generic. Yes, we do read some literature and some narratives, but we also read about 50% of the text in English around informational text. So if I can help you and accomplish my standards as well, fantastic. So let’s have this conversation and say, “Oh, this is what you’re teaching in science in the next three weeks? I’m gonna choose some texts and we’re gonna analyze ’em for central idea. We’re gonna analyze ’em for details. We’re gonna, for mood or tone or whatever that we’re teaching. And by the way, I’m building background knowledge. So when they come to you, they know some stuff about what you’re going to be teaching next.” So I don’t think it’s impossible to say teams of teachers could come together and say, “What do we believe that our students need to know and learn and be able to do? And then how do we choose things that are gonna help them accomplish exactly that?”
Eric Cross (19:01):
And that’s empowering. Because that’s one thing that we can control maybe is this East-West, peer-to-peer, different content areas. A system may not be able to change as quickly, but I can definitely go talk to my English team or math team and check in and kind of see, “Hey, where do we have overlap in that?” And I know the times that I’ve accidentally had overlap with the teams, it’s super-exciting. And the students have been more bought in! Because it’s like, we’ve done something on the human microbiome and we’ve talked about genetics and all these different things, and then when they read The Giver, or they read some book about genetics, they have all this knowledge. And they’re excited. And they talk about colorblindness or they come to my class and they’re like, “Hey, we read about this!” It’s almost like they saw a magic trick, the fact that these things linked up. And the engagement has been so much higher when it’s the same content in different classes, but through different lenses. At least, that’s what I’ve seen in my years of teaching.
Douglas Fisher (19:54):
I saw a lesson on space junk that was so cool. Middle-school students learning space junk. And the history teacher had a part of it, science teacher had a part of it, English Language Arts teacher had a part of it. And these students, I mean, you watch them look up all the time, ’cause there’s space junk up there. Where’d it come from? Why is it there? What are the politics of this? How do we clean it up? I mean, it was just so interesting to watch them when the teachers came together. And the teachers met their standards in this couple-week-long space-junk exploration. Investigation was met. Politics was met. All these different things. Economy. You know, how much does it cost to clean up this problem? So there’s really cool opportunities when teachers come together and realize we can work together and improve the literacy and learning of our students.
Eric Cross (20:50):
Absolutely. So before this recording, we picked your brain a bit. And I know that there were three specific strategy areas that you wanted to touch on. And one of those — which is kind of coming back to the 3000-words language teachers — was vocabulary. So what are the opportunities that you see, as far as the way of educators to approach vocabulary? Because, you know, there’s a lot. We got a lot of it. The 3000 words.
Douglas Fisher (21:14):
Yeah. There’s a lot of it. So the worry is, we make a vocabulary list and have students look up the words in definitional kinds of things. That’s not really gonna help. Students need to be using the words. They need to be using the words in their conversations, in their writing, in how they think about your content in science. So vocabulary is a huge predictor of whether or not you understand things. Vocabulary is also a pretty good predictor if you can read on grade level. So when we think about vocabulary, there’s something called word solving. You show students a piece of text and you’re reading it, you’re sharing your thinking, and you say, “Oh, here’s a context clue!” Or “I know this prefix or suffix or root!” And in science, a lot of the words are prefixed, suffixed, or root words. We tend to add things together with a lot of prefixes and suffixes and have roots and bases in science. So we can help students think about, “Oh, what does geo- mean? We already know what geo- means here. It means the same thing in this word. Let’s apply that knowledge.” So word solving is part of it, showing students how we think about words that we might not know. The second is more direct instruction of vocabulary. As students encounter the words, we work on what it means, how we say it. We practice it a few times. The process is called orthographic mapping. It’s kind of a scientific idea here. But you have the sound and the recognition of by-the-word, by sight, and what it means. And your brain starts to automatically recognize that word in the future. So I don’t have to slow down, disrupt my fluency, and try to figure out what the word is saying. ‘Cause I’ve seen it enough. I’ve heard it pronounced enough, I’ve pronounced it enough, and I know what it means. So teachers should be saying, “What words in sixth grade science, what words in third grade science, do my students really need to know?” And I’m gonna have them encounter those words over and over. I’m gonna have them use the words. I’m gonna have them see the words. I’m gonna have them say the words. I’m gonna say the word and we’re gonna be over and over with these terms, so that students incorporate them into their normal view of, “These are the things I know about the world.” By the way, when they go to read that next thing, and they understand “geology,” you know, for sixth graders, for example, they know how to say it. They don’t stumble on it. And it activates a whole bunch of memories in their brains. “This is what geology is.” There are branches of geology, there’s physical geology, there’s all this thinking that activates as they read.
Eric Cross (23:35):
There was a practice that I participated in and am trying to incorporate — I don’t know what the name of it is. But essentially what happened was we were dissecting a flower. And the instructor had us name parts of the flower. But we got to come up with our own names for it.
Douglas Fisher (23:49):
Ah.
Eric Cross (23:50):
So, for instance, the stamen we call “the fuzzy Cheeto.” And we all used our own words and then everything was legitimized. And so we went through and learned the whole activity using our own vocab words. But then, in the end, after we presented and talked about it, then the words, the actual academic language was attached to our word. And we were able to say, “OK, the fuzzy Cheeto is the stamen,” and this, this, this, and this. But it was such an interesting practice, because it kind of legitimized all of our definitions. But we weren’t stumbling on these long Latin terms and things like that. Is there a name for that? Or. … ?
Douglas Fisher (24:29):
Yes. I don’t know the name for that. I think it’s really smart. So here’s what I would say about that, is: we don’t learn words, we learn concepts. Words are labels for our concepts. So what that teacher did for you was allow you to develop concept, a concept knowledge. “There’s a part of this plant, it goes like this, we’re gonna call it fuzzy Cheeto. Now I have this concept. And look, it occurred in all these plants. And those people called it that and that other group called it that. We called it a fuzzy Cheeto. Here’s the part of it.” And then the concept is in your brains. And the teacher said, “It’s really called stamen.” And it’s an instant transfer, because you already had the concept. What we often see is students are trying to learn a really hard academic word and the concept for the word at the same time. And so it slows down the whole process. And there’s higher levels of forgetting. Because human beings, we don’t learn words; we learn concepts. If you don’t have the concept, if I gave you a word out of the blue that you’ve never seen, never heard, and a week from now I asked you to remember it, you probably would not, because it didn’t register. It wasn’t part of your schema. You didn’t have a way to organize the information. You don’t have a concept. So that teacher? It’s a great idea. Got you to develop concept knowledge. And then said, “Here’s a real label for it: What some other people called it when they had the chance to come up with their own names.”
Eric Cross (25:50):
Shout out to my teacher, who was—
Douglas Fisher (25:51):
Right.
Eric Cross (25:52):
It was learned then. It was a great practice. And the fact that you’re right, like, I just mean from my own personal experience, I agree that learning concepts versus complicated words. And it’s interesting that you said higher levels of forgetfulness, you know. And you often hear that complaint about it: “Students forget! Students forget!” But this complex topic and this complex word that’s new to me, and I have to remember both of those things.
Douglas Fisher (26:12):
That’s right.
Eric Cross (26:13):
And the other neat thing that it did, is it actually honored the background and like the founts of knowledge of all the different groups in the classroom. You just said something about “this group called it this and this group called it this,” and so by letting different groups share all of those names, now we’re starting to build these kind of interesting connections. That’s at least what I remember experiencing. And so this, even this practice of this approach is very layered, beyond just kind of generating new knowledge of things. So I appreciate that aspect of it. Now another area that you mentioned was complex text.
Douglas Fisher (26:41):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (26:42):
And how we can get students into complex text. So what can we do there?
Douglas Fisher (26:46):
I think science is an ideal place to get students reading things that are hard for them. And I do believe that some parts of school should be a struggle. Not all day, every day. But there should be doses of struggle, which are good for our brains. And these complex pieces of texts that don’t give up their meanings easily allow students to go back and reread the text and maybe mark the text and talk to peers about the text and answer questions with their groups. And the whole point of complex text is to say, “We persevere through it. We may not understand it fully on our first read. But we go back and we might underline, we might highlight. We might write some margin notes. Our teacher might say, ‘What did this author mean here?’ And we go back and look at that part and we take it apart. What do we think about that? And we talk to each other. It’s showing that when we read things, we work to understand. We work through our thinking, often in the presence of other people. And our understanding grows as we go into the text over and over and over again.” So I said geology earlier. There’s about a two-page article on “what is geology” that sixth graders often read. And some kids find it super boring. It’s a once-read, “OK, geology, I don’t really understand it. There’s a bunch of words in here that I don’t understand.” But if you go back to it a few times and you start taking apart, “What are the branches of geology? Oh, I’m gonna go reread that.” How are these two branches related to each other?” “What are the subtypes of each branch of geology?” “How do geologists do their work?” You start asking questions where students are going back into the text. You spend a little bit of time. Now, the introduction to geology, the students know so much more. So whatever you do next— video experiments, whatever—they have a frame of reference, because of that deep, complex read. It’s probably better than simply telling them, “Here’s the information.”
Eric Cross (28:45):
Right. And I even feel like as an educator, when I reflect on my own learning in the classroom, and then looking at it through the perspective of an educator <laugh>, you find this difference between how you were taught and then what the data says good teaching is.
Douglas Fisher (28:59):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Eric Cross (29:00):
It’s so easy to slide back into how you were taught!
Douglas Fisher (29:02):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (29:02):
Even though, you know, you mentally assent to, “This is the best way. This is the data shows.” And you find yourself kind of sliding back at times.
Douglas Fisher (29:10):
Yep. And there’s good evidence to support what you just said, that most people teach the way they experienced school. And it is very hard to change that. And people have studied this. And it’s very hard to change that. Because it worked for us. And we have an n of 1, and it worked for us. Now, remember, there were a whole bunch of other kids in the class that it may not have worked for. And we chose to be in school the rest of our lives, and some of your peers did not choose to be in school the rest of their lives. In fact, some of them hated school and found no redeeming qualities of their experience. So just because it worked for us in a case of one, n of 1, doesn’t mean it worked for all of the kids, or even the majority of them.
Eric Cross (29:57):
Very well said. It’s that, what is that, the survivor bias? Survivorship bias? Where you were the one that made it. But you don’t think about all the other folks. ‘Cause we’re thinking about ourselves.
Douglas Fisher (30:05):
That’s right.
Eric Cross (30:06):
Great case for empathy too, is thinking about the people left and right. Because my friends are like, “I hated science.” And I say, “Who hurt you? Like, what did they do? It’s so amazing, so much fun!”
Douglas Fisher (30:16):
“What happened to you? Science is the coolest. Right? It’s so amazing!”
Eric Cross (30:21):
But I also had a unique experience in seventh grade with my teacher who did some of these things, and made it accessible for so many of us, in opening opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But you’re absolutely right. That was my story. That wasn’t the story of everybody that was around me. And I think that’s really important. Now, I know this is also a big one for you, but I wanna talk about writing. What are the opportunities that you see in terms of writing specifically?
Douglas Fisher (30:51):
So would love it if science teachers had short and longer writing tasks in the science time. Of course, you can integrate some of the science writing, the longer ones, in the English language arts time, especially if you’re the elementary teacher and you can have control of the whole day. But I said this earlier; I’ll say it again. Writing is thinking. While you are writing, there’s nothing else you can do but think about what you are writing. Your brain cannot do something else. So if a science teacher wants to know, do their students really understand the concepts? Have them write. Now some of the shorter ones, I like something called “given word” or “generative sentences”: “I’m gonna give you a word: CELL. C-e-l-l. We’re in science. I want you to write the word ‘cell,’ c-e-l-l, in the third position of a sentence. So it’s gonna go word, word, cell, and then more words.” You could also say, “I want the sentence longer than seven words,” or whatever. But the key is, I’m telling you where I want the word. You will know instantly if your students have a sense of what the word “cell” means in the context of science. If they write “my cell phone,” they don’t get it. If they write about spreadsheet cells or jail cells or whatever, they didn’t get it. But if they talk to you about plant cells and animal cells and the components of those cells, and then once they have that sentence down, you can say to them, “Now write three or four more sentences that connect to that sentence.” It’s super simple. So whatever concepts you’re teaching, put ’em in a specific position. Now you don’t have to only put it in the third position. You can say the first position, the fifth position, the fourth position. But it forces them to think about what they know about the word and then how to construct a sentence for you. That’s a very simple way to get some writing from your students that helps you think about what they understand. Other kinds of writing, you can have quick writes, you can have exit-slip writes. There’s something in the research space called the muddiest part, where halfway through the lesson you have them write so far what has been the least understood or the most confusing part of this lesson. And they do a quick write, right there, at the muddiest part. And as a teacher, you flip through these and you start to say, “Oh, these are the points that are confusing to my students.” So if 80% of them all have the same thing, I gotta reteach that. If these five got, “This is the muddiest part,” If these five thought, “This is the muddiest part,” these seven, “I thought this was the muddiest part,” what do I need to do? Because it’s gonna be hard to move forward if this is their area of confusion. There are also all kinds of writing prompts that have a little bit longer. My favorite one is RAFT. What’s your Role? Who’s your Audience? What’s the Format? And what’s the Topic we’re writing about? Super flexible writing prompt. When you teach something, we don’t want students to only think they write to their teacher. So your role is an atom. You are writing to the other atoms. What do you wanna write about? What’s the topic? What’s the format of it? Is it a love letter? Is it a text message? Is it … so we, we mix it up with students in saying, how do they show some knowledge through a prompt that we give them? And then of course, longer pieces as they get older. More opinion pieces through fifth grade. More claims and arguments starting in sixth grade. So that they’re starting to see, “I have to use the evidence from things I’ve learned, read, listened to, watched, and construct something: an opinion, an argument where I back it up with reasons or evidence.” And those longer pieces, you know, less frequently. The shorter pieces, pretty regularly. So the teacher sees the thinking of the students.
Eric Cross (34:29):
When you were speaking about these really creative writing prompts, there were specific students coming into mind, that were coming into mind … they’re, they’re great science students, but they also have this really strong artsy side drawing, creative writing, and things like that. And when you said something about atoms talking to each other, it elicited, in my brain, certain students that would really love this aspect of creativity in the sciences. And it’s not how we’re typically trained as science teachers, to kind of incorporate this, like you said. A book of props. But I’m imagining, like, as a science teacher, if I took this, this would be a great way to reach more students to be able to show what they know, in a way that might resonate with their own intrinsic “Oh, I get to write creatively!” So I was kind of writing furiously as you were sharing all that information there.
Douglas Fisher (35:12):
So here, I’ll give you another example for elementary people. Again, with RAFT. There’s a book called Water Dance. It’s a pretty popular book for elementary teachers. It’s really about the life cycle of water. For example, you are a single drop of water. You are writing to the land. The format is a letter. And you’re explaining your journey. Now, if they can do this, they’re essentially explaining to you the cycle of water. But you got it in a way that people are now, “Oh, I’m a drop of water. So it’s me. My perspective. Where do I go from? Where do I start?” Because you can start anywhere in the cycle, right? My drop could have started in the clouds. My drop could have started in the ground. My drop could have started in the lake. But it has to show you the journey. So there are many ways of showing you the right answers.
Eric Cross (36:02):
And that’s using the RAFT protocol.
Douglas Fisher (36:04):
That’s RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic. It’s been around 20 or 30 years.
Eric Cross (36:09):
You just gave the name to something a teacher shared in our podcast community, Science Connections: The Community, on Facebook. Teacher shared a Google slide deck and on it were just three slides. And the role that the student had to have is they had to show, then tell, the story of a journey of a piece of salmon being eaten, a piece of starch from pasta being eaten, and then an air molecule in a child’s bedroom. And they had to give the path of travel and the experience from the mouth and then breaking down into protein and all those kinds of things. And this teacher shared it and I wish I knew the teacher’s name because I wanna give ’em credit, but they shared it. And so I used it with my students and then had ’em read aloud their stories and dramatize it. And they were so into it!
Douglas Fisher (36:49):
So cool.
Eric Cross (36:50):
But through it, I was able to see that they understood different parts of the body. They understood cell respiration. The whole thing. And it was fun! To watch them get so into this creative writing. And now I know the name of it. That’s been 30 years they were using RAFT. So you just talked a bit about complex texts and writing. And before we go, I wanted to circle back to something that you said, because I think it’s important, and if you could elaborate on it a little bit, about the value of struggle. Can you talk more about that?
Douglas Fisher (37:21):
Sure. I do believe in a lot of the U.S. we’re in an anti-struggle era of education. And it predates Covid. I think it made it worse during Covid. We front load too much. We pre-teach too much. We reduce struggle. We quote, “over-differentiate” for students. And there’s value in struggle. The phrase, “productive struggle” — if you haven’t heard it, Google productive struggle — it’s an interesting concept, that we actually learn more when we engage in this productive struggle. Now, productive struggle originally came from the math world, and it was this idea that it’s worth struggling through things to learn from it, that you’re likely to get it wrong, and then there was productive success. And there are times when we want students to experience success and we make sure we put things in place for productive success. But there are times where we want them to struggle through a concept. ‘Cause it feels pretty amazing when you get on the other side, when you know you struggled and you get to the other side. If you think about the things, listeners, think about the things in your life where you struggled through it and you are most proud of what you accomplished. I want students to have that. I don’t wanna eliminate scaffolding, eliminate differentiation. But I do want some regular doses of struggle. So if you look at the scaffolding, we have a couple choices. We have front-end scaffolds, distributed scaffolds, and back-end scaffolds. Right now we mostly use front-end scaffolds: We pre-teach, we tell students words in advance, that kind of stuff. But what if we refrained from only using front-end scaffolds, and we use more distributed scaffolds, when they encounter. So there’s a difference between “just in case” and “just in time” support for students. So we tend to plan on the “in advance, here are all the things we’re gonna do to remove the struggle before students encounter the struggle.” What if instead we said, “Let them encounter some struggle. Here’s the supports we’re gonna provide. We’re gonna watch; we’re gonna remove those scaffolds, and allow them to have an experience of success, where they realize, ‘I did it. I got it.’” Every science teacher I’ve ever worked with, when they do an experiment or a lab or simulation, they are looking for productive struggle. They don’t tell the answers in advance. They don’t tell if the answers are right. That’s your data. What does your data tell you? I mean, this is what you do. But then the other part of your day when you move into, like, reading, you don’t do that. You fall into the trap of removing struggle. And so allow them to grapple with ideas. Allow them to wonder what words mean. Allow them to say, “I’m not getting this, teacher! It’s really frustrating!” And you say, “Yeah, this is really hard. This is why we’re doing it at school. ‘Cause it’s really hard. If it was easy, I’d have you do it at home. But we’re doing it here, ’cause it’s really hard and it’s OK not to get it at first.” And create a place where errors are seen as opportunities to learn, and struggling through ideas and clarifying your own thinking and arguing with other people to reach an agreement or reach a place where we agree to disagree is part of the power of learning.
Eric Cross (40:38):
There’s a teacher, who I took this from. My master teacher when I was student teaching. And she said that there’s no such thing as failure in science, just data. And I took that same mantra. And I resonate with what you said about how science teachers, all of us, hold onto that productive struggle, because it’s part of being a scientist. It’s part of the experiments. That genuine “aha” moment. Or it didn’t work out? That’s great! That’s totally fine! Let’s write about it and let’s take photos and let’s publish it and let’s be scientists. That’s totally true. As we wrap up, Dr. Fisher, is there any final message that you have to listeners about bringing science and literacy together? I know you speak everywhere, but for everyone that’s listening, if you can put out your encouragement or message or suggestion … you’ve given so many great tips and practical applications. But, any final thoughts on the subject?
Douglas Fisher (41:32):
I think many science teachers are intimidated because they think they have to be reading teachers. And there’s a knowledge base to reading. And some teachers are reading teachers and science teachers, and I don’t wanna dismiss that. But it’s not that you have to become a reading specialist to integrate literacy into science. It’s how our brains work. And so as you think about the way in which you are learning and the ways in which you want your students to learn, what role does language play? What role does speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing, play in your class? And then provide opportunities for students to do those five things each time you meet with them.
Eric Cross (42:12):
Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for being here and for your encouragement, and sharing your wisdom and experience. And then personally serving my city, here in San Diego, and my students, when they make it to your high school and ultimately the alma mater of San Diego State University.
Douglas Fisher (42:30):
That’s right.
Eric Cross (42:31):
Yeah. We really, really appreciate you in serving all kids and lifting the bar and making things more equitable for all students. And encouraging teachers. So thank you.
Douglas Fisher (42:39):
Thank you very much.
Eric Cross (42:42):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Douglas Fisher, Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Check out the show notes for links to some of Doug’s work, including the book he co-authored titled Reading and Writing in Science: Tools to Develop Disciplinary Literacy. Please remember to subscribe to Science Connections so that you can catch every episode in this exciting third season. 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. Also, if you haven’t already, please be sure to join our Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community. Next time on the show, we’re going to continue exploring the happy marriage between science and literacy instruction.
Speaker (43:26):
I had this moment of realization I felt a few months ago: I’m like, if I don’t teach them how to use the AI as a tool, as a collaborator, then they’re gonna graduate into a world where they lose out to people who do know how to do that.
Eric Cross (43:39):
That’s next time on Science Connections. Thanks so much for listening.
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Meet the guest
Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is professor and chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College having been an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is the recipient of an International Reading Association William S. Grey citation of merit, an Exemplary Leader award from the Conference on English Leadership of NCTE, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design as well as books, such as The Restorative Practices Playbook, PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design, Building Equity, and Better Learning Through Structured Teaching.
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.
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S1-01: The journey from student to SpaceX engineer: Juan Vivas
In this episode, we join Eric Cross as he talks to supply chain engineer Juan Vivas of SpaceX about his experiences growing up as a Latino in STEM. Juan shares his story of moving to the United States to study engineering and becoming successful in his career as a scientist. Juan openly discusses the experiences that made a difference in his life and the teachers that inspired him along the way. He also shares his experience as an engineer in different fields, as well as what it’s like to work in the supply chain during COVID.
Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Juan Vivas (00:00):
But to me, based on my experience so far, I think the best way to put it: An engineer is a technical problem-solver.
Eric Cross (00:28):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Juan Vivas. Juan is a supply chain engineer for SpaceX. His career in STEM has pivoted from chemical engineering to working on foods like Cinnamon Toast Crunch to his current role at SpaceX, where he’s responsible for his work on Starlink, a technology that uses low-orbit satellites to provide internet access across the world. In this episode, Juan shares his story of how he became an engineer and how a thoughtful teacher used robotics to inspire him. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Juan Vivas. Juan, thanks for being here.
Juan Vivas (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, of course! Super-excited to be here.
Eric Cross (01:19):
Hey, and starting off, I kind of like to ask your origin story. We were talking earlier about Marvel, and your journey of one working for…what I consider the closest thing that we have to SHIELD in the Marvel stories is SpaceX. Like with my own students, we talk about SpaceX like it’s a fictional thing, and we watch the rocket launches together and we watch the recovery and it’s so cool.
Juan Vivas (01:45):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (01:46):
And so when I knew that we were gonna be able to talk to you, I was excited. Like, I felt like I was a kid.
Juan Vivas (01:51):
<Laugh>
Eric Cross (01:51):
So I’d love to hear your origin story of you ultimately landing at SpaceX. And begin wherever kind of seems most natural to you.
Juan Vivas (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, of course. You know, I wasn’t one of those kids at from a young age I said “Oh, I’m gonna be an engineer.” Right? “I want to go and build all these things.” Where I grew up, and the social circle that I had, a lot of people were like doctors or lawyers. Just figured, you know, I’ll go to med school and go down the same path that 90% of like everyone else was gonna take. But in high school, I actually got into robotics. And, kind of like I mentioned, I wanted to do med school, that is what I figured I would end up doing. And then I got into robotics in high school. And I think that was what really kind of like changed my perspective of what I wanted to do, because basically these competitions were just—it was full-on driven by students. So we designed, programmed, and manufactured, like, the entire robot itself. And so through that I ended up doing a summer engineering program at the University of Maryland, the summer before going into my senior year in high school. And there we worked on a competition with underwater robots. And so we spent the entire summer, kind of similar scenario, designing a robot, manufacturing it, programming it. And then in the end it was like a competition in the buoyancy tank with different teams. And, you know, I think one thing that was really neat about that experience is that I got to hear Dr. John C. Mathers, who is a Nobel Prize physicist, speak to us in a room with, like, only 10 high school students. And just hearing his experience of where he started and the accomplishment that he’s been able to do, down in the STEM path, was really neat. And that summer was my final decision that I’m “OK, I know I want to be an engineer.” What’s interesting is I ended up choosing chemical engineering, instead of mechanical, which a lot of people, you know, based on all the experience that led me up to be an engineer, they asked me why I didn’t choose mechanical engineering. And I think one of the reasons why I chose chemical engineering is it’s very process-based. So one thing needs to happen, and there’s different inputs to that one step, and that step has an end-to-end reaction to it, right? So certain things need to happen in step one in order for step two to occur. And however the inputs happen in step one, it’s gonna affect the rest of the process. Honestly, very different than what I thought it was really gonna be. But what’s neat about chemical engineering is that it’s one of the most versatile engineering majors that you can have. Chemical engineering, because you work with a lot of process bases. Everything has a process, right? Everything needs to start with step one, and with, you know, step 10, whatever. And it’s all about optimization and improvement along those processes. So you can really take chemical engineering principles and apply ’em to different areas of a career, which is essentially the experience that I had in college. I had three internships with Dow Chemical where I did environmental health and safety, production, and supply-chain improvement. I then did research and development with Clorox. And then I did manufacturing engineering with General Mills. So really different job roles, different aspects, but same methodology applied.
Eric Cross (05:36):
I feel like there’s so much that you just said, <laugh> and I was trying to always, “I wanna ask him about that!” And in there, what I heard was there was a real pivotable, pivot moment in your life. Was the club…or was it a club, the robotics program? Or was that a class?
Juan Vivas (05:53):
You know, it was actually…it was VEX Robotics, specifically.
Eric Cross (05:56):
It was VEX! OK. Yeah, yeah. Really popular. And they still have it; I think we actually have some downstairs. So it was a club, and not necessarily a formal environment, where you were able to build. And it’s both collaborative and competitive, right? Like, there’s both aspects.
Juan Vivas (06:11):
Yep. Yep.
Eric Cross (06:11):
And, and then you had access to one of the only two facilities in the country that have these…were they buoyancy tanks?
Juan Vivas (06:20):
Buoyancy tanks, yep.
Eric Cross (06:21):
And there’s this book, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and then another similar book called Balance. It talks about how some of these innovators, like Steve Jobs and, and Bill Gates, they had access to things that other people didn’t. So, like, Bill Gates, I think at the University of Washington, had a computer that, you know, no one else did. And Jobs had one at, like, Hewlett-Packard. So it gave you this awesome headstart, where you’re able to test things in a real-life environment that kind of transfers into real-world skills. And then a few internships, so like, internships and mentors. So you had these people in the industry or people who were front-runners that were able to pour into you and give you these opportunities. And so it’s really neat to see how a program that starts as a club, kind of a competitive thing that introduced you to it and hooked you, then led to unfolding all of these opportunities that ultimately led you up to being here. And there’s one part—in looking at your LinkedIn profile, there’s a couple of really cool things that stand out. There’s a lot of cool things, but there’s two that really stood out. So one, working at SpaceX, and we’ll talk more about that, but I wanna go to General Mills and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Because Cinnamon Toast Crunch is amazing.
Juan Vivas (07:39):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (07:39):
And you were part of the supply chain for that. In my head, I’m thinking, OK, like, what is he like responsible for? Like, getting the cinnamon and sugar?
Juan Vivas (07:51):
<Laugh>
Eric Cross (07:51):
What was, what did your job entail, when you were running that?
Juan Vivas (07:55):
There, I didn’t even know what I was gonna be doing until my first day. It was just, whatever the business need is, that’s where you’re gonna be put. So this was actually a high-priority plan for General Mills. And the production line that made Cinnamon Toast Crunch was split up into processes. So you have, they call it the process-process side, which is like literally raw materials, like making the cereal from scratch, baking it, adding the sugar, and then sending it to be packaged. And then you have the packaging-process side. so I was then placed as a packaging process lead, for the packaging side of that production line. So I was accountable for two packaging lines that packed out Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And that is where—that was actually my first real, you know, call it “real job,” like graduated college, going straight into the industry. I was a process lead for the packaging side of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Eric Cross (08:54):
So you went from cereal to rockets, <laugh>, which which is an amazing trajectory to have.
Juan Vivas (09:03):
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Cross (09:04):
And when you kind of mentioned, back in your story about medical school, and, you know, it’s kinda like, what you see people doing, and you’re “OK, this is what I think I wanna do.” And then we have a perception in our mind about what a certain job’s gonna be like. And then reality hits. I think a lot of—when I ask my students, “What do you wanna do?” They think, like, “lawyer!” and when they think “lawyer!” they’re like, “I’m good at arguing!” Right? And until they find—until they talk to some lawyers and they find out like what that career can look like.
Juan Vivas (09:28):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (09:28):
You’re not just in the courtroom showing off your arguing skills. But, like, an engineer, when I talk to my students about what does it mean to be an engineer, often it’s very linear. It’s “I build bridges,” or, you know, maybe cars, but you’re a supply chain engineer. And, and that’s something that I think, now more than ever, it’s probably an incredibly critical role, especially considering that all of these supply constraints. Can you—what is a supply chain engineer? And what does it look like in your day-to-day? How is engineering rolled into that?
Juan Vivas (10:03):
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s an excellent question. I, too, once thought that engineering was just “I’m gonna be actually making something physical,” and like being super engineer-y about it. But, to me, based on my experience so far, I think the best way to put it: An engineer is a technical problem solver. As a supply chain engineer, specifically right now in my role at SpaceX…you know, as you can guess, the supply chain in the entire world is crazy. There’s no raw materials anywhere, and nothing can ever get on time. And so what I work on is I help our suppliers develop processes to meet the design criteria that we set up for like a specific part. As my job as a supply chain engineer, it’s “Can I take this design and make it manufacturable?” Right? “Can I go to any supplier and can they actually make this to the tolerance that the design engineer set them to be?” Nine out of 10 cases, the answer is no, essentially, is the best high-level way to put it.
Eric Cross (11:10):
When you’re solving these problems, is it this iterative process of going back and forth? Or is it just this aha-moment when you finally figure things out? ‘Cause I imagine they’re coming up with a design; you’re going back and saying, “Can this be manufactured?” or “Can it be done?” They’re saying no 90% of the time. And then are you the one responsible for kind of iterating on this, or changing it and then going back to them and telling them, asking them, until you get a yes? Is that—
Juan Vivas (11:33):
Yep. Yep, yep. Exactly. So we go through a process called Design for Manufacturing, DFMing. And where I essentially take, you know, the design engineer’s proposal, and then I have conversations with the suppliers, and then, that’s where the iteration begins. Where we go back and forth, back and forth, until we kind of meet in the middle to have something that can be manufacturable. Most of the times, in my experience, suppliers will always tell you no, just because they always want something that is manufactured really easily. And so you just gotta learn through experience. Like, when are they actually telling you something that’s a fact, versus when they’re just trying to you know, get out of a tolerance, or that “all right, all right, they mentioned that would just like make their jobs a little bit more difficult.”
Eric Cross (12:17):
So I’m hearing like there’s soft skills that are woven into the technical skills that you also need to be able to have.
Juan Vivas (12:23):
Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, as an engineer—and this is something, again, that I feel like you can only learn through experience—you’re gonna see that it’s not just you working to solve this one problem. Especially for a supply chain engineer. You’re talking with marketing; you’re talking with an industrial design team; you’re talking with logistics; you’re talking with procurement, materials management—just a whole set of people that don’t necessarily have technical background. Right? So sometimes, depending on the audience that I’m targeting, I’m always very, very peculiar on what is my target audience, right? How can I—how deep in my technical knowledge do I need to go? Because if I just, you know, talk straight Engineer, they either don’t care or they’re gonna be really confused about what I’m saying. So there is a stronghold of soft skills that definitely go into engineering, which I think are really important to communicate, you know, to, let’s say, students that are really interested in engineering. So you can be extremely smart and intelligent and really good at problem-solving, but if you don’t have those soft skills that you apply in the real world—’cause in the real world, you’re never only gonna be working with engineers, no matter like where you’re at—so having those soft skills to be able to manage with different backgrounds and different sort of people and different ways of thinking, it’s, I feel, really critical, for, for an engineer in the real world.
Eric Cross (13:50):
No, I think that’s a great point. It reminds me of teaching! And so many other professions where your ultimate goal is to really pour into this person in front of you and help develop them and create a sense of inquiry and wonder and personal growth and inspiration. But you’re also working within constraints and people and relationships. You know, you have your other teachers, you have parents, you have administrators, you have a district, you have communities, stakeholders. You have all of these different dynamics that you have to kind of navigate in order to ultimately help this child thrive. Versus just, like, being in the classroom: “OK, I just got <laugh>, the hundred or 200 students, just you and me. That’s it.” But that’s not the real world. And there’s this report that came out, I think Google ran it, Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle, and they asked the question, “What are the most effective traits of a good team and a manager?” And the top seven skills were all soft skills. So it is like exactly what you’re saying, where, yeah, it’s great that you have this technical aptitude, but if you’re not able to work with other people, problem-solve together, work with people of different backgrounds and perspectives, then you’re gonna run into some roadblocks. And that kind of dovetails, like, looking at things like if you looked at education from the perspective of an engineer. So you’re all about optimizing, right? Optimizing, working with what you got. When you look at education, are there any things that you would optimize to help improve the experience of students? Like, looking back, that you would fine-tune, that you think could provide better outcomes in the classroom?
Juan Vivas (15:28):
You know, I feel…I don’t know. Obviously I’m not a teacher. And I’m sure teachers just have so much stuff going on. But I think just like, finding…giving a chance to those students that you see a lot of potential in and really taking the time to mold them. You know, I did have a teacher who was able to mold me and give me that kind of one-on-one personal experience, right? I think honestly to me it just comes down to mentorship, and motivating students on what, you know, they’re passionate for. Like, putting them in front of engineers, right? Like finding engineers to come volunteer and explain to them. I genuinely believe it just takes one spark to really get a student on a trajectory where they can make an impact in the future. So to me, it comes down to, really, exposure. How much are you really exposing your students to…you know what, something I’ve learned, when I joined SpaceX, is that Elon doesn’t believe—well, you know, there there’s a lot of things that Elon believes and not believes in; there’s a whole different type of conversation!—but he doesn’t think that you can just take a curriculum, let’s say, and just apply it massively to everyone and expect like everyone to be it. That’s just naturally not how it works, right? Students learn at different paces; they have different sort of interests. This is actually why he created his own school for his kids in LA, called Ad Astra. You know, if you take that mentality, what that school is doing is that they’re working at the students’ pace and at the student’s interests, right? And I actually have a coworker who has his kids in that school. And I mean, these are one of the most brilliant kids I’ve ever known. Like, they are taking differential equations in the eighth grade. And I didn’t know what differential equations was until I was in college already and they told me, “This is a class you have to take.” <Laugh>. But it’s finding that crossway where, where is the curiosity of the student? What are they really interested in? and exposing them to that.
Eric Cross (17:51):
Yeah. And what I’m hearing of that is, in teacher-speak, a lot of personalized learning. Like you were talking about…is it Ad Astra?
Juan Vivas (17:59):
Ad Astra? Yep.
Eric Cross (18:01):
Ad Astra. You know, every student learns in their own way and they develop knowledge in their own way. And being able to personalize learning according to the students’ abilities and needs, and then accelerate or slow down, really produces some amazing effects. I know this is something that we as teachers try to do with the classroom. Scaling it is the challenge. But it’s great because even with people who are in charge of policy or people who have decision-making ability, hearing people from the top down saying, “Hey, look, this is what worked for me. This is how I was able to become successful. I had a teacher that was able to be a mentor to me because they knew me, they had a relationship with me, they were able to tap into my passions and use those passions to drive me to do or put me in programs that I might not have known about because they, they knew who I was.” And it’s not one-size-fits-all for everyone. So having—maybe it’s curriculum or learning experiences that are kind of modular, where students are able to maybe try on different things and get that exposure, I’m a big, big believer, like you are, in mentorship. That was a huge, huge thing in my life. Having mentors. It’s the reason why I became a science teacher. In seventh grade, I had a mentor who had us doing college-level science, you know, at UC San Diego. And it completely changed the trajectory of my life, in a direction that I wouldn’t have had without him. So I think that’s great. And it’s something that we as teachers would appreciate hearing. Going back to what you said…earlier you said your wife is a supply chain engineer as well. And so that means that there’s two people who are process-minded in the household. And this is kind of a lighter question, but I gotta wonder, do you have the most optimized flow for grocery shopping? <Laugh> Because…
Juan Vivas (19:49):
Yeah, I think we don’t spend more than like 20 minutes at a grocery store. Mind you, we only shop at Trader Joe’s and we have a very specific list before going in. And if you ever shop at Trader Joe’s, you just know where everything is ’cause it’s always there and it’s small, right? But yeah, like we’re, we’re in and out in like 15, 20 minutes. It’s great.
Eric Cross (20:11):
I love it. I love it. I feel like I’m that way by design. I go in with a purpose and this is exactly what I want. I know where the cookie butter is, <laugh>, I know where my coffee is, and then, OK, I’m in and out. Apple Pay or whatever I’m using. And then we’re good to go. Do you think…so as someone listening to this or some people even just becoming aware of supply chain engineering, what advice would you give someone that’s interested in pursuing this career path? If you maybe reverse-engineered your process, knowing what you know now, you were gonna give advice, you were that mentor, what are just some kind of tips or ideas or thoughts or trajectories that you’d think that they should aim for? I’m assuming like robotics….
Juan Vivas (20:56):
Yeah. You know, I think I would say definitely finding some sort of program that exposes you to a lot of things that you won’t be exposed to, like on a day-to-day basis, or something that you just can’t be exposed to naturally at school. And mentorship, honestly. I was born in Colombia and my parents were both—they’re still both professionals, but they were both professionals in Colombia. And when we moved to this country, this was like December of 1999. My parents started from scratch, and so they didn’t really grow up in the States, right? So when it was my time to go to college and do all of this stuff, it was just like me on my own figuring this stuff out. And, you know, they definitely made some mistakes when it came to college applications and whatnot. But once I was in college, I knew that the best way for my success was gonna be through mentorship. And that’s when I joined the, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, which is a nationwide organization. And each college, well, most college campuses, have their own chapter. In joining that, I was exposed to resume workshops, mock interviews—basically how do you even talk to a recruiter? Which is so critical, right? And personally that that organization was really what molded my actual professional career.
Eric Cross (22:19):
There’s this theme that I’m hearing, kind of weaving through this. And in addition to—as we’re talking about STEM and technical skills, in addition to that, there’s this thread that I’m receiving of…being able to form relationships with other people, for our students, is an important skill to teach and should be taught explicitly. Which isn’t…it’s not really a curriculum, right? Like, you don’t get tested on your ability to….conflict resolution or how to write an email or how to develop a relationship. And then the other part in I think what you just said is the aspect of community. Through this organization, you learned kind of some of these hidden rules, maybe I would call it.
Juan Vivas (23:04):
Yep.
Eric Cross (23:04):
It’s not that you didn’t have the…you had the aptitude. You had the drive. But there were these kind of hidden rules, and from moving to the US, you needed a community to be able to show you, so that you can kind of go through the proper steps.
Juan Vivas (23:16):
Exactly.
Eric Cross (23:17):
And so that created a lot of value for you.
Juan Vivas (23:19):
Yep.
Eric Cross (23:20):
Well, the last question that I have is, is just kind of a wondering. You have this awesome story, and the story continues to unfold. I gotta say, <laugh> I’m gonna be following your LinkedIn profile, because I think you just have kind of the coolest trajectory of going from, you know, General Mills, working in chemical engineering, and then ultimately it’s SpaceX. And every time I see the rocket taking off and landing, I’m gonna be thinking, thinking about you. So cool!
Juan Vivas (23:47):
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Cross (23:49):
And personally, I have a hope that one day, one of my students will be at a company, you know, like SpaceX or Tesla or wherever, and one day I get to interview them and talk to them and see what they say. But the last question I want to ask is, is there, is there a teacher who inspired you, or a memorable experience that you have that made an impact on you?
Juan Vivas (24:16):
Yeah, yeah, of course. It was kind of you know, middle school going into high school. The way my school worked, everything was divided from pre-kindergarten, whatever, first to sixth grade, and then seventh grade to 12th grade. So I had a high school science teacher, Ms. Brown, Ms. Velda Brown, who, came from a small little island town on the east coast of Canada. Somehow landed, in the high school that I went to, to teach science. Going back to the beginning of the story where I mentioned that I figured whatever, I’ll go to med school. I played soccer, basketball, and, you know, I said, “I’ll figure it out once I graduate.” It might have been like life science in the eighth grade or something like that. But then she went on to teach me chemistry and physics as well. And when I was in the 10th grade, she approached me and she asked me if I wanted to join the robotics club. And I remember saying robotics? I don’t know. You know, naturally, in school, it’s different sorts of crowds: people that play sports and people that are like in like STEM clubs or whatever. And I was, “Ah, I don’t know; I don’t know how I feel about robotics; not really my thing….” But somehow she convinced me to join robotics. It’s me, coming into this group of kids that already knew each other, and they were all working on robotics. And I’m, “Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m just here to try this thing out.” It was a thing where we met every single Saturday at like seven in the morning. And there were times where I literally had to choose, “Do I go to like a soccer game or do I go to you help my team with robotics?” And I completely loved it. Like, I fell in love with the aspect of building something from scratch, and just making it operative. And she ended up just being a huge mentor for me in high school, actually. With her, with the help of her, I ended up opening the robotics club at my school. And before I left, we opened it up to middle schoolers. And then, you know, later, years later down the road when I was in college, I found out that it was now a whole-school thing. So there was an elementary robotics club at the school, the middle school one, and then the high school one were still a thing like years after I left. And that was like just so amazing to hear. But yeah, it was Ms. Velda Brown, my high school science teacher, that really took her time to mold me and get me into robotics, and really mentor me. And honestly, I’m sure you as teachers, you guys probably hear about it a lot, but you can have a lot of power in shaping a kid by just telling—believing in them, right? She believed in me so much that I would go on to be a successful engineer. And I’m. “OK, yeah, yeah, you’re just saying it.” But she spoke life into her students up to this day. I still speak about it with my wife, and when I’m in conversations about this, that if it wasn’t for my high school science teacher, I would not—well, no, I would probably not be an engineer right now.
Eric Cross (27:38):
Wow. Shout out to Ms. Velda Brown <laugh>. Would you say she spoke…I think one thing that just resonated with me is when you said she “spoke life” into you.
Juan Vivas (27:46):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (27:46):
That was really powerful. And I think we as teachers have that power and we don’t realize it. Because, you know, we get so we’re so familiar and living day-to-day, but we do have the power of life, speaking life, into our young people. And, yeah, that was—
Juan Vivas (28:03):
Absolutely, yeah. You know, I think obviously people grew up with different backgrounds, different communities, life situations, right? So imagine having like a student that is similar in that environment and then they just hear someone at their school, like, “Hey, you’re really good at this. why don’t you consider doing this?” And that’s when I feel teachers have that power. Where like they don’t necessarily know the background, but they can make that opportunity, or make that decision in the moment, to really shape a student’s life.
Eric Cross (28:37):
And we need to hear that. And I think, I hope that other teachers listening to this will be reminded that many times we don’t get to reap the harvest. We don’t get to see the <laugh> Juan Vivases at SpaceX. They just kind of go, and they disappear, and we hope for the best, and we get a new group. But every once in a while they come back, and we get to see what our watering or seed-planting was able to produce. And so, just know that you sharing your story for educators, and for definitely Ms. Brown, makes a huge difference and is a huge encouragement. So.
Juan Vivas (29:11):
You know, I think we touched on earlier, you know, how do I end up going from cereal to rockets, right? And I think it ties along with what I mentioned earlier of just taking—as an engineer, you’re really a critical problem solver, right? And you think that methodology. And if you find a way, you can apply it to different sectors. When I was doing a lot of like the packaging process stuff at General Mills, being a lead on a high-volume manufacturing line, what I do for SpaceX specifically, right now, I’m actually on the Starlink project. So if you’re up to date with Starlink, it’s, it’s essentially high reliable, fast internet that we’re providing to areas where usually people don’t have access to internet, right? Or maybe they do, but it’s extremely expensive. Because to an internet provider company, the benefit is not there, if they extend an entire internet fiber line out to their place because it’s only directed to them, right? So that’s, that’s essentially what Starlink is trying to solve. And this is the first time that SpaceX is facing a consumer packaging scenario. Before it was just rockets. And now they’re selling a product to consumers. They had never done that before, especially in a high-volume manufacturing setting. And so I am the supplier development engineer for all the consumer-facing packaging for the Starlink product itself. And that’s essentially how all those thoughts connected, where I had this experience coming from General Mills and packaging high-volume manufacturing. And then when Starlink started, they’re all, “Right, well, who knows anything about packaging?” Right? “We know so much about rockets, we need someone with this technical background.” And that’s essentially how I bridge over to SpaceX.
Eric Cross (31:11):
And so while you’re working at SpaceX, you’re working on Starlink, which I know you mentioned that—you said that it’s providing internet globally, which in and of itself, we—especially those of us that live in major cities—we kind of take for granted. Internet is like a utility. But we don’t maybe realize that in many parts of the world, internet is not reliable or even accessible.
Juan Vivas (31:33):
Right. Right.
Eric Cross (31:34):
I see every once in a while, I think, the StarlinK satellites sometimes are visible?
Juan Vivas (31:38):
Yep.
Eric Cross (31:39):
Low orbit?
Juan Vivas (31:39):
Yeah. Yeah. You can go—they’ll kind of be like a little train of bright stars that move along together. Yep.
Eric Cross (31:46):
And that must—that must feel…I mean, we all have jobs and we’re all doing different things, but you’re working on a project and you’re engineering something that actually can provide a lot of opportunities or close a gap in some parts of the world where they don’t have access to internet. They’re gonna be able to have access and be connected all over. I dunno, the word would be “existential.” Existential value. Like, what you’re doing is actually providing a service for people. Humanity. Like, addressing a critical need in many, many places around the world.
Juan Vivas (32:26):
Yeah. We’ve had stories where we have sent Starlink kids to a small school in a village in rural Chile, right in South America. And for the first time ever, they’ve had internet. We have supported disaster relief in Europe. I think this past summer, Europe had really bad floods. We sent Starlink kits out there. You know, the vision of working at an Elon Musk company and SpaceX and Starlink—this is all stuff that is being done for the first time in history. We have never, ever done anything like this before until now. And to be able to provide those that don’t have the access to—to your point, it’s kind of wild, right? Like we, we just take it for granted. “Oh yeah, I just have internet. Let me log on.” There are people on Earth right now that have never been on the internet. Or don’t even know what the internet is. And that’s essentially the, the gap that Startlink is starting to close.
Eric Cross (33:26):
Yeah. We think about that while my students are doing TikTok dances. <Laugh> And there are people who, you know, never, never been connected. And, it kind of makes me more like, just inside, if I can ask: What’s it like working at SpaceX? I showed my students what it’s like working at some of the Silicon Valley companies. ‘Cause just to show them there’s slides and food and, you know, they kind developed this ecosystem inside so that it’s really kind of homey to kind of keep you there, you know. When you’re working and there’s bikes and things like that. And that’s a very Silicon Valley type of thing. But, you know, in listening to you talk about SpaceX and Elon, you know, you’re with a really visionary kind of company, and when I hear you talk about it, there’s I can hear this passion, this, “we’re doing something.” Is that culture, like, pervasive everywhere? Are you around folks that kind of are on that same wavelength? Because I definitely get it from you as you talk about what you do.
Juan Vivas (34:28):
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I think, as an engineer, you know, going to SpaceX and working at SpaceX, it’s essentially—personally, I believe right now in the US it’s like the mecca of engineering, right? Like, it is where engineering in this most, you know, shape and manner, it’s being applied. I think what’s really interesting is that the way that Elon looks at it is just iterate, and iterate fast, right? Like, fail and fail fast. I think as an engineer, you always want to have things perfect, right? And so you spend a lot of time in making a decision or investigating something or whatever. And working at SpaceX is the complete opposite. It’s just you know, “Assume, state your assumptions—like, what are you assuming right now? What are the risk at it? And just make a decision and then see what the result is.” You know, so it’s an environment where you learn, really quick.
Eric Cross (35:28):
You said something that I think was powerful and I hope, I think <laugh>, this is definitely, I’m gonna get a clip of this <laugh> of you saying it. Because it speaks directly to, I think, what a lot of students struggle with in the classroom, is there’s this competition or feeling that you always need to be right. And you need to be right the first try, on the first time. And a lot of times it’s because students will compare themselves to each other, or there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to be successful. But you said, “Fail and fail fast, iterate, state your assumptions.” And it sounds like this critical part of being an engineer or in what you do, like there’s no room for ego or attaching your identity or your sense of value or worth or ability to whether you’re able to solve a problem in the first try.
Juan Vivas (36:13):
Yep.
Eric Cross (36:14):
Like, you have to be OK with the cycle, is kind of what I’m hearing from you. Is that, is that right?
Juan Vivas (36:19):
Yep. Exactly. It only took six months to develop the product from scratch and launch it to the public, which is insane. Nowhere in the world will any company ever iterate that fast and come up with a brand-new project. But it’s because of that mentality—like you’re saying, it’s not about like just trying to make it perfect and have all this information. And I think Elon has learned this personally, you know, through Tesla and the beginning of SpaceX. It’s, “I can wait to have all this information, and most likely I’m still gonna be wrong after I make the decision.” So it’s, “Might as well take the risk, do the decision, and then just see where you learn from it, right?” And then you keep applying that, applying that. So it’s like you iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate until you get what you want.
Eric Cross (37:00):
I think this is even, like, great advice. I’m taking this personally because I get paralysis by analysis <laugh>.
Juan Vivas (37:06):
Yep.
Eric Cross (37:07):
You know, I’ll research something to death but then not actually execute. Like, I need to make a decision and do it and then course-correct along the way. Somebody once told me it’s a lot easier to turn a moving car than it is a car that’s sitting still. And so as you’re kind of flowing, you’re just making these adjustments along the way until you end up on the path that you want to be. So I think that there’s so many gems in the things that you’re saying right now. What I’m thinking through the lens of my seventh graders that want to work in any STEM field—I mean, really, any field in general, but especially engineering, especially the STEM fields—knowing that, pick it, make a decision, move forward, and then course-correct along the way. That’s what science looks like in the real world.
Juan Vivas (37:49):
Yep. Exactly. Yep. And definitely most important—and I feel like this is sometimes where, not necessarily education in general, but it’s just, we want students to, “OK, you need to get it right the perfect time, right?” But it’s like, every student is gonna think differently. A student is gonna take a different assumption based on their background and experiences. And I mean, you know, we can go a lot deeper in that, but the way a student is shaped, they’re gonna take certain assumptions. So that’s where it gets interesting. OK, why are you assuming that? Where’s your thought process in this?
Eric Cross (38:25):
And we all come from different backgrounds and mindsets and filters and biases that cause us to look at something a certain way. And it’s not just like calling it out, just going, “Hey look, this is what it is.” Like autopsy without blame, this is what I’m working with. Let’s discuss it openly. Right? And if we started that process earlier, you know, younger, in classrooms, we can de-stigmatize the right answer being the best answer more, as opposed to focusing on process as opposed to outcome. And then you kinda get used to wanting to go through the process. I look at it like video games and I talk to my students. I say, “You know, you don’t pick up a video game that’s brand-new and then play it and then you die once and you’re ‘Ah, I’m never gonna play this game again.’ You know, it just doesn’t work that way. You’re going through this iterative process, and no matter what you play, you’re trying things differently. You’re data collecting. And then you’re making new decisions based on the data that you collected.” And for some of my kids, they’ll just raise their hands, say, “No, I just get mad and throw the controller across the room.” <Laugh> But I go, “Yeah, and then you’ll try it again.”
Juan Vivas (39:33):
The best way to know how not to do something is to fail. And so you already…I mean, what is that famous quote? I think that’s why Thomas Edison’s, “Oh, I, did not fail 99 times. Right? I only found 99 times…” I mean, that is that is true. And I feel like at work in a SpaceX, that is something that probably the core of it comes from there. It’s you know, any failure, quote unquote, that you may take it as a failure, it’s really not. You’re just “OK, we, we tried that. It didn’t work. Like what are we gonna do next?” So it’s just like taking that learning and like moving off with it quickly.
Eric Cross (40:09):
I heard a couple of teachers say, “Things fail: First Attempt In Learning: F A I L.” And then another teacher, one of my mentor teachers, she said, “There’s no such thing as failure, just data, in science.”
Juan Vivas (40:20):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly. Yep.
Eric Cross (40:23):
And so I’ve always taken that to heart. And I share that with my own students, just, “A ‘no,’ a lot of times, will tell you more information than a ‘yes.’” ‘Cause if something works in the first try, you may not exactly know why it worked. It just did.
Juan Vivas (40:34):
Yeah. Yep.
Eric Cross (40:37):
So yeah. Well, I went on your time, brother. Dude. <laugh>. The time flew. It was…
Juan Vivas (40:46):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (40:47):
There were so many things I was trying to write out as you were talking, that I just felt like, “This guy is sharing so many gems!” But yeah, I want to thank you for taking time outta your day and for sharing that information for your passion for what you do. And, I don’t know, I think that students and teachers that listen to this will get an insight from a perspective that really matters. ‘Cause ultimately we’re, we’re trying to really prepare our students for real life. Maybe I’ll email you privately if I order a Tesla, if you can move me higher up the Cybertruck line. <laugh>
Juan Vivas (41:22):
Yeah. No promises.
Eric Cross (41:24):
<laugh>
Juan Vivas (41:25):
Yeah. No, I appreciate you guys having me, having me here, and be able to speak on my experience. And hopefully it sparks a couple, one, even if it’s just one teacher that will spark another student, that is already success there. So.
Eric Cross (41:42):
Well I know, I know what you said resonates with me and it fills my cup. And I’m excited. So I’m already thinking of some ideas of things that I can do, just because of this conversation, and I know other people will as well. And, again, this is Juan Vivas, who’s a supply development engineer at SpaceX. He’s worked at some amazing places. And someone who believes deeply in not only the power of the technical skills, but the heart skills, and how community makes a huge impact in his life. It made a huge impact in him ultimately becoming a scientist, and now working on a project at SpaceX, Starlink, that is going to provide access to the world, to the web. And that’ll ultimately help us solve more problems and innovate and create some solutions that will benefit everybody. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you.
Juan Vivas (42:30):
Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. Appreciate it.
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Meet the guest
Juan Vivas is a chemical engineer currently working as a Supplier Development Engineer at SpaceX. Juan got his start at the University of Florida, where he led the Society of Hispanic Engineers (SHPE) as vice president. He’s worked for companies like Clorox, Dow Chemical, and General Mills. Juan lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and two dogs.
About Science Connections: The podcast
Welcome to Science Connections: The Podcast! 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.
Welcome Reviewers, to Amplify Desmos Math!
Amplify Desmos Math thoughtfully combines conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and application. Each lesson is designed to tell a story by posing problems that invite a variety of approaches before guiding students to synthesize their understanding of the learning goals.
Scroll to learn more about the program and explore sample materials.
About the program
We believe in math that motivates. Our structured approach to problem-based learning builds on students’ curiosity to develop lasting grade-level understandings for all students.
The program thoughtfully combines conceptual understanding, fluency, and application, motivating students with interesting problems they are eager to solve. Teachers can spend more time where it’s most impactful: creating a collaborative classroom of learners.
A powerful suite of math resources
Amplify Desmos Math combines the best of problem-based lessons, intervention, personalized practice, and assessments into a coherent and engaging experience for both students and teachers.
Screening and progress monitoring
mCLASS® Assessments, along with daily formative checks, measure not only what students know, but also how they think. The asset-based assessment system provides teachers with targeted, actionable insights, linked to core instruction and intervention resources.
Core instruction
Amplify Desmos Math lessons provide a structured approach to problem-based learning, helping teachers create a collaborative math community with students at its center. Each lesson systematically builds on students’ curiosity to develop lasting grade-level understandings for all students.
Differentiation and intervention
Integrated resources like Mini-Lessons, Fluency Practice, and Math Adventures provide targeted intervention on a specific concept or skill connected to daily instruction. Extensions are also available to stretch students’ understanding.
Boost™ Personalized Learning activities help students access grade-level math through engaging, independent digital practice. Responsive Feedback™ adjusts to students’ work, providing item-level adaptivity to further support their learning.
An approach that supports teachers
Clear, step-by-step instructional moves help teachers plan and teach student-centered lessons that use student thinking to differentiate instruction and guide to grade-level understanding. They include:
- Guidance on what to listen for and how to respond.
- Clear learning objectives to keep learning on track for each activity and lesson.
- Daily reinforcement activities to provide direct instruction when needed.
A structured approach to problem-based learning
Problem-based learning asks students to make sense of and think strategically about mathematically interesting problems. This approach allows students’ ideas to take
center stage, so they are active and engaged in their learning process. Teachers are able to hear and respond to student thinking in real time, guiding and differentiating instruction right in the moment.
Moving from “I do, We do, You do” to “You do, We do, I do”
Lessons begin by activating student’s prior knowledge and curiosity, inviting them to explore the math, collaborate, and refine their thinking. By focusing on developing student thinking first, teachers can better connect ideas, guide learning, and synthesize learning objectives.
Lessons that are rigorous and delightful
Every lesson in Amplify Desmos Math is designed to put students at the center of their learning. Utilizing research-based best practices, students engage in meaningful work based on rich problems and real-world experiences.
Warm-Up
Lessons begin by inviting every student to contribute to the mathematical discussion. Instructional routines are often used to build fluency, set the context, activate prior knowledge, or highlight a strategy that may be helpful in the lesson.
Rich learning activities
Math knowledge is built through experiences and meaningful interactions. Students notice, wonder, explore, calculate, predict, measure, explain their thinking, use math to settle disputes, create challenges for their classmates, and more. Teachers serve as a guide, using a Launch, Monitor, Connect framework:
- Launch: Teachers offer a short introduction to the problem or challenge
- Monitor: As students work individually, in pairs, or in groups, teachers ask questions and provide support to move student thinking closer to the intended math goal.
- Connect: Teachers connect student ideas to the Key Takeaway of the activity to help students synthesize and solidify the big ideas.
Synthesis
Teachers ensure that students end the lesson with accurate and enduring understandings of the math goal through synthesis of student ideas, explicit instruction, and reflection.
A short Show What You Know assessment allows students to show what they know about the learning goals of the lesson and reveal what they are still learning.
Differentiation and practice
Lasting understanding requires reinforcement. Every lesson offers Lesson Practice instructional recommendations to Support, Strengthen, and Stretch learning.
Print for every lesson with engaging digital experiences
Whether in print or digital form, engaging interactions enable students and teachers to openly exchange ideas. Each lesson includes student print materials, interactive teacher Presentation Screens, and digital resources for practice and differentiation. Some lessons also use manipulatives or provide options for students to use devices individually or in pairs. Device recommendations for student use are age-appropriate, with more frequent usage in middle and high school.
Demo access
Please login to the digital platform to experience our full program as part of your review. In order to access the digital platform, you’ll need to log into using your unique login credentials below.
- Click the orange button below to access the platform.
- Click “Log in with Amplify.”
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Assessments
By starting with what students already know, Amplify Desmos Math helps build a strong foundation for success to guide and support future learning. Teachers are empowered to transform every classroom into an engaged math community that invites, values, and develops student thinking. With explicit guidance on what to look for and how to respond, teachers can effectively support students as they develop their understanding.
Program assessments
A variety of performance data in Amplify Desmos Math provides evidence of student learning while helping students bolster their skills and understanding.
Unit-Level Assessments
Our embedded unit assessments offer key insights into students’ conceptual understanding of math. These assessments provide regular, actionable information about how students are thinking about and processing math, with both auto-scoring and in-depth rubrics that help teachers anticipate and respond to students’ learning needs.
Lesson-Level Assessments
Amplify Desmos Math lessons are centered around sense-making and in-the-moment feedback. Daily moments of assessment provide valuable evidence of learning for both the teacher and student.
Data and reporting
Amplify Desmos Math provides teachers and administrators with unified reporting and insights so that educators have visibility into what students know about grade-level math—and can plan instruction accordingly for the whole class, small groups, and individual students.
Assessment reports
Reporting functionality integrates unit assessments, lesson assessments, personalized learning, Benchmark assessments, and Progress Monitoring for a comprehensive look at student learning.
Our reports show proficiency and growth by domain, cluster, standard, and priority concept using performance data from unit assessments. Then our reports highlight areas of potential student need to allow teachers to modify their instruction and target differentiated support.
At-a-glance views of unit-level assessment results inform your instructional planning, and you can also drill down to item-level analysis.
Standards reports
Our standards report allows you to monitor proficiency at the class and individual student levels. Proficiency and growth are shown by domain, cluster, standard, and priority concepts. Areas of potential student need are highlighted to allow teachers to modify their instruction and target differentiated support.
Administrator reports
Amplify Desmos Math provides a complete picture of student, class, and district performance, allowing administrators to implement instructional and intervention plans.
- Track student, class, and district performance with usage, completion, and assessment data.
- Accurately group students and classes with the Benchmark and Progress Monitoring data of mCLASS Assessments and allow teachers to reliably implement and track the progress of Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention.
- Provide one data-driven solution that educators can rely on for high-quality math instruction.
Differentiation and intervention
Amplify Desmos Math views differentiation as an ongoing process where teachers are both reactive and proactive to student needs, ensuring that all students have clear pathways to proficiency. Through rich data and teacher support, Amplify Desmos Math uses flexible categories of intervention and enrichment that adjust daily according to student thinking.
In-the-moment differentiation supports are available for every lesson, both digitally and in the print Teacher Edition.
In-lesson differentiation
Within every lesson activity, teachers can use the suggestions in the Differentiation Teacher Moves table to provide in-the-moment instructional support while students are engaged in the work of the lesson. This table can help teachers anticipate the ways students may approach the activity, and provides prompts that they can use during the lesson to Support, Strengthen, and Stretch individual students in their thinking. Teachers are provided with clear student actions and understanding to look for, each matched with immediately usable suggestions for how to respond to the student thinking illustrated in each row of the table. In addition to using these suggestions in the moment as teachers monitor student work, teachers can review the Differentiation table in advance to help them anticipate how students are likely to approach the activity.
Differentiation: Beyond the Lesson
Teachers are provided with recommendations for resources to use with each group of students needing support, strengthening, and stretching after each lesson. Support, Strengthen, and Stretch resources include:
- Mini-Lessons: 15-minute, small-group direct instruction lessons targeted to a specific concept or skill
- Item Banks: Space for teachers to create practice and assessments by using filters and searching for standards, summative-style items, and more
- Fluency Practice: Adaptive, personalized practice built out for basic operations and more
- Centers (K–5): Lesson-embedded routines and practice for students that are vertically aligned across grade levels
- Extensions: Lesson-embedded Teacher Moves including possible stretch questions and activities for students
- Lesson Practice: Additional practice problems support every lesson
- Math Adventures: Strategy-based math games where students engage with math concepts and practice skills in a fun digital environment
Multilingual/English Learner supports
Supports for multilingual/English learners (ML/ELs) are called out at intentiSupports for multilingual/English learners (ML/ELs) are called out at intentional points within each lesson. These suggested supports are specific, targeted actions that are beneficial for ML/ELs. They often describe a modification to increase access to the task or provide support with contextual or mathematical language development that can often be helpful to all learners. ML/EL supports may also be attached to Math Language Routines.onal points within each lesson. These suggested supports are specific, targeted actions that are beneficial for ML/ELs. They often describe a modification to increase access to the task or provide support with contextual or mathematical language development that can often be helpful to all learners. ML/EL supports may also be attached to Math Language Routines.
Math Language Development
Every lesson in Amplify Desmos Math includes opportunities for all students to develop mathematical language as they experience the content. Amplify Desmos Math purposefully progresses language development from lesson to lesson and across units by supporting students in making their arguments and explanations stronger, clearer, and more precise. This systematic approach to the development of math language can be broken down into the following four categories of support:
- Vocabulary: Units and lessons start by surfacing students’ language for new concepts, then building connections between their language and the new vocabulary for that unit.
- Language goals: Language goals attend to the mathematics students are learning, and are written through the lens of one or more of four language modalities: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- Math Language Routines: Math Language Routines are used within lessons to highlight student-developed language and ideas, cultivate conversation, support mathematical sense-making, and promote meta-cognition.
- Multilingual/English learner supports: Supports for multilingual/English learners (ML/ELs) are called out at intentional points within each lesson.
K-5 sample materials
Click the links in the drop-down sections below to explore sample materials from each grade. For a full program review, please login to the digital platform or request physical samples.
For helpful navigation tips and more program information, download the Amplify Desmos Math Program Guide.
You can also watch a product expert walk through a lesson and the available program components.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 2, Sub-Unit 2: Counting and Comparing Images.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 2, Sub-Unit 2: Counting and Comparing Images.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Forest Friends
In this lesson, students apply their understanding of how to compare groups of images as they determine which group has more or fewer and then compare their strategies by guiding a bear through a path that has more mushrooms than the other.
Skills Unit 2 Teacher Guide
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 1: Adding and Subtracting Within 10.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 1: Adding and Subtracting Within 10.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Leaping Lily Pads!
In this lesson, students find differences when subtracting 1 and 2 from the same number by helping a frog reach a lily pad where it can eat a bug.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you review the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 1: Adding and Subtracting.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 1: Adding and Subtracting.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Ways to Make 10
Students continue to develop fluency by finding the number that makes 10 by helping a millipede reach its favorite food – a clump of leaves!
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you review the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 3: Data on Scaled Graphs.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 3: Data on Scaled Graphs.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Puppy Pile
Students compare data represented on bar graphs with different scales by using animal stickers to create scaled bar graphs.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you review the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 2: Using Factors and Multiples.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 2: Using Factors and Multiples.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Hamster Homes
Students choose tube lengths to connect to platform heights for hamster homes, identifying possible heights using what they know about multiples.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you review the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 3: Volume of Solid Figures.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 1, Sub-Unit 3: Volume of Solid Figures.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Centers Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Figures Made of Prisms
Students decompose a figure into rectangular prisms and determine the volume of the figure by adding the volumes of the individual prisms.
6-A1 sample materials
Click the links in the drop-down sections below to explore sample materials from each grade. For a full program review, please login to the digital platform or request physical samples.
For helpful navigation tips and more program information, download the Amplify Desmos Math Program Guide.
You can also watch a product expert walk through a lesson and the available program components.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 1: Solving Equations.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 1: Solving Equations.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Weight for It
Students use equations and tape diagrams to represent seesaw situations and to determine unknown animal weights, helping them make connections between diagrams that represent equations of the form `x+p=q` or `px=q`.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 3: Inequalities.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 3: Inequalities.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Shira the Sheep
Students solve inequalities with positive and negative coefficients to solve a variety of challenges featuring a fictional sheep who eats grass according to an inequality.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 2: Analyzing Numerical Data.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from a complete sub-unit on this site: Unit 6, Sub-Unit 2: Analyzing Numerical Data.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Robots
Students connect points on a scatter plot with individuals in a population and rows of data in a table. The analysis of scatter plots continues with data about the eye distances and heights of robots.
Teacher Edition
Planning and instructional guidance is visual, organized, and easy-to-follow. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from two complete sub-units on this site: Unit 2, Sub-Units 1–2: One-Variable Equations and Multi-Variable Equations.
Student Edition
Motivate students with mathematics that is both rigorous and delightful. To help you preview the program, we have included samples from two complete sub-units on this site: Unit 2, Sub-Units 1–2: One-Variable Equations and Multi-Variable Equations.
Ancillary sampler
Included in the ancillary sampler are examples from the program Assessment Resources, Intervention and Extension Resources, Additional Practice, and Math Language Development Resources.
Featured digital lesson: Shelley the Snail
Students represent the solutions of a situation using a table, a graph, and multiple forms of an equation to identify multiple combinations of blocks that can help Shelley the Snail cross a gap.
S2-02: Developing your own teaching style: Tips from a veteran teacher.
In this episode, Eric Cross sits down with veteran educator and former Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) Middle School Science Teacher of the Year, Marilyn Dieppa. During the show, Marilyn shares tips for new teachers, ways to inspire students, and how she utilizes her journalism background to develop literacy skills within her science classroom. She also shares her experiences developing a robotics academy, and the VEX IQ World’s Competition. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Marilyn Dieppa (00:01):
I think my favorite thing is their success. Whether it’s robotics, whether it’s in the classroom, that they pass a test for the first time, those are my moments of success. And that’s what makes me happy.
Eric Cross (00:15):
Marilyn Dieppa is a veteran middle-school science educator at Miami-Dade County public schools. Dieppa launched her school’s STEM Academy in 2016 and developed professional development through the STEM Transformation Institute of Florida International University. Dieppa’s coached numerous new teachers and was the 2018 Miami-Dade County public schools’ middle-school Science Teacher of the Year. In this episode, we discussed her transition from a career in journalism to the science classroom and the value of personal and professional support systems for teacher longevity. And now, please enjoy my conversation with Marilyn Dieppa.
Marilyn Dieppa (00:52):
Nice to meet you, Eric.
Eric Cross (00:53):
Nice to meet you too. Thank you for being willing to come on the podcast.
Marilyn Dieppa (00:58):
Not a problem.
Eric Cross (00:59):
So you’re out in, you’re out in Florida. In Dade County. I’m out here in San Diego. So I’m like literally on the other side of the country. Have you—were you born and raised in Florida?
Marilyn Dieppa (01:09):
I’ve been here for 40 years, so I’ve been here most of my life. Yeah. I’m Puerto Rican, but I was, you know, my young childhood, I was in New Jersey. And then when I was 15, I came down.
Eric Cross (01:23):
I looked at like your—some of your accolades, which are really impressive. The things that you’ve done for students with robotics, and all the education, or, kind of like teacher enrichment, a lot of mentoring and coaching that you do now.
Marilyn Dieppa (01:35):
I am part of leadership team for the district. I do a lot of training. I work on curriculum. I help with pacing guides to make sure that everything is based on what the state wants, what the district wants. I have done a lot for the district in the last, probably 20 years.
Eric Cross (01:52):
What got you into teaching initially? What was your…like, why middle school science? We’re like a unique group.
Marilyn Dieppa (01:57):
This is the second career choice for me. So I’ve only been doing this for 24 years. I was a journalism major and then I got married and then I had my child and I wanted to do something. My thing was that I wanted to go to Iraq. I wanted to cover the news. I have a minor in Middle Eastern culture. so there was a lot of things that were in my mind when I was young, pre-married. and after, you know, you have children, priorities kind of change. So I totally changed, pretty much had to start from scratch, with my degree, because nothing kind of transferred over from journalism to teaching. So before I actually did that, I started subbing just to see if I liked it. And I fell in love with teaching right away. And that’s how I got into it. So my degree is really in elementary.
Eric Cross (02:45):
Now, when you were subbing, you were doing elementary school.
Marilyn Dieppa (02:47):
Yes. Pretty much elementary.
Eric Cross (02:48):
How did you go from there to like, middle-school science?
Marilyn Dieppa (02:50):
My thing was writing, not necessarily math and science. But I ended up with my cooperating teacher, my CT, she was a math and science teacher. So I was put with her, and who knew that I liked science and I liked math? So I ended up with that and I infused a lot of labs. So in elementary you tend to—I think teachers are a little bit afraid of the labs, so I infused a lot of literature with my labs. I infused all my—I did it like a whole-group type thing, everything I did with my labs, I incorporated the math. I incorporated the science. I incorporated, you know, the reading with it. And from there, I just—you know, they ended up putting me in a lot of leadership roles with science. And then my principal was opening up the school where I’m at now, my former principal. And she, you know, she took me with her. And so her dissertation was in looping, on how following your students, did that really make a difference in test scores? So I was part of her like test study, and I had students that I followed for two years in a row. And she would look at data and that was part of her dissertation. So that really made a difference. So I ended up moving with my students and my first group of middle-school students, I had them for four years.
Eric Cross (04:10):
Oh, wow.
Marilyn Dieppa (04:10):
And that was—those were my children. I, like, boohooed when they left. And I ended up, you know, literally following them from fourth grade all the way to more than four years. Because it was all the way until they left eighth grade.
Eric Cross (04:21):
What did you think of that model of looping with students?
Marilyn Dieppa (04:24):
I think it’s a great model, depending on the kids that you have. I love, you know, the school that I’m at. I’m very blessed, because it’s a great school. It’s really a wonderful school. I’ve had really good relationships with students. They always come back, and they always come back when they wanna tell me that they’re in something in science, right? They’re an engineer or they’re a nurse, or they’re, you know, doctors at this point. So I’ve seen a little bit of everything with my students. And it’s very rewarding.
Eric Cross (04:52):
That’s super-exciting, right? When they come back and they’re either telling you about their college major or what career they’re in. And I like to recruit them at that point and ask them to come talk to my students. Because Google photos gives you unlimited storage, if you have a teacher account, I actually have photos of students from like 10 years ago.
Marilyn Dieppa (05:09):
Oh, wow.
Eric Cross (05:10):
And I’ll put their middle school picture next to their—and then their current picture.
Marilyn Dieppa (05:14):
Oh, that’s awesome. I’ve never done that.
Eric Cross (05:17):
Yeah. You could see, like, they could see the younger version of them.
Marilyn Dieppa (05:19):
And it’s funny because even with the STEM Academy, which I have now, I have the same group of kids for three years. So I’ve had already few groups that have gone by, and those kids come back to me, they come back to our competitions, they help out, you know, they’re very integrated with the robotics. So I’m getting those students back as well. So I’ve maintained that relationship with them as well.
Eric Cross (05:46):
How do you develop your own classroom management style? How did you figure out where your—where you fit and what works for you? What was your process like for that?
Marilyn Dieppa (05:55):
You know what I think, just by teaching, teaching them to respect. And one thing that I’ve developed that—I don’t scream in my classroom; I just talk to the kids. I have very good one-on-one communication with them. I show them respect. I treat them as an equal.
Eric Cross (06:12):
And what grade are you teaching currently?
Marilyn Dieppa (06:14):
Eighth grade. So I do science. I teach high school science. I teach comprehensive, which is like our regular students. I have kids who are inclusion. I have kids that are ESL. So I teach all, you know, dynamics of students. And then I have the academy, which is something separate. But I infuse a lot of physics and of course that they need in order for them to be competitive.
Eric Cross (06:38):
So tell me about that. What is the STEM Academy?
Marilyn Dieppa (06:40):
It is an enrichment program. So it is an advanced enrichment program, because they do follow like the math enrichment. so they have to be really good at math in order for them to be accepted into the program. So, one day we got like a grant, and we got a little robot, the VEX. I don’t know if you’re familiar with VEX. I know it’s big in California. So I was told, “Here, this is for you. See what you can do with it.” So I started with an after-school club, the following year. It kind of hit off. We went to our first little competition. The kids did really well. And then the following year, they told me, “Hey, we need an academy, make it happen.” So it’s not like I had a curriculum. I kind of do my own thing. But we do a lot of different types of things. Our big portion is the VEX, but I also do sec me, we do Future City. We do a whole bunch of competitions within the district. You know, Math Bowl. So I get my kids prepared for anything that really has to do competitive-based. I do that with those students.
Eric Cross (07:38):
What age range or which grade range?
Marilyn Dieppa (07:40):
Sixth to eighth. We have kids who stay the three years and then we have kids that after, you know, sometimes it’s more the parents that want them to be part of the engineering. but sometimes we lose kids after the first year and you know, that’s fine because we wanna really have kids who really wanna be there and are, you know, committed to it. Because there’s a lot of commitments to that program.
Eric Cross (08:01):
Those types of programs, there’s so many like outside-of-the-classroom things that you need to take care of. If you’re going to competitions, and weekends, and all those types of things. Is there a team of teachers that are doing this or is it just you?
Marilyn Dieppa (08:10):
Team of one! .
Eric Cross (08:11):
A team of one! Right? Like, yeah. And how long have you been running this yourself?
Marilyn Dieppa (08:16):
This is probably like my sixth year.
Eric Cross (08:19):
OK.
Marilyn Dieppa (08:20):
So we’ve been very successful. That program is totally inquiry. It’s totally on them. I don’t know how to use a little, you know, remote control. I don’t know how to do anything. I’m there for troubleshoot and to make sure that they’re on task, but they have been very successful because I do put everything on them. And I go, “It’s not my robot. This is your robot.” So they build everything
Eric Cross (08:40):
And that seems to be the theme, especially with, a lot of times, with science teachers. And encouraging them to say, “You don’t have to be the expert in everything.” Teachers tend to be more like risk-taking and innovative when they’re willing to like, not have to be—I don’t have to know everything in order to do something.
Marilyn Dieppa (08:54):
Exactly. So we’ve been very successful. Very proud of my students because you know, we’ve, gone to Worlds twice. We’ve qualified three times in the six years. Actually, I had two teams that went last year.
Eric Cross (09:07):
What is, what is Worlds? That sounds like a big deal.
Marilyn Dieppa (09:10):
It’s a huge thing. And it’s teams from all over the world. You can actually look it up online. It’s—from this year, there were teams, although they said China was not gonna be in there, there were actually some teams from China. There were teams from New Zealand. There were teams from South Africa, the UK, a lot of teams from, from Europe. And then there are teams from here. We are the host country. We’ve been the host country for a while. But it’s amazing. The first time we went, the first team that we were paired up with was a Russian team. So, you know, there was Google Translate and the kids—and it’s, they didn’t need to know the same language because they communicated with the robots. So it was really amazing. They work collaboratively. So it’s not like a battle box. So they work two teams together and whatever, they both get together, they both earn the same points. So it teaches leadership, and there’s so much more to it than just a robot. They have to know how to communicate, because they do get interviewed. They do online challenges. It’s so many things. It’s just—I think it’s one of the best things that our district has really invested in, because these kids are so into it, and they love it so much. For the last year and this year I have the same kids that are in the robotics. I’m also gonna be teaching them physical science. So I have to teach them that separation between what we’re doing in our science classes versus what they’re doing in the class. So there has to be a separation. So they see one side of me in this class where it’s very laid back. It’s very chill. No, no, you, you guys do it. There’s no sitting down. It’s like organized chaos, I call it all the time. But then in the classroom, it has to be a little bit more organized.
Eric Cross (10:53):
Is that something that, as far as getting the parts—like people do, like, GoFundMes and donations and Donors Choose. Can you—
Marilyn Dieppa (11:00):
We get grant money, grant money from the town of Miami Lakes, the town that I work in. So the town actually sponsors us. Without them, we could not do that. It is a very expensive activity to do. If you go online and you look up the prices, you’ll be, “Oh my gosh, goodness, it’s very expensive.” You know? But the smiles on their faces when they come back and they have those little certificates, it means nothing, you know, it’s a little piece of paper. But that, to me, to them, it means the world.
Eric Cross (11:27):
Well, teachers, if you’re looking for ways to get that stuff funded, be fearless on behalf of asking for free things for your kids. Find a local business that somewhat connects to even robotics and say, “Hey, look, I’ve got 50 kids that really want to get after it. And we need X amount of dollars so we can buy those robotics kits. We’ll put your banner up somewhere. We’ll do all these other things. But come support our students. Come to the competition. Donate whatever you can for our students.” And many organizations will say, will say yes. Many just aren’t asked.
Marilyn Dieppa (11:57):
Right. And a lot of towns do have, like, education advisory boards. You wanna reach out to those people. ‘Cause those are the communities where they have money set aside in order to assist things like this.
Eric Cross (12:09):
Do you notice any carryover between the students that do get involved with these extracurriculars into the regular science classroom?
Marilyn Dieppa (12:16):
For sure. They’re more, they’re more disciplined. They tend to care more about the sciences because they see that link in the science. I mean, my kids are talking about gear ratios. They’re talking about, you know, mass accelerations. They had—they infuse all these things. And when they see it in the science class, they’re making that connection, which is really wonderful.
Eric Cross (12:41):
It seems like there’s a high level of engagement because this is an authentic thing. It’s almost, this should be science.
Marilyn Dieppa (12:46):
Yes. And not only that, the writing skills that have to be interpreted because part of the program is that they, they don’t necessarily have to have it, but in order for them to go far and make it to Worlds, they have to have an engineering notebook. So our strength sometimes is not the robot, but the engineering notebook.
Eric Cross (13:02):
his is where the journalism major shines.
Marilyn Dieppa (13:05):
Yes. And I go, “Guys, this is your Ikea manual. You have to explain what you’re doing, what pieces you’re using, what’s going right.” You know, and then they have to interpret and see what didn’t work. How can they fix it? So there’s so much problem-solving. It’s real life, it’s what they’re doing there. More so than sitting and learning rote, you know, vocabulary or whatever the case might be, ’cause they’re actually applying what they’re learning.
Eric Cross (13:31):
Yeah. And that’s, that’s so critical, the communication piece. Because seems like now in society, more than ever, even just being able to communicate something with bad science is convincing to people. Versus if you have great science, but you can’t communicate it, you’re not gonna be able to get it out into the public. It’s so great to see a program that exactly brings together this literacy aspect, in addition to kind of this content and skills aspect of doing the science.
Marilyn Dieppa (13:57):
And that’s what really, you know, since I started, that’s pretty much what I’ve done. My strength, believe it or not, when I was growing up, was not the science. I think I didn’t really have a really good science background. But I remember reflecting and saying, “I don’t want my students to feel like I felt when I was a child.” I wanna make sure that I give them everything, you know, give them the hands-on experience. I think I had one teacher when I was growing up and I still remember him. He was my second-grade teacher and he was just so amazing with the science. And it was just like the only really good experience I had. And I think that always stayed in the back of my mind. And when I started teaching and I go, “I wanna give these kids these experiences.” You know, sometimes I see kids in eighth grade and I go, how sad! They see water boiling and they’re just, like, in a lab room. And they’re just like, in awe, because there’s water boiling. And I go, “You guys haven’t seen water boil before?” And he goes, “No, no, no, not like this!” And I go, oh wow.
Eric Cross (14:58):
Even if it’s simple, everyday phenomena, everyday things that people deal with in a science classroom, or when you’re a teacher in that setting, it’s just—it just hits different, right? Like you, you know, you drop dye into water and watch it diffuse. And it’s like, whoa! Because they’re looking at it through that different lens. And that’s why one of the reasons why—I’m super-biased, but as science teachers, we get to do the coolest stuff.
Marilyn Dieppa (15:21):
Yeah, we do.
Eric Cross (15:22):
We just do. It’s so much fun. And basically anything that happens, that’s cool, like in, innovation and things like that, we can figure out ways to incorporate into our classroom. Now, as a coach and as a mentor, you’ve had multiple student teachers in your classroom. And we have, you know, huge need for new teachers. I teach teachers who are getting their CR, getting their credential. And the landscape of education is, is constantly shifting. You’ve watched it shift over the years. What are your biggest tips that you give to new teachers?
Marilyn Dieppa (15:49):
Well, I just had an intern last semester. I’ve had a few interns where, you know, not only are they doing this, but they’re also learning robotics too. So they’re really getting aspect in how to incorporate that. You don’t have to have everything separate. You can include everything together. But I think, I think it just comes from the foundation where they’re not exposed. Even me, when I went to college, I don’t remember doing so many labs as I should have. And I think it’s just a fear of them trying new things and failing. And I go, you know what? I, sometimes my first class is my guinea pig class, because I always change my labs. I don’t like to do the same thing over and over again. If I see something online, I go, “Oh wow. You know what, I’m gonna try it.” And I go, “Hey guys, this is the first time; we’re gonna do this together.” And it’s really—it’s just for them not to be fearful. And I think especially for science teachers or like even elementary, to give the kids the foundation that they need, they’re afraid. They’re afraid of failing and not trying something new, and say, “Hey, it’s OK. There’s other ways of doing this.” You know? So I always say, “My first class is always my guinea pig class, ’cause that’s the class I’m gonna try this on.” And then, you know, when you have to tweak, reflect, then we do that.
Eric Cross (17:06):
What are some of the things that you’ve seen or encouragements that you give to teachers who are teaching, kind of, in this kind of newer landscape, where as teachers, you become more than just a science teacher. I mean, you’re a mentor. You’re an encourager. Sometimes you’re a counselor for students. And then there, there are things that happen externally that impact teachers as well. It’s a tough job.
Marilyn Dieppa (17:24):
So I always say, you know, when you have a child, we have to be very aware of what’s happening with our children. Especially after these two years of the pandemic. That was kind of crazy. Last year was a really tough year, I think, for most educators that were back in the classroom. But I always tell ’em, you have to be really aware of what’s going on with these kids outside. When you see somebody who’s not doing anything and then you have the parents are there supporting. There’s something going—I mean, there has to be something going on. Kids are not just going to be so, so defiant. You’re gonna have very few that will be like that. But most of them it’s just gotta see and read those kids and see what’s going on, and don’t be afraid to—and I always say, I’m not there to really be your friend, but I’m there to help you. And you gotta tell ’em, you know, if you need to talk, come talk to me. Have an open-door policy with those kids.
Eric Cross (18:16):
What’s been your favorite part of the job? Something you really enjoy about the job? Especially having been teaching for as long as you have.
Marilyn Dieppa (18:23):
I think my favorite thing is their success. Whether they have struggled all the year and they’ve had that one piece of success or they don’t realize what they got out of middle school until they get to high school and they come back to you and they tell you it’s, you know, seeing my kids, whether it’s robotics, whether it’s in the classroom, that they pass a test for the first time, those are my moments of success. And that’s what makes me happy.
Eric Cross (18:52):
So you get those ahas, you get those wins, those turnarounds. And it’s like, “Ah, this keeps me going. This is so good!” But there’s something that I say to myself when I do get challenges in the classroom is teaching seventh grade, I say, “They’re 12. They’re 13. They’ve been on earth for 13 years. And for the first five or six, like, you know, they’re just kind of coming online at that point. And they’re going through all these changes.” And it grounds me in the fact that ’cause sometimes the things that you experience can be really, really challenging kind of interpersonally. And I remind myself, “Well, it’s like—you’re not 28 years old. Like, you’re, 12 and 13, and you need me to not be Mr. Cross, the science teacher. You need me to be, you know, Mr. Cross, the mentor, or Mr. Cross, the coach.” Like you were saying, open door. Keeping that open door, keeping that relationship. Because so much of what we’re doing is like life coaching in addition—and that connects to their success in the classroom. There’s a direct relationship.
Marilyn Dieppa (19:45):
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
Eric Cross (19:46):
Now what gets you back each fall? Because at the end, you know, every school year it’s like, “That was a tough one!” Especially with the last couple years. Right? So what’s been something, what gets you back in the classroom every fall, so that you’re ready for your students?
Marilyn Dieppa (20:02):
I think the support I get at home. I have a husband who is the most supportive person ever. He always tells me, “Your kids are grown up.” You know, my kids are adults now. “Enjoy these kids, what they’re doing. You don’t know how much they need you.” So he does tell me that. He goes, “And don’t complain! You love it!” And also my administration, they back me up. And that’s what I think what keeps you coming back. I love my administration. Whatever I ask for, they don’t tell me no. They tell me I’m crazy, but they don’t tell me no. You know, we have these huge competitions once a year at our school, administration has to be involved ’cause they have to be there, and they go, “We do this because we love you! But you know, you’re crazy!”
Eric Cross (20:48):
It’s interesting, ’cause both of these things, they involve human connection. And one is your support system at home, which is incredibly valuable. Shout out to your husband; I don’t know if he’s around. And then the culture, like, feeling supported. Teachers, you know—and it’s not just in education, but people, I’ve experienced—will work harder, longer, be more committed, when they have that intangible. When they feel like they’re connected to something bigger than them. Or on a team, not in a silo. And one person can really create or break whether that happens. And just like us in the classroom as a teacher, right? Like, “What makes you like this teacher’s class?” “Well, I feel connected. I feel safe. I feel it’s fun. It’s the culture!” I like to end with asking this question and you kind of alluded to an answer earlier, but who is one, or it could be multiple teachers, that you’ve had in your own life as a kid growing up or young person in kindergarten through 12th grade, could even be college, that has inspired you? Or made a difference in your life one way or another? Like, who pops out? I feel like we all have somebody.
Marilyn Dieppa (21:58):
One was my second grade teacher, as I mentioned before. Mr. Fernandez, never forget him. And my other teacher was my high school teacher, Mr. Velazquez. It was in New Jersey as well. And he was the one that really got me into the love of writing. He was my Spanish teacher, actually. He wasn’t even, you know—he was like an elective teacher. But he just made me believe like, “Wow, you’re like a really good writer!” To me, those two gentlemen really stood out. Very fond memories of being in school and really enjoying what I was doing.
Eric Cross (22:33):
There are so many teachers that we all have been impacted by. And many of us now who are teachers, we sit in that same seat. We fill those same shoes. And going back to what you had said earlier, one of the most rewarding things is when those kids come back to you. And I’m thinking about all the work that you’ve done, all the students you’ve poured into, all the competitions you’ve done. The ones that have come back to you are a small fragment of the ones that you’ve impacted.
Marilyn Dieppa (22:59):
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Eric Cross (23:00):
‘Cause we think about our own story, right? Like you’ve gone on and paid dividends for that one teacher in second grade. You know, Mr. Fernandez or Mr. Velasquez like, they went and they just gave you exposure to something or helped you fall in love with something. And you went on this trajectory. And if we could see the timeline of, like, this teacher created Marilyn, and Marilyn went and did this, and then what do all those students do? And that, I don’t know, there’s so many jobs that are gonna be hard work and that are gonna be challenging and stressful. But that is the thing that I think fills me when I listen to your story. I just think about like all the students throughout Florida that you have—you probably will never hear from, but have gone on to do amazing things or become great people who would go back and talk about you and say you were an inspiration for them. Marilyn, thank you for taking the time out to be on the podcast and for not only teaching students, but inspiring and coaching younger teachers and new teachers. It’s so critical. And for being willing to spend so much of your time beyond the classroom to create these opportunities for students to do this awesome, fun, engaging science, and go to Worlds. I wish you a great school year.
Marilyn Dieppa (24:11):
Thank you. You too.
Eric Cross (24:12):
We hope you make it to Worlds again and crush, in a competitive, collaborative type of environment. We’ll be checking out—I’m sure other teachers will check out Vex Robotics. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Marilyn Dieppa (24:23):
Thank you. You too, Eric.
Eric Cross (24:26):
Thanks so much for listening. Now we want to hear more about you. Do you have any educators who inspire you? You can nominate them as a future guest on Science Connections by emailing STEM@amplify.com. That’s S T E M at amplifycom.wpengine.com. Make sure to click subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And join our Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community. Until next time.
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Meet the guest
Marilyn Dieppa is a long-time educator and STEM Academy coach at Miami Dade County Public Schools. Currently in her 24th year, Marilyn teaches 8th grade science and coaches the STEM Academy at Bob Graham Education Center. She launched the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Academy during the 2016-2017 school year, and the teams compete in VEX IQ World’s Competition representing both the district and the state. She has been the middle school department chairperson since 2003, attends the district department meetings and Instructional Capacity-building Academy (ICAD), and trains her science department.
Dieppa holds a bachelor of science in Elementary Education and a master of science in reading education. She is also a Nationally Board-Certified Teacher in Science.
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!
S2-03: Building meaningful student connections in the science classroom
In this episode, Eric Cross sits down with Indiana State Teacher of the Year, Sharita Ware, to talk about how to successfully build meaningful student connections in the science classroom. Sharita shares her journey from a corporate career to becoming Indiana’s 2022 Teacher of the Year, and her passion for creating project-based lessons for her students. Together, Eric and Sharita discuss how educators can teach students to love science content by building strong relationships, adding in other content areas, and supporting students’ imagination. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Sharita Ware (00:00):
I try to create that equal playing field where there’s nobody’s voice, that’s more important than anyone else’s and try to make them all feel that what they have to say is important.
Eric Cross (00:14):
Welcome to science connections. I’m your host Eric. My guest today is Sheta where Sheta is the 2022 Indiana state teacher of the year. And in her 10 year career, as an engineering and technology teacher, she has dedicated herself to helping students build knowledge and skills for high school and life. Beyond. In this episode, we discuss how she inspires her seventh and eighth grade students to build problem solving and critical thinking skills through hands on real world and collaborative projects. She is as humble as she is knowledgeable and through our conversation, it was easy for me to see why her students feel successful under her guidance. And now please enjoy my conversation with Sharita Ware.
Eric Cross (00:59):
Can I start off by saying congratulations on teacher of the year. Thank you for the state of Indiana. Um, that’s amazing. So I, I, I did watch, uh, your videos, uh, short interviews, and then you spoke, was it Purdue? Yes. You were there. And so, uh, to see if fellow seventh grade, eighth grade science teacher out there being celebrated, like I was so excited, so yeah, I wanted to congratulate you on that and, and just kind of talk to you about like your teaching journey and ask you, uh, maybe just kind of start off with your story about what brought you into, into the classroom, especially the middle school.
Sharita Ware (01:29):
Classroom. So what happened is when I was working in industry as an engineer and when my husband and I got married, we decided that I was gonna, um, stay home with the kids because, you know, we wanted, um, our influence to be greater on our kids than, you know, the people that would be watching them, you know, because they would ultimately spend more time with them than they would with us. And, and so, um, I stayed home and when my youngest was going to be going to kindergarten the next year, I was like, okay, what am I going to do? Cuz I really don’t necessarily feel like I need to stay at home. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but um, I knew going back to industry would be a challenge just because in my field, I, I was traveling a lot before I got married and had kids.
Sharita Ware (02:14):
And so I knew that that wouldn’t really be conducive to again, raising children. So I, I get this email, my inbox for Woodrow Wilson, teaching fellowship at Purdue. And they were just looking for people in stem fields to go into teaching. And I was like, okay. And it was a national search, you know, I filled out the application, we had to go in and do some sample teaching mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I was picked as, as one of the, the teachers to go through the program. And I started off thinking I wanted high school. And the really cool thing about this, uh, program is that we had long observation periods at high school and at middle schools. And so we would go to a school and we’d stay there two or three weeks. And so it, it kind of gave you right. A little bit more insight to what happened on a daily basis. And after those observations, I was like, I like middle school better than I, uh, like high school. And so I just kind of went that direction and you know, the rest is history. So
Eric Cross (03:19):
I feel like our stories are similar because I went into teaching thinking I wanted to do high school because I like the maturity and you a little bit more sophistication, advanced things, but yes, middle school, I felt like I can, I could get them more upstream before and kind of help shape mm-hmm <affirmative> that experience for them? Because I feel like at middle school is really where they kind of decide like what they can do based on their experiences.
Sharita Ware (03:39):
I found in the middle school that the kids, I mean, they just, they clamor around you and they’re like, what are we doing today? You know? And they get so excited and, um, they’re, they’re just, I don’t know, I guess in some ways, just more hungry in the sense of like they’re willingness to, um, now sometimes they’re a little reluctant, but you know, their willingness just to try new things. And I think, um, my students really what I have found over the years that they have found a safe space and I hear the kids, you know, say to me so many times that, you know, it it’s safe. I feel, I feel safe in here. And, and it’s not something that in my mind I’m thinking about, oh, I need to make this a safe place. It’s just, I guess part of just who I am as a person has created this environment of, of safety and, and the kids recognize that, you know, I don’t play favorites. You know, everybody starts out mm-hmm, <affirmative> on equal footing. I, I don’t care what your backstory is. I don’t care how many times I see you in the hallway when I’m walking during my prep. You know, when you hit my room, I’m, I’m gonna treat you the same way on day one, that I treat everybody else.
Eric Cross (04:54):
You really understand how to build culture with, in, with your classroom, with your students. And, and you said they feel safe, but is there anything that you do that someone could like apply? And like you found that you’ve gotten a lot of just relational capital through doing these things, or is it just your personality? Like how, how do you build those connections?
Sharita Ware (05:12):
You know, growing up being a, a very quiet person. I, I think a lot of times my voice was ignored because I was the quiet kid in the back of the room. And oftentimes I became seen or heard because of my work, you know, in the beginning it was kind of like, oh, she’s just this quiet girl in the back of the room. And then, you know, the first essay was due or the first project was due. And then it was like, oh, you know, then you’re the person to be on, you know, people’s teams. And, and that, I don’t know, that always kind of bothered me because, you know, I’m thinking just because you’re not the loudest person in the room doesn’t mean that you don’t have something to say, mm-hmm <affirmative>, you just might not be talking all the time. You know? And, and so for my students, I just, I try to create that equal playing field where there’s, nobody’s voice, that’s more important than anyone else’s and try to make them all feel like that what they have to say, or what they have to contribute is, is enough, is good.
Sharita Ware (06:14):
Enough is important as…
Eric Cross (06:16):
It is, as it is. And there’s probably a lot of things that you do. But in addition to building these relationships, what do you do? Like how do you make your learning fun for students?
Sharita Ware (06:25):
I think, um, I’m also a little bit on the silly side. Um, we do a, a Barbie prosthetic leg project, and this was after trial and error of having the kids make full size prosthetic legs. And I try to make it as real world as possible, but with none of the children being amputee or, you know, having access to someone, it was really hard for them to really visualize what needed to happen. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so, um, I found this Barbie that had a prosthetic leg and I was like, well, LA, so I just started collecting Barbies and chopping their legs off <laugh>. And so I have this jar of Barbie legs. And so, and I said, you’re gonna make prosthetic legs. And I lay this jar of legs on the counter and the kids are like, like they gasp and then they crack up and then they’re like, okay, this lady’s crazy. So…
Eric Cross (07:22):
That’s when you take off your scarf and there’s this necklace of just Barbie legs that are just around and you’re like, I’m a middle school teacher and they go, oh, okay. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. It’s totally fine. Is this a lesson that someone that you made up or is it something that you’ve re remixed? Is it something that someone could do if they looked it up anywhere?
Sharita Ware (07:38):
Um, so I think teach engineering has the, the full size leg that the kids make. And that’s where I initially got it from.
Eric Cross (07:47):
Is that the website teach engineering?
Sharita Ware (07:49):
Yes. And, um, I, in fact, I get lots of ideals from there. Um, and I, I always usually tweak them, but it’s, it’s one of those things that kind of gets your brain going. And so it was kind of a mixture of, uh, project lead the way gateway to technology and the teach engineering. And I think the project lead the way had us making like braces, uh, for, um, kids with, um, like cerebral palsy or, or something like that. And the kids did okay with that project. Uh, but I wanted to go just a little bit, uh, deeper with it because part of what I was wanting them to do is that context and that connection, that human connection, because for me, it’s not just enough for them to make a project. Uh, before we start this prosthetic leg, I read them a story out of a Scholastic magazine, and it’s a, a teenage girl that lost her leg in a boating accident.
Sharita Ware (08:42):
And she was super active, um, playing sports and running. And, and so I was, you know, trying to get the kids to, you know, make that connection, someone close to their age. Um, and then how it’s not, it’s, it’s more than about her physical healing. It’s also about her mental healing and how she had to, you know, talk to herself to say that she could, you know, recover and, and come back from this and still go on to do all of the things that she was doing before. Um, and in some ways it’s kind of cool because, um, you know, she has a running prosthetic, she has a, a swimming prosthetic, and she has her every day with the pain and toils prosthetic. So just trying to, you know, help them to see that it’s more than just the, you know, the biomedical mechanical engineering aspect of the project.
Sharita Ware (09:30):
And so they have to design for comfort. They have to design for, um, swelling. And then, um, they also can, if they, if they want to, they don’t have to, if they want to, they can create their own backstory. So when they get there, um, we have a day where they are introduced to their client, so they get to meet their Barbie and, and then they get to decide if they want a backstory and, and then do their research based off of that. So if it’s someone that was a runner, then they can design a prosthetic running blade. So just, they have lots of, uh, flexibility.
Eric Cross (10:04):
The, that aspect of adding the narrative. It does so much for like listening to it on the outside. It one, it adds this humanity to, you know, what can sometimes just feel like it may be cold, logical stem. We’re just, we’re just doing things. We’re fixing things. We’re, you know, we’re discovering things, but really the stem has value when we’re actually applying it to, to, to serve humanity or our ecosystem or whatever it is. There was a, a coding, uh, class I was doing with my students and I showed them this app called be my eyes. And it’s for people who are visually impaired and it pairs them with a volunteer. And when they call, and there’s a whole huge pool of volunteers and I’m one of them. And when my, when it happens in class, I answer and it uses the FaceTime. So the person who’s visually impaired is holding up their phone and you see what they see and you tell them and real time what’s happening.
Sharita Ware (10:54):
Oh, wow. That’s so cool.
Eric Cross (10:56):
These are, these were the things I think for students that the story, the, the human part of it, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it must bring in so many more students into engagement.
Sharita Ware (11:05):
Yeah. I, I feel like it does because I, I think, um, and, you know, along the journey, they kind of lose, um, they lose sight a little bit because, you know, they get out in the lab and they have access to all of these different materials. And I think, you know, truly making it, you know, project based for me is I try not to control the materials too much. Um, I try not to make it so wide that they just get lost, but I try to throw a few curve balls in there, you know, of, of materials that really don’t make sense to use, but they kind of think they make sense to use. Um, because the, the, the meat of it is that the prosthetic leg is a similar size of the original leg and that the, the knee functions. And so I don’t limit, and I grade them off of efficient use of materials.
Sharita Ware (11:59):
So, and that just throws them off because I think, well, how many Popsicle sticks can I use? And I’m like, you can use as many as you like, but remember, this is a prosthetic leg that, um, your Barbie, which is one six scale, um, is going to be wearing all day. So you could think that a Popsicle stick, if you chose to use a Popsicle stick is kind of like dragging around a two by four <laugh>, you know? So do, is that what you really want to use as your material? And some of the kids really think about it and saying, okay, I’m, I’ve got this aluminum rod, okay. This is probably what I would use for my bone structure, because it’s lightweight, but yet it is supportive. And then sometimes they come up with their own ideas in terms of materials, like one student brought in his, um, 3d doodle pin mm-hmm <affirmative> and he made joints and everything with this pin.
Sharita Ware (12:54):
And I’m, and I had delayed buying one, cause I’m like, I, how do you have control over that thing? Mm-hmm <affirmative> he brought that in and he did probably two or three iterations of it and, and got it to work where even the knee where it bit back 90 degrees, but it stopped. He made like, so that it didn’t bend forward. It blows my mind. I’m like so many UN unexpected things have, have happened just from my, um, teaching style. Now I did have, my first few years, I had a, a teaching coach, um, come in and, um, I asked her to come into my room because I just wanted to make sure because I was not a traditional teacher. She said, this classroom is amazing. And, and I think the one thing that she helped me with was, was purpose and consistency and the sense of making sure that with the standards that all of these cool things and ways of being, um, that I was doing in my classroom, that, that I kept it purposeful and intentional. So many times as educators, I know in having student teachers again, ask yourself the question, what is the big picture I want the kids to take away. And once you ask that question, then everything that you have them do will lead to that big picture. Well, it should lead to that big picture.
Eric Cross (14:22):
So it sounds like they’re, you’re starting with this end goal in mind and then kind of backwards planning to get there. Yeah. Do you think you would’ve been the same type of teacher if you would’ve gone straight from college into the classroom? No. And if, if, no, as you’re shaking your head, what do you think it is about? Cause I’ve been asking myself these questions, like just over the years, what is it about coming from industry and going into the classroom? Do you feel like, is how has that impacted you in how you teach?
Sharita Ware (14:45):
Well, I think it’s twofold cuz I was older. I already had three children. I think the combination for me, I think is I was already a mom and I had worked in industry. So the behavior aspect of kids and, and then having that real world experience. And I, I just feel like whether it’s in the classroom, um, marriage, kids, to me, it’s 90% relationship, you know, and the rest will work itself out. That’s, that’s just my, my take on it. But I, I feel like having kids, so some of the behavioral things I kind of was aware of, you know, and just learned many times just not to react to some of the things that they did.
Eric Cross (15:31):
Which is huge. Right. Especially in middle school is controlling your reactions.
Sharita Ware (15:35):
Yes. Cuz that’s what they want. You know? And, and I had this student last year as well. She’s brilliant. And so if she cannot wrap her mind around the purpose of what you’re doing and, and you’re pushing her to do something that she doesn’t think is necessary, mm-hmm <affirmative>, she kind of has these meltdowns. And, and so we just had this, you know, I don’t know, we just came to this understanding and it, and it works to control the meltdowns. I tried to make sure. And, and I used her as a gauge because I knew she wasn’t, she wasn’t getting upset because she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand the why mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I felt like if she got the why then so would everyone else. So when she, if she was okay with it, then I was like, okay, then I must have explained it well enough.
Sharita Ware (16:25):
And so in my mind that I really need to make sure they understand the, again, going back to that purpose <laugh> and intention, making sure that that is clear. And then I think that’s what gets lost. Sometimes mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, with us as teachers, we, we know where we want the kids to go and we want us to trust the process, you know, just do it because I said so, but sometimes, you know, empowering your children to under to understand the why, because that again is what allows them to be able to do bigger and greater things on their own. So on that next project comes along. They’re starting to tell you, well, first we need to make sure we understand what, um, we’re being asked to do to do. So we have to define the question. We have to make our driving question that will help us stay focused. And, and you’re just standing up there going, okay, now you don’t need me. I’ll go here and sit down. <laugh> so it’s, uh, it is really cool.
Eric Cross (17:28):
Now I’m thinking about my own kids. Like, do my students know the why behind the lesson we did today? It’s one area of growth that I wanna make sure I do this year with my students. And so I really appreciate that. So the, and you just hit on something that is, has been in the forefront of my mind lately and math and English as you know, tend to be prioritized in schools everywhere because it’s what state tested. And it’s what, you know, this is a whole other conversation, but I’ve been talking to math teachers frequently about one of the challenges that they experience or they’ve been telling me is that math is kind of taught. Like it’s just computational, you’re solving these problems, but it’s really separated from any real life application. A lot of times, you know, it’s pizza or gumballs or, or just fictional scenarios and students don’t perform well many times. And some of the reasons why is cuz just no connection. I don’t want to solve puzzles. Like it’s not my jam. Do you have any just inside or, or perspective on how math is, is taught in maybe a way that you think it would students would benefit more?
Sharita Ware (18:32):
You know how kids learn in elementary school, you’ve got this, the same teacher teaching all of the subjects. And so wouldn’t that be an awesome opportunity for you to have like these, these projects where I feel like you could, a class could legit work on the same project for a whole entire year. And so couldn’t the English be writing your persuasive letter to the mayor, asking him to do this or do that. And the process of doing that they’re, they’re, they’re writing with a purpose with a true purpose. Um, and then when they’re doing math, you know, they want, they want a new neighborhood park. So, you know, well how much is this gonna cost? Well, math, what size is it gonna be math? Let’s see what it looks like, art, you know, you just, you have all of this things. And then of course then science.
Sharita Ware (19:32):
So if it’s on a heel, how can we, you know, deal with erosion? And you know, you can just pull so many different things into that. And so not only are they learning, but they’re narrowed in and focused on a project, they’re, they’re able to dive deep into, you know, learning more of learning, how to express themselves and communicate with real people. So it’s more of taking these compartmentalized learning that we do in middle school and high school. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> where you’re almost learning apprenticeship style. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, you have these master educators and it’s not about them being the best at math or being the best at this or that. Cuz there’s so many tools now that could help you through that. But you’re, you’re giving, you’re teaching them so many life skills and so many ways to think and problem solve that, that we’re just that the kids just don’t have.
Eric Cross (20:27):
I think that that is amazing. And I think that in that situation, what I’m hearing is we’re going deeper, not wider because there are a lot of different concepts that kids are expected to learn. Or I should say there are several concepts that teachers are expected to teach doesn’t necessarily mean that our kids are learning, but we’re teaching them. And this way you’re embedded it into an authentic context. Students are able to go through this cycle just like real life. And then they’re also able to build these kind of really transdisciplinary skills. Not only am I learning the math, the English, the the, but I’m also learning the interpersonal skills of being able to sell myself and present myself in a way that’s winsome. And it’s especially powerful coming from someone from industry. Last question, even just listening to you, I know you, you are this for a lot of people, but I wanted to ask you who inspires you?
Sharita Ware (21:14):
I think there have been lots of people over the years. Like I’m thinking of my shop teacher who has since, uh, the last few years passed away. Um, he was one of those people, I think similar personality to me, super quiet person, but he was always in the background on my journey and his name was Joe Mo and we called her Madam Carol was my 10th grade English lit teacher. And she was the one that started reading my work out in front of the class. And you know, and that just gave me courage, not so much to be seen. Uh, but that the work I was doing was, was good. And, and I think I needed that kind of encouragement. Lastly, my students inspire me because when I look at their faces and see the excitement, I think of those students for the first time and, and, and think about this seventh and eighth graders for the first time feeling like they really have something to say, they really have something to contribute of value. And, and I do it for them. You know, the reason why I am here in this moment is because of them. Um, without them, you wouldn’t be talking to me <laugh>
Eric Cross (22:37):
This is, this is true. This is, this is true. You would probably never say this about yourself, but you just exude a humility and a service in how you talk about your students and yourself. And I just wanna thank you for using your gifts, but I don’t wanna just call them gifts because it makes it sound like you didn’t earn ’em and your skills that you’ve earned and worked very hard to acquire over the years to go back into the classroom and leave industry, cuz you, you could have gone back to industry too, but you decided not to. And you could have worked in the industry and your hours were a little different pay is a little different, but you came back to serve the kids of Indiana and because of you and because of that choice, those students have a brighter future and believe in themselves and they’re finding their voice. And I want to thank you for that and for representing all of us stem teachers who are in middle school and being that leader. So thank you for that and thank you for being on the podcast.
Sharita Ware (23:24):
You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
Eric Cross (23:28):
Thank so much for listening. Now we wanna hear more about you in the amazing work you’re doing for students. Do you have any educators who inspire you? You can nominate them as a future guest on science connections by emailing stem, amplifycom.wpengine.com. That’s ST E M amplifycom.wpengine.com. Make sure to click, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join our Facebook group science connections, the community until next time.
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Meet the guest
Sharita Ware, a Purdue University graduate, is in her 10th year of teaching engineering and technology education to middle school students in the Tippecanoe School Corporation. Ware challenges her students with real-world, problem-based design scenarios that will help them contribute to global technology and integrated STEM. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
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!
You might also like:
S1-02: Community and joy within K–8 science instruction: Desiré Whitmore
In this episode, we join Eric Cross as he sits down with physicist and science education specialist, Desiré Whitmore. Listen in as Desiré explains her work at the Exploratorium, a public learning laboratory. Eric and Desiré discuss finding passion in science, the importance of meeting students we’re they’re at, and K–8 science instruction with real-life connections. Desiré chats with Eric about her work on supporting the science of teaching science content at the Exploratorium museum.
Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Desiré Whitmore (00:00):
I think it’s really amazing when we can realize as teachers, like, no, our job is not to just enforce rules on our students, right? Our job is to help students to achieve more learning.
Eric Cross (00:37):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Desiré Whitmore. Desiré has held positions as a science curriculum specialist with Amplify Science, a professor of laser and photonics technology at Irvine Valley College, and is now the senior physics educator in the Teacher Institute at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Her current work is focused on providing support and professional development to middle and high school science teachers to help them teach through inquiry. In this episode, we discussed Desiré’s pathway into physics, the impact of educators in her life, and the importance of representation for students in the classroom. I’m so excited for you to meet my physicist friend, Dr. Desiré Whitmore. All right. So just like a superhero, STEM superhero, you have an origin story and so—
Desiré Whitmore (01:36):
How long is this podcast gonna be? ‘Cause, you know, I can talk for days, so you—
Eric Cross (01:40):
I know, I know! But it’s, it’s…so, OK. We can give us a highlight. So, you know, 30 minutes. But what would be the origin story? You can start from any point in time, but what’s that journey like?
Desiré Whitmore (01:51):
I’m gonna start at the beginning, when I was really young, just because I think it’s important. Neither of my parents were college-educated. My mother didn’t finish high school. My father went back and got a GED later. But my father’s grandmother, her name was Claudia Pairs, and she was a teacher, right? So when I was a kid, she actually kind of raised me from, I don’t know, until I was around seven or eight. And so she was very important in who I became, I think because she taught me that college is important and she taught me to think. She taught me to ask questions. She taught me how to ask questions. Just the Exploratorium likes to do. Which is why I fit so well here. She taught me to always wonder and always think about things. And I remember as a kid, she taught me to count and read and write when I was, like, three. And she would always have bubbles at her house. And I was obsessed with bubbles. I thought bubbles were the coolest thing in the world. And just how you can take your breath and create this thing that now you can see, and it’s your breath, right? It’s your breath inside of a bubble and it’s flying around and it has all these cool colors, and then it would fly up and then eventually just pop. And you’re like, where did it go? Now my breath is just up there. Not understanding, as a kid, but my breath is always everywhere. I didn’t understand any of that, but I understood that my breath was inside of a bubble. That’s my earliest memory of thinking about science, was from that. And she was not a science teacher. She was—I don’t even know what she taught. I think she was an elementary school teacher, maybe. She died when I was 12. So I don’t have super-strong memories or of understanding who she was, only that she raised me and what she taught me as a kid. But that in itself really helped me because then when I was in the environment that I was in at home with my parents, which was not at all the environment she provided for me, I always had the things she taught me in my head, right? So I was always asking questions. My mother hated it. I was always taking things apart and putting them back together. So I used to take apart TVs and VCRs and vacuum cleaners and telephones, and my mother’s like, “Oh my God, I’m gonna murder you.” And she tried a couple times, too.
Eric Cross (04:25):
Did you ever put ’em back together and realize you had extra parts? You’re like, oh, hi.
Desiré Whitmore (04:29):
Oh yeah. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. VCRs have a lot of extra pieces. You’re like, “What do you even…it still works. It’s fine.” <laugh> You know? And vacuum cleaners too. They had a lot of extra parts, <laugh> all the time. And TVs. I should not have been playing with TVs. But like I said, I didn’t have a lot of parental, guidance as a child. So, like, whatever—I’m opening up TVs.
Eric Cross (04:54):
There’s a lot of open inquiry going on in your household. Yeah. Unsupervised.
Desiré Whitmore (04:59):
Unsupervised. But I didn’t know what it was or what it meant as a kid. I mean, I used to put things in the microwave. I did so many microwave experiments as a child, trying to cook different foods or melt different things. And so I think those kinds of experiences, where I was allowed to just be curious, kind of shaped who I am today. And then I kind of got into…you know, when I was in school, I loved math. In 10th grade, I had my first Black teacher, he was my chemistry teacher. His name was Mr. Strickland. And I was like, chemistry is cool, dude. And he was not the best teacher, but he was fun. Like you were saying, he was me, and he was talking to us the way I speak. And he was so like, just kind of chill and happy-go-lucky, I guess. But he wasn’t…he hadn’t taught chemistry in a long time. So he wasn’t a very good teacher. And me and one other kid in the class were in love with chemistry. And so we would read the book and do all the homework and he’d be in class lecturing and we’re like, “That’s not right, Mr. Strickland, like, what are you talking about?” And then he’d be like, “Oh, really, Desiré? Do you wanna teach the class, then?” And I’d be like, “Yeah.” And so I would go up and I would teach my chemistry class in high school, because the teacher was trying to make an example out of me. But he was also, I think, willing to be like, “I really don’t know.” And I really appreciated that. That he wasn’t just like, “I know all of the answers and you’re wrong.” Like, he wasn’t being a jerk, right? Like, the fact that I said, “Yes, I do wanna teach it,” and he actually let me do it? That’s pretty dope. And then I liked physics in my senior year in high school, but I didn’t think it was where I was gonna go or anything. I loved music and I loved math. Those were my two subjects.
Eric Cross (06:51):
What was it about math that resonated with you?
Desiré Whitmore (06:55):
I think it helped me understand the world a lot better. I didn’t have strong science teachers, I guess, growing up. It was a lot of reading out of books or watching laser discs in class. That’s how old I am.
Eric Cross (07:12):
Laser discs.
Desiré Whitmore (07:13):
Laser discs. And you know, so there wasn’t a lot of…I moved around a lot as a kid. I didn’t have this straight curriculum. You know, in one year, in the third grade, I went to three different schools.
Eric Cross (07:25):
Mm. Oh wow.
Desiré Whitmore (07:26):
It was kinda hard for me to latch onto school. But with math, because I could look at math and actually understand the world in it, I could see how math can be used to describe how things work.
Eric Cross (07:40):
I almost imagine, especially with so much transition in your life, it helped make sense of things. You had a lot of transition going on, but you were able to understand the world through the process of math. And then this early exposure, it kind of reminds me my own story too. Because there were these books that would do these cross sections of a cruise ship or a machine; that’s what got me really into engineering. Kind of How Stuff Works. I would watch that on Nova, How Stuff Works. I’d always be fascinated. Even Sesame Street had a segment where they would show you crayons and how the dye was added. You remember that?
Desiré Whitmore (08:19):
Yep. Yeah.
Eric Cross (08:20):
Young Desiré, doing photronics…photronics?
Desiré Whitmore (08:24):
Photonics.
Eric Cross (08:24):
Photonics. Photonics at home with the microwave and all these other things.
Desiré Whitmore (08:29):
Sure. How ’bout that.
Eric Cross (08:30):
<laugh> Right. And then loving math. So, early, I could see this combination, sort of this alchemy, happening inside you. And then, how did that lead to you becoming a physicist?
Desiré Whitmore (08:46):
It’s not as straightforward as it seems it should be. It’s obvious to everyone. <laugh>. But it wasn’t obvious to me. ‘Cause I wanted to be a lawyer. You know, because my parents weren’t educated, they didn’t really know…both of my parents and their subsequent spouses when they broke up—so my parents and my stepparents—are all bus drivers. And so they don’t know what options are. Right? So for them it’s like, “You have to be—you can be a doctor. You can be a lawyer. ‘Cause you’re smart. I know you’re smart, so you’re gonna be one of those things.” And I was like, “I don’t wanna be a doctor. That’s not actually interesting to me.” I did wanna be a teacher when I was younger, because I knew that my grandmother was one. But yeah, I went in and I was like, “I’m gonna be a lawyer. I’m gonna be a lawyer.” And then I go to college and I was like, ‘Eh, I don’t. I hate writing.” <Laugh> Like, I love reading, but I don’t writing. So I don’t think I wanna be a lawyer. I love music and I love math. I was originally going to major in music and math, but then I went to community college because I missed my opportunity to go to university for…long story. And so I’m at community college and I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna just do something new. I’m gonna be a marine biologist.” So my major was marine biology, and then they’re helping me pick out my classes. And they had zero math there. And I was like, “Pardon me. I think there’s a mistake, but I’m not taking any math.” And they were like, “No, you’re done with all your math. For marine biology, you only need calculus. And you took all of that in high school, so you’re done.” And I was like, “No, this is not gonna work for me, dude.” So I continued taking calculus anyway and moving on in math. And then I realized that biology wasn’t what I needed, but I did love my chemistry and I loved my physics classes. So I asked those teachers—chemistry, physics, and math teachers in community college, my professors—”I don’t wanna be a marine biologist and I don’t wanna be a lawyer. What do I do? What do you think I could study? I really like chemistry and math and physics.” And so all of them, all three of these professors told me, “Oh, it sounds chemical engineering would be good for you, so you should be a chemical engineer.” And I was like, “OK, cool. No problem.” That’s what I did. So I got my degree in chemical engineering. Right. And I finished community college, studying chemical engineering. I was like, “This is really cool. This is a lot of fun. I love engineering.” And then I transferred to UCLA as a chemical engineering major. And I was like, “I hate this.” <Laugh>. “I hate it a lot.” It was just…
Eric Cross (11:07):
What was it about chemical engineering that you were just not feeling anymore? What was it that just made you go, “nope”?
Desiré Whitmore (11:12):
It didn’t—at least the way it was taught to me—it wasn’t as as…exploratory, I guess. There wasn’t a lot of theory in it. There was just a lot of “OK, pull out a ruler and you’re gonna draw a thing and then this is how you’re gonna build a reactor.” And it didn’t seem very scientific to me. The science was missing. And don’t get me wrong, I understand, now that I have a degree in chemical engineering, that it’s not that chemical engineering is not scientific. But it’s that you build up the science and then you don’t focus on it. You focus on the engineering aspect of it. Which is, you have the science and the scientists will work on that aspect. But then how can WE do kind of larger batch chemistry. And for me, that was just less interesting. It was a lot of pushing buttons and just plug-and-play equations stuff. Instead of diving into first principles of why things happen in chemical engineering. There was no “why things happen”; it was “this is what happens, so this is the next step.”
Eric Cross (12:25):
You had to go so far into your academic career to realize that this is what chemical engineering is. And we were talking about representation, and not having examples or parents; your families were bus drivers. My mom was a receptionist and executive assistant, things like that. And I was the first of many, like you…we kind of had to go through and invest all this time and money to finally get to this place to realize, “This ain’t it.”
Desiré Whitmore (12:58):
This is not for me, yeah.
Eric Cross (12:59):
This is not for me. That was a long journey to get to that point.
Desiré Whitmore (13:03):
It was. Especially because I went through community college and I took a long time in community college, ’cause I was working full-time. So I was working full-time, going to community college. Took me a while. And then I finally get to UCLA. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m finally gonna get my degree and go make money!” And then I was like, “Ooh, no.” I mean, I could go and make money, don’t get me wrong. I could have graduated and made a ton of money. But I was not happy at all and I did not enjoy what I was doing. So, while I was in undergrad, I realized I don’t wanna do chemical engineering anymore. But what do I wanna do? But then I was taking…I took a quantum mechanics class. And that class blew my whole mind. And I was like, “This is the coolest thing that I’ve ever learned in my life, and this is what I wanna do.” And so I went and talked to my professor and I was like, “Can I work for you? Can I do research? Because this is amazing and I wanna do this.” I felt it was too late for me. I had been in school for so long and I was already kind of burnt out. So I was, “I’m not going to change my major. That’s just outta the question for me right now. It costs so much money for this degree and I don’t have—I’m not just gonna waste my time and keep working all these jobs.” So I had three jobs in college. And it was like, I worked at Radio Shack, I did research for this professor, and I worked in the library, the chemistry and physics library.
Eric Cross (14:28):
I love the fact that we’ve talked about laser discs; you said Radio Shack; and we talked about the analog internet of the encyclopedia salespeople. And I know all of those things. And I’ve been through all of those things together.
Desiré Whitmore (14:43):
Just in case people don’t know how old I am. <Laugh>
Eric Cross (14:47):
For our listeners who are way younger, yeah, this is how we grew up. This is how we—these things are extinct now. There’s this element of this kind of cultural connection. I think that we experience that. It kind of it flies under the radar. People don’t really realize it until you’re in an environment that’s different from what you’re used to. And you realize that, “Oh wow. this is not what I’m used to.” And the things that I’m finding funnier, the things that I connect with, it’s not what everybody else connects with. And as a teacher, it’s the same thing, right? Like, we go in the classroom and you know, you and I are rapping about laser discs and Radio Shack and I’m trying to talk to my kids about it. And they’re like, “Yo, Cross, what is that? Are you gonna give us a history lesson? What are these things?”
Desiré Whitmore (15:35):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (15:36):
And I found myself having to stay connected to pop culture, because I teach 12- and 13-year-olds all day. And it’s great for keeping things relevant for my students. But when I talk to my friends that are my peers, they’re like, unless they’re a teacher, they’re like, “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
Desiré Whitmore (15:55):
Yeah. I have a friend who’s also a middle-school teacher and she’s always coming to me with all this. I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She did the Glow-up Challenge, but she did the Glow-down Challenge. So she invented a new thing. She’s like, “No, I couldn’t do Glow Up ’cause that’s too much. So I did the Glow-Down Challenge.” And it’s the cutest thing ever. And the students think it’s amazing. And I’m like, “That’s awesome. But I have no idea what the point of that is.” <Laugh>
Eric Cross (16:21):
And there’s this theme, too, that when we talk about teaching kids STEM, there’s this soft part of it, this relational piece of it that you mentioned, of this connective aspect that in a certain way kind of even superseded the content knowledge that your teacher even had at that point, where you’re going up and teaching the class. But just the fact that someone looked like you or spoke like you or connected with you in a certain way made a big difference to who you are as…well, the trajectory of where you went.
Desiré Whitmore (16:57):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (16:57):
“I like chemistry. It resonates with me.” And it’s something I think can get lost. And I think just to kind of a good segue, I use Amplify my classroom, and one of the reasons why is because of the representation that is in these videos. And you were part of crafting this for…was it the fifth grade?
Desiré Whitmore (17:21):
I mean, it was K–8. So I was—
Eric Cross (17:23):
OK, so you were doing the whole thing.
Desiré Whitmore (17:24):
Yeah, I was a part of the K–8 science team. My title was science curriculum specialist. But in reality I was hired to do the engineering internships, mostly. Which are middle school. And to be a sim developer. So sims K–8. I worked on several of them in both middle school and elementary. Yeah.
Eric Cross (17:47):
What was that like for you? When you were designing curriculum? ‘Cause as a teacher, it’s, you know, I think with teachers it’s kind of…I would consider myself, if I was gonna use hip hop as a metaphor, I’m more of a DJ than an MC. Where I wanna remix things that exist, versus, I don’t wanna write the lyrics in freestyle. So I don’t want to go and write the curriculum completely; I wanna take something that’s solid and then I want to go ahead and remix it. You are great at both. What was the process for you, being on that team, designing? How did you go about making, “OK, we’re gonna create this experience for kids”?
Desiré Whitmore (18:25):
It was, it was amazing. I learned so much, so much. It was the best job I had before I came to the Exploratorium. The process was amazing, because it wasn’t just me, right? It wasn’t just me. It was a whole team. And each unit had its own team. So we had a scientist, which I was the scientist we had. So we had a scientist; we had a literacy specialist, because it was really important to increase science literacy so that students understand not just that science exists, but “What are the terms that are used in science and how can I speak and act a scientist? What are the things that scientists actually do in their real life?” Then we had an assessment specialist and then we had a simulation specialist. And so, on the units that I was on, sometimes I was both the sim developer and the scientist, or sometimes I was just the sim developer and I got to work alongside another scientist, which was always fun. And so it was really nice, because I was working alongside master teachers. People who had been teaching for years, and they were able to help me better understand. ‘Cause I’ll come in and I’ll be like, “Yeah, there’s a unit on light waves, let’s come in and teach this unit on light waves!” <laugh> I was the sim developer and scientist on that unit, and there was another scientist working on the unit, but they were like, “Well, Desiré literally builds lasers, so I think she should be the science developer.” So we kinda had two science developers on that one, which was fun. But I come in and she’ll come in and she’ll be like, “Yeah, I think this is where we wanna go and this is what we wanna teach.” I’m like, “No way! Like, that’s not accurate, right?” And so I can come in, but then I’m coming in with all this crazy lingo, right? I’m up here. But then also I have taught kids about lasers and optics and photonics my whole career. So I’m also very capable of bringing it down to where kids need it to be. What I don’t know is how effective that is, right? When to do it and when not to do it. When to bring the level up; when to bring the level down. And so working alongside these other teachers and assessors really helped me to do that. And so for me it was just two years of deep learning experience. I learned—every single day at work, I learned something new. Which is something that I value and I’ve wanted in my career, my whole life. We made active decisions in that room. Like, “We want to interview scientists who are scientists of color or who have different abilities or who have different representations in all kinds of ways.” Right? And then we also have these fake internships, or not even the internships, but just in the general units. And we actively wrote scripts for those. And we actively wrote in those scripts, like, “This is a Black woman. This is an Indian woman. This is a Jewish man in a wheelchair.” Like, we specifically dictated exactly who we wanted in these videos, because we knew that representation was super-important and we knew that we wanted students to be able to connect.
Eric Cross (21:35):
Right. One of the things, I appreciate what I’m hearing a lot in that is the amount of intentionality that went into this. But even now as you’re reliving it, you’re still almost iterating on how could we improve it or how can we make it different or reach more people. And I think that goes towards when we’re talking about including more people and inclusion. Like, it’s not a binary thing. You’re always modifying; you’re always iterating; you’re always redesigning and improving to be more inclusive, to reach more students. Because you know, to your point, part of it is, “Yes, we wanna do this really awesome science curriculum,” but the other part of it is there’s more to it than just your content. And I think now more than ever…I use—we just finished the food bar unit. Metabolism. And in there there’s a simulator. They always ask me when I show the videos, “Are these, are these real people? Are these real situations?” And I tell ’em, “Well, the story is real, but these are all fictional actors. But what’s actually happening happens. It’s real.” And they get really into it. And I think one of the other things is with your simulations—especially the engineering units—there’s no one right answer. And so my students who want to go, “Mr. Cross, I wanna make the best bar! Perfect 10, best taste, cheapest!” And I’m like, “All right, good luck!”
Desiré Whitmore (23:06):
Yeah. Go do that.
Eric Cross (23:09):
Casue there’s something called trade-offs! It could happen! And they’re like, they’re trying. They get into the code. They try to open up the Inspect Element, when they feel like hackers.
Desiré Whitmore (23:17):
Yeah, they do. But these kids like, they’re so smart and they’re so resourceful. And I’m just thinking like, maybe that’s how we challenge them more, right? Sometimes we can give them these kinds of things where it’s like, “Go and create a program, ’cause that’s the level you’re at <laugh>. Go and create this program to do something similar that’s related to the work that we’re doing.”
Eric Cross (23:38):
I’ve had some of my own students redesign—I have one student who redesigns every assessment I give him. I give the project; I give the options for the final goal; and he always chooses—if I give three options, he always chooses option four. If I choose two options, he’s choosing option three. And so he’ll go into Google Sheets, he’ll pull all the data and then he’ll construct his own kind of spreadsheet with all the probabilities of different things.
Desiré Whitmore (24:06):
You tell this kid to make a GitHub right now <laugh> so that he can get a job as soon as he’s done with high school. <laugh>.
Eric Cross (24:12):
He’s amazing. And we did this one project where students had to design a Netflix show to show their understanding of metabolism. And they had to do four episodes. So I gave him a template. It’s not from me; it’s from, I think, EdTechPicks.org or something. And it looks like the whole Netflix splash page. They took photos, did the whole deal. He created NOTflix. Everyone else did Google Slides. His Google Slides was interactive. So when you clicked on different boxes, it actually took you to the next splash page of that show. I mean, it was….
Desiré Whitmore (24:48):
That’s fantastic.
Eric Cross (24:49):
It was, it was. I recorded his presentation. It was brilliant.
Desiré Whitmore (24:53):
But that’s amazing. And that speaks to your strengths as a teacher and why you’re an amazing teacher. Because you see the students and what they’re trying to do and you work with them; you meet them where they are. Right? There are so many teachers who would just be frustrated with that student. And it’d be like, “No, these are not your options. Your option was to do what I told you to do.” And there are many teachers who would do that. And I think it’s really amazing when we can realize as teachers, “No, our job is not to just enforce rules on our students. I mean, that is part of the job, because that’s what school was when it was created. But our job is to help students to achieve more learning in what we’re trying to do. And so the fact that you are so good with this student and that you encourage him to go above and beyond when he can, I think it’s so amazing.
Eric Cross (25:49):
Well, that brings me to my favorite group, organization, and the phase of your career of where you are now: The Exploratorium. And I wanted to kind of rap, talking about what you do now. Because the Exploratorium—I tell people, they go, what is that place? And maybe you can tell us what it is and then what you do. But for me, I’ll just tell everybody: It’s Disneyland for science teachers. And I love going there. I not only love going there because of what I receive from it professionally. Many of the PDs, I don’t even call ’em PDs—just communal learning experiences, that I’ve had that have been led by you and Lori and, and Tammy and the rest, and everybody that’s there have been incredible. And I have so much fun. Emotionally, I get excited when I go. When I’m on the plane, I’m like, “Here we go!” And then we go and we’re making fudge or we’re blowing darts with marshmallows across the room in the theme of Boba Fett. There’s just these rad things that are going on there. And it’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced before. So maybe we can close with talking about what the Exploratorium is, what you do there, for people who’ve never been and have been a part of it.
Desiré Whitmore (27:19):
I’m gonna give you what my definition of the Exploratorium is.
Eric Cross (27:21):
That’s what we want.
Desiré Whitmore (27:22):
So, the actual definition is, we are a public learning laboratory. We are known as the Museum of Art, Science and Human Perception. Cool. But, like, what does that all mean? Right? And I think your description of the Disneyland for science teachers, I think that’s a perfect description. ‘Cause for me, I tell people like, “Oh, I wanna go to the happiest place on earth.” And for me, that is the Exploratorium. And yes, I work there, and yes, it’s still true for me. So the Exploratorium is this huge museum. It’s an interactive science museum. And art—we have a lot of art. And it’s all about learning through doing. It’s not about learning science by going up to an exhibit and reading the little paper next to it. It’s like, no, you go up to an exhibit and you interact with it and you teach yourself science. The goal of the Exploratorium is really to help people understand that learning science, doing science, isn’t reserved for only scientists. Doing science is something that everyone in the world should and does do. And so helping people understand that everything we do is science is kind of the point of the Exploratorium to me.
Eric Cross (28:35):
Even the building itself…one of the other cool things too is, for people that don’t know, it’s the size of Costco or two.
Desiré Whitmore (28:43):
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Cross (28:44):
It’s immense! And even the building itself teaches. Like, you have that whole workshop, dead-center in the middle of the floor where they’re designing things. It’s like inside-out. And then I remember going to the one experience where I think it was Eric who showed us that it’s one of the few facilities that is actually cooled by the Bay water. And there’s only a couple of those in the state that can do that. And it has a platinum rating, something wild that. So even just the building itself…everything that if they can extract every ounce of science teaching in that, it’s in there. And you are in a very important program for me. And can you talk a little bit about maybe what you’re doing in T.I.?
Desiré Whitmore (29:33):
So I am in the Teacher Institute. I’m a physicist in the Teacher Institute. And the Teacher Institute is a group of teachers and scientists. And our job is to basically support middle school and high school science teachers and teacher leaders in the state of California, but science teachers around the world, in their pursuit of science teaching. And by support, I mean we provide professional development. We provide other things, communities of practice, and we go and do workshops in certain places. We go to India to teach Tibetan monks and nuns science. And we go to Costa Rica to teach teachers all over the country of Costa Rica about science. And so our job is really, to help science teachers feel more secure in their science teaching and help to retain them in the field, because a good science teacher is so important in helping our students thrive. And so our job—and we take this very seriously—is to help science teachers thrive. And we are made up of PhD scientists and veteran classroom teachers. So we have on the one side teachers who have been teaching middle school or high school for years. One of my coworkers, Zeke, who I work with the most, he was a high school physics and environmental science teacher for 21 years before coming to the Exploratorium. And then me, I was never a classroom teacher. I was a professor; I was a physics professor at a community college, and I was a researcher. So my deep knowledge of physics and current knowledge of physics—or knowledge of current physics—combined with Zeke’s extremely experienced pedagogy is really how we work together as a team. And it’s not just Zeke, right? We’ve got a geologist on the team, Eric Muller. We’ve got Tammy, who’s a middle-school bio teacher. We’ve got, Julie Yu, who is a chemical engineer, PhD, and also a prior middle school teacher, former middle school teacher. We’ve got Hilleary Osheroff, who was a PhD biologist who used to work at the American Museum of Natural History. We’ve got Lori Lambertson, who was a middle-school math teacher. And so, you know, we all come together to bring our experiences both in and out of the classroom and in and out of the research lab to provide teachers with the best inquiry-driven stuff we can. And we’re very—we’re so equity-focused, because we believe that that’s important, right? We know that the impact of our work is, I think, why most of us are here. It’s why I’m here. In undergrad, my grad school, and my postdoc, I would go into classrooms. I would go into science museums and teach science to people. And I probably reached out to maybe…over that whole time, I would say a couple thousand people, right? Maybe a couple thousand people total. That’s great. But over 15 years of reaching out and only reaching a couple thousand people, that’s rough, right? And now I’m at the Exploratorium, and I know that if I reach one teacher, right? If I can teach one teacher…let’s say you. How many students do you have in your classes a year?
Eric Cross (33:11):
Two hundred a year.
Desiré Whitmore (33:12):
You have 200 students a year that you teach. So if you teach for 10 years, that’s 2000. That’s 2000 students. So I have, by teaching you today, assuming that I’m actually teaching you something that’s gonna be useful for you—
Eric Cross (33:29):
You do! And you are!
Desiré Whitmore (33:30):
You are going to be impacting these 2000 students over the next 10 years. And of course you’re gonna be in teaching for much longer than that. But let’s just say in 10 years, that payoff is so much higher, right? And you’re one teacher. But I have 30 of you in my workshop! And so if all of these 30 teachers each teach 2000 kids over the next 10 years, then I’m actually doing something. I’m actually changing the way that students see science, through changing the way that you see science. Right? And so I take my job very seriously, as we all do. Like, we’re so invested in our teachers. And it’s not that we don’t care about students, ’cause we absolutely do. But we understand that without good teachers, students aren’t going to be able to thrive, as often as they would otherwise. I was able to do it somehow. But I’m one. There are so many other kids who could have gone into science who didn’t because they felt they never connected to it. So our job is to try to help teachers connect to it. And an important part of that is allowing you all to experience science as a learner. We want you to play and have joyful experiences. We want you to enjoy science and to try to think about it from the perspective of your students. Walk in their shoes. So that when you then go back to your classroom, you are able to think about like, “Oh yeah, you know, my students totally asked the same question that I asked, or that another teacher asked in the workshop because they had the foresight to think about that’s what my students would ask.” Right?
Eric Cross (35:02):
Well, I think it’s really effective to create empathy for the learner. Because I find myself in that position. I don’t know if some kind of memory displacement field happens to me when I sit in those workshops, but Hillary will ask a question that I know the answer to and I’m like, “I don’t want to answer the question. I don’t—I might be wrong.” And I teach the subject! And I embody what it’s like to be a student. And when I leave, I might have to go back and reference exactly what the lesson was, but I remember how I felt when I didn’t know. And very rarely as teachers do we get put in positions like that. And so it helps me be in the position of my students emotionally, of what it’s like. Even even the intentionality of how do you ask questions and not showing an affect on your face when somebody says the right answer or the wrong answer.
Desiré Whitmore (35:55):
Well, I’m still learning that. I’m not great at it. Julie is the mast.
Eric Cross (35:59):
Julie’s got it nailed.
Desiré Whitmore (36:00):
I’m still trying to learn from her. She’s amazing. And I really would like to get there one day. But I’m still not there. I’ll be like, “Oh! Oh! Well, that’s…”. I have a terrible poker face. So I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, but you think that? Maybe…”. That’s a piece of it that’s really important, right? It’s this not giving away the answer, even when you have the right answer. Allowing people to ask the questions and explore and become invested in the problem, before giving away the answer. That’s something that I learn here at the Exploratorium. And like I said, I learn every day. And it’s something that I think is so important for us as teachers to learn and try to implement. Because oftentimes you’ll come and you’ll have students who are like, “I’m too stupid. I don’t know the answer.” And then somebody else will say the answer, and then the student is like, “Yeah, I was right. I’m too stupid.’” But it’s like no! But if you have that student actually think about it, then the student—once they do hear the right answer—they might be like, “Oh yeah, that would make sense.” Instead of “I’m stupid.” It’s like, no, this is, “I explored this and I figured it out on my own.”
Eric Cross (37:08):
Things keep coming back to how this experience and the process of them learning science even outweighs the content of it. ‘Cause the content is almost easier to share, it’s easier to get, you can look it up really quickly. But in your story and in many other people’s stories, the exposure, the experience, how they’re going through that process—I know that’s something that I’ve learned a lot in just watching. Not teaching science, but actually the science of teaching. Sitting in the workshops and watching how we’re treated as students, how you interact with us, and then being able to take that back to the classroom. And just to add onto the value that it’s created, I think one thing that it’s also done is given us community. And in addition to being able to impact students, it’s also been able to build resilience in teachers. Because we as teachers can feel very isolated. And especially now when things are incredibly difficult, and every teacher’s experiencing Covid and shutdowns and low staffing across the country in different ways, when you don’t feel you have community or people that you can connect with, it just makes everything feel exponentially harder. And you’ve done a great job at being able to build community with us in our community of practice. The Exploratorium has been able to do that. And it’s something that I’m super-grateful for probably more than anything else is that through these last two years, being able to connect really made me feel like, “OK, we’re gonna be able to do this.” And it’s not just about Cross or my other teacher in eighth grade or my sixth grade teacher who’s doing this. That message, I think, is really, really important. I wanna ask this: Was there a teacher or an experience that impacted you or inspired you throughout your educational career? You know, kindergarten all the way to college? Was there a moment or a person or anything that that really stuck with you, that you felt maybe influenced who you became? Met you where you were at? I know you mentioned your chemistry teacher at that point, but is there anyone else, or was it that person that was really the person who sticks out for you?
Desiré Whitmore (39:21):
There actually have been a few. Of course, the first is my great-grandmother, Claudia Pairs. But I think in the fourth and fifth grade I had the same teacher. She stayed with us going from fourth to fifth grade. And fourth grade was a new school for me. New town. I was the only Black child in the school, me and my sister. And my teacher recognized that I had no real help at home, I guess? And she really kind of…she saw that I was really smart. She would give me extra assignments when she could tell I was bored. It meant that someone outside of my house cared about me in a way that I didn’t feel cared about at home. Her name is Ms. Comet. Mrs. Comet.
Eric Cross (40:11):
Like…comet?
Desiré Whitmore (40:13):
Yeah. Mrs. Fran Comet. And I’ve tried looking her up as an adult and I can’t find her. But I work with so many teachers, and I know how hard teaching is and how degrading it can be…or demoralizing, I guess, to not be appreciated. And so I know what it feels to me when a student has reached out and shown me like, “Hey, I’m now in dental school,” or “I’m now getting a PhD in science,” and I’m just like….
Eric Cross (40:40):
I got a message this morning on Instagram from a student. And none of my students use their real names in their Instagram handles. So I got a message from Moonshine. <Laugh> And I was a seventh grade teacher. And through deduction, deductive reasoning, I figured out who it was. This person’s now in college and they responded in that…you know, you get one of those every once in a while. And I feel it just fills your tank. It’s just so important that we—it’s funny because, kind of to your point, we don’t realize who or how we’re making impacts on people. And in what ways. We just know that we are. And I tell other teachers, I said, “You have one of the few professions where you fall asleep worrying about other people’s kids.” And it’s the words that we speak, the things that we do, people are always watching. I know, no pressure, right!? Hopefully, someone listening can find Ms. Comet.
Desiré Whitmore (41:37):
Ms. Comet. Teacher at Buena Vista Elementary School back in the ’80s. But your talk about this impact, it reminds me of the thing I wanted to say, but I didn’t. But I’m gonna tell you right now. I mentioned how science was not a priority when I went to school, in my hometown. That’s Lancaster, California. But recently I got a phone call from a family friend and she was so excited. And she called me to tell me that her daughter was super-excited when she picked her up from school. Because I was in her classroom. She said, “Auntie Desiré was in my class today! And she works on lasers! And she does spectroscopy! And I wanna learn about spectroscopy now. So can we call Auntie Desiré?” And I was like, “Wait, what?” My friend was kind of confused. She’s like, “Desiré didn’t tell me she was in town.” She had no idea why her daughter was saying I was in her classroom, ’cause I was not physically there. And then I had to put the pieces together and I was like, “Oh my God, your daughter’s in eighth grade already.” It made me feel really old, ’cause I know this girl from a little baby. But I was like, “Oh my God, that’s the eighth grade unit on light waves for Amplify that I wrote, and I’m featured as the scientist.” Because we have real scientists in the units. And they featured me in that one, in my laser lab. And so this little girl who knows me really well, who lives in my hometown, is seeing representation in science. She doesn’t necessarily know I’m a scientist. She knows that—I don’t know what she knows about me. She just knows I’m Auntie Desiré and, you know, I like gumbo at Christmas. That’s what she knows about me. <Laugh>. And so she comes back and she’s so excited ’cause now she knows so much more about me. And she knows that if I can do it and I came from where she’s at, she can do it too. And she was super-excited. And I was just…it brought me to tears. I was just crying in the car. I was driving <laugh> at the time and I was like, “This is amazing. Work that I did is teaching you and all of your friends in this tiny little town that you live in. And that to me is so important because now this little girl knows that, like, she knows me as just a normal human right. Who likes Star Trek and Star Wars and The Owl House. And now she’s over here like, “Oh my gosh, this normal human wrote the science curriculum that I’m learning from.” Which I think is just so fantastic. And it really brought home for me kind of the importance of my work and why I’m doing what I’m doing. And that’s pretty awesome. And I get messages from Instagram, you know, from teachers who are like, “Hey, did you work on this? ‘Cause you were featured in the video, but did you write this light waves unit?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And they’ll tell me, “I have students, this is their favorite unit. I’ve gotten notes from students saying, ‘This was my favorite unit in all of middle school.’” And I’m like, “Ohhhhhh!”<Laugh>
Eric Cross (44:33):
That story just gives me chills. Because I just can imagine how surreal that must feel. And you’re directly making that impact on those kids. And I’m glad that you shared that story so that everyone can hear it, because it’s a powerful story and I lived—I feel I was living it through you, just now, as you were discussing it.
Desiré Whitmore (44:54):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (44:54):
And I feel that way in the classroom to a small degree, because I get to have—when my students create posters of scientists that we don’t typically see, I’ve got you on my list of scientists, and I’m they’re like…And I’m like, “I can call her!” Like, “Mr. Cross, you KNOW her?!” I’m like, “Yeah, she’s a friend of mine! I was talking to her the other day!” And they’re like, “Whoa. She works with lasers?!”
Desiré Whitmore (45:17):
<Whispers> I do.
Eric Cross (45:18):
Desiré. I’ve held you for so long and—
Desiré Whitmore (45:23):
Yes, I’m sorry! I told you, I talk so much! I’m a teacher!
Eric Cross (45:26):
No! No, no, no, no. It was great! I wanna honor your time. Can you tell everybody where they can find out more about you again?
Desiré Whitmore (45:33):
So first off, you can find me on Twitter at Darth Science, D A R T H S C I E N C E, and you can also find me at Instagram at Dr. Laser Chick: D R dot laser chick. Even though I don’t post on Instagram that much. I also have a website, which is laser chick dot net. I’m still working on it. It’s not the best website yet. But, you know, it’ll, it’ll be better in the future.
Eric Cross (46:02):
Would you be willing to come back later on in the year and do a part two?
Desiré Whitmore (46:07):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. So I can actually finish telling you the story of how I got into physics! ‘Cause I totally didn’t. ‘Cause I’m all over the place.
Eric Cross (46:15):
So, everybody, cliffhanger! Next time she comes back, she’ll continue to tell us the story. Desiré, thank you so much.
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Meet the guest
A Southern California native, Desiré earned an associate of science from Antelope Valley College, a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from UCLA, and a master of science and Ph.D. in chemical and material physics from UC Irvine. Her research focused on developing very fast laser and microscope systems that could capture molecules vibrating and rotating in real time. She was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, where she designed and built attosecond lasers (the fastest laser pulses, which emit x-ray light, ever measured). At the Lawrence Hall of Science she wrote an all-digital K–8 science curriculum (Amplify Science), which aligned to the NGSS, with the Learning Design Group (LDG). Desiré left LDG to teach hands-on laser technology and physics courses at Irvine Valley College before joining the TI staff. She is the proud mom of Stella, a four-year-old boxer-pit mix. In her spare time, Desiré is restoring her 1967 VW bug.
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!
S1-04: Connecting with students and caregivers in the science classroom: Ryan Rudkin
In this special episode, our host Eric Cross sits down with veteran middle school teacher Ryan Rudkin. Ryan shares her expertise after almost two decades in the classroom, discussing ways to incorporate aspects of problem-based learning into the K–8 science classroom. Eric and Ryan talk about how to increase parent engagement, involve community members, and add excitement to lessons.
Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (00:00):
I know there’s other goals in mind, you know, standards and test scores. But at the end of the day, I wanna come back and I want them to come back.
Eric Cross (00:35):
My name’s Eric Cross, host of our science podcast, and I am with Ryan Rudkin, middle-school teacher out here in California just to the north up near Sacramento? El Dorado Hills?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (00:46):
Yeah. 20 miles east of Sacramento.
Eric Cross (00:49):
Nice. And I am down here in San Diego. And so Ryan, to start off, what I wanna do is ask you about your origin story, like a superhero. So how did you become a middle-school science teacher to become part of this elite profession of science folks that get to do awesome things with kids?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (01:08):
I would agree with you that it is definitely an elite profession. I got my credential and I thought I was gonna teach third or fourth grade elementary school. And the second day I got called for a sub job for middle school. And I just thought, “We’ll take it,” you know? And by second period, I knew: This is where I belong. The kids, middle school, students are just a species of their own. And you have to appreciate them. And if you do appreciate them, then you’re in the right spot. And I quickly looked at my coursework and I was able to get authorizations in science, history, and English, and I love science. So I chose science. And the rest is history. It’s been a wild ride and I wouldn’t have changed or asked for anything different. I love it.
Eric Cross (02:02):
I definitely agree with you. So, your history—you’ve been in various middle-school classrooms. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What classrooms have you been in? What disciplines of science have you taught or are currently teaching?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (02:14):
I was hired for seventh grade life science, and then I did that for a few years and then I got moved into eighth physical science, and I was there for 12 years. Love eighth grade science. I love eighth graders. Chemistry and physics are my favorite. There’s just so much opportunity for just awesome labs, great conversations, student discourse, all of that. And then the past three years I’ve been in sixth grade and now we’re integrated. So,a sixth grade integrated science and I also teach social studies and a technology design class.
Eric Cross (02:52):
Oh, nice. What do you do in your technology design class? That sounds cool.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (02:56):
Right now it’s mostly internet media and we use WeVideo, it’s an editing-video program, and we produce and put on our school weekly news bulletin. And then we weave in other projects. We do some interdisciplinary projects. Right now my students are working on a mythology God, Goddess, and Monster project that relates to our social studies curriculum. And we’re learning about Greece. So yeah, we just try to give them added projects and they’re using the WeVideo platform. By sixth grade, they’re coming to us now with wonderful skills with all the tech. I mean, if I need help, I ask them like, “How do you do something on Google Docs?” Or, “How do you do something on Drive?” The kids are definitely tech-savvy.
Eric Cross (03:49):
They must love being the teacher in the classroom. They get to—it kind of switches power roles, where they get to teach the teacher something.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (03:56):
Yes. And especially WeVideo, sometimes we’ve had some hiccups, and the kids show everybody, and that’s part of the design class. They’re trying to solve—we’re teaching them how to solve their own problems. So if there’s any kind of issue with anything with the technology, honestly, I usually tell them, “Go ask a friend,” or we kind of shout out, “Hey, who knows how to troubleshoot this?” And the kids are eager to help each other, which is nice.
Eric Cross (04:21):
And they have this authentic experience where they’re actually doing real problem-solving, as opposed to something that we manufactured. Like, those are real things that we have to deal with in life. And that’s exactly like how we solve it, right? We just go ask people! We look it up, and the ahas are genuine too. Throughout!
Ryan Renee Rudkin (04:36):
Yes, especially thinking on the fly. Especially yesterday, I was in the middle of teaching and my laptop froze, and it’s like, “OK, everybodytake a couple minutes, you know, work on this, this, or that while I switch out laptops!” And so I’m modeling, too, how to solve my own problems. And I think it teaches the kids how to do that too.
Eric Cross (04:59):
I’ve always thought it was interesting that when teachers get to teach in real time, how do we handle stress and frustration when it’s really happening? And I think the tech—at times, failure is the real one where you feel this chill or this sweat that kind of comes over you and you’re trying to present or cast or the video won’t play and things like that. I think I’ve done enough times in my years of teaching where now my students know what to do, or they want to come up and help, and we’re good with it. But I remember in the beginning when those things would kind of glitch or go wrong or the wifi goes down, and you’re like, OK, what do we need now?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (05:33):
I think it’s honestly, after the fact, when I think in the moment, I’m not thinking of feeling stressed, but just afterwards, then I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this has just been a wild day.” But yeah, you just have to kind of go with it. And that’s just the beast of middle school. I just added to the list of why we love it.
Eric Cross (05:53):
You said something about interdisciplinary work, and I wanna kind of ask about that. Because it sounds like you’ve had your hand in several different areas of science and grade levels. Working, doing design courses, working with tech. Are there certain lessons that are your favorites to teach? The ones that you really enjoy, or that no matter what, you’re like, “We need to do this; this is such a rich experience for students”?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (06:17):
Yeah. I definitely try to do lessons or activities along the way. I like to do projects at the end of my units. When I taught physics, we did a project and it was mainly an assessment tool called the Wheeling and Dealing. The kids, they would all get a different car. And then they to sell their car. And so they had to pretend to be a car salesman, and they did that with their knowledge of the physics unit. So everything we did on forces and speed and motion. So I like doing culminating projects like that. And you’re kind of tricking them into assessing them.
Eric Cross (06:57):
When I think about your car salesman project, I’m thinking of a bunch of students, but they’re like on Shark Tank, but they’re just littler versions. And they’re doing these sales pitches, but they’re speaking in scientific terms as they’re trying to do it. Do you record these or do they just exist in the classroom?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (07:12):
No…And that was a long time ago, when I taught eighth grade. I wish I had; I wish I had recorded. That was definitely—it was fun, ’cause the kids, they would get their little piece of paper and they—some of ’em didn’t know what car it was. And so they’re like “A Boo… A Boo-gatti? What’s a Boo-gatti?” And then someone from across the room would be like, “Ooh, I want it! Here, I’ll trade you my Ford Focus!” And <laugh> so they would kind of wheel-and-deal which car they would…and then once they got their choice, then they would do the project.
Eric Cross (07:44):
So they’re really embodying this persona of a car salesman. The wheeling and doing back-and-forth and trying to trade a Bugatti for a Ford Focus. <Laugh>
Ryan Renee Rudkin (07:53):
I know. <Laugh> I like to make my class, my learning environment, enjoyable. You know, I gotta be there; they gotta be there. So I know there’s other goals in mind—you know, standards and test scores—but at the end of the day, I wanna come back, and I want them to come back. And I just have that as a priority.
Eric Cross (08:18):
Well, based on the projects that you’re doing and the way that you approach education with students, I can see why middle-school students would want to come back, even if they had the option not to. Just because of the cool things that you’re doing. Now we’re on this—hopefully, fingers crossed—tail end of COVID in the classroom and schools, and I know it’s impacted all of us differently. Has student engagement changed since COVID and if so, how, and what have you done in these last two years to maybe adjust your approach, to continue that engagement and that richness that you provide for your kids?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (08:57):
I definitely—I think for me, I recognize that when the students are in my classroom, I want them to, I dunno, for lack of a better word, just escape the noise at home. And I know we’ve always had students that are going through divorce situations or their dog died, other things, but I think with COVID, it’s definitely been compounded. And just creating a safe place for the kids to want to be and…it’s hard. We’ve had a lot of students that have been out, absent, for various reasons and on quarantine. And they’re struggling with doing work from home, ’cause their parents are stressed and their parents are dealing with their work issues. And so I think just having grace for the kids and just keeping…I don’t know, I guess like I said, I’ve always had student engagement as top of my list.
Eric Cross (10:06):
It sounds like—the things I hear you say really have to do with who these students are as people.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (10:12):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (10:13):
And then as a second, who they are as students. How do relationships fit into your engagement? ‘Cause I’m hearing this connection that you seem to be making with kids as you’re talking about things that are beyond academics: their home life, how they’re impacted.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (10:28):
Yes.
Eric Cross (10:28):
Is there anything that you do to build these relationships, or to connect with your students, to make them feel wanted or feel connected to the classroom or to you?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (10:37):
Yeah, I do. I do a few things to build those connections. And again, this timeframe in their life is so out of their control, their peer relationships, relationships with their parents. And when they’re in my classroom, I want them to feel loved and appreciated. Something I do it’s called Phone Fridays. And in one of the social media groups, someone posted about it, and I’ve been doing it for over a year now, actually. So on Fridays I call parents and give good news. And so I’ll pick maybe one or two students. And it could be academic reasons. It could be behavior, I’ve seen a slight improvement of behavior. Maybe a role model in the classroom. And my goal is to get everybody every trimester. So everybody gets a phone call by the end of the trimester. And it’s funny ’cause sometimes the parents are a little like “Uh-oh”! When they pick up, they see the caller ID, and their school’s calling. ‘Cause Some kids don’t get good calls. So it’s a really—I would say every single parent that I’ve called, I usually get a follow-up email, either to me or my admin, just saying it’s such a cool idea I do this; thank you so much. And yeah, I just call and give good news and just put ’em on the spot. And usually the kids are a little embarrassed, but you can tell, even though they’re kind of—I think they’re faking it, that they’re embarrassed! ‘Cause You know that they got the Phone Friday, and everybody’s like, “Who’s gonna get the phone Friday?!” And so it’s a very big deal in my class.
Eric Cross (12:07):
What a great way to—I mean, it seems like that hits on so many levels. You’re making these positive calls home. You’re praising publicly, which a lot of times can happen where students can get criticized or redirected publicly and then praised privately, which is a lot of times the reverse what we should be doing. But here you are praising them publicly. And then you’re not only building a relationship with yourself, but you’re also connecting them with their parent or whoever is caring for them, because now when they go home, there’s this, “Hey, your teacher called; you’re doing awesome!” So it’s this kind of triangle that’s forming there. I think that’s super-cool and a great thing for teachers to do.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (12:45):
It takes, you know, the last five minutes of my class. I do it every class. And then I have a system. Like I said, I keep track of all the kids. That way, by the end of the trimester I’ve gotten everybody. Sometimes I let the students, whoever I call first, then I let them pick a peer and I tell them, “OK, we have to have a solid reason. Why are we calling?” And a couple times they’ll have a student, like one of my energized ones, they’ll raise their hand. “How About me? How about me?” And I and the kids kind of laugh a little and I said, “Well, how about this? Let’s make a goal. How about next week we’re gonna make a goal and we’re gonna have a reason to call home.” So just working on the kids that need a little push in the right direction. That’s other reasoning to it. But yeah, it’s fun. I love it.
Eric Cross (13:33):
And you have the community. You have this goal setting. We were talking a little earlier about this transition—so you’re becoming this…your school’s going through the IB process, is that right?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (13:44):
Yes.
Eric Cross (13:44):
And we were talking about the ATL skills and one of them is goal-setting management. You already kind of organically do this in your classroom, which is really neat. I know being an IB teacher, a lot of times I find the things that I’ve already been doing and find, “Oh, this is actually an approach to learning!” or “This is something that has a title!” I just thought it was just being helpful! Ah…So the kids are connected. You have this process where you’re calling parents; it’s working; students are involved, so it’s building this community. Now you’re engaging students. Do you have any favorite student engagement tools that you use in your classroom or when you’re teaching that you feel like you get a lot of bang for your buck? There’s so many things out there these days. And so many approaches, tools, web apps. Do you have any favorites that you use?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (14:40):
No. Nothing comes up top of my mind right now. Mostly just projects, like I said. And being excited. I think having my students see me excited about something…and I’m honest when we’re doing something that’s not quite my favorite, then I’m honest about that too. But just having my—like, we just started thermal energy this week and I told my students, I said, “OK guys, I’m gonna weave in some chemistry in there. I’m gonna weave in some particle motion,” and they’re like, “Oh! That’s when you taught eighth grade, huh!” Cause I talk a lot about when I taught eighth grade before. I don’t know, just showing my own enthusiasm, I think, is a good payoff to me. That’s a bang for your buck. Other things…I try to give ’em cool videos and Mark Grober, he’s definitely a favorite of mine I like to show my students. I like to bring in guest speakers from our community. When I taught eighth grade for physics, I always brought in a local CHP officer and they would bring in the radar and lidar guns and the kids would mark off the parking lot and they would calculate their speed. And then they would verify it with the radar gun. Two years ago when I taught math, I brought in a local landscaper company, a father-and-son outfit, and they showed the kids how they would do bids on jobs. And so, relate it to our chapter on volume and area. So just making that connection with real life. Plus it’s just a nice opportunity, too, for the community to come in. With our design class, put on our newscast. And then one of our units in our sixth grade curriculum is weather. And so I brought in a local weatheruh, chief meteorologist. And he actually talked to the students about his job as a meteorologist and then also being on the news and putting on a newscast. So we got him on our green screen and did a little like Mark Finan, you know, little cameo on our newscast for the week for school. So that was kind of cool.
Eric Cross (16:45):
They must have been excited.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (16:47):
Yeah. They’re pretty starstruck by him. So that was pretty fun.
Eric Cross (16:51):
This person was on their local news? So they would know him?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (16:56):
Yeah, he’s on Channel 3 out of Sacramento. Yeah. KCRA Channel 3, Mark Finan.
Eric Cross (17:00):
So all these guest speakers that you have…how do you reach out to these people? And you sound like you get a lot of success. Do you ever get nos? Like if I’m sitting here listening and that inspires me, but you’re getting celebrities and you see a few people…like, how do you reach out to them? And does everybody say yes? How does it go?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (17:21):
Well, usually at my back-to-school night, I always ask the parents if they have a career or hobby that could lend itself to the curriculum. And so sometimes I’ll hear about—students will talk about, like, “My mom’s a doctor.” And so I’ll reach out to parents and just say, “Hey, you know, your kiddo said, you’re a doctor. May I ask what type?” And most of the time the nos that I’ve received are just because of schedule conflicts. You just have to get creative! Look in your community and see what you have. People want to come and talk to kids. I’ve had some presentations that the person is so intelligent and amazing, but they just, weren’t very kid-friendly. I mean, that happens. Butsomeone knows someone. And just ask! I mean, it doesn’t hurt to ask to have ’em come out, come hang out for the day, with my students. Andone time I had a nurse practitioner she was in the cardiac unit. And so she brought in hearts and led a heart dissection with my students. And we did a station set-up. I’ve had elaborate ones like that, or just a mom come in to tell my students about her job as a nutritionist and relate it to our unit on metabolism. And so just did like a little 15-minute Q&A with the kids on nutrition. And I would just say, look at your community and/or post on social media. I always do that. Post in your school’s PTA groups. So the parents know someone, that’s for sure. Or someone’s retired. One time I had—I think he was a grandfather of one of the kids—he was into rocks. And he had a bunch of meteorites <laugh> and brought in his meteorites.
Eric Cross (19:15):
Bring in your rocks!
Ryan Renee Rudkin (19:15):
I know! Right? And he <laugh> just brought in his meteorite collection! I was like, sure, come on in!
Eric Cross (19:23):
That’s one of the things I love about being a middle-school teacher is that my students have such varied interests and I’ll get the Rock Kid every once in a while and he’ll come in and he’ll have all these rocks and crystals. And a lot of times there’s a grandfather that’s responsible for this inherited geologic treasure that they have.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (19:45):
Yeah, something like that—I mean rocks are not my favorites, but I don’t really tell the kids that. I was like, “Sure, yeah, come on in! We can have a whole-day lesson on rocks!”
Eric Cross (19:55):
<Weakly> “This is great!”
Ryan Renee Rudkin (19:58):
Just utilizing your resources. That’s all it’s about.
Eric Cross (20:02):
Well, I think the back-to-school night was really helpful. That’s something that’s super doable. You have a bunch of parents and you just simply ask, “Who do you know? What do you do?” And then just collecting that and then just asking people to come in. I’ve I’ve been reluctant to do it more often than I’ve wanted to, because I haven’t figured out—and maybe you can help me with this—I have three class periods a day plus other class periods that are not necessarily science. And I don’t want to dominate a person’s schedule. Do they tend to be willing to stay all day? Or do you do, one class gets it, and you record it? Like, how do you balance out the speakers with your school schedule?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (20:39):
Mostly they’ll they’ll just come for the whole day. When I taught eighth grade, I had five classes, so that was easy. That was an all-day thing. And then usually I’ll offer to call lunch, have lunch delivered, or snacks during the day. I mean—
Eric Cross (20:53):
Feeding them is key.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (20:54):
Yeah. Just something kind of nice. Donuts in the morning. I mean, you’d be very surprised. Most people that are in the field or retired, like I said, they’re more than willing to come. And even if they have to wait an hour, while you teach another class that doesn’t pertain to it, then they’ll either leave or come back or just hang out in the back and pretend to be a student during that history class that you have.
Eric Cross (21:20):
It’s my own limiting belief where I feel guilty. I don’t think about it. I need to think about it through the perspective that you do, that these people WANT to talk. I just assume everybody’s so busy. But I do know, the times I’ve had speakers come out, at the end of the day, they’re so energized or they’re so happy or they’re so grateful. ‘Cause They’re like, “This is what it’s like to teach every day?” I’m like, “Yeah, this is what it’s like.”
Ryan Renee Rudkin (21:42):
I think too, a lot of parents…usually being being in the stops at elementary. A Lot of parents don’t get the opportunity to come help out in the classroom, because the middle school kids, you know, it’s not very cool or it’s just not needed like in the elementary classes. So a lot of times, like I said, you’d be surprised. A lot of the parents they’re more than happy to come and hang out. And again, some students, they don’t want their mom or dad to be there, but then I talk it up. I’m like, “Everyone’s gonna be so like impressed that your dad’s a doctor,” or “your mom’s a doctor” or —so then I kind of like downplay it. Like, “Oh, whatever, you’re you’re faking it. It’ll be fine. Don’t be embarrassed.” Leading up to their parent coming into the classroom.
Eric Cross (22:36):
Right. Kind of redirect that energy toward something positive. With guest speakers, projects, pacing, all these awesome things that you have going on, how do you find balance as a teacher, as a person? And what encouragement would you give to new or aspiring teachers? We work in a profession that will take as much as you give it. And you fall asleep at night worrying about other people’s kids and we love it. And teachers by personality can just give and give and give and give. But in order for us to last—I’m thinking about those new teachers who are going into it, who are gonna go in and be there before the sun gets up and stay after the sun gets down. How do you maintain balance, taking care of yourself? You’ve been in education for—how long have you been teaching for?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (23:29):
Sixteen. This is my 16th year.
Eric Cross (23:31):
Enough to be that veteran. So how do you find balance? And then, what encouragement would you give to new or aspiring teachers?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (23:39):
I would say each year, pick one or two things to add on. You can’t add on 10 things, even though you’re gonna find 10 things that are awesome. But just make a little list, put ’em in a file, and every year, just get good at what you do and then just add on one or two things. And reflect on what’s not going well that you can get rid of to make room to add something else. Try to be patient with yourself. And don’t reinvent the wheel. There’s so many things out there that you can borrow and make it your own. Again, I think that’s a time-saver, just leaning on your colleagues. And take lots of notes, because then when you do it again next year, you can refresh yourself and, “Oh yeah, this lesson, wasn’t the best…” What can you add in to make it a little bit better? And yeah, I would say just take on one or two things each year. And then by the time you get to, you know, being a veteran, you can do all these awesome things and it’ll feel natural ’cause you’ve been practicing and just adding in one thing at a time. I coached Science Olympiad a bunch of years ago, and Science Olympiad is so rewarding. It’s just so amazing.
Eric Cross (24:59):
What is Science Olympiad, for the people who’ve never heard of it?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (25:03):
Oh, Science Olympiad is so awesome. Google it. I think it’s just ScienceOlympiad.org. It’s 23 different events across all disciplines of science, different topics. And then you have a team of 15 students. And so your 15 students have to cover the 23 events. So for example, if the student’s on the anatomy team, usually there’s a team of two kids they’re gonna study and learn. They provide all the rules and the guidelines. So the students learn and study whatever the parameters are for that year. And then they take a test. And then they compete against other schools. And there’s build events, the engineering events, they can build things like trebuchets matchbox cars or mousetrap cars. Oh gosh, there’s all kinds of things. There’s like a Rube Goldberg device. It changes every year. And it’s so rewarding to see the kids; they pick their area of science that they love. And sometimes you have to put them on an event that they don’t know, and then they end up loving it. It’s so rewarding as a teacher to see these kids that are just on fire and you know that one day they’re gonna go off and do amazing things. They just commit. They commit to their event. And then they blow it outta the water and they win medals and just the recognition…it’s super, it’s just an amazing program.
Eric Cross (26:42):
One of the competitions that’s really low-tech that I’ve taken into my classroom is Write It, Do It. Have you done that one before?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (26:50):
Oh, yes. Yeah. That’s one. Yep.
Eric Cross (26:52):
It’s such a low-tech, simple one to do, but it teaches such great skills. And for those people who haven’t heard of the Write It, Do It project, you create kinda some abstract art out of random crafts. That’s very difficult to describe. You have pipe cleaners and foam and balls and you know, all these different things. And you make it. And then one person on the team is the writer, and they look at it and they write the procedures, and then their teammate, who’s in a different room and doesn’t get to see it, gets all the materials to build it and the procedures, and they have to rebuild it as closely as possible to the actual original. Even though they don’t get to see the original. So they have to rely on their partner’s ability to write procedures step-by-step. And it was fun to watch my students become teammates in that. And they learned how to communicate in a really fun competition. So I expanded it to do it with all of my students as an activity, just to teach them how write descriptively, to write procedurally, to be technical writers. And it’s, it’s fun! It’s fun to see what they build based on what the students say. <Laugh> And it’s also fun to watch them interact with each other, which for seventh graders, usually it’s conflict. <Laugh> But, like, playful conflict. <Laugh> It’s pretty funny to see what they build.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (28:11):
They’re like, “Man, what are you talking about? That doesn’t mean this; it means this!”
Eric Cross (28:16):
<Laugh> I know part of me feels guilty, but not enough to stop the project. ‘Cause I know for some of ’em, it’s gonna be a really trial by fire being able to practice their skills with writing procedures.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (28:27):
But they’re learning among themselves how to provide more details and to be more thorough with their writing and and their thoughts, put their thoughts onto paper. So yeah, that’s a funny event. Definitely.
Eric Cross (28:41):
Earlier you had mentioned something about connecting your kids with kids and students outside of your classroom. What is it that you do with that? Because I thought that was a really cool project. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (28:57):
Yes, I’ve done—they haven’t had it in a few years, but there’s something called the Pringles Challenge. And if you Google that, I’m sure it’s on the Internet still. So you sign your class up, or your classes, and you get partnered with another school somewhere in the U.S., someplace else. And you decide individually teams, whatever they build. And they make a package to ship a single Pringle chip through the mail. And then you actually mail a Pringle chip through the mail. And then your partner team or partner school, they send their chips to you and then you open everything and then you can take pictures and video. And then there was a whole scoring process where you would score when you receive the chips. And then you input all the data on the website so you can see like how your—and most schools would trade pictures, so that the kids found out how their chip survived. March Mammal Madness is so much fun. Again, Google that.
Eric Cross (30:01):
Did you say March Mammal Madness?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (30:02):
Yes.
Eric Cross (30:03):
Like March Madness, with mammals?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (30:05):
Yes.
Eric Cross (30:05):
- What is this?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (30:06):
It starts up in March. And you can sign your students up. And that one—it’s not too interactive with other schools, but this is opportunity to get the kids interacting within your site or within your district. Or if you have teacher friends at other schools. There’s like 60…I think it’s 64 animals? And they have this massive bracket that they post. And then you can have the students, I did it—it would be very time-consuming to have the kids individually research each animal. So I just gave one animal per student and so as a class we researched all the animals and then, I think it’s every three days or so, they have these bouts. And it’s all posted on YouTube. Google it. It’s kind of fun.
Eric Cross (30:56):
I’ve already got the website up, ready to go! Folks, everybody who needs to Google this: <articulates carefully> March Mammal Madness. And is it Arizona State University? Is that the main site, ASU?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (31:04):
Yes.
Eric Cross (31:04):
So people, listen to this. Check it out. March Mammal Madness. Look, I’m doing this! I’m already,—you’ve already sold me on this.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (31:14):
It is so much fun, oh my gosh. And then, then the kids—each round, they pick their pick, just like basketball. They do their picks and then you wait for the video. And they do it live on—I think it’s live on Instagram, or the next day on YouTube. And then the kids get all excited. And then usually the kids, whatever animal they got as their research animal, they’re rooting for that one to win, the whole thing.
Eric Cross (31:42):
But we still have time; we still have time to—
Ryan Renee Rudkin (31:45):
You can jump in anytime. Even if it’s already started, you can jump into it. It usually lasts—I believe it’s a two-week from beginning to end. When they do the first round, the wild card, and then all the way to the winner, I believe it’s a two-week process. Oh, maybe three, actually.
Eric Cross (31:59):
I’m already seeing this lead-up to the video being watched in class to see…I’m already thinking about like, “How do I prevent my students from finding the video?” Or like, “When does it go live so that I could be the one to show them so they didn’t go find it early?”
Ryan Renee Rudkin (32:13):
It takes time out of the class, but I believe it’s one of those things where you have to just…it takes 10 minutes out of the class, but it’s important. So when they each round and then the next day, they release the YouTube video. Last year, when it got down to the final round, we were on spring break. And so I told my students, “You guys, let’s do some optional Zooms. And so I had a bunch of kids log on and we all watched the videos together. So that was kind of fun. And then this year, the other thing, the first time I’ve ever done this and it’s going really well is—on social media, I was talking with one of the teachers from Ohio who teaches science and she and I decided we’re gonna do penpals for our students this year. Paper-And-Pen penpals. So that’s been a lot of fun. We just partnered up all the students, her students and my students, and once a month we send and receive the letters to each other. So that’s been a really cool experience.
Eric Cross (33:14):
If you keep doing that, and you need more teachers to be involved, can my students be penpals with your students?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (33:20):
Yeah!
Eric Cross (33:20):
If you open it up to more people? I think that, to get a letter, old-school? Letter in the mail? It would be so exciting.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (33:28):
It is. We mail them, the teacher and I, we just put them all together in one package. But yeah, it’s an actual handwritten letter.
Eric Cross (33:37):
The only letters I feel like I get in the mail now are bills.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (33:42):
Right? Exactly.
Eric Cross (33:42):
But I feel like the digital version of that is if someone calls me, it’s probably bad news. I don’t know if I’m the only one that’s like that, but I’m like, “Who’s calling me? Why aren’t you texting me? What’s going on? Text me first, then call! I need to know who’s going on, and if you’re unknown, you’re going to voicemail.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (34:00):
Exactly. The penpals has been a lot of fun.
Eric Cross (34:03):
You’ve been in education for a while. You’re on the other side of what it’s like to be a student in the classroom. Which can be surreal in itself, when we think about our own experiences as being a student. Is there a teacher or a learning experience that’s had an impact on you while you were a student in school that really stands out to you? And you can interpret the question however you want. But is there someone that’s memorable or an experience that’s memorable that you still carry with you today?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (34:32):
Definitely. My favorite teacher, and we actually still keep in contact on social media is Mrs. Sheldon. She was my fifth and sixth grade teacher. I had the pleasure when I was in elementary school, I was in an all-day contained GATE class—Gifted and Talented Education class. I vividly remember doing so many amazing projects. We built this big, giant—she brought in a big ol’, like, TV box. It was big, big, big. And you could stick like three kids inside there, standing up shoulder-to-shoulder. And we built this big dragon. The head, and we had the whole rest of the class in a big sheet behind us, and we would do a little parade around the school. And she had that thing for years after. They had to repair it every year, and they would do the little parade around school. She did a lot of traveling and when we would go on vacation and then come back, that was always the big deal: “Where did Mrs Sheldon go?” And she had sand from Egypt and pictures from the rainforest. And later when I became a teacher and then I looked her up and we reconnected I did ask her, “Did you go to those places? Or did you, like, lie about it? <Laugh> To get us engaged?
Eric Cross (35:52):
You went for the real questions!
Ryan Renee Rudkin (35:54):
I did. And she laughed and thought that was funny. And she did travel for real. But yeah, she’s an amazing woman. We still keep in contact. And I remember, you know, little things…like we would be out there doing our PE time and she’d have her long skirt, you know, dress on, with her tennies, and she’s out there playing kickball with us. Just a very kindhearted, smart, amazing woman. I’m very fortunate and I’m grateful that we are able to keep in contact. Love social media for that reason. So.
Eric Cross (36:33):
Yeah. And that’s Miss Sheldon?
Ryan Renee Rudkin (36:35):
Mrs. Sheldon. Marlene Sheldon. Yeah.
Eric Cross (36:37):
Shout-Out to Marlene Sheldon influencing the next generation of teachers, with engagement with your world travels and all those different things.
Eric Cross (37:04):
Ryan, thank you so much for one, serving our students. And in the classroom, our middle-school students who need us. I think that middle school especially, elementary school, those years are when students are really starting to decide, “What am I good at?” And the experiences that we create for our students really shape what they believe they can do. These really cool, engaging experiences, these projects that you’re giving them, whether they’re doing these car sales, Shark Tanks, or they’re doing penpals, or you have guest speakers, or they’re designing planets. These are things that students don’t forget. And then when they move on to higher grades, they remember more than anything, I think, how they felt about something. And it sounds like you’re crafting these awesome experiences. And so I just wanna thank you for your time. I know as a teacher it’s very short. And I thank you for being on the podcast with us.
Ryan Renee Rudkin (38:04):
Thank you. This has been a great experience. I just—I really enjoy my students. And I feel very, very grateful and very blessed for finding where I belong.
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Meet the guest
Ryan Rudkin is a middle school science educator near Sacremento, California. Although she originally thought she would teach elementary students, Ryan connected with middle school and never looked back. Now in her 16th year in the classroom, Ryan also supports teachers in her district with professional development. Ryan’s favorite part of teaching science is seeing students grapple with concepts and explore phenomena.
About Science Connections: The podcast
Welcome to Science Connections: The Podcast! 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.
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- Reading with the B.E.S.T. Modules have been built to guide teachers and students as they begin to work with Florida’s new reading standards, providing an introduction to each grade-level B.E.S.T. Reading Benchmark. (Example module: Grade 6, Understanding Rhetoric)
Knowledge matters
Texts in the Amplify ELA Florida Edition curriculum cover a wide range of topics, themes, and genres with differentiated supports that ensure that all students can work through each reading and lesson. Taken as a whole, the texts show students a diverse picture of the world and help foster a lifelong love of reading. Comprehension develops as students engage with literary and informational text selections that are complex, rich, and meaningful.
Texts were selected for Amplify ELA Florida Edition using the following criteria:
- Text complexity as defined by qualitative, quantitative, and reader and task measurements as required by the B.E.S.T. Standards and the Amplify Text Complexity Index
- Balance of literary and informational texts
- Varied representation of genres: novels, plays, poetry, biographies, and other full-length texts
- Diverse cultures, perspectives, and authors
- Engaging texts that extend learning and support students as they build knowledge
- Grade-appropriate texts, with scaffolding and compelling activities to support student engagement with 100% authentic texts
- A library with more than 700 complete books, both classic and contemporary, encompassing a wide range of genres, topics, and cultural perspectives
Curriculum matters
Amplify ELA Florida is a blended curriculum designed specifically for grades 6–8. The heart of every lesson is the text. Each grade includes six units centered on literary or informational texts, delivered in several forms of media. Your classroom will also benefit from two or three immersive, project-based experiences and a dedicated Story Writing unit.
- Full B.E.S.T. coverage: Standards are clearly labeled in each lesson, so teachers can save time planning and get back to what they love: teaching. Also included are Benchmark Modules that support teachers’ and students’ introduction to the new standards for Florida.
- Five levels of differentiation: Based on each student’s needs and the performance measures within Amplify ELA reports, a teacher can choose the differentiation level that’s the right fit for everyone.
- Embedded Assessments: Teachers benefit from uninterrupted instructional time and a continuously updated picture of each student’s progress with key skills and standards.
- Powerful feedback tools: Comprehensive tools help teachers maximize both the quantity and quality of feedback.
- Robust reporting: Our reporting app offers information on student progress to help inform instructional decisions.
All in one place: Embedded teacher support, differentiation tools, student data, text, and other curriculum features—they’re all right there.
Materials
Amplify ELA Florida Edition is a blended curriculum that seamlessly integrates print and digital resources to be used in any learning environment. The resources are designed to facilitate instruction for planning, teaching, learning, and assessment.
Student materials
Available digitally and in print, the student materials guide middle schoolers through complex texts and writing with the following:
- Student Edition will engage students with high-quality narrative and informational texts.
- Digital experience will provide videos, a library of more than 700 texts, audio supports, and other online experiences that capture their attention.
- Writing Journal will keep all of their thinking and writing about text in one place.
Teacher materials
Available digitally and in print, the Teacher Edition contains all of the information teachers need to facilitate classroom instruction, including:
- From detailed lesson plans.
- Video teacher tips embedded in the lesson.
- B.E.S.T. standards alignment and assessments including exit tickets.
- Real-time differentiation strategies.
- Clarify and Compare lessons.
- Robust reporting.
Professional learning
Amplify employs a national cohort of more than 50 ELA facilitators, all of whom have experience as former classroom teachers and many of whom are former school and/or district leaders. Our professional learning team has decades of experience working with large districts across the nation. Amplify has experience supporting district launches over multiple years and has partnered with districts of all sizes nationwide. We partner deeply with districts and tailor professional learning to their unique needs.
Welcome, Program 3 reviewers!
We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA/ELD Framework to life in classrooms across the state.
Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.
Your review samples
We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify California Language Arts, a comprehensive biliteracy program for kindergarten through grade 6.
Reviewer Binders (K–6)
Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.
- The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
- The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–2.
- The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 3–6.
Physical samples (trade books)
Your review of the program will be entirely digital with the exception of the trade books that you will be receiving as physical samples. You can expect to receive 13 boxes of physical materials for your review. Twelve boxes of trade books, one for each grade K–5, in English and Spanish, and one box containing your Reviewer Binders.
As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder.
Digital review materials
In order to access your digital review materials, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:
- Click the orange button below to access the platform.
- Click “Log in with Amplify.”
- Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Navigation tips
Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:
Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.
Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grade 6
Click here for additional information on navigating the program for grade 6.
Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) content/alignment to standards
Evaluation Criteria Map
Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.
ELA Standards Maps
The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Language Arts for each grade level.
ELD Standards Maps
Category 2: Program organization
Amplify California Language Arts’ biliteracy program is a comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, with both integrated and designated English Language Development instruction designed to give multilingual/English learners the tools to thrive. Amplify’s biliteracy program for grades K–6 includes:
- Core English language arts instruction: Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California (grades K–5) and Amplify ELA California (grade 6) covering knowledge building and foundational skills.
- Provides upper grade foundational skills instruction for grades 3–6.
- Core Spanish language arts instruction: Amplify Caminos California, a fully parallel SLA program that works in tandem with English core instruction across all grades.
- Provides upper grade foundational skills instruction for grades 3–6.
- Designated English Language Development: Language Studio California is the designated English Language Development companion that directly aligns with and supports core English instruction.
- Newcomer Support: Amplify California Language Arts Newcomer Support to facilitate instruction for students who are new to both English and the United States.
Program structure
Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.
This model is integral to the structure of the Amplify biliteracy program, which directly aligns with the CA CCSS ELA and ELD standards by combining rigorous decoding and skills instruction with research-based knowledge and language development instruction. In its early grades, the Amplify biliteracy program uses a two-strand structure—Skills/Lectoescritura and Knowledge/Conocimiento—to effectively address this learning challenge while meeting standards expectations for both language development and academic content mastery.
[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grade 6
Amplify Caminos California lessons are designed to allow all students time to work toward learning objectives, including peer collaboration and discussion. Since each lesson activity is aligned to subsequent activities, students’ understanding and analysis develops progressively throughout the lesson.
Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify Caminos California empower teachers to deliver effective instruction and keep students engaged with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides
- Assessment Guides
- Authentic texts and trade books
- Knowledge Image Cards
- Knowledge Flip Books
- Remediation and intervention resources
- Decodable readers
- Student Readers and novels
- Student Activity Books
- Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
- Poet’s Journals
- eReaders
- Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
- Instructional routine modeling videos
- Assignable Practice Games
- On-demand professional development
Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides that include:
- Detailed lesson plans
- Standards alignment and exit tickets
- Real-time differentiation strategies
- Robust reporting
- Student Editions that include:
- High-quality narrative and informational texts
- Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
- Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
- Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
- Trade books
Core literacy philosophy
Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for multilingual/English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.
Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–6, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.
Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays.
Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.
Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.
Scope and sequence
Below you can view the scope and sequence documents for each grade level.
- Kindergarten
- Grade 1
- Grade 2
- Grade 3
- Grade 4
- Grade 5
- Grade 6
- Newcomer Support Grades K–6
Routines
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:
Discussion and collaboration routines:
- Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
- Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
- Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening
Foundational Skills routines:
- Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
- Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
- Finger-tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
- Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
- Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary
Knowledge-building routines:
- Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
- Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
- Partner reading: Paired fluency practice
Close reading routines
The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.
Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.
Cross-Linguistic Transfer routines
The Cross-Linguistic Transfer (CLT) routines are easy-to-implement, 10–15 minute mini-lessons designed to help bridge English and Spanish literacy and language development. These structured routines are organized by grade bands for K–2, grades 3–5 and grade 6, covering five skill areas:
- Oral language
- Reading
- Vocabulary
- Language
- Writing
[Reviewer highlight video] Amplify’s program alignment to Cross-Linguistic Transfer criteria
Designated English Language Development materials
Language Studio California is a K–8 content-based companion for English language learners. Built on Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California’s carefully sequenced Knowledge Domains, it combines engaging content knowledge with targeted supports and research-based strategies to help students move swiftly toward language proficiency. This program includes:
- Real-world content to provide authentic opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- Scaffolding strategies and differentiated instruction to offer targeted support along five English proficiency levels.
- Progress monitoring tools to help teachers provide consistent and effective support.
- Teacher Guides that:
- Provide impactful progress monitoring tools including formative and summative assessments, and Language Proficiency Assessment rubrics.
- Offer varied differentiation strategies including Support, Challenge, and Access supports in each lesson segment.
- Are organized into thoughtful lesson segments—Talk Time, Building Background, On Stage and more—that make learning objectives concrete.
- Activities that:
- Expand on domain knowledge from core content and read-alouds and prompt collaborative conversation to practice oral fluency.
- Support hands-on language activities to promote authentic interaction in the classroom.
- Help students bridge experiences and knowledge with images, vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, writing space, and more.
Category 3: Assessments
Systematic MTSS alignment
In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement California’s required reading difficulties screening schedule per SB 114.
| Tier 1: Universal/ differentiated support | Tier 2: Supplemental/ targeted support | Tier 3: Intensified/ intensive support | |
| Core instruction assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly |
| Universal screening assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY |
| Formal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura Monthly | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura Bi-weekly |
| Informal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California core assessments Daily | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit |
| Diagnostic assessment Frequency of administration | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment Optional after universal screening assessment is administered | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment After universal screening assessment is administered |
Universal assessment system
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition (K–8) and mCLASS Lectura (K–6) are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY, and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.
Core instruction assessments
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for grades K–6 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.
Formative assessments:
- Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5).
- Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5).
- Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
- Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grade 6).
- Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grade 6).
- Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“Solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grade 6).
Summative assessments:
- Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2)
- Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2)
- End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5)
- Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grade 6)
- Unit reading assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grade 6)
Performance assessments
Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K–5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.
Progress monitoring
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.
Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.
Diagnostic assessment
Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.
Category 4: Universal Access
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California are developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
Universal Design for Learning
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.
- Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
- Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. The programs include clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
- Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including Multilingual/English Learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. Lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
- Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.
Embedded differentiation
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.
- Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
- Core vocabulary building
- Core connections
- Essential background information building
- What Have We Already Learned?/What Do We Already Know?
- Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
- Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
- Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data.
- Amplify ELA California and Amplify Caminos California provide point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
- The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
- Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
- Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language, multi-clause and complex sentences, and informational text characteristics.
Assessment-driven MTSS resources
- The K–6 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills.
- Fluency packets (Grades 2–6)
- Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–6 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
- Flexible Instructional Time including:
- Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities
- Pausing Point activities designed to support multilingual/English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
- Boost Reading and Boost Lectura are student-led digital intervention programs that follow the scope and sequences of Amplify CKLA California and Amplify Caminos California respectively, to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.
Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support
Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.
Implementation supports across K–6
Planning and preparation resources
- Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
- Sub-unit Overviews (Grade 6) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
- Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grade 6) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
- Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
- Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine
Point-of-use instructional guidance
- Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
- Activity guidance at point of use
- Lesson standards clearly called out
- Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
- Differentiation tips at point of use
- Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
- On-the-Fly supports (Grade 6)—quick call-outs to the identifying features of “on track” and “needs support” students accompanied by short models of student guidance to foster strong performance
Multimedia and digital support
- Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
- Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for multilingual/English learners and students struggling to read, including translated Unit Background and Context documents and Text Previews
- Teacher Dashboard and reporting tools provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response
Caregiver supports
Communication and overview resources
- Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
- Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
- Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grade 6) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
- Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
- Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
- Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning
Content and learning support materials
- Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
- Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grade 6), available in English and Spanish
- Unit Overview and Support documents (Grade 6) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
- Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home
Home practice and extension activities
- Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
- Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
- Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
- Games and activities on Take-Home Pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
- Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
- Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home
Welcome, K–8 Program 2 reviewers!
We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA/ELD Framework to life in classrooms across the state.
Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.
Your review samples
We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California and Amplify ELA California, Language Studio California for grades K–8. Physical and digital review materials will vary by grade level.
Reviewer Binders (K–8)
Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.
- The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
- The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–4.
- The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 5–8.
Physical samples (K–5)
You can expect to receive 15 boxes of physical materials for your review. As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder. Please note you will not receive any physical samples for grades 6–8 ELA or Language Studio for grades K-8. Your review of the program for grades 6–8 ELA and Language Studio for grades K-8 will be entirely digital.
Digital samples
In order to access your digital samples, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:
- Click the orange button below to access the platform.
- Click “Log in with Amplify.”
- Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Navigation tips
Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:
Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.
Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades 6–8
Click here for additional information on navigating the digital materials for grades 6–8.
Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) Content/Alignment to Standards
Evaluation Criteria Map
Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map for grades K–8. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.
ELA Standards Maps
The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Language Arts for each grade level. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Standards Maps.
ELD Standards Maps
The links below provide the ELD Standards Maps for Amplify California Core Language Arts for each grade level.
Category 2: Program Organization
The Amplify California Language Arts Program 2 submission includes Amplify CKLA California for Grades K–5, Amplify ELA California for Grades 6–8, and Amplify Language Studio California for Grades K–8. This comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, with both integrated and designated English Language Development instruction designed to give English learners the tools to thrive.
Program structure
Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading and The Reading Rope–bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.
Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.
[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 6–8
Amplify CKLA California empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction and keeps students engaged with with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides
- Assessment Guides
- Authentic texts and trade books
- Knowledge Image Cards
- Knowledge Flip Books
- Remediation and intervention resources
- Decodable readers
- Student Readers and novels
- Student Activity Books
- Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
- Poet’s Journals
- eReaders
- Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
- Instructional routine modeling videos
- Assignable Practice Games
- On-demand professional development
Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides that include:
- Detailed lesson plans
- Standards alignment and exit tickets
- Real-time differentiation strategies
- Robust reporting
- Student Editions that include:
- High-quality narrative and informational texts
- Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
- Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
- Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
- Trade Books
Core literacy philosophy
Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.
Provide intentional ELD support. Honor students’ linguistic assets while building academic English through both integrated and designated instruction.
Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–8, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.
Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays.
Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.
Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.
Scope and sequence
Below you can view the scope and sequence for each grade level.
- Kindergarten
- Grade 1
- Grade 2
- Grade 3
- Grade 4
- Grade 5
- Grade 6
- Grade 7
- Grade 8
- Newcomer Support Grades K–8
Routines
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:
Discussion and collaboration routines:
- Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
- Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
- Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening
Foundational Skills routines:
- Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
- Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
- Finger-tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
- Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
- Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary
Knowledge-Building Routines:
- Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
- Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
- Partner reading: Paired fluency practice
Close reading routines
The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.
Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.
Designated English Language Development materials
Language Studio California is a K–8 content-based companion for English language learners. Built on Amplify CKLA California’s and Amplify ELA California’s carefully sequenced Knowledge Domains and units, it combines engaging content knowledge with targeted supports and research-based strategies to help students move swiftly toward language proficiency. This program includes:
- Real-world content to provide authentic opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- Scaffolding strategies and differentiated instruction to offer targeted support along with five English proficiency levels.
- Progress-monitoring tools to help teachers provide consistent and effective support.
- Teacher Guides that:
- Provide impactful progress monitoring tools including formative and summative assessments and Language Proficiency Assessment rubrics.
- Offer varied differentiation strategies including Support, Challenge, and Access Supports in each lesson segment.
- Are organized into thoughtful lesson segments—Talk Time, Building Background, On Stage and more—that make learning objectives concrete.
- Activities that:
- Expand on domain knowledge from core content and read-alouds and prompt collaborative conversation to practice oral fluency.
- Support hands-on language activities to promote authentic interaction in the classroom.
- Help students bridge experiences and knowledge with images, vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, writing space, and more.
Category 3: Assessments
Systematic MTSS alignment
In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement the California’s required universal screening schedule per SB 114.
| Tier 1: Universal/ differentiated support | Tier 2: Supplemental/ targeted support | Tier 3: Intensified/ intensive support | |
| Core instruction assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly |
| Universal screening assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY |
| Formal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura Monthly | mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura Bi-weekly |
| Informal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California core assessments Daily | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit |
| Diagnostic assessment Frequency of administration | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment Optional after universal screening assessment is administered | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment After universal screening assessment is administered |
Universal assessment system
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.
Core instruction assessments
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for Grades K–8 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.
Formative assessments:
- Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5).
- Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5).
- Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
- Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grades 6–8).
- Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grades 6–8).
- Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grades 6–8).
Summative assessments:
- Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2)
- Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2)
- End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5)
- Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grades 6–8)
- Unit Reading Assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grades 6–8)
Performance Assessments
Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K-5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.
Progress monitoring
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.
Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.
Diagnostic assessment
Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.
Category 4: Universal Access
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California were built on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and reviewed by CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization. The program is developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
Universal Design for Learning
The programs incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.
- Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. In Amplify CKLA California, the Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
- Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. Amplify CKLA California includes clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
- Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including English Learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. In Amplify ELA California, lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
- Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.
Embedded differentiation
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.
Throughout the Teacher Guides, point-of-use Differentiation icons provide targeted instructional strategies and supports. These icons indicate specific guidance for advanced learners, students who need additional support, and English learners, allowing teachers to easily identify and implement appropriate scaffolds and extensions during instruction. In addition, teachers are provided with recommendations for resources to use with each group of students.
- Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
- Core vocabulary words
- Core Connections
- Essential Background Information or Terms
- What Have We Already Learned/What Do We Already Know?
- Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
- Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
- Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small-group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data.
- Amplify ELA California provides point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
- The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
- Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
- Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language, multi-clause and complex sentences, and informational text characteristics.
Assessment-Driven MTSS resources
- The K–8 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills
- Fluency Packets (Grades 2–5)
- Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–8 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
- Flexible Instructional Time including:
- Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities
- Pausing Point activities designed to support English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
- Boost Reading is a K–5 student-led digital intervention program. Boost Reading follows Amplify CKLA California’s scope and sequence to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.
Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.
Implementation supports across K–8
Planning and preparation resources
- Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
- Sub-unit Overviews (Grades 6–8) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
- Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grades 6–8) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
- Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
- Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine
Point-of-use instructional guidance
- Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
- Activity guidance at point of use
- Lesson standards clearly called out
- Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
- Differentiation tips at point of use
- Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
- Student Supports in all core lessons that provide teachers with targeted supports in daily core instruction, addressing which might serve the student best in the moment—support, strengthen, stretch—with additional call-outs for newcomers
Multimedia and digital support
- Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
- Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for English learners and students struggling with reading, including translated Unit Background and Context documents and Text Previews
- Teacher dashboard and reporting tools (Grade 6–8) provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response
Caregiver supports
Communication and overview resources
- Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
- Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
- Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grades 6–8) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
- Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
- Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
- Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning
Content and learning support materials
- Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
- Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grades 6–8), available in English and Spanish
- Unit Overview and Support documents (Grades 6–8) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
- Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home
Home practice and extension activities
- Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
- Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
- Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
- Games and activities on take-home pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
- Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
- Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home
Welcome, K–8 Program 1 reviewers!
We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA Framework to life in classrooms across the state.
Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.
Your review samples
We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California and Amplify ELA California. Physical and digital review materials will vary by grade level.
Reviewer Binders (K–8)
Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.
- The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
- The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–4.
- The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 5–8.
Physical samples (K–5)
You can expect to receive 15 boxes of physical materials for your review. As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder. Please note you will not receive any physical samples for grades 6–8. Your review of the program for grades 6–8 will be entirely digital.
Digital samples (K–8)
In order to access your digital samples, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:
- Click the orange button below to access the platform.
- Click “Log in with Amplify.”
- Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Navigation tips
Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:
Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.
Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5
[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades 6–8
Click here for additional information on navigating the digital materials for grades 6–8.
Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) Content/Alignment to Standards
Evaluation Criteria Map
Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map for grades K–8. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.
ELA Standards Maps
The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Core Language Arts for each grade level. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Standards Maps.
Category 2: Program Organization
The Amplify California Language Arts Program 1 submission includes Amplify CKLA California for Grades K–5 and Amplify ELA California for Grades 6–8. This comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, transitioning from foundational literacy to advanced text analysis.
Program structure
Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading and The Reading Rope–bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in evidence-based literacy practices.
Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.
[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5
[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 6–8
Amplify CKLA California empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction and keeps students engaged with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides
- Assessment Guides
- Authentic texts and trade books
- Knowledge Image Cards
- Knowledge Flip Books
- Remediation and intervention resources
- Decodable readers
- Student Readers and novels
- Student Activity Books
- Poet’s Journals
- eReaders
- Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
- Instructional routine modeling videos
- Assignable Practice Games
- On-demand professional development
Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:
- Teacher Guides that include:
- Detailed lesson plans
- Standards alignment and exit tickets
- Real-time differentiation strategies
- Robust reporting
- Student Editions that include:
- High-quality narrative and informational texts
- Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
- Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
- Trade Books
Core literacy philosophy
Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.
Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–8, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.
Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays.
Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.
Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.
Scope and sequence
Below you can view the scope and sequence for each grade level.
Routines
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:
Discussion and collaboration routines:
- Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
- Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
- Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening
Foundational Skills routines:
- Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
- Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
- Finger tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
- Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
- Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary
Knowledge-building routines:
- Vocabulary preview: Introduction of new words before reading
- Read-aloud procedures: Established routines for introducing and discussing complex texts
- Text discussions: Structured comprehension conversations with scaffolded questioning
Fluency routines:
- Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
- Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
- Partner reading: Paired fluency practice
Close reading routines
The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.
Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.
Category 3: Assessments
Systematic MTSS alignment
In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement California’s required universal screening schedule per SB 114.
| Tier 1: Universal/ differentiated support | Tier 2: Supplemental/ targeted support | Tier 3: Intensified/ intensive support | |
| Core instruction assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments Daily, Weekly, Monthly |
| Universal screening assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY |
| Formal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura 3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura Monthly | mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura Bi-weekly |
| Informal progress monitoring assessments Frequency of administration | Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California core assessments Daily | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit | Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments When linked to a lesson in the toolkit |
| Diagnostic assessment Frequency of administration | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment Optional after universal screening assessment is administered | Amplify skill diagnostic assessment After universal screening assessment is administered |
Universal assessment system
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition (K–8) and mCLASS Lectura (K–6) are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.
Core instruction assessments
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for Grades K–8 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.
Formative assessments:
- Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5).
- Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5).
- Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
- Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grades 6–8).
- Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grades 6–8).
- Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“Solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grades 6–8).
Summative assessments:
- Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2)
- Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2)
- End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5)
- Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grades 6–8)
- Unit Reading Assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grades 6–8)
Performance Assessments
Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K–5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.
Progress monitoring
Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.
Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.
Diagnostic assessment
Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.
Category 4: Universal Access
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California were built on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and reviewed by CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization. The program is developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
Universal Design for Learning
The programs incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.
- Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. In Amplify CKLA California, the Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
- Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. Amplify CKLA California includes clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
- Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including English learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. In Amplify ELA California, lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
- Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.
Embedded differentiation
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.
- Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
- Core vocabulary building
- Core connections
- Essential background information building
- What Have We Already Learned?/What Do We Already Know?
- Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
- Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
- Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small-group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data.
- Amplify ELA California provides point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
- The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
- Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
- Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language, multi-clause and complex sentences, and informational text characteristics.
Assessment-driven MTSS resources
- The K–8 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills
- Fluency Packets (Grades 2–5)
- Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–8 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
- Flexible Instructional Time including:
- Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities
- Pausing Point activities designed to support English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
- Boost Reading is a K–5 student-led digital intervention program. Boost Reading follows Amplify CKLA California’s scope and sequence to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.
Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support
Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.
Implementation supports across K–8
Planning and preparation resources
- Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
- Sub-unit Overviews (Grades 6–8) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
- Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grades 6–8) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
- Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
- Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine
Point-of-use instructional guidance
- Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
- Activity guidance at point of use
- Lesson standards clearly called out
- Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
- Differentiation tips at point of use
- Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
- Student Supports in all core lessons provide teachers with targeted supports in daily core instruction, addressing which might serve the student best in the moment—support, strengthen, stretch—with additional call-outs for newcomers
Multimedia and digital support
- Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
- Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for English learners and readers struggling with text, including translated Unit Background and Context Documents and Text Previews
- Teacher Dashboard and reporting tools (Grade 6–8) that provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response
Caregiver supports
Communication and overview resources
- Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
- Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
- Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grades 6–8) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
- Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
- Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
- Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning
Content and learning support materials
- Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
- Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grades 6–8), available in English and Spanish
- Unit Overview and Support documents (Grades 6–8) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
- Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home
Home practice and extension activities
- Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
- Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
- Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
- Games and activities on Take-Home Pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
- Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
- Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home
Winter Wrap-Up 01: Problem-solving and facilitating classroom discussions
As we prep for an exciting new season of Math Teacher Lounge: The Podcast, hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer are looking back at the amazing speakers and conversations from past episodes and sharing some of their favorites!
First up: A season 2 double feature of the power of problem-solving with Fawn Nguyen and Facilitating Classroom Discussions with authors Christy Hermann Thompson and Kassia Omohundro Wedekind.
Fawn is a specialist on Amplify’s advanced math team and a former math teacher and math coach—so she knows her stuff! You’ll hear about her five criteria for good problem-solving problems, and the power and importance of exposing all students to problem-solving.
Then, we’ll move into Bethany and Dan’s conversation with Christy and Kassia to learn how hands-down conversations allow students to become better listeners and the steps you can take to implement hands-down conversations in your classroom.
Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.
Dan Meyer: (00:01)
Hey folks. Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. My name is Dan Meyer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (00:03)
And I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson. Hello! Happy New Year! Hello, Dan Meyer.
Dan Meyer: (00:09)
HNY, Bethany. HNY to you and to all of the listeners out there in Math Teacher Lounge. HNY is the abbreviation that I use sometimes.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (00:18)
Oh, is that what that is? Is that—I wasn’t sure what that was. If on my birthday you send me HBD…no.
Dan Meyer: (00:25)
Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (00:25)
No. Unacceptable.
Dan Meyer: (00:27)
I will. No, you want the full thing. To demonstrate my care for your birthday, I gotta spell the whole thing out. I’m just trying to stay relevant. You know, I’m just trying to stay relevant and youthful. So I’m using The Abreevs.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (00:38)
The Brevvies.
Dan Meyer: (00:40)
To the extent of even abbreviating the word “abbreviation.” . So, any New Year’s resolutions you wanna share with the listeners, Bethany? While you think, I’ll just share mine real quick here. This is the year of the perfect Wordle streak for yours truly, Dan Meyer. I’m going the full 365. Watch. Watch me do it, folks. I’m naming it here. Live on air. recorded on air. Perfect Wordle year. What you got for the listeners, Bethany?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (01:10)
Let’s see. It’s raining very hard here in Southern California, and my newest resolution is to embrace nature. My child wants nothing more than to go and splash in all the puddles.
Dan Meyer: (01:22)
Nice.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (01:23)
And be amongst the mud. And what I’m gonna keep telling myself—and so far, so far, I’ve been doing pretty good with this—thrive, child. Splash. Squish. We can dry you off. You will not melt. So I want to keep finding opportunities. Like, for instance, my response is, “It’s pouring rain. Let’s stay under covers and let’s read this book together!” And his response is like, banging on the windows, like, “Please let me go outside.” So I myself have some rain boots. I’m going to go forth and splash with my child. So hopefully you’ll see me doing that a bit more.
Dan Meyer: (02:08)
Love that.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (02:09)
Ask me what I’m doing. I’m outside, splashing in nature.
Dan Meyer: (02:12)
I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I have felt a bit like parenting is a means for rounding out aspects of my own personality that I have felt are—or habits or hobbies that are lacking. Like, I’ve never been real outdoorsy or into camping, but I don’t want that to limit my own kids’ aspirations or interests. So let’s do the thing that’s not super natural for me, for their own sake. Which is kind of what I’m hearing a little bit from you, which—that sounds exciting.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (02:35)
Do you wanna go camping together? Like, our families?
Dan Meyer: (02:38)
Uhhh. Let’s take this one off the air. I also love something that’s more relevant to a teachers audience that you said, that I think is super interesting, is how there’s ways that we can make the jobs harder for ourselves, that are optional. And what I hear from you is like, “I’m just not gonna freak out. We’re getting wet. We’re getting soggy. And I’m just not gonna freak out.” And I just think that that’s interesting to think about, the things that we take on, you know, that’s optional. Freaking out is optional, sometimes. And there’s other areas, I think, for parenting or for teaching, where it’s like, “Oh, do I really need to choose this particular battle?” And to reconsider that.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (03:19)
And in that spirit, our whole Wordle episode that we talked about? Do you remember you talked about how beautiful Wordle mistakes are, and how you keep learning from mistakes? I mean, you obviously want the final correct answer, but just, you know, when you get on a losing streak, Dan, I hope you’ll continue to pat yourself on the back.
Dan Meyer: (03:38)
Well, I will not be taking on a losing streak, or even lose one day. This is what’s gonna happen here. I’m just speaking that and putting it out in the universe.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (03:49)
Speak it!
Dan Meyer: (03:50)
But if it happens, I will be taking a long break from all human interaction. And lamenting, as I do.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (03:59)
Camping. Dan’s off in the woods, weeping.
Dan Meyer: (04:01)
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Well, we wanna share with you folks—an exciting programming note is that we are currently working very hard on producing a special fifth season of this podcast. You thought the other seasons were special? Let me tell you, this fifth season gives new meaning to the word “special.” And we can’t wait to tell you more about that. But in the meantime, Bethany, you wanna tell ’em what we’re up to in the meantime?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (04:26)
Well, Dan and I went back and we were having a conversation about some of our most favorite conversations, or the conversations that people bring up to us. Like, when we were at the CMC conference, or NCTM, folks, when we talk about the podcast, they’re like, “Oh, I loved this one.” “Oh, I love this one.” And that, to me, I don’t know, that is exciting. And so, while we’re putting together this new season over these next few weeks, we’re gonna feature a few of our favorite conversations from our first four seasons. Dan, four seasons!
Dan Meyer: (04:59)
We’ve been at this for four seasons! And I do want to just emphasize something you said, Bethany: that all of our conversations are our favorite conversations. They’re all our special children. What we just felt like you, the listeners, did not quite learn enough from some of these, and so we really needed you to hear them again to make sure you got everything that you should get out of them. So, let’s tell ’em who’s up first. And who’s up first is a conversation we had about problem-solving with Fawn Nguyen, who’s an advanced math team specialist here at Amplify. Been a former math coach, math teacher. Just really done the work, is what I’d say about Fawn.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (05:38)
If you have been listening to this podcast, you’re like, “Whoa, whoa. Wait, I have not missed an episode. I didn’t hear Fawn’s interview.” That is because we used to be video only, not podcasts. So this conversation with Fawn was from, what, our second season?
Dan Meyer: (05:55)
Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (05:56)
And we were on video. And another thing about it is it was, this is a conversation that, when folks talk about problem-solving, a lot of the responses we’ve gotten are like, “Wait, I’ve never thought of problem-solving this way.” In fact, you’ll hear us say that exact thing . So we really appreciated the time with Fawn. And yeah.
Dan Meyer: (06:17)
Enjoy it, folks. Especially enjoy Fawn’s—I think a four-part?—definition of problem-solving, a word that’s often kind of mushily defined. And Fawn really goes into, I think, precision and depth on it. So hope you folks enjoy it.
Dan Meyer: (06:35)
Give a wave, Fawn, to the camera. Would you? Cool. Fawn has been a teacher for a very long time. She is someone who could have left the classroom at any point and taken any number of jobs in the math-teaching universe. But I’ve always admired that Fawn has taught kids for a very long time, and that has given her, in my view, just a lot of clarity on what is important to her about students. I’ve seen her not get upset or obsessed with certain kinds of small niche issues that a lot of us, like, they get a lot of us down in the classroom, sometimes. And she’s maintained a laser focus on among many other things, problem-solving as a virtue in mathematics classrooms. So, please welcome Fawn to our show. Fawn, thanks so much for being here.
Fawn Nguyen: (07:18)
Hey, thank you so much. Thank you. I am so excited and honored that you guys invited me for this, Bethany and Dan.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (07:24)
Thank you for being here.
Fawn Nguyen: (07:26)
I love you, Bethany. Dan, I can tolerate, but I love you.
Dan Meyer: (07:30)
I really worked myself up there on that complimentary opening for you, and that’s how you get me back, here? OK. Problem-solving is fully on the consciousness of math teachers. Every math teacher knows that they need to say, like, “Yeah, oh, problem-solving. Yes. Love it. Do it. I dig it.” But even so, I feel like it’s become kind of a buzzword. Like, it’s not always obvious what that means…or am I doing problem-solving, really? So we’re curious: As someone who is a problem-solving expert, who is asked all over the world to talk about problem-solving: How do I know if I’m doing problem-solving in my classroom?
Fawn Nguyen: (08:12)
This is not my definition of it, but—nor am I an expert, by the way, Dan, thank you! but I try really, really hard and work on it!—my definition—or it’s not my definition, but I like it because it’s short and honest—is “problem-solving is what we do when we don’t know what to do.” And so—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (08:32)
Ooh!
Fawn Nguyen: (08:32)
—with that mind-frame, I’m hoping teachers think more about what they task. Because I think it gets mislabeled a lot, as to what is problem-solving. If the kids already know what to do, there’s a solution path. Then it’s not problem-solving.
Dan Meyer: (08:48)
Yeah. So what are examples then? An example of, like, I might call something problem-solving, but it it fails that particular definition that you just proposed there. Very short, very honest definition.
Fawn Nguyen: (08:59)
Just, it needs to have constraint and contradiction to what the kids think naturally. It should come as a surprise. There’s an element of surprise in it. There’s tension.
Dan Meyer: (09:11)
Maybe if there’s harder numbers or, you know, decimals or fractions in the same kind of procedure…I can feel myself thinking, “Yeah, this is hard. This is problem-solving. Problem-solving equals hard. But we already know what to do.”
Fawn Nguyen: (09:27)
Or just word problems. That’s the most common thing. As soon as it just has words attached to the math, it becomes problem-solving. But that’s just coding it to me. That’s just coding it with words, wrapping it around. It doesn’t mean anything until we read through and see if there’s true problem-solving in it.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (09:45)
Like, what’s the moment that it becomes problem-solving? In the way that you envision it?
Fawn Nguyen: (09:53)
Well, I think there’s the bigger problem-solving of really bringing a task…I wanna call it left field. It just—we rarely ever, if ever, see it in the regular coursework, but it can also be problem-solving if we just take what we expect the children to do at the end of the unit, how about we front-load that? To me, that’s also problem-solving. And I’m trying to encourage teachers to do that last problem first. The task writers put more thought—not that they don’t do the rest of it!—but you know, this is a special one, because they label it “challenge,” or “enrichment,” or “are you ready for more?” I’ve seen those. And so it is this really special problem. And I would love for us to think about “do that first.” Because my biggest fear is that because it comes at the end, that not all the children are involved. And so that to me is the saddest part. Because we might not get to it, right? In mathematics, we always think, “OK, well, let’s do these problems and then we don’t have time for the rest.” But I think that’s your richest task right there, is at the very end. So why don’t we front-load it, start it, and it’s OK—of course it’s OK!—that we don’t all get it. But the exposure to all students is so important. Talk about, you know, equity. Talk about that, everybody gets the same thing. If everyone dug into that first one with everybody’s collaboration, and we get to share that, and then we leave it, because “Yeah, OK, now we learn more of the other stuff, right? That hopefully support. And then we can go back. And now everybody had a chance to go get into it, and then we can come back to it as, as many problems, we need to go back to it.”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (11:37)
And that feels so powerful. Because it feels like—as a teacher, I’m thinking it would also inform my work, how I approach the unit, and how I approach the next steps. Right? Like, what kind of work would we be doing if I let it, if I allow it, to change the way that I approach the unit.
Dan Meyer: (11:58)
Yeah. What you’re describing is so powerful, and really asks a lot of the task designers as well, I think. There are problem-solving tasks that really require, like, abstract knowledge of the way formulas and variables fit together. And what I love about what Amplify is doing with their problem-solving, what you’re helping them do, is that they start with a true low floor that can draw in every student. And they might get stuck at different places; that’s fine. But everyone has a way in. That’s exciting.
Fawn Nguyen: (12:24)
It’s a big deal for me to have this opportunity and this trust, to integrate problem-solving into the curriculum, make it intentional. It’s difficult to implement. It is, to be honest. Because for me, what is a good task? This makes one of my four criteria: One is, it is non-routine. It is simply stated. Simply stated—that’s like your low floor. And then has multiple solutions. And the fourth: This makes it. Because that the teacher enjoys solving it. And so you have to enjoy solving it to bring it. Because so that way I can say to my kids, “This is my gift.” It really is, Because, you know, it has so much fun and joy. And I appreciate the struggle. And I wanna illustrate an example. For example, let’s say Dan and I are classmates. And I know that Dan gets A’s on his tests and the lowest score he ever got was an 89%. I, on the other hand, just sitting right next to him, I average D. I have a D average on everything. While Bethany, our amazing and wonderful teacher, brings in a problem. And when she brings it in, she says, “I worked on this problem. I found this problem; I worked on it; and I struggled with it. And it was amazing. I enjoyed it so much, I’m sharing it with you.” And all of a sudden it’s like, “OK!” And I”m sitting there, right? My teacher loves this problem so much; she’s bringing it in to share with us. And now, all of a sudden, it’s not, you know…and I know she only gives us non-routine. When she talks about problem-solving, it’s non-routine. So it’s not directly tied to the textbook that I’ve been struggling with. So it gives me a chance, it gives me a chance to contribute. To think differently. And now, suddenly I look forward to working with Dan, because in this space, in this problem-solving space, Dan is no longer Mr. Know-It-All. And so that’s what I mean by—I am saying this a hundred times, and I will not stop saying it—problem-solving levels the playing field. Our world is filled with unsolved problems. Are you kidding me? Right? We look around us, we have so many things that are not solvable, or people are working on it, and yet in mathematics, what happens? The bell rings; we start; and we solve everything during that time, and we leave. And that’s…yeah. No! No! We need to wrestle with problems.
Dan Meyer: (15:04)
And that was our conversation with Fawn Nguyen, which we first released way back in November, 2021. You folks can follow Fawn on Twitter at Fawn P Nguyen. Um, that’s @ F A W N P N G U Y E N.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (15:18)
So our episode today is a double feature. We are featuring another conversation that we loved from Season Two. This is a conversation with Christy Hermann Thompson and Kassia Omohundro Wedekind. They’re authors of the book, “Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math.” And I don’t know if you remember, but not only did we have a conversation with them, but we did a whole book study on Facebook, a Facebook Live book study, over the course of several months. And it was one of my most favorite things. And then they did a webinar at the end. So our conversation with them on the podcast for me felt like such a beautiful dive into their book. And you know, I’ve said it before, you think you have something down in the classroom, you’re like, “Oh, hand-raising, I’ve got that down.” You think you have it down, but then somebody says, “OK, but have you ever considered thiiiis?” You know, and it just—
Dan Meyer: (16:17)
NOT that??
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (16:18)
, Not that? Something totally different? And I loved talking with them. They’re a lot of fun. And I loved the book.
Dan Meyer: (16:23)
Wonderful conversation, great book. Very provocative ideas. Yeah. As someone who’s like, “OK, classroom management, I gotta get the hand-raising going…”. In the classroom before we talked, they offered a really potent challenge to some really standard classroom management ideas. Yeah. Loved it.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (16:40)
And this conversation also offers some really practical tips for facilitating student conversations. So we think you’ll enjoy it. Here’s our conversation with Christy and Kassia.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (16:53)
So today we are talking about “Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math, K—5.” And we have the authors here, Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson. Before we begin, let’s define what a hands-down conversation is. A hands-down conversation is just another way to structure discourse in your classroom. So in a typical classroom, you might see students raising their hand and waiting on a teacher to call on them before they share their ideas or engage in discussion. But in a hands-down conversation, it’s students’ ideas and voices that are taking the lead, and teachers are stepping back and focusing on listening and facilitating. Hello! Welcome to the Lounge.
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind: (17:44)
Thank you. We’re excited to be here. We’re fans of Season One. So we’re ready to go.
Dan Meyer: (17:50)
I was a secondary teacher but I still found so much to love about the book. I think facilitating conversations is just generally challenging, and perhaps even more so in math, where answers feel so tightly dialed-in, in lots of ways. But I loved it. I would love for you to just explain to our audience, what is a hands-down conversation and how does that contrast with what might be standard practice for some people? For some classes?
Christy Hermann Thompson: (18:13)
We just started using the term hands-down conversation because we wanted to differentiate the fact that there are different times to have different types of dialogue in the math classroom, in the literacy classroom. And we use this as one of our tools. Right? It’s not that every day, all day long, we’re very against hand-raising and should never see that again. We find that having this as one of our tools will be where we make really clear to the students that this is a moment where we’re turning it over to you to negotiate the space and make the decisions about when your voice comes in and who speaks next. You know, carry on kind of like that dinner table or that playground or, you know, whatever is your natural habitat for talk. And bringing that into the classroom and then hoping that it also someday transfers back out of the classroom back into the real world.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (19:09)
For the teachers who feel like that’s terrifying to have students just start speaking, and speaking without any sort of control or my little equity sticks, my little popsicle sticks, or my popcorn, or whatever other thing they’re using, what would you say is the first step?
Christy Hermann Thompson: (19:25)
So I think recognizing and naming that fear is part of it. And then saying to yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen here?” You know, I think the worst that could happen is that nobody talks and it’s totally silent. Or on the other hand, everybody talks at the same time. And both of those things will happen! And so what? It’s gonna be messy. And if you just acknowledge that it’s gonna look messy, and that’s part of growing; that every child as they learn—and every adult—is messy as they grow.
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind: (19:59)
And we have to see what kinds of things will happen in a hands-down conversation. Like there’s no prerequisite. You just start and then you see what happens. And those are the signs that tell you, “What can help this community grow as talkers and listeners? If everyone’s talking at the same time, and they’re kind of pushing each other over with their words by saying, “I have something to add!” “I have something to add!” or something like that, that’s a common thing that sometimes happens at the beginning. Then you know that the next step is to do some work about how to hold your thoughts back, how to add, wait for a space in the conversation to talk. And those are all things we need people to know out in the world.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (20:41)
So can you give an example of a micro-lesson that…well, first, what do you define as a micro-lesson? And then, what’s an example of one that maybe somebody who wants to dip their toe into the world of hands-down conversations that they could try?
Christy Hermann Thompson: (20:56)
The reason we call them micro-lessons is because we wanted to differentiate from the term mini lesson, which is out there and tends to describe about 10 or 15 minutes that might take place at the beginning of a work period of time. And this is much smaller than that. We usually follow a pretty predictable structure of naming. Here’s this thing that’s so helpful when we’re having conversations, and we love to especially be able to name something that a student had done: “Kaylee did this yesterday and it really helped us.” So what we might call that is, “And then here’s how Kaylee and other people might do that. They might do something like this.” And, you know, having a little anchor chart, so there’s a visual reminder of that skill. “So when we’re having a conversation today, you could try…”. And that’s basically a micro-lesson, just in a nutshell.
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind: (21:51)
When I was doing these hands-down conversations and I had more space for myself to listen as a teacher, I’m like, “Well, look at those kids, like, slumped onto the ground, like, pulling the carpet apart, but they’re having this amazing conversation!” And so I learned that listening is a lot broader. So in this lesson that I’m thinking about, we just talk with kids about what are lots of different ways that listening can look like. Sometimes with younger kids, I’ll take pictures of them listening in different ways and we’ll notice things about them together. And then we invite them to talk with their Turn and Talk partner about like, “How do you like to be listened to?” Or “Tell me about how you listen.” And just kind of broaden that. And really, I like to think that like the micro-lessons are for the kids, but also I’m saying those things to say them for myself. Like, “Remember, you don’t have to insist that kids are staring each other down in the eyes all the time. Like, “It’s OK when they’re doing other things. There’s other ways of listening.” So I think I’ve learned as much from the micro-lessons each time I do them as the kids that I’m trying to help grow as listeners and talkers, as well.
Dan Meyer: (23:00)
You folks have a lot of really eloquent ideals you express, around democratic classrooms and engagement. But you also have just some very tangible, practical…even down to, like, how a teacher positions their body in space and the way they use their eyes to connect. I think it would be really helpful for teachers to hear that it’s not just they’re signing on to a manifesto of sorts, but there’s ways they can act their way into the beliefs that you both expressed here.
Christy Hermann Thompson: (23:26)
When I’m starting hands-down conversation work, if I put myself a little bit outside of the circle and look down, and give myself a clipboard, it, it helps me bite my tongue and it helps me give better wait time and see what the kids are doing before I have that tendency to jump in and teach and do lots of teacher-y things.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (23:48)
Kassia and Christy, thank you so much for joining us. We are so excited to have this conversation and to share your work. This is exciting. And I feel like this conversation is just the beginning of a deeper dive into this book.
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind: (24:01)
Thanks for having us.
Christy Hermann Thompson: (24:02)
Thank you.
Dan Meyer: (24:03)
Thank you both.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (24:06)
Thanks so much for listening to our conversations with Fawn Nguyen and Christy Hermann Thompson and Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, both of which were released in 2021, part of our second season. And, you know, we hoped you enjoyed listening to it for a first, second, maybe third, fourth time.
Dan Meyer: (24:24)
Let’s be real. There’s some real fans out there.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (24:26)
We loved it then. We love it now!
Dan Meyer: (24:28)
Yep, yep, yep. Please keep in touch with the show by following us on Twitter at MTL Show, and join our Facebook group, the Math Teacher Lounge community. We’d love to hear from you there. And please stay tuned for more info on what we’re cooking up here in the Math Teacher Lounge. Thank you folks for listening. Take care, Bethany.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson: (24:47)
Bye now.
Stay connected!
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We’ll also share new and exciting free resources for your classroom every month.
Meet the guests
Fawn Nguyen
Fawn began her work with Amplify in 2022 as a Math Advance Team Specialist. She was a math coach for a K-8 school district for three years, and a middle school teacher for 30 years before that. Fawn has also received a number of accolades as an educator.
Christy Thompson
Christy Thompson is a Literacy Coach in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. She has spent her teaching and coaching career particularly focused on listening to and learning from the talk of our youngest students.
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind
Kassia Omohundro Wedekind spent many wonderful years as a classroom teacher and math coach in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and now splits her time between being an independent math coach and an editor at Stenhouse Publishers. Her favorite days are spent in classrooms learning from the many ways children talk, listen and negotiate meaning together.
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!
You might also like:
Survey
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Program overview
Boost Lectura is a high-quality, personalized Spanish literacy foundational skills program that complements Amplify Reading to build reading proficiency in both English and Spanish for grades K–2.
Student field study experience
Note: This is an early subset of the program experience. Some content may be appropriate for some students, but difficult for others. This is feedback we want to hear. The designs are also still in progress, with many aspects yet to be featured. Please email Aya Bukres with all suggestions!
Field study books and games
Below is a list of books and games (with associated skills) by grade level. Students will access these games and books through Quests.
Note: Books do not include voice-over at this time.
Kindergarten Books
| ¿Qué pasa con la gallina Tina? | ¿Qué puedes hacer con los 5 sentidos? | ¿Por qué croan las ranas? |
| Un festín de sabores | Un ¡pop! en tiempo | Los aluxes |
| El efecto mariposa | Las estaciones del año |
Kindergarten Games
| Game Name | Big Idea | Skill that will be practiced |
| Son sabrosón | Phonological Awareness | Rhyming |
| Alfa y beto | Phonological Awareness | Blending |
| Jugando ando | Phonological Awareness | Segmentation |
| Tragaletras exigentes | Phonics | Letter-sound correspondences |
| Tragaletras gruñones | Phonics | Letter combinations |
| Tragaletras comelones | Phonics | Review of letter-sound correspondences and letter combinations |
| Investiga la escena | Comprehension Processes | Gap-filling Inferences |
Grade 1 Books
| La leyenda de la colibrí | La capibara: Un animal amigable | Mi ruidoso cuerpo |
| El zorro y el huaychao | Deseos al sol |
Grade 1 Games
| Game Name | Big Idea | Skill that will be practiced |
| Alfa y beto | Phonological Awareness | Blending |
| Jugando ando | Phonological Awareness | Segmentation |
| Tragaletras exigentes | Phonics | Letter-sound correspondences |
| Tragaletras gruñones | Phonics | Letter combinations |
| Tragaletras comelones | Phonics | Review of letter-sound correspondences and letter combinations |
| Silabalón: la copa | Phonics | Syllable decoding |
| ¿Aquí o alla? | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding words with y, g, and c |
| ¿Esta o aquella? | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding words with different graphemes to represent the same phoneme |
| ¡Abra palabra! | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding – syllable manipulation |
| Quita y pon | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding – syllable manipulation |
| ¡Conéctalo! | Comprehension Processes | Using connectives |
| Investiga la escena | Comprehension Processes | Gap-filling inferences |
Grade 2 Books
| La despedida | La verdadera fortuna | La fascinante Ruta de la Seda |
| Bernardo de Gálvez | Hormigas amigas |
Grade 2 Games
| Game Name | Big Idea | Skill that will be practiced |
| ¿Aquí o alla? | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding words with y, g, and c |
| ¿Esta o aquella? | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding words with different graphemes to represent the same phoneme |
| ¡Abra palabra! | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding – syllable manipulation |
| Quita y pon | Phonics & Word Recognition | Decoding – syllable manipulation |
| ¡Conéctalo! | Comprehension Processes | Using connectives |
| Investiga la escena | Comprehension Processes | Gap-filling inferences |
Consider using Boost Lectura during the following times:
- Small group or center time
- Choice time
- During intervention blocks
- After school
- At home
- Remote learning
Getting your students online
Instruct students to navigate to learning.amplify.com, and log in using the method you typically use when logging into Boost Reading.
Find and click on the icon for Boost Lectura, as shown above.
At this time, students can begin playing games or reading books by clicking on “Iniciar.”
Having students play games in Quests
Select a game from the list to play!
Students can play games in Quests by selecting the curioso icon.
Students should hear quest narratives in Spanish.
The Automatic Placement Tool (APT)
The Automatic Placement Tool will be served when students first log in and choose the Lectura product. The Experience should take about 15–20 minutes total.
Students are greeted with a comical animation explaining we need their help with answering a few questions.
Students are guided through a few short activities measuring different skills domains.
Students receive closure to their experience via another short animation.
Troubleshooting guide
Please check to ensure “cookies” are accepted on your device.
If you still receive an error message or blank screen when accessing an Amplify page, please email Aya Bukres.
Please email Aya Bukres to confirm your login credentials.
What does problem-based math learning unlock for students? Part 2
Webinar series recap, part 2 of 3
Our webinar series explores how problem-based learning engages all students in grade-level math every day, and how instructors can bring problem-based learning into their classrooms.
We reviewed part 1 of the series in this blog post. Now, in part 2, we dig deeper into this key aspect of problem-based learning: transferring responsibility for learning to the students.
So…now what? “If you watched Kristin Gray’s webinar,” says educator Kathleen Sheehy, “You may be thinking, ‘I learned so much about the power of problem-based learning. Where do I get started?’”
In this webinar, Sheehy joins fellow educator Ben Simon to explore how teachers can truly make that key shift toward student-centered instruction. “It is a journey. So we are going to talk about the small shifts that teachers and others can make that add up to something big,” Sheehy says.
The role of the teacher in student-centered learning
Most adults were not taught to do math this way as kids—and many teachers were not taught to teach math this way. When teachers have a lot of content to get across in limited time, it can feel risky to shift to a style that requires a bit of letting go.
“Student-centered instruction helps us embrace the idea that people can come at math ideas from different directions,” says Sheehy. “It’s collaborative and social. It focuses on problem-solving with an emphasis on multiple strategies and flexible thinking.”
Problem-based math learning may not be the sage-on-a-stage model, where the teacher stands up front and acts as the only math expert in the room—but it doesn’t mean the teacher relinquishes control, either. You can have both student-focused instruction and solid classroom management.
“It’s not a free-for-all. It’s very structured,” says Sheehy. “The teacher also plays a role in providing instruction and then guiding their students to the key takeaways they want for them.”
Building stakeholder investment
To be most effective, problem-based learning needs to be not only focused on the student but supported by the community as well. This means you aren’t the only one who needs to adjust to the new approach.
What actions can you take to build stakeholder investment? How can you get the principal, other teachers, parents, and kids (who are also accustomed to another style of learning) involved and excited?
Be able to articulate a really compelling reason why student-centered instruction is right for your students. The following are just a few research-backed examples:
- It helps students develop deeper and longer-lasting mathematical understanding.
- It helps students grow as problem-solvers, engaging them in productive struggle and collaboration and learning core life skills.
- It helps students develop a growth mindset, which reduces math anxiety, boosts math confidence, and helps them relinquish the idea that someone either is or is not a math person.
When the teacher is the supporter of knowledge, not the gatekeeper, students lead the learning process and feel more confidence with and connection to math, says Sheehy.
How and where do you communicate these ideas? Sheehy and Dixon have found that providing a short hands-on math experience with problem-based learning examples can be very effective. This enables stakeholders to experience the difference themselves, especially when conducted in a low-stakes scenario like a parent math night or PD training.
Sheehy also suggests asking them what they think the impact of student-centered learning would have been for them when they were students. “We’ve heard people say things like, ‘I would have been way less anxious about math if I’d learned it this way,’” she says.
Making a plan to start the shift
“We’re not expecting to create a masterpiece overnight. It takes time to develop the teacher and student skills and to establish everything that needs to be in place,” Sheehy says, “You can’t get better at all the things all at once.”
Where to start? “Size up the shift,” she says, and make a plan.
“Using very clear look-fors can enable educators to decide where to focus,” says Sheehy. “‘What would I look for if I walked into a classroom that is beginning to engage in student-centered instruction?’”
Here are a few key elements to look for:
- Management of materials, routines, and classroom setup in a way that facilitates collaboration.
- Establishment of a classroom community (using norms charts, etc.) around the core idea that everybody belongs there and is a mathematician.
- A teachable structure that models the thinking process and creates predictability, allowing students to focus.
Sheehy and Dixon have found that a focus on these three areas helps teachers name what they are trying to improve in a systematic way.
“Once I tackle this first area and feel successful with that, I know what I’m going to tackle next, and after that,” says Sheehy. “These look-fors can help you make informed decisions that, little step by little step, can help you eventually get to where you want to be.”
How Amplify Math supports problem-based learning
Amplify Math is designed to support problem-based learning, so you’re making that shift every time you teach. The program specifically supports teachers in the planning and delivery of problem-based lessons, and enables them to monitor student progress and differentiate instruction based on real-time data.
Lessons start with warm-ups that tap into prior knowledge, then move into problems that require collaboration to solve. Teachers monitor, engage, and ultimately synthesize student work into the main idea. There are also ample opportunities for practice and reflection.
Learn more about Amplify Desmos Math.
Register to watch the recording.
Subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge.
S2-04: Gamification in the K–8 classroom
In this episode, Eric Cross sits down with his colleague and friend Fabian Hofmann to talk through gamification in the K–8 classroom. They discuss Fabian’s experience teaching outside of the United States, and the differences in classrooms outside of the country. Fabian explains the integration of game mechanisms in the classroom, standard-based grading, and shifting student thinking about learning by forming strong relationships. Fabian also shares how he created a new STEM course at his school revolving around his own passion for Star Wars. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Fabian Hofmann (00:00):
In Mr. Hofmann’s class, I get to earn points and I get to be a Jedi. I can suspend my disbelief and I’m learning history, but at the same time, I’m traveling through the galaxy.
Eric Cross (00:13):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Fabian Hofmann. Fabian is a middle school IB educator, currently teaching seventh grade multimedia design and history at Albert Einstein Academy’s middle school here in San Diego, California. He also hosts the podcast Rebel Teacher Alliance, a podcast dedicated to encouraging and supporting teachers to rethink student engagement. Fabian’s one of the most innovative teachers that I’ve ever met. His use of technology and gamification makes learning fun and accessible for our students. And I have firsthand experience with these students because we teach on the same team and have worked alongside each other during my entire career as a teacher. In this episode, we discuss gamification of the classroom, how he approaches grading from an innovator’s mindset, and his newest STEM class, Immersive Design, where his students are working with former Disney Imagineers to completely renovate their classroom into an interactive Star Wars-themed learning environment. And now, please enjoy my conversation with my good friend and colleague, Fabian Hofmann. We’ve worked together for how many years now? How many years have you been at Einstein?
Fabian Hofmann (01:23):
Well, I started when you started, like after you were student teaching, so 2014.
Eric Cross (01:28):
OK, so it’s been a while.
Fabian Hofmann (01:30):
Yeah. And then I took two years off and I went to Hawaii. I couldn’t handle the pressure. And then I came back. So we’ve worked together for six years but known each other for eight.
Eric Cross (01:39):
What’s your origin story? We’re gonna talk about your origin story. I told you.
Fabian Hofmann (01:42):
All right, cool. Right. So when I was a little boy…no. <Laugh>
Eric Cross (01:46):
This podcast is not that long!
Fabian Hofmann (01:49):
So no, I started out, teaching in 2009. I started student teaching in Germany and was teaching history and English. Did this two-year student-teaching program there. And then, when I was done, my wife and I, she’s American, we got married and we decided to move to the States. And then I started teaching at a German cultural center called the Goethe-Institut in San Francisco. We lived in the Bay Area. And from there, after a year we moved down to San Diego; I started subbing; I worked for a year at High Tech High. I taught humanities there. And then, after that year, I ended up at Einstein teaching German because that was what was available. I didn’t want to teach German. That wasn’t like, on the top of my list. But it made sense because I had taught German in San Francisco and it kind of was like, “Well, I can do that, I guess.” And then, yeah, and then I went back to—we went to Hawaii for a couple of years and then I came back here to start teaching history. So I’ve taught like a million things essentially.
Eric Cross (02:52):
And then during that time, what’s your evolution been like in the classroom? Kind of like your view of education? And how does that play out in your day-to-day with kids?
Fabian Hofmann (02:59):
So when I started teaching here in the States, I noticed that it’s very different. Technology was much further along here than it was in Germany. So when I got here and we had like an iPad cart; I helped setting up the iPad carts. And I worked with the Chromebooks and I was like, holy, holy crap, this is so cool. Like, kids can like actually do things with this technology. And then, I mean, I love technology. I’ve had an iPad when it came out and stuff like that. And so I was like, “Oh, so how about we use this in our classroom?” And so I always moved—I moved very quickly to having students create on the iPad. And at first it was like, “Oh, we use the Apple apps and stuff.” And then I went to an ed-tech teacher summit here in San Diego and my eyes were like opened to, “Oh my God, there’s so much more than just the Apple apps.” And ever since then I was like, “OK, we’re gonna use this; we’re gonna do that.” It’s just crazy stuff that I thought was cool and that students really seemed to enjoy, because it wasn’t like a typical language class; it was more like, “Well, what can we do to create, and how can we somehow still use the language but we are learning coding at the same time, or we are creating something in 3D at the same time?” Like, I was always trying to make it have two angles: the language angle, obviously, and then also the technology angle.
Eric Cross (04:25):
What was it that kept you kind of pushing? ‘Cause I remember the beginning in the Classcraft days to where you are now, I feel like you’re like light-years ahead of where you started.
Fabian Hofmann (04:37):
So you were actually the one who showed me Classcraft, which is like a gamification portal, kind of off-the-shelf thing that you can subscribe to. It has some free features and it’s like a gamification platform where students can create characters. And then these characters go on adventures. That’s like their avatar, and they get experience points in the classroom game and stuff happens. You can create, like, adventure paths for them. So if you have an assignment that you want students to do that has different steps, so, that could be an adventure path. That’s what I liked about Classcraft, is like this idea of like, “OK, we’re taking a game and applying it.” But it wasn’t enough for me. And so I started developing my own classroom game. I did some reading. I met online with John Meehan, worked with him. I read the book by Michael Matera, Explore Like a Pirate. And so it just broadened my whole world to, or just opened the world of gamification to me.
Eric Cross (05:38):
You present on gamification; you mentor other teachers on gamification. You host a podcast where you talk about it. But for those people who haven’t done it or gotten into it or maybe have a perception of it maybe that’s not quite accurate, can you talk a little bit about like what gamification is and what it’s not?
Fabian Hofmann (05:54):
- So the biggest difference…we all know game-based learning, because we all do it. We use Quizlet; we use quizzes; we use Gimkit, Blookit, Jeopardy, anything like that. Those are game based. That’s game-based learning. So using a game to facilitate learning. Which is great. I love game-based learning too. But the difference is with gamification, in the pure definition of gamification, is that you’re using game mechanics and elements and apply them to a non-game setting. A couple of smart educators were like, “Why don’t we just do that in our classroom?” And so we borrow these elements, these mechanics, these game mechanics, like getting experience points, and applying them to the classroom. So anything that students do, they earn points. So they turn in an assignment, that gets you a hundred points. They go and do something extra for the class, they get 50 points. Whatever it is, whatever your value is. That’s one aspect, like a leaderboard, virtual money, stuff like that that just in reality is not necessary, but you’re putting it somewhere where it doesn’t exist. And all of a sudden students have this weird shift in their view where it’s like, “Well, school is school, but in Mr. Hofmann’s class, I get to earn points and I get to be a Jedi and I can suspend my disbelief and I’m learning history, but at the same time I’m like traveling through the galaxy.” And it’s just amazing how that shift happens just because we’re changing the language a little bit.
Eric Cross (07:29):
Yeah. You seem to have like tapped into something that is already kind of in that zeitgeist culture thing. We’re gaming and it appeals to—I know it appeals to our students regardless of how they feel about even the subject that’s being taught, the fact that they’re immersed into this environment where they’re taking on this character role and they’re part of this bigger narrative. And you’ve so dynamically constructed this whole storyline and these experiences, and they’re learning experiences, like, they’re learning, but they’re enjoying it in a different way. But I wanted to ask you about something that I really admire that you do, and it’s how you grade. And I remember the first time you said this, we were in a parent-teacher conference and we’re all talking on Zoom with these parents and we’re all sharing our spiel. And you go, I don’t grade kids. They grade themselves. Can you talk a little bit about your conferencing with students? The rubric you use like that that, I’ve really been paying close attention to lately.
Fabian Hofmann (08:24):
Yeah. So, when I was working in Hawaii, I noticed I was teaching English, and grading papers in English is really not fun. Like, that is like my least favorite thing. Some teachers are like, “Yeah, it’s grading! Awesome! I can read stuff!” For me, it’s like, yes, I like to read stuff, but I—and it was the same in German class. I gave them feedback. Sometimes I would use oral feedback, I would, like, record stuff for them, and they would listen to it, and then they would work on it. And so I noticed when I’m giving them feedback and its oral feedback, they’re more inclined to actually work on the stuff that I was critiquing, versus when I sat down and I wrote something. They would never read it. Or some would, and most of them would not. And so I was like, this sucks. <Laughs> And I encountered this book called Hacking Assessment, because it’s such a waste of time, right? You spend so much time, because you wanna do the due diligence. And for those few kids who actually do care, that benefits them. But I want this to benefit everybody. And so I read this book called Hacking Assessment, by Starr Sackstein. And she talks about how she put the onus of grading into the student hands, essentially. And so she did standard-based grading and essentially said, “You know what? Here’s the thing. I am not going to grade you anymore. You are going to get a rubric that we are going to dissect and explain and make sure that you understand. And then you sit down and you give yourself a grade based on this rubric.” And I was like, “Wow, what? That is….I can do that? And the cool thing about this book is that she covers all the roadblocks that we as teachers have. And she explains, like, she gives examples on what we can do to convince parents, to convince admin, to convince the community, convince other teachers why what we’re doing is much, much better for a student than the previous system is. If you think about it, when a student comes into school, they start at a hundred, they start the year at a hundred, and all they’re doing is just lose points. And they’re just trying to keep up. Right? And it kind of flips this on its head, because not only with the gamification, I’m changing the name of the game, literally, but I’m also now with ungrading, I’m giving them the responsibility and the accountability to really look at their stuff and really be critical about how they’re doing. And I taught like normal in my first year in Hawaii when I was teaching English, by me grading everything and turning it and giving it to them. And I used peer grade and I did all that kind of stuff. But in the end, I was always the one responsible for the grade. But then I started to do the ungrading move and I just started to conference with kids and started giving them feedback, with the help of gamification, because there’s like a bunch of rubrics you can use to make it more fun. But all of a sudden, kids that in the year before would’ve failed my class in English, because they were English learners; they were just not into it; they didn’t care as much…all of a sudden that flipped completely. I did the exact same content again. We had to write an essay and all of a sudden, the essays were all like, up there, because we sat down, we talked about it, we went through this review process, gave them feedback. In the end, they could say, “Hey, I want this grade. And then I still have the last say. I would say, say, “Yep, sounds good.” Or “If you wanna get an A on this, or whatever it was, a 4, then here are the things you still need to do.” And because I did that, all of a sudden, the students are like, “Oh, that’s all I need to do?” And then they did it and turned it in, and all of a sudden, they got a 4. It’s, it’s amazing how that the conferencing with students, how that shifted their attitude. And I got to know my students way better than I ever had.
Eric Cross (12:20):
Yeah. That’s, that’s one of the things that I’ve noticed. And I watch you get so much more facetime with students having conferences than I do. I find myself grading…and, you know, at our school, it’s mastery-based instruction, so students can retake assessments, but you’re absolutely right: I give a grade; they get a score; and some of ’em score lower, but in their minds it’s like, OK, I’m done with that. And even though they can retake it, such a small percentage actually do. But the information that I give them in the feedback is often not read. But you’re sitting down and having a conversation and really listening and there’s so much more of a connection that you have. I just think it’s so rich. But the question I have now is how do you make the time for those conversations with those kids in your class?
Fabian Hofmann (13:01):
Yeah, it’s definitely a learning curve. Like the first year I did it, it was horrible. Like <laugh>, it cost so much time. Because kids came, because when it was time to grading, because I had not figured it out yet, I had not streamlined it. And I’m still learning. I’m still trying to figure this out and do it even better. But the idea is that you do something, you check in with me really quick. That doesn’t have to be like a full-on conference. It’s—I walk around or I call them up and say, “Hey, I saw you working on this. How did, how are you doing there? How many—” Like, let’s say I use a rubric that gives them crystals for different parts. They write the introduction; they write a bibliography; whatever, so I can bring them up and say, “Hey, how is the bibliography looking?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m missing…like, I only have like one or two sources.” And then we say, “OK, so right now you would get two crystals out of three because you have something. When you come back, you get all the crystals.” And so that’s a gamified aspect again, right? They’re coming back to get more crystals, not because they wanna do better necessarily. But because they’re like, “Hey, I wanna get those crystals because it gives me points in the game.” They are very good about like grading themselves and kind of like, they’re really hard on themselves sometimes too. And I have students who are like—
Eric Cross (14:08):
Yeah, they are.
Fabian Hofmann (14:09):
“Well, how can you make sure that people don’t just give themselves an eight?” And I’m like, “Because there’s a system in place that that does not happen. Like, there is a rubric, and if they cannot back up what they want, then it’s not gonna happen. They can write an eight all day long. I’m still the person entering it into the grade book!” <Laugh>
Eric Cross (14:27):
And let me premise this for listeners who don’t teach at IB schools, which is probably like most people.
Fabian Hofmann (14:31):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (14:32):
So IB, we teach zero through eight on a rubric system. And seven-eight is kind of like the A, kind of, quote-unquote. I know IB people are probably cringing when I say that, but <laugh>, you know, when you transfer it to like a high school? Seven, eight would be the highest score, you know. Four, five, six. So when we say eight, we’re talking about the highest score.
Fabian Hofmann (14:49):
Yeah. And so it’s really interesting because I can call them out on stuff, and it’s a one-on-one conversation, right? And if, especially if they turn something in that is not great, and they give themselves like a—I don’t know, like a C, let’s say, or a four, or whatever it is—and they’re like, “And you’re happy with that?” And then they’re standing there and they’re like, like, “No…?” <Laugh> And all of a sudden there’s a conversation. Where it’s like, and then I can be very intentionally like, “Hey man, I know you can do better. I would not—I’m not gonna accept this. I’m gonna push you to turn this in again.” And most of them actually sit down and do more. It’s a process. It takes a while. It’s not pretty in the beginning. But the payout is, so it’s incredible. Just like the amount of time that I get to spend with students, like specifically talking to them about things that they still need to work on, celebrating stuff they do, it’s incredible. Like the relationships are just so different than what I had years ago.
Eric Cross (15:50):
And you’ve also created a system where we preach—and schools always talk about this Dweck growth mindset and not having a fixed mindset, but I wonder how many opportunities or how systems are set up that are actually fixed, where it’s like one and done, OK, you did this exam and then that’s it, but there’s no opportunities to grow until the next exam! Which is gonna be….or whatever the assessment is, which is a whole different area of content or different topic or whatever. But here, you’re actually able to facilitate this growth mindset and push back if a student says, like, “Well that’s—I just got a four,” and you can actually pour into them and talk to them. And do you ever hear more about a student’s story as to why they were where they’re at, as you’re having these conferences?
Fabian Hofmann (16:29):
Oh, absolutely. Like for some kids who, who are just like not getting the work done or whatever, there’s always something where it’s not because they’re not smart or because they’re lazy. It’s like, sometimes, literally they tell you, well, ’cause I ask them, “Hey, can you work on this at home?” Or “Can you come in during lunch, after school, whatever? I’m always here.” And then they drop some bombs on you, like, “Hey, my parents, like, divorced. My mom lives in Mexico.” ‘Cause we live in San Diego. So some students live in Mexico and come to school here in San Diego and they get stuck at the border or, even though they have internet at home, they have to share. It’s like kind of what we experienced during the pandemic, where it’s like, there’s like three kids at home and one computer. Stuff like that. Right? And it’s these stories where you’re like, first of all, it’s very humbling ’cause they’re going through stuff that I never had to go through. I mean, my childhood was not amazing, but compared to what they’re going through, it’s like, “Oh yeah, that exists.” And it kind of like puts you in your place a little bit. It’s also because of the system that I use. There’s no late, really, in my class. Some of the students are like, “I need to subtract points from my grade because I turned it in late.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. The fact that you’re doing it is quote-unquote punishment enough ’cause you have to do it outside of class, you have to do it at home; you have to do it during lunch. Like, that is, that is not comfortable. You’re still doing it. So why would I punish you by taking a grade away? That doesn’t make sense. You got the work done. That’s all that matters.” I try to be that person that like is understanding. It’s still pushing them to do their best and reminding them and harping on them. And with the spark that I threw in there and fanning that flame of them becoming a better student because I’m supporting them. You’re supporting them. We’re all—our seventh-grade team is incredibly supportive. And then some people might push back, like “That’s not preparing them for the real world.” This is the real world.
Eric Cross (18:20):
There’s a lot of life skills that they’re gonna need…but like, they’re 12 right now! Or 11 or six, you know, whatever it is! Let’s—we can hold off on taxes and the crushing weight of adult reality later on. You got it done! Well-done! I do wanna talk about this thing that is your baby lately, this embryonic thing that you’ve been growing and I’ve been fortunate to be able to watch it since its inception. But you have this class that you created from scratch that’s essentially a STEM class. Two questions: Why did you create the class? And you’ve done some uncommon things. I’m gonna leave it wide open just for you to talk about it because it’s your baby and I’ve been fortunate to be able to watch it from the start. So can you talk about that?
Fabian Hofmann (19:01):
So yeah, so I’m obsessed with Star Wars. I think that’s putting it mildly. I love Star Wars. Always have. My classroom game is called Jedi Academy. And I’ve been playing around with this idea of creating a room that is more immersive. So I put a space, like a window to space, on my wall. I have the Millennium Falcon in my room. I have like a bunch of Resistance stuff or whatever. Anything Star Wars, you can find in my classroom. It’s not like overloaded, but I was very intentional in the things that I put in there, because I want my students to come in and feel like they are playing the game. And one of those things that I used was like smells; I used sounds to try to immerse them more. And then so one day I was like, wouldn’t it be cool to create a classroom that looks literally like a Star Wars set? Like you walked onto a set. Onto a spaceship, onto a rebel base, onto whatever it is. And how can I, how can I make that happen? And then we talked about it and you were like, “Yeah, how about you let the kids do it?” And that’s kind of how the course was born. And now I have students in my classroom who are in the process of designing a classroom based on Star Wars. And they’re gonna build everything. And we’re all learning at the same time. I’ve never done anything like this. I do like STEM, but I’ve never like actually made it a class. And so I contacted a bunch of people on LinkedIn ’cause I was like, it would be cool to talk to an Imagineer and to get like my foot in the door at Disney and then have an Imagineer come in and tell us about what they did. I have this book called The Art of Galaxy’s Edge, which is like the Star Wars land in Disneyland. And I just looked at the list and was like, “Who could be a good person to contact here?” And it said one of them was Eric Baker, and it said, “Executive Creative Director.” And I googled him or I looked for him on LinkedIn and I found him and I was like, “I’m just gonna send him a message. I’m just gonna tell him what I do in my class in history, gamification and all that, and they’re Jedi, and blah, blah, blah.” And he wrote back! Like, he was the only person that wrote back. I wrote a bunch of people and he was like, “Yeah, I’d be super-interested. I don’t know what you want me to do, but I’m down.” And so it created this relationship between me and Eric Baker who used to work for Imagineering, who are like the people at Disney who create the rides in the park and all that. And I talked to him and he gave me some feedback on the room. And then he was like, “Oh, so if you ever want me to talk to students, I’m down.” I was like, “Uh, yes!” And so we had him Zoom in. He talked about his life and how he became one of the people to look for when it comes to theme park design and to create immersive experiences. And I contacted other people on YouTube, like somebody who is like a Star Wars room builder. He’s willing to chat with us about this project. And then, I discovered that there is this thing called Imagination Campus at Disneyland, which they offer workshops on immersive storytelling. And I was like, “Oh, that’s what I want! I want my students to tell a story with my room!” And so I wrote up a proposal. Took a long time, but they signed—our admin signed it off. We kind of financed it. And then, about two weeks ago, you came along, another teacher, and we took 30something students to Disneyland and they did this workshop where they learned all about like how the Imagineers design story elements and put them in the parks. And then we took all of the kids to Galaxy’s Edge. And we took a bunch of photos. We went on the rides together. We had this collective experience. And it was life-changing for a lot of students. Because, I mean, we’re a Title One school; there’s like, we have about 60% free or reduced lunch. And a lot of them had never been to Disneyland. About half of them had never been. Some of them went when they were little. And so just watching their faces, going to Disneyland, watching them walk into Galaxy’s Edge, experiencing all these things, it was just, my mind was just blown. And I like literally, I don’t know if you noticed, but I was just smiling. Literally.
Eric Cross (23:19):
You were loving it.
Fabian Hofmann (23:20):
Yeah. Then we come back and we have these amazing conversations about design and what they noticed and how they created this immersive experience in their world. And we talk about how we can bring this back to our classroom. And parents are sending emails saying, “Oh my God, we’re so happy that you did this for our kids and you’re the coolest teacher.”
Eric Cross (23:39):
You touched on something that I wanted to ask you about. So you stay connected to people that inspire you, I feel like, or you have a pretty broad network of educators and professionals. Like, how much does that play into what you do in the classroom and the ideas that you have, as your network or your community of people?
Fabian Hofmann (23:57):
So the one network that helped me the most is Twitter. And I know people have opinions about Twitter, for good reason. But when I started to gamify, I just started to follow specific hashtags for areas that interested me. And that was gamification; eXPdup, which is like Explore like a Pirate—it’s an acronym. And it just opened up all these people, all these people, all these educators who are out there just like doing cool stuff and sharing it on Twitter. And I started connecting with them. And one of them is on my podcast. We met through Twitter; we started sharing stuff. We started talking about the things that we do. We both happened to have a gamified classroom. And so we connected over this thing Twitter, and now we’re like friends and we’re presenting together at Q and all those places. Teacher Twitter is incredibly supportive and people want to show you the stuff that they work on, just like I do. Like when I have stuff that I worked out, I shared it on there. And it’s so fun to hear back from teachers saying, “Hey, this looks awesome.” It’s just, it makes you feel good and it makes you feel like, “Oh, what I’m doing is not a total waste of time.” <Laugh>
Eric Cross (25:10):
<laugh> Those thoughts do creep in, right? Like, even though you’re doing something awesome and you might think so, we become our own worst critic sometimes, or we always see the things that we can improve and we overlook the things that we’re doing well. Fabian, where can people hear more about you, about gamification, about what you’re doing in the classroom, about how you’re innovating? I know you talk about this stuff with some—and you talk about it with some pretty legit people in the education industry. So can you tell some folks where they can hear more about it?
Fabian Hofmann (25:37):
So you can find me on Twitter at Hofmann edu—one F, two Ns—edu, and then I also host a podcast called Rebel Teacher Alliance. There’s three of us, where we talk all things gamification. But we also talk to teachers who don’t gamify at all. And we just, we just invite people who are interesting, who have stuff to share, who do cool stuff. You can find the podcast on the internet at Rebel Teacher Alliance dot com. Follow us there. If you wanna be a guest, just send a message and we’ll get you on.
Eric Cross (26:10):
Fabian, I’m gonna gush on you right now, but when you came back to Einstein, I was so happy because I knew that you sharpened me; you make me a better science teacher. Your innovation, your passion for kids, your sense of humor, your outside-the-box thinking, all of that. And when you got onto the seventh-grade team and you were here, I just knew that it was going to be awesome. And it has been. And so as a teaching colleague, as a friend, dude, you just rock, man. I’m super proud of you. And thank you for making me better.
Fabian Hofmann (26:40):
Aw, now I’m starting to cry. It’s like, don’t…
Eric Cross (26:43):
<laugh>. All true, dude. All true, my brother.
Fabian Hofmann (26:46):
Thank you.
Eric Cross (26:46):
All true. And thank you for letting me be part of the journey and I will definitely be walking down the hall asking you questions as I try to implement some of these great ideas that you’re doing with kids. Thanks so much for listening. And now we wanna hear more about you. Do you know any inspiring educators? Nominate them as a future guest on Science Connections by emailing STEM at amplifycom.wpengine.com. That’s S T E M at amplifycom.wpengine.com. Make sure to click subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join our Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community. Until next time.
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Meet the guest
Fabian Hofmann is a middle school International Baccalaureate teacher and host of the Podcast, Rebel Teacher Alliance. He is currently teaching 7th grade History and Multimedia Design just down the hall from Eric Cross at Albert Einstein Academies Middle School in San Diego. To engage students, he uses technology and gamification. Students embark on a year-long journey through a galaxy far, far away to learn the ways of the “Force” and some world history along the way. Follow him on Twitter and check out the Rebel Teacher Alliance podcast.
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.
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S1-05: How does coding fit in the science classroom? A conversation with Aryanna Trejo of Code.org
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.
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.
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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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.
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!
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Professional learning journey
| Prepare | Begin | Practice | Advance |
| Learning sessions will help shift literacy and math instruction in areas such as the Science of Reading and/or problem-based approaches to math. | Program-aligned packages will support those who are new to Amplify programs. | Program-aligned packages will support those who have experience using Amplify programs. | Offerings will support advanced implementation, build capacity for instructional leaders, certify in-house trainers to deliver Launch sessions, and more. |
“Gain the literacy knowledge and skills you need to thrive and help your students thrive. Through these sessions, you’ll understand typical literacy development and how to describe and address literacy difficulties.”
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This session will build a base of common knowledge about the Reading Rope and support educators in identifying effective instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.
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Science of Reading: The Learning Lab online course
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The final course in the series is designed to review key concepts and knowledge from previous coursework, explore fundamental aspects of structured literacy within lessons, observe and analyze structured literacy instruction in action, and investigate how data informs instructional decisions.
[Available June 2025]
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Supporting multiliterate learner sessions
Unlock the magic of teaching multiliterate learners with evidence-based literacy practices. Making the shift to effectively support diverse readers in multiple languages is no small feat, but our professional development sessions are here to guide you effortlessly.
Empower your teaching with these engaging sessions, and make a meaningful impact on your multiliterate students’ literacy development.
Build your knowledge of multiliterate learners
Virtual | 90-minute session
This session provides educators with a foundational overview of how to teach multiliterate learners using evidence-based literacy practices.
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Deepen your knowledge of multiliterate learners
On-site or virtual | 3-hour session
This session will build an understanding of how the brain learns to read in multiple languages, as well as how to leverage cross-linguistic transfer, and align instruction to best practices for multiliterate learners.
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Elevate educational experiences by placing students’ ideas at the core of math lessons through problem-based learning. These sessions offer flexible professional learning experiences, allowing you to gain firsthand experience with a problem-based approach as a learner. You then learn to integrate this approach seamlessly into your teaching practices, bringing renewed energy to your math classroom.
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On-site or virtual | 3-hour session
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Prepare Professional Development (PD)
Learning experiences to prepare for literacy and math instructional shifts
The following literacy and math sessions are designed to support all educators—regardless of the program used—in enhancing their instructional practices.
- Sessions devoted to Science of Reading offer research-based strategies to deepen understanding that support students’ reading development.
- Sessions focusing on a problem-based approach to math empower educators to facilitate meaningful learning experiences and foster critical thinking skills in their students.
- Sessions supporting multilingual/English learners enable educators to make a meaningful impact on students’ multiliteracy development.
Professional learning journey
| Prepare |
Begin |
Practice |
Advance |
| Learning sessions will help shift literacy and math instruction in areas such as the Science of Reading and/or problem-based approaches to math. | Program-aligned packages will support those who are new to Amplify programs. | Program-aligned packages will support those who have experience using Amplify programs. | Offerings will support advanced implementation, build capacity for instructional leaders, certify in-house trainers to deliver Launch sessions, and more. |
“Gain the literacy knowledge and skills you need to thrive and help your students thrive. Through these sessions, you’ll understand typical literacy development and how to describe and address literacy difficulties.”
Science of Reading learning experiences
Listening to students read is magic. But knowing how to get them reading? That’s science.
Making the shift to the Science of Reading is no small feat, but participating in professional development sessions can help you make this change seamlessly.
Amplify Science of Reading sessions offer flexible professional learning experiences for teachers that incorporate engaging activities grounded in what science tells us about literacy development.
Build your knowledge of the Science of Reading
Virtual | 90-minute session
This introductory session provides educators with a foundational overview of what the Science of Reading means and what it tells us about how to teach using evidence-based reading practices.
Participants will learn to:
- Define the Science of Reading by examining evidence-based research.
- Explain how two frameworks, the Simple View of Reading and the Reading Rope, work in tandem to guide effective literacy instruction.
- Identify instructional principles aligned to the Science of Reading.
Deepen your knowledge of the Science of Reading
On-site or virtual | 3-hour session
This session will build a base of common knowledge about the Reading Rope and support educators in identifying effective instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.
Participants will learn to:
- Identify the strands in the Reading Rope.
- Describe how each strand plays an important role in developing skilled readers and writers.
- Identify key look-fors in effective Science of Reading instruction.
Science of Reading: The Learning Lab online courses
This series of three self-paced online courses, crafted by literacy expert Susan Lambert and built around International Dyslexia Association (IDA) Knowledge and Practice Standards, guides you through the essential Science of Reading skills and knowledge needed to teach students to read proficiently, as well as advanced strategies for aiding struggling readers. Each course builds on the last, equipping you with the tools and confidence to make a lasting impact on your students’ literacy journeys.
Benefit from flexible learning on an interactive platform—each course spans 25–30 hours of instruction and is accessible for 12 months. Upon completion, you’ll be provided with a downloadable certificate, validating your new expertise in the Science of Reading.
Foundations to the Science of Reading
This course offers a comprehensive overview of research in the field. Each of the eight modules contains three lessons covering the foundations of literacy acquisition.
Explore the scope and sequence of Foundations to the Science of Reading with a Pacing Guide.
Access the free Preview Pass for this course.
Advanced topics in the Science of Reading: Assessment and reading difficulties
The second course is aimed at providing an in-depth examination of assessments, a deeper understanding of reading difficulties, and familiarity with pertinent legal frameworks for educators, all of which influence instructional decision-making.
Explore the scope and sequence of Advanced topics in the Science of Reading with our Pacing Guide.
Access the free Preview Pass for this course.
Applied structured literacy
The final course in the series is designed to review key concepts and knowledge from previous coursework, explore fundamental aspects of structured literacy within lessons, observe and analyze structured literacy instruction in action, and investigate how data informs instructional decisions.
Explore the scope and sequence of Applied structured literacy with our Pacing Guide.
Access the free Preview Pass for this course.
NEW
Sessions supporting multiliterate learners
Unlock the magic of teaching multiliterate learners with evidence-based literacy practices. Making the shift to effectively support diverse readers in multiple languages is no small feat, but our professional development sessions are here to guide you effortlessly.
Empower your teaching with these engaging sessions, and make a meaningful impact on your multiliterate students’ literacy development.
Build your knowledge of multilingual/English learners
Virtual | 90-minute session
This session provides educators with a foundational overview of how to teach multiliterate learners using evidence-based literacy practices.
Contact us to request a quote.
Deepen your knowledge of multilingual/English learners
On-site or virtual | 3-hour session
This session will build an understanding of how the brain learns to read in multiple languages, as well as how to leverage cross-linguistic transfer and align instruction to best practices for multiliterate learners.
Contact us to request a quote.
Sessions focusing on a problem-based approach to math instruction
Elevate educational experiences by placing students’ ideas at the core of math lessons through problem-based learning. These sessions offer flexible professional learning experiences, allowing you to gain firsthand experience with a problem-based approach as a learner. You then learn to integrate this approach seamlessly into your teaching practices, bringing renewed energy to your math classroom.
Build your knowledge of a problem-based approach for grades K–5 or 6–8
Virtual | 90-minute session
This session provides you with a foundational overview of what an engaging problem-based approach in math entails.
During this session you’ll learn to:
- Explain how a problem-based approach to math brings delight to both teaching and learning and builds lasting student understanding.
- Identify actionable strategies for using a problem-based approach in a math classroom.
Contact us to request a quote.
Deepen your knowledge of a problem-based approach for grades K–5 or 6–8
On-site or virtual | 3-hour session
This session provides you with hands-on experience facilitating problem-solving in math, leaving you with an increased understanding of how to teach conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and applications of math.
During this session you’ll learn to:
- Explain how a problem-based approach to math brings delight to both teaching and learning and builds lasting student understanding.
- Identify actionable strategies for using a problem-based approach in a math classroom.
- Connect your current teaching practice to a problem-based approach, and choose a next step to implement a more problem-based approach.
Contact us to request a quote.
Get in touch with a PD expert
mCLASS K–8 Literacy & Math Assessment System | Amplify
Overview
Among English Language Learner (ELL) students, Spanish is the most common language spoken at home—77% of students with limited English proficiency in the U.S. public schools claim Spanish as their primary language at home.
Amplify’s new Spanish-language companion program for Amplify CKLA meets an essential need for educators, and fulfills a central mission for all of us who aspire to achieve true equity in education. With Amplify Caminos, teachers will be able to develop student comprehension in Spanish through a content-rich curriculum while also building bridges to English literacy.
Amplify Caminos was developed by a bilingual team from across the Latinx Hispanic diaspora with a concerted effort to create relevant connections for students so the classroom experience strikes the ideal balance between the security of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown.
Amplify Caminos is a Spanish language arts curriculum for grades K–5 and can be used on its own. It can also be used alongside Amplify CKLA to provide students with equitable instruction in Spanish and English across a range of instructional models, including dual language immersion and transitional classrooms.
Amplify Caminos is a program for Grades K–5.
In Grades K-2, the Knowledge Strand builds background knowledge and vocabulary through carefully sequenced read-alouds and complex texts. Teachers read stories aloud that are more complex than the text students can decode on their own, enabling children to engage with complex texts and build background knowledge of a variety of connected topics in history, science, literature, and the arts.
In Grades 3–5, students are still focused on building reading and writing skills as well as knowledge and vocabulary, but the program no longer has two strands. The various lessons in each unit include read-alouds; whole group, small group, and partner reading; close reading; literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions; vocabulary; grammar; writing; and unit assessments.
The Amplify Caminos Skills Strand for K–2 is under development.
Available for the 2021–22 school year, Amplify Caminos can support teachers in multiple language teaching models, including dual language immersion classrooms, transitional classrooms, newcomer or bridge programs, and other unique models.
It can be taught alongside Amplify CKLA or as a standalone.
Program design
Grades K–2
Knowledge Teacher Guides, Flip Books, Student Knowledge Activity Books, Image Cards, recorded Read-Alouds, and planning and professional development resources.
Grades 3–5
Teacher Guides, Student Readers, Activity Books, Poet’s Journal, Writer’s Journal, Text Anthologies for Grades 4 and 5, Core Quests, Writing Quests (The Contraption in Grade 4, The Robot in Grade 5), and planning and professional development resources.
S5-01. Investigating math anxiety in the classroom
Season 5 is here! This season, we’ll be talking all about math anxiety: what it is, what causes it, and what we can do to prevent or ease this anxiety in the math classroom. To launch this very important theme, we sat down with Dr. Gerardo Ramirez, associate professor of educational psychology at Ball State University.
As someone who’s been studying math anxiety for more than a decade, he had some interesting research and advice to share on why math anxiety affects so many students (and adults), and tips for how to start reducing it.
Listen now and don’t forget to grab your MTL study guide to track your learning and make the most of this episode!
Enjoy this episode and explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.
Dan Meyer (00:01):
Hey, folks. Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. I’m one of your hosts, Dan Meyer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:05):
And I am your other host. I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson. Season five! Hello!
Dan Meyer (00:11):
Bethany, how are you doing? How have you been spending the long break between our recording sessions?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:16):
As much as I loved sharing content from previous seasons, I am so thrilled that we’re back for season five. I have been, you know, chasing a toddler. I think he’s already tired of me saying, “Ooh, can we count that?” He’s like [sighs] “One two, one two.” Like, he’s done already.
Dan Meyer (00:36):
Too much counting. Yeah, I worry about that so much, that my love of mathematics might be perceived by my kids as smothering. Yeah, I worry about the same. We shared with you folks some bangers of reruns, in my humble opinion. Some great guests. But, we’ve been excited—me and Bethany—to hop back on the mics, on the ones and twos, and explore some new ideas together.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:01):
Well, I loved our season talking about joy in mathematics. And personally I could…like, we could turn this whole podcast into joy in mathematics. However, we’re kind of going a different route. Because if you ask folks why they don’t feel joy in mathematics, a lot of times at the root of that is some really intense math anxiety. So this whole season, we’re going to be delving into math anxiety. Exploring what it is, who has it, why do we think it happens, what do we think we can do about it, and how can we navigate through it, so that we can experience that joy in math? These are questions that we’re gonna explore over the course of the season. Dan Meyer, how do you feel about that?
Dan Meyer (01:49):
It feels big and it feels personal. I mean, as we shared in our math stories back from season…whatever it was, math anxiety was a huge part.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:59):
It was last season, Dan.
Dan Meyer (02:00):
Last…? I mean, who can remember? Big part of your journey. I’ve had some very punctuated but intense moments of anxiety in math class. And socially, we have built math up to be this incredibly powerful thing. You know, restricting movement on economic ladders, preventing people from getting into careers they want. Whether or not they have much to do with math class, math anxiety is a really large part of educational but also social life. And yeah, I’m really excited to explore it with you. We’re bringing on some really excellent guests. Some researchers, yes. But not just researchers! Also people who practice in the field and know firsthand what it looks like to resolve issues of anxiety with students.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:45):
Yeah, you’re right, Dan. My math story contained quite a bit of math anxiety, so I am particularly invested in this season. I mean, I still navigate math anxiety. And, you know, many of us do, and let’s talk about it. And let’s—I love that you reminded me. We’re gonna have a lot of great researchers all throughout the season, and a lot of times folks feel like the research happening, there’s sometimes a gap between researchers and what’s actually happening in the classroom. Not in all cases, but a lot of times. Right? And I remember a lot of conversation about the latest research when I was in grad school, but unless you’re actively studying something, sometimes we don’t know what’s happening. Right? We’re really focused on what’s happening right in front of us in our classroom. So let’s take some of that research; let’s break it down; let’s talk to some of the folks who are thinking about this for the bulk of their day, right?
Dan Meyer (03:41):
Yep. So we got our first guest coming up in a moment here.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:45):
So to kick off this season, we’re starting episode one by talking to Dr. Gerardo Ramirez, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Ball State University. And he’s been researching math anxiety for more than a decade. He’s worked with so many amazing folks in the field. He’s worked with students, he’s worked with teachers, with educators…I’m just so excited to talk to him. If you look up math anxiety, you see his name as one of the folks who is really thinking about this at so many different angles, and we get to talk to him. So enjoy our conversation with Dr. Gerardo Ramirez.
Dan Meyer (04:29):
We are so excited to have Dr. Gerardo Ramirez on the show with us. Dr. Ramirez is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Ball State University. Thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (04:40):
Yeah, thank you for inviting me to talk about math anxiety.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:43):
So with your interview, Dr. Ramirez, we are actually launching the season. We’re gonna be talking about all different aspects of math anxiety, and it feels pretty perfect that you are first guest of the season, because of the sheer breadth of research and conversations you’ve had about math anxiety. Could you start us off kind of telling us a story of how did you get interested in studying math anxiety? Or why, you know, why did you dive into this topic that, you know, I think a lot of folks might…like, if you’re on a plane, and you say, “Oh, I study math anxiety,” what kind of reaction are you gonna get?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (05:24):
Oh, sure. Yeah. I think most people are actually very interested because they all have their own story about feeling anxious about math, or just being anxious about evaluation situations that involve math. And, yeah, they wanna share those stories. People feel quite comfortable talking about their anxiety about math, for some reason. But for me, I started off, when I was in undergrad, I was studying to take the GRE quiz. I was hoping to go into a psych program. But I wasn’t exactly sure what direction yet. As I took some of the practice tests, there’s some situations in which I was very nervous about taking the practice test. And I just noticed that I did really poorly on some of these exams. And so I became very interested in issues like choking under pressure, which means when you underperform relative to what you expected to perform. And so, as I was researching these issues, I started to come across this whole field of math anxiety. And I saw that while there are some people who choke under pressure during tests, there are other people who just have a strong general fear of mathematics.
Dan Meyer (06:29):
That’s really helpful. I can imagine you’re doing a lot of free psychology sessions, free therapy for people on airplanes when they bring to you their own stories of math. So let’s thank you for your service in that sense. I’m super-curious. So Bethany and I have both taught math. We both have seen firsthand what it looks like when a student is anxious in math class, though maybe we don’t have kind of the clinical language to describe it. And I’m curious, from a clinical sense, how do we define math anxiety?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (06:57):
Sure. So first off, math anxiety is not something that you would find in the DSM, for instance. But we generally define that as a fear or apprehension to situations that involve math. So it doesn’t have to necessarily be educational situations. It could be someone asks you a math-related question during a party, or you have to calculate the tip at a restaurant, for instance. It doesn’t have to be about schooling situations, although that’s obviously where it seems to matter a lot for many people. So it is basically a fear or apprehension to situations that involve math. And I think distinguishing the term “fear” from “anxiety” is really important here. A lot of times people use those terms interchangeably, and the term “fear” is obviously within our definition of math anxiety. But oftentimes what differentiates anxiety from fear is that, anxiety is—think of it like a recipe. Anxiety is fear plus a little bit of unknown. OK? So if, for instance, if you hated snakes, and they threw a snake at you, you’d be in intense fear. Whereas if you hated snakes and they said, “There is a snake in the room, but I’m not gonna tell you where,” that’s gonna cause anxiety. And so the reason why we call it math anxiety is because a lot of times people experience this fear for a possible unknown future that involves math or possible unknown evaluations that people might have about your competence, because of math. And so for a lot of kids, they feel anxious about how they’re gonna do on a test or whether they’re gonna be able to pass a class or whether they’ll be able to understand what you’re saying in your lessons, for instance. And so the anxiety component really gets at fear of something that’s unknown, but related to mathematics situations.
Dan Meyer (08:47):
Math is somewhere in the ceiling right now. Perhaps I might be surprised with a math situation!
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (08:52):
Yeah. yep.
Dan Meyer (08:52):
So I have this tendency to assume that every other subject that we teach has it better and easier than math does. It’s not true. I know this is not true. But I’m kind of curious here. Is math anxiety, like, part of a general just set of anxiety around schooling itself? Like, is there a reading anxiety, a writing anxiety, and does that all just flow from the same kind of fount of anxiety around schooling or situations about learning? And what makes math special in this regard? If it is its own special anxiety, for instance?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (09:27):
There are different…so some people obviously suffer from generalized anxiety. Right? And so they would, you know, feel anxious both for evaluative and non-evaluative situations. But in the research that we’ve done and that other people have done, there are differences between things like reading anxiety, math anxiety; I’ve also studied spatial and creativity anxiety. A lot of times what we’re trying to do in these studies is we measure all of the above, and we try to show that, look, math anxiety predicts math situations above and beyond these other things. So yeah, we definitely distinguish those things. And so what’s special about math is that, well, I think the symbolic nature is a big part of it. The abstract symbolic nature is just not as tangible to students. They can’t touch it. And so it doesn’t allow ’em to use their full cognitive faculties to play with it, as you might see, for instance, in science. Or it doesn’t allow people to relate math to their own interests the way you might see, for instance, in English. So maybe I hate reading novels, but I’m interested in zombies and you give me a book on zombies, well, ok, great, you’ve connected my personal assets to the topic. Whereas with math, either that’s harder to do or instructors don’t do such a good job of setting that connection up.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:46):
Also, I think, you know, I’ve heard of students being really anxious, let’s say, during a reading session, when teachers used to do—hopefully they’re still not doing it—the popcorn reading, where you just randomly call on a student to read out a sentence. Right? But you don’t really hear students or adults talking about, “Oh, no, no, no, I don’t read; I don’t mess with reading.” You know? Whereas with math, you do hear, “Oh, I’m not a math person. Oh no, no, no, don’t ask me any math questions.” And that is such a distinction.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (11:18):
Yeah. And I think a lot of that’s because it’s just so common. As an adult, to be nervous about reading is kind of an uncommon thing. So people feel a stigma around admitting that. But math is something that everyone feels like they’re inadequate in. And so there’s a lot of comfort in telling you how they’re just one of the many people who don’t like math. And that, you know, can have a lot of different consequences and outcomes. I think on the one hand, I think for a lot of kids it becomes a normalized message that if you fear math, that’s OK, join the club. Right? But we have to be careful about that, ’cause a lot of math anxiety researchers will oftentimes say, part of what leads to math anxiety is adults normalizing that it’s OK to be scared of math. So I think a lot of times adults, teachers, for instance, math teachers, they’ll tell kids, “You know, if you’re scared, that’s OK.” And so a lot of the math anxiety community says, “No, no, no, you’re not supposed to do that.” But my recent view is different. I view that as a form of validation. Because math is hard. And so telling kids, “Hey, look, it’s actually easy if you just try,” I don’t think that’s true. It’s actually just hard. And I think even if it was easy, to the kid, it feels hard! And I think something that’s not really well-studied right now in our field is the value of validating people’s math negative math experiences. We don’t want to validate that, ’cause we think that we’re gonna reinforce that. But actually, I think the opposite. I think when you validate people’s negative math experiences, it helps ’em to feel that they can handle it. They can start to take control over their own emotions.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:52):
I love that. And I, I actually, I think that’s so powerful, what you’re talking about, that validation. I taught kindergarten, and I vividly remember being in a parent-teacher conference and that parent saying, “Oh, I wasn’t a math person either,” right? Or, you know, their language and their experience with their own math schooling, their anxiety about math was actually impacting their students’ experience of math. Or the conversation that, when I would go to talk about a math assessment, let’s say, you could see the parent actually tensing up. And there was this moment of validation, that I felt like we needed to make space for that in the conversation with the parents, right?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (13:38):
Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:38):
Like, this is a real thing. And we are working on teaching students that math is something that gets to—your experience with math gets to look all sorts of different ways. And it’s OK if we, you know, make a mistake, or if we kind of only get this part, but we’ve really got that part. Or let’s talk about it; let’s write about it. So I really feel like that that validation is something that’s so missing. And instead of the validation, like you said, you see folks being like, “Oh yeah, me neither. I’m not a math person either.” Right?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (14:10):
Yeah. I think…part of the reason why people are comfortable sharing this because they’re looking for validation also. When they say, “Oh, I’m not a math person,” you know, I think they’re hoping that, you’ll say like, “Yeah, me neither,” or “Of course not, ’cause math is terrible.” Right? They’re looking for validation, not to reinforce their perspective, but to feel that it’s OK not to be a math person. And I think that’s one of the techniques that I’m trying to work on in my research right now, is to provide evidence that actually people will work harder when you validate their math experience. You don’t have to tell them a positive story per se. If your current story is “Math is hard and I’m very, very anxious; I’m scared,” then we can just validate that and help you work through that. And it actually will strengthen our relationships. Because if you’re a student and you’re struggling with math and I tell you, “Yeah, it’s hard; it’s OK to struggle with math,” that makes you feel seen. And that’s gonna lead you to want to ask me more for help, because I’m someone who understands you. And that’s a great, you know, remediation opportunity.
Dan Meyer (15:14):
A common thread that I think I’m seeing here in several answers is that math sometimes asks students to disassociate part of themselves. Where success in math oftentimes means working from an a level of abstraction with symbols, like you said, that can feel alien. Like, who am I here? And in the same way, I love that you’re proposing we validate and reassociate people with a very deeply felt part of themselves that is anxious about mathematics.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (15:44):
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s what validation’s supposed to do, right? So a lot of us, when we feel these strong emotions, we wonder, “Is this even a real thing? Are other people feeling this? Is there something wrong with me?” So we feel the emotions, but we can’t actually deal with them, because we wonder if they’re legitimate. And so when someone says, like, “Yeah, this is hard,” it crystallizes that emotion. And once something is made real, you can actually choose how you want to deal with it. Some kids are gonna deal with it by staying anxious. But some people are gonna choose to deal with it by saying, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now; I have to take this math test, so I’m just gonna think positive.” And that’s great. If the kid can end up saying that to themselves, that’s much more effective than me telling the kid, “Hey, you just gotta think positive. You’re gonna start the test anyway.” And so we want the kid to make meaning of their experience, and the way we do that is by crystallizing their emotions through validation.
Dan Meyer (16:36):
Yeah. I love that. And so what you’re proposing there, I think, sounds like, a solution, like a post-talk solution after students are feeling anxiety.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (16:43):
Yes.
Dan Meyer (16:43):
To validate and empathize.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (16:45):
Yes.
Dan Meyer (16:45):
And over the course of our season, we hope to explore a lot about solutions to math anxiety that are preventative, that reduce the odds of anxiety arising, through instruction and curriculum, before it arises. And I’m just wondering if you’ve seen anything that would hint at either specific or general words of wisdom you wanna share with the educators, about not just addressing it after the fact, but preventing math anxiety before it arises?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (17:14):
To be honest, at this point, I haven’t seen enough evidence for me to recommend anything concretely as an intervention for math anxiety, or an intervention to prevent its development. All I can really do here is rely a lot on the more broad cognitive-behavioral research on anxiety, which says that one of the ways we prevent people from developing anxiety is by helping them to make more positive appraisals of challenge situations. So a lot of times, when kids are challenged, they don’t know how to interpret that. “What does it mean that I’m struggling with this thing?” And so that’s where I think a lot of teachers can help students’ interpretations of that. ‘Cause if you leave kids to their own devices, they’re gonna think, “I’m struggling because I’m stupid. I’m struggling because I’m not good enough. I’m struggling because my dad is right; I’m gonna be a failure.” You know? They’re going to impose an interpretation to a challenge situation regardless. And so, as teachers, one thing we can do is we can help shape that interpretation and say, “What does it mean to struggle with math? People will say it means you’re stupid. That’s one interpretation. What’s another one? It means that your brain is working really hard to think through something. That’s another interpretation. What’s better? What do you think is more helpful?” And then, helping students to see how interpretations matter to how you ultimately feel about something. And that’s a very metacognitive way of thinking about things. So yeah, I would say that one way to prevent it is to help students to take more positive interpretations of their experience. But another way, and I think a more successful way, I think, is to give students early experiences where they feel efficacious dealing with math. One of the ways you do that, for instance, is by obviously making sure that the students understand the material—but that’s obvious; people are trying to do that. One of my favorite recommendations is to keep reassigning assignments, the same exact assignment, for, say, three weeks, back-to-back. So if in week one you do the homework assignment, you do OK, you don’t do so great, when week two you do it, you give the exact same assignment, and now the student can see like, “Wow, OK, this was much easier.” And then, week three, you give the exact same assignment; now the kid’s feeling really confident. And the reason why that’s great is because it helps kids to see that they’re growing in confidence. A lot of times kids don’t get to see that because we’re constantly throwing new assessments at them. And so they’re never seeing that growth. All they’re seeing is a new challenge, a new challenge, a new challenge. So I think we need to set up situations where they can feel that they’re growing, when we keep the assessment static. That can be a formative assessment, for instance—doesn’t have to be a summative assessment.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:55):
That feels so powerful and it feels like it really connects to that validation piece, right? We are actually helping to create a culture in our math classroom where we might struggle with something, but we keep revisiting it. And it’s not so much to reach mastery, but as Dr. Megan Franke — we talked to her about this partial understanding and about pulling on those threads of things that you do understand, so that you can build your confidence…build, not just confidence, but build your…I guess, kind of get your footing, right? You’re saying, “Well, I do understand this. I see how this works.” And if I’m revisiting an assignment, I feel like that would give me permission to like, “Hey, I don’t have to have this figured out on the first pass. You know?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (20:44):
Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, I’m gonna give you a silly analogy, but I think it works. You know, a lot of times people will have nightmares, right? And they’ll keep having the same nightmare over and over again, right? And so one reason that we suspect this happens is because they haven’t worked through whatever that nightmare’s supposed to be about. So if, say, I’m scared of driving, I may be having the same dream about driving and crashing over and over. And we keep having these nightmares. And I think math anxiety is kind of like a waking nightmare, where you keep rehashing something because you haven’t had the chance to finally address that dragon. You know? And so if someone was having a lot of fear over driving, then one behavioral approach would be, you know, to work with a therapist to actually get behind the wheel and maybe drive around the same track over and over until you feel comfortable at that, and then the nightmares stop. Well, the same thing is true, I think, about math, math and math anxiety, is that you wanna give people these opportunities to feel confident by going back to that original experience that caused them to feel anxious, and saying, “This one assignment that we did in week three that really freaked you out, let’s try it again now in week five. How was that?” “Yeah, it wasn’t so bad. It was still kind of annoying.” “OK, we’ll we’ll come back to it.” “Now it’s week seven. Now let’s go back to that assignment. How is it now?” “That’s actually…it wasn’t that terrible.” And that gives people the opportunity to reflect on how they’ve grown past that nightmare.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:05):
I have to say, Dan talked about you being like a therapist. I’m like, wait, “How did you know, Dr. Ramirez? I did have this recurring dream! I did! And I had to face it. No, but I had such intense math anxiety in high school and it was debilitating. And the biggest thing for me, I thought I was the only one. I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought, “Why can’t I figure this out?” There wasn’t a conversation about “Here are some tools,” or “Here are some, some, some…”. Like, “This is OK, for you to feel scared about this or overwhelmed!”
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (22:41):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:42):
You know, I think often when we talk about how widespread math anxiety is, I think a lot of folks automatically jump to high schoolers or college students avoiding math courses. But we see this in really young kids.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (22:56):
Yeah. So people are…people are just constantly making meaning of themselves, regardless of the age range. And that’s true even with young kids; they are trying to figure out who they are. Right? And so one of the things you see oftentimes with young kids is you ask ’em, “What are you good at?” And they say, “Everything!” And that’s their attempt to, you know, make meaning of themselves. But sometimes they’re not good at everything. Sometimes they actually struggle in math. And I think even early on, they have to make meaning of that. They say, “Well, I’m good at everything except math.” And how do you make sense of that? Well, why not math? “Oh, because math is terrible. It’s not for everybody. You know, it’s not something that I like.” And so, yeah, in a lot of the studies that we did early on, we basically went into these first-grade classrooms with the purpose of trying to assess whether we can actually show variability in kids’ math anxiety, even early on. In other other words, do kids even report feeling anxious about math situations? Or do they tell us that they’re great at everything? And what we found was that in fact, a good chunk of kids are, again, perfectly willing to tell you that “No, certain situations involving math make me very anxious.” Counting or addition, or doing a problem on the board. And the way we do that is by—I think there are probably more sophisticated ways that can be done, but this is the best we have at this point—is we go in there and we ask them, we show them a bunch of smiley faces and anxious faces. And we say, “I want you to tell me how you feel about these different situations that involve math.” And so we say, “If you feel kind of nervous, I want you to point to this face. If you feel very nervous, point to this face.” And we basically will read to them situations. We’ll say, “How would you feel if your teacher asked you to open up your new math textbook and you saw all the numbers inside of it?” And they’ll point to the really nervous face. So right now, those are some of the more reliable assessments for math anxiety among young kids. And that work showed us that even young kids are self-reporting math anxiety.
Dan Meyer (24:51):
Obviously this is worth our study, because we would hope people would not feel anxious in general, and especially if we have a mandated…kids are mandated to be in math classes for their entire childhood. So I see the need for this study, these studies. I’m curious: What are the consequences, though? Like what, what correlates with math anxiety? What are other reasons why we should care about math anxiety and work to remediate it?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (25:16):
Oh, sure. So it correlates with their actual math performance. It can correlate when they choose to do homework. Right? So a lot of times, the parents report having to fight with their kids over math homework a lot. And you also oftentimes see a lot of frustration over mathematics specifically. And so it can, you know, not only affect their academic ongoing outcomes, like math tests and math assignments, but it can also affect their relationship with their parents. So if every time you come home, your dad’s screaming at you because you haven’t done your math homework, and when he asks you to solve the problem in front of them, you don’t remember, ’cause you were checked out, ’cause you’re so stressed out, that’s gonna cause a really negative experience. You know, a lot of times people grow up and they still remember their dad screaming at them over the math homework. You know, it’ll affect your relationship with your teacher. So if you’re making me feel incompetent, if you’re stressing me out, you’re not the kind of person I wanna come to for help. So it can predict relational outcomes as well as academic outcomes. And down the line, of course, when it affects students’ opportunities to get into things like AP classes, it affects students standardized test performance and their choice of colleges, as well as scholarship opportunities.
Dan Meyer (26:29):
Once you show that it correlates to performance, then that opens up a whole range of other correlations that are pretty important, it sounds like. Whether that’s career options or, you know, post-secondary education and the like.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (26:40):
Yeah. And a lot of times, when people are choosing a career at college, a lot of times students will make a decision specifically based on what career has less math requirements or less math courses. So I think this finding needs to be verified further. But, there’s some studies showing that, for instance, elementary ed teachers, one factor that feeds into the decision to go into elementary ed is the math requirements are very low in elementary ed. So that can…obviously it’s not what we wanna hear, because these are our first formal math teachers, right? For our kids.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (27:16):
It feels so powerful, the impact that math anxiety can have, not only while you’re in, let’s say, elementary school, high middle school, high school, but then the impacts beyond that in terms of your career. And I shared this last season, when we talked about our personal math story, but I know when I was navigating the deepest part of my math anxiety, I really felt like, maybe this is a reason I can’t be an elementary school teacher. Because I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able…not that I wouldn’t understand the math for fourth grade, fifth grade, but that there was something about my ability to teach it or understand it or develop a love and passion for it that I wouldn’t be able to do. And I really had to reclaim it in my own way. But, you know, something that I think is so powerful about your research is just the applicability — not only to the field of mathematics, but folks’ everyday lives. And the way that you have talked in the past about math being a gatekeeper…I have a family member who, brilliant American Sign Language interpreter. I mean, amazing. Like a dance with her fingers. I could just watch it all day. And she actually didn’t complete the program because she couldn’t complete the math requirements. And I remember talking to her about like, “Well, have you gone to the free tutoring? Have you gone to, you know, this or that?” But it was a paralyzing fear, you know? So Dr. Ramirez, what do you wish educators understood about math anxiety? Or the research about math anxiety? Or maybe even the general public at large, what do you wish folks understood about math anxiety?
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (28:58):
Oh, I think that a lot of students, they struggle with math. And I think we wanna normalize that struggle as much as possible. We want to create a culture where it’s OK to do math slow; it’s ok to take your time. And I know that’s not possible with a lot of these requirements that a lot of math teachers have to do. But I think if we want to prevent math anxiety, we have to create opportunities to tell better stories. So that’s ultimately what I tell people is, why do people develop math anxiety? Because they had experiences that challenged their competency and they told a negative story. And so making space to reflect in math classrooms about what does it mean to go slow in math, or what does it mean to make mistakes, and then helping kids to tell better stories, I think it’s really the best thing we can do as math educators. ‘Cause you know, your job is not to be a therapist ultimately. You know, there’s only so much math teachers can do. But I think one of the most powerful things we can create is setting up students’ experiences where they feel confident, and they can tell better stories, so they can have better dreams about math.
Dan Meyer (30:06):
Really appreciate this introduction to math anxiety. It’s been a fantastic kickoff to our season. Dr. Ramirez, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez (30:14):
Sure. Thank you.
Dan Meyer (30:16):
Thank you folks so much for listening to that conversation with Dr. Gerardo Ramirez, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Ball State University.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:25):
Dan, OK, if not for your frantic signaling, I would’ve probably asked another 20 questions. I need to know what you thought .
Dan Meyer (30:34):
I found it interesting at all points. And especially I think I started to understand a little bit better where the anxiety comes from for some students. I got a little bit here, which is that I think math, more than other disciplines, involves alienation. Check that word. You like that? Alienation? I’m into it. I’m feeling it. It’s like…to get good at math, to be successful in math, you gotta, as a kid, lose your attachment to the world you understand. And I mean, “got to” as in like, “you are asked to” — many times, unfortunately, by curriculum and instruction. Which is to say, you’re turning things you can hold onto into numerals. Right? You’re turning the world and its patterns that you can see and touch into Xs and Ys. And I just don’t know that other disciplines deal with that as much. Maybe I’m wrong and just guilty of, you know, “grass is always greener” syndrome here. But I think that’s an experience that kids have in math. And I thought that Dr. Ramirez got at that when he’s talking about the need to validate a student’s experience of anxiety. Like, in treating anxiety, sometimes we alienate people further by just like saying, “Oh, no, no, no, it’s just like, you need to, you know, drill yourself more, practice more,” and kind of invalidate that. So this feeling of alienation, I think permeates a lot of math instruction. I’m looking forward to learning more about that with our future episodes
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:00):
Alienation. That’s interesting. I definitely felt, I definitely felt isolated and alone many times in my math journey, when I was having my…you know, in high school, when I was feeling like, “Clearly everyone can look at tan, sign, cosign, and that means something to them.” Right? I think it’s really interesting, because I’m thinking about the other disciplines; I’m running through them, and I’m like, even in science, which can seem abstract, so oftentimes there’s these experiments that accompany these concepts, where you’re like, “Look at this concept made real in front of you.” Right? . And so yeah, that’s really interesting.
Dan Meyer (32:39):
You’re always one step away from blowing something up! Or, you know, dissecting something that’s tangible to you.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:46):
Yeah. That’s really interesting. I did really love how he brought up the abstract. And how, I think, even validating it…he talked so much about validation. Which to me was like, YES. If somebody just said, “Hey, it’s not only possible to have math anxiety, but it also doesn’t mean that you don’t belong here.” If somebody had said that, it would’ve literally changed the trajectory, you know? And I wonder what those conversations could look like in our classrooms, where teachers celebrate that. Like, WHOA, this is a new way to think of this. This is a new way. Asking how many, or what do you notice for this image, through a mathematical lens, or looking…we talked to Alison Hintz and Antony Smith, like mathematizing books, like looking through these lenses — it’s an invitation to step into this other world, right? But there’s not only one way to do it. And I think oftentimes it’s like that anxiety of “Am I gonna say the right thing?” or “Am I gonna notice the right thing?” Right? How do we create that space more, where there’s so many possibilities and we want kiddos to notice what they notice, right?
Dan Meyer (33:54):
You gotta become a certain kind of person to be successful in math class. I feel like is part of the implied deal. Where you’ve gotta—like how you said—say a certain thing or think about a certain thing a certain kind of way. You’re trying to become someone who is not necessarily you. Which I think is fundamentally an experience of alienation, separating you from important parts of yourself.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:19):
I will never, ever dive into mathematics on the scale and level that you have with your PhD. You understand math in a way that my brain just…I won’t get there, right? And yet I’m allowed to call myself a mathematician, with all of my deep dives in elementary math and my love of early numeracy and thinking about how we start thinking about counting and numbers. Right? It’s like, if we make more space for what mathematicians can look like, and what is your personal relationship with math…I mean, that to me feels really exciting. ‘Cause I think we both have something to offer each other.
Dan Meyer (35:03):
I think I have never found early math more interesting than when I talk to early math educators. And learn just like all the different ways that students come to understand a concept that I had thought was simple. Like addition of whole numbers. Whoa! There’s a lot of ways kids do that work, and their brains think those thoughts. And, yeah. That’s a good word there you’re offering us and our listeners.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:27):
Yeah. Yeah. I’m really excited about this season. I think there’s — again, there’s no way we’re gonna cover all facets of math anxiety. But I think having the chance to explore it over the course of a season is going to be really fascinating. And really, I hope, destigmatize it and open up the conversation for our listeners. And, you know, if you listeners…we wanna know what you thought of this episode. Do you have any particular questions? Do you have questions related to math anxiety? Questions related to this episode? We are in development for this season, so we’re gonna do our best to get those questions answered. You can keep in touch with us in our Facebook discussion group, Math Teacher Lounge Community, and on Twitter at MTLshow.
Dan Meyer (36:14):
Next time, we’re gonna go deeper into the causes and consequences of math anxiety.
Dr. Erin Maloney (36:20):
It’s not just the case that people who are bad at math are anxious about it. It’s actually that the anxiety itself can cause you to do worse in math. And that for me is really exciting, ’cause it means that if we can change your mindset, then we can really set you on a path with several more options available to you.
Dan Meyer (36:41):
Til next time folks,
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:41):
Bye.
Stay connected!
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Meet the guest
Dr. Gerardo Ramirez obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied the role of teachers and parents in shaping the math attitudes of their students, as well as reappraisal techniques to help students cope with anxiety during testing situations.
Dr. Ramirez is currently an associate professor at Ball State, where he examines the role of frustration, empathy, and cultural capital in shaping students’ success and persistence.
About Math Teacher Lounge
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!
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S4 – 02. Bethany and Dan share their math biographies
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.
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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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.
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!
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S5-05. Math technology & hacks for math anxiety: research-based tips for caregivers
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!
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.
Stay connected!
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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.
About Math Teacher Lounge
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!
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S5-04. Coaching tips for managing math anxiety in teachers
So far this season, we’ve investigated math anxiety in students and its causes with passionate researchers and curriculum experts, including one from Sesame Workshop! Now we hear from Dr. Heidi Sabnani, consultant, coach, and co-host of Math 4 All, as she gives us research-based tips for teachers who are facing math anxiety themselves! Listen as we discuss Heidi’s own math anxiety and journey through math, the effects teacher math anxiety can have on instruction, and practices educators can implement right away for overcoming 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!
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (00:00):
Coaching is the opportunity to provide that just-in-time kind of professional development for teachers, if we go at it in a slightly different way.
Dan Meyer (00:10):
Hey folks, welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. I’m your host, Dan Meyer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:14):
And I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.
Dan Meyer (00:16):
Bethany, how are you doing, and how are you feeling about our current trajectory through this exploration of math anxiety?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:24):
Dan, I gotta tell you — let me make it about me for a second. <laugh>.
Dan Meyer (00:29):
Go. Do it.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:30):
If only I had known that so many other people experienced math anxiety, and I wasn’t the only one. I mean, I’ve said it before, but you know, I hope that this series so far is helping to reframe math anxiety for folks who maybe have a narrow definition of it … and I guess expand, reframe. And also, for those folks who are working with students who have math anxiety, or who they themselves have experienced math anxiety, I hope they’ve found some tools, some resources. Right? Like, “Yes!”
Dan Meyer (01:04):
Yes! Same.
New Speaker (01:06):
And what about you? How are you feeling?
Dan Meyer (01:08):
Yeah, I hope this has been cathartic for all of our listeners who have experienced math anxiety, and not re-traumatizing, that there are lots of people who feel this way about math in particular. And that it’s so well-experienced, so broadly experienced, that people have decided to study it a whole bunch. Which is great. And now we’re moving into our kind of solutioning. You know, in my relationships, I’m sometimes told that I rush too quickly to solutions before trying to understand what’s going on. So I’ve loved our episodes that have been about what is going on. And now, with Dr. Truglio last episode and our guest today, we’re moving more into some solutions, which I’m excited about.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:49):
I don’t know, Dan, I think next time I see you I’m gonna bring a list of some concerns or worries I have, and I would love if you just get right to the solution. I’m actually OK with that.
Dan Meyer (02:01):
All right. Good to know. Good to know. I’ll say I am coming off of a day where I was feeling some teacher anxiety today, because I taught really real students. So just to let you know where I’m coming from here. I taught some seventh grade students at Montera Middle, here in Oakland Unified School District. Taught ’em a lesson outta the Desmos curriculum. And it was one of those lessons where some thorny stuff comes up. I’m talking students who are wrong for smart reasons, who are right for the wrong reasons, and their minds are working so hard trying to figure out inequalities. And I’m like trying to just step into that process as an educator with some curriculum and help shape those ideas. But it’s just … I don’t know, you want it to be as easy as like, “let me just show you how it’s done a few times, and now you got it.” But whew, some of these ideas, they take a long time to form up and they’re really easily reshaped by lots of stuff going on. So that’s where I’m at, anxiety-wise, right now. The teacher anxiety stuff.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:04):
I think there’s probably plenty of teachers who do kind of just say, this is how you do it. And so, from what I have seen of your teaching and what I know of the Desmos curriculum, it is such an opportunity to think hard about the things that we are assuming about our students, assuming about what we know about the math itself. And yeah, that requires some thought.
Dan Meyer (03:30):
Yeah, for sure. I came in ready, like, “When you multiply both sides of an inequality by a negative, this sign flips around.” And I could just say that to kids and say, “Hey, remember that! Write that down!” And a lot of them would do it really well, you know, provided the assessment problems looked like ones we’ve gone over in class. And they’re also learning — in addition to that math, they’re learning that math is a giant sack of tricks they gotta memorize, right? So there’s just these pros and cons. And at the end of the one period I’m gonna teach this week, I was like, “Well, your teacher’s gonna go over that tomorrow, when they’re with you instead of me.” So it felt a bit like I copped out on that one. And I’m just in in my feelings about that right now. And I’m gonna try to come on down here and be present in the math-anxiety world.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:25):
I appreciate you sharing that, Dan. And I think … I have a feeling that you could write a pretty catchy rhyme to allow the students to flip and <starting to rap> “multiply by negative. and dit-dit-dit-dit.” Can you feel it? You picking up that beat?
Dan Meyer (04:40):
Ooh, yeah. A nice little beat. Uh-huh. Yup.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:41):
Yeah. You know, you could come up with something pretty clever, and yet you did not lean on your wordsmithing skills. You said, “No, let us dive in.” So what are you gonna do with this lesson, by the way? What happens now? You popped in for one period, and then what happens?
Dan Meyer (05:03):
Yeah. So this is gonna be a blast. I hope you folks tune in. We’re gonna actually release the footage of me teaching this lesson live. You know, it’ll be replayed live. And on top of that, a couple of my favorite teacher coaches and just smart people about teaching are going to be giving commentary. They are gonna be giving the director’s commentary, the sports announcers’ commentary on what they’re seeing. I beg for their generosity in their commentary. But I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I’ve never seen anything like this before, a commentary track on top of a teaching lesson, in this way. So I’m just gonna gonna be excited to see what they noticed that I didn’t, what they might have done, the thoughts they might have. Maybe I’ll do a post-game interview, you know.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:50):
Ooh, yes!
Dan Meyer (05:50):
With my towel around my neck, <laugh> looking all sweaty.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:54):
Ready, set, grow!
Dan Meyer (05:55):
Like, “Yup, we gave it all out there, you know, just a real team effort.” You know, that kind of thing. We’ll see how that goes.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:02):
I actually love that idea. I love that it’s not just this one random lesson that just kind of floats out there, and it’s about, you walk away with whatever feelings you have, and the students obviously walk away, but that this is gonna help other educators.
Dan Meyer (06:17):
Yeah. Yeah. We’ll multiply my anxiety and make it more people’s anxiety. We’ll see how that goes. So stay tuned on the Math Teacher Lounge feed for that. All right?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:25):
All right! And speaking of anxiety, Dan Meyer, we gotta get to today’s show. You know, last time we had some amazing strategies for helping students from Dr. Truglio from Sesame Workshop. I gotta tell you, I sent that episode to so many of my friends, like, “Listen to these ideas!” and have had some interesting follow-up conversations. And we would love to hear what you think about this season so far, at MTLShow on Twitter or in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge. So today, we’re gonna focus on strategies for supporting teachers.
Dan Meyer (07:00):
Yes. Which is why we’re so excited to bring to you folks Heidi Sabnani, who — we’ve had researchers. We’ve had Sesame Workshoppers. And Heidi Sabnani has been a classroom teacher; she’s teacher-consultant; newly minted doctoral degree holder. We’re so pumped to bring to you folks: Heidi Sabnani.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:25):
Dr. Sabnani, thank you for being here. Can we call you Dr. Heidi? What would you. …
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (07:31):
You can just call me Heidi. Yeah. Heidi is good.
Dan Meyer (07:36):
Right on.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:36):
- Heidi, thank you for joining us in the Lounge. We’re so excited to talk with you.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (07:41):
I am super-honored to be here. It’s really exciting and I just really appreciate the opportunity.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:47):
I will say I don’t have a PhD, although the two people I’m talking with right now, both do, and you’re both like holding up your degrees as we speak and saying, “Wah-wah.” But I imagine that if I did, I’d wanna throw that doctor in more frequently, so.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (08:02):
Well—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:03):
If I sneak in a “Doctor,” Heidi, it’s only out of respect.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (08:05):
- I appreciate it.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:07):
Dan makes me call him Dr. Meyer all the time.
Dan Meyer (08:10):
You don’t call me Dr. Dan or Dr. Meyer, ever. So—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:13):
I will now!
Dan Meyer (08:14):
—this respect only goes towards Dr. Heidi, it seems. But yeah, we’ll take that off the air.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:19):
Well, we are going to delve into your research on math anxiety soon, because I actually — speaking of becoming a doctor, a new doctor, I have some questions. We have questions about your research, but on a personal level, I really appreciated the way that you share that you yourself experienced math anxiety as a student. So I’m wondering if you could tell us a bit about your own math anxiety, your <laugh> journey through math.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (08:50):
Yeah, so much like the people in the research that I did, and with the research that I read by others, many of us can tie the beginnings — or like the evil villain origin story of math anxiety — to a particular event, or series of events. And my series of events started, the big blow-up, I guess, in fourth grade. And I had had some struggles in school — I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. And so I had always been in the special group of kids who got some extra attention <laugh> from the teacher, or from an aide, or whoever happened to be in the room. But in fourth grade — at that time, they taught multiplication and division facts in fourth grade. Many, many moons ago. And I struggled greatly with just understanding what was happening and why we were moving so quickly. And, my teacher was probably not the best person to be entrusted with my learning at the time. Like, her style may have been OK for others, but it was obvious that she felt like kind of wasting her time with some people in the classroom. And I happened to be one of those people.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:26):
Mmm. You said that really diplomatically, though. <Laugh>
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (10:30):
Well, you know, you look back at things from the perspective of many years. And having made lots of mistakes myself in the classroom as a teacher, I try to give some grace to things that happened, and how you remember them. Yeah, that’s my story, but maybe she had a different one, right?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:55):
Yeah. But fourth grade Heidi was still, you know, still experiencing that. Yeah.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (11:01):
Yeah. Fourth-grade Heidi didn’t like being in the “dumb group” and didn’t like being told that she would probably not graduate from high school. So that was kind of the general environment. And I got further and further behind in math. The dyslexia was less and less of an issue the older I got, because I had great comprehension. And so I could figure out the fluency thing just by the pattern of language, because mine is mild in comparison to so many who struggle with that. But math was not working in that same way. And I got more and more behind and to the point where I was having to stay in every day at recess. And I had had it after like a month. Like, I’m not staying in at recess anymore to do this math that I don’t understand, by myself. Like, not doing it. So I—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:53):
Which, by the way, if there’s one way to make you hate it, <laugh> like, to engender, to endear you to a subject, could it be, “Let’s have you stay in at recess”?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (12:07):
Right. And so one day I just stormed out of the classroom, I was like, “I’m not coming. I’m not staying, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m done.” And I can remember her standing up at the top of the hill screaming at me to come back, and I was like, “No way. Not doing it. Done with this.” I went to a parochial school, though, and my dad is a pastor. So that whole little incident blew up in the greater community in a way that I didn’t really anticipate as a fourth grader. And my parents had no idea that this was going on. And so they were shocked and dismayed that their — up until that point — oldest child, rule-follower, had done this. But then even more upset when they found out what was happening with my math understanding, or lack thereof. And they did what they knew best at the time. So my mom was a great memorizer. She has a brain like an elephant. And my dad grew up in the British system in India and Singapore, and it was at that time very much based on memorization. And so they were like, “We are gonna just work really hard. We’re gonna buckle down and do this thing <laugh>.” And so that’s what we did, and that’s where all of it began. It was not — it was just about “We’re gonna learn the facts. We’re not gonna ask questions; we’re not gonna think about it, because it’s just the rules. And if you can figure out the rules or the system or what the teacher wants, and mimic what the teacher is doing, then you’ll be successful.” And it was really successful for me, once I figured that out all the way through. My whole goal in high school when I took high school math was to take enough math courses with a high-enough GPA that when I got my BA in college, that I would never have to take math again. And I succeeded in that and got an English degree and a Master’s in world lit. And I was in no way doing math ever again.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:31):
But little did you know that Future You was going to be researching math anxiety. How did you wind up researching it then? How did you wind up researching math anxiety?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (14:43):
So I took a job in school improvement when I was working in Ohio, after a number of years teaching high school English in Southern California and Guatemala and Michigan, all over the place. And I took a job in school improvement with a co-consultant who was gonna be doing the math end, and I was gonna be doing the literacy end, and we were just gonna go in, and I was gonna make kids love reading, and she was gonna make kids love math, and it was gonna be so fun. And then she decided she didn’t like working with adults and they couldn’t find anyone else. And my boss said, “So you’re just gonna do both for the rest of the year.” After that year, I got requested to go back and, and do this again. I said, “Well, if I’m gonna do this, I’m going to go back and reteach myself the math in ways that I wish that fourth-grade Heidi had learned it, and fourth-grade-and-up Heidi had learned it.” And so that was like the, the beginning of the switch. And so now equal amounts of time in my career have been spent in both. But when I started, when I continued working, when I left the classroom to continue working with teachers, and when I transitioned more into an elementary setting, I began to notice the same behaviors that I had in high school of avoiding math, and avoiding teaching math, were happening in the classrooms that I was supporting. And so I would have teachers come and say, “Oh, can we talk about this literacy thing?” And even if it was like a math meeting, or we were supposed to split the time evenly, and ohhh, for some reason the literacy time talk would just like move over <laugh>. And then there was no time to talk about math at the end. And “Oh, that’s just too bad.” Like, we’re just gonna move on to this next thing. Funny how that happens, right?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:32):
Yeah. <laugh>.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (16:34):
And noticing teachers’ behaviors around going to and or avoiding math professional development that I was giving. Or getting sick. Or like having to leave the room for a long period of time. And so I began to notice these behaviors. And initially I thought I wanted to look at math anxiety in children, which is one branch of the research that I started with. But as I got into things more, the people that I have the most influence in are adults right now.
Dan Meyer (17:09):
Right.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (17:09):
And so as I started looking at the research that had already been done, I feel like we do a really nice job of admiring the problem of math anxiety, and we do less in the “what to do about” phase. And so I was like, “Well, if I’m going to continue to be in this career and in this profession, then I need to be doing something in the space of ‘what are we gonna do about it?’” And so that’s how I switched to looking at “what do we do to help teachers?” Particularly elementary school teachers, because that’s the area of greatest need, based on previous research that we could at least do something to help.
Dan Meyer (17:51):
Yeah. A previous guest mentioned that a lot of research is better understood as me-search, especially in this kind of arena, where we’re going back in to try to understand what it was that happened for us and how to prevent it for future generations. And I have nothing but respect for that motivation right there. And your point is well-put, that it is very possible to spend a ton of time examining math anxiety from every angle, every facet, you know, put it up there on a mounted board and admire it … and there’s a lot of value there, but I appreciate that you’re moving into, “So, now what?”
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (18:27):
Yep.
Dan Meyer (18:28):
And so I’d love if you’d share with us and our listeners the broad details of your study, and what you ultimately found. Like, if there are any large takeaways here, what were they?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (18:40):
Yeah. So a couple of things to kind of just lay a little bit of the groundwork. One out of four teachers say that they have math anxiety. Those numbers increase rapidly, the younger of the grades that the teachers teach. So if we think about preK to two, it’s about 88%, based on other people’s research. So I was like, “Well that’s a lot of people <laugh>!” And so, that’s the scope of the problem. And so I was thinking, “OK, what do we do in these moments?” Because other researchers had said they’re spending — when they don’t like it, they’re spending less time teaching math and avoiding it, or relying on methods that were done to us. Just out of fear of trying something different, at many times. And so one thing that has become more prominent in math education since I transitioned 16 years ago into this has been the role of coaches in school systems. And so one of the questions I wanted to think about was, “What can coaches or math specialists who work with adults as well do to help the teachers that they work with?” So that was kind of the lens that I was looking at. Like, let’s think about the systems that we currently have in place. Is there something that we could be doing that would help teachers, that wouldn’t be so huge or so monumental that with little shifts in our own behavior as coaches or professional development providers that we could make that would make a difference? So that being said, this was a qualitative study, so a small group of people in very intense settings. So I kind of always wanna preface that, because in academic world, you know, there’s <laugh> all sorts of thoughts about that. So I had asked teachers from districts that I work with who self-identified as having math anxiety if they would be interested in the study. So, this is what we’re thinking of, this is what it would look like, and the scope of the support they would have.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (20:50):
So basically you’re tracking these four teachers who self-identified as math anxious. And were you serving as their coach and kind of seeing what was working?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (21:00):
I was serving as their coach. Yeah. I was serving as their coach during that time period. And some fairly recent research that had been done was in the idea of “Can we do some reflective conversations or reflective writing around where your math anxiety started, and how that makes you feel both as a teacher of mathematics now, because you are teaching math, and how that affects your identity as a mathematician?” And so that was the first starting point. And that was a really critical moment that I’m glad that I had stumbled across the research on, because it turned out that having someone hear and acknowledge that what happened to them was both wrong and inappropriate, in many cases, and in a couple instances, was traumatic and also abusive — that that mattered. That it was OK to feel anger and hurt and frustration based on what happened to you in the past. And then have that moment to reflect on, “OK, so what do you want the classroom environment that you’re building as a teacher to feel like for your students?” So it was turning that moment of how they felt to thinking about, then, what kind of environment do we wanna make within the math classroom? And what steps can we take to ensure that happens? So that was like, Step One is just thinking about what that looks like. What kind of math identities then do you want to create for your students? Because all of the teachers were very concerned with not continuing the cyclical nature that often happens with math anxiety, from teacher to student and back again.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:54):
Well, and even that validation, right? Like, how many of them hadn’t even had, like you said, had that? We had another, when in our first episode, Dr. Gerardo Ramirez talked about that validation and how key.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (23:09):
Yeah. That was the first thing. The next step of it, which very different from what I often do — I don’t generally go in and model for teachers — just me, taking over your classroom. I really like to co-plan with teachers and co-teach with teachers and have it not feel like they’re losing control over what’s happening in that moment. And that’s generally the way that I go in when I’m doing professional development in a classroom, right? Like, I’m working with the teacher and we’re a team; we’re doing this together. But in these four cases, these teachers were very, very resistant <laughs> to co-teaching. And so I said, “OK, well, let’s throw everything out. Let’s try whatever it happens to be.” So the modeling aspect turned out to be really important, in part when three out of the four cases, because they were like, “Oh, I can do that.” <laugh> like, Well, yeah, I know you can! Like, it was that having a moment to sit back and see someone else doing it — which is harder to do when you’re co-teaching, right? It’s harder to be reflective in the moment when you’re still thinking about the teaching choices you’re making, because you’re both co-teaching.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:24):
Right. Or sometimes you see, like in co-teaching, it falls into “one teach, one manage,” you know, or something like that.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (24:31):
Yes.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:31):
I have definitely fallen into that. But you, by modeling … it was almost, I don’t know, it feels like you’re kind of holding their hand. Like, “I’ll show you!” And not that it has to exactly look like that, right? But you found if a coach is coming in and the teacher gets to sit back and basically watch their students learn, they’re probably gettinga ton of information about their students, and they’re really learning some teaching strategies for mathematics that they can then like dip their toe in. I think? <Laugh> Am I kind of thinking of this? I’m trying to picture this and it feels rich and rife with possibilities <laugh>.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (25:16):
Well, and it, it turned it from … I think sometimes, when I go into a classroom, I learn so much from watching teachers and being able to sit and listen to students, that you don’t always have the luxury of when you’re the teacher. <Laugh> Right? It’s so much harder to be like, “OK, I’m gonna be watching what a kid does, because I’m hoping someone uses this strategy, so I can connect it to this other person’s strategy, so that we can take that apart and look at it and really have immediate discussion around it.” Those are all so many things that are happening in the moment as a teacher. You don’t get to sit back and look at it from a researcher kind of lens. Or look, you know, from the up-above lens. And when I had these conversations with teachers, I was like, “That’s what I want you to do. I want you to be able to sit back and look at all the things that are happening.” Because then you begin to notice not only the moves that the teacher — in this case, me — who was modeling for them was doing, but also the student conversations. And it was almost like having a case study within that moment, where they got to sit back and just experience, versus thinking about all the decisions that they would make at the moment. So that was something that was really surprising to me.
Dan Meyer (26:33):
Yeah. And I love the idea that they’re seeing the pedagogical moves, but they’re also experiencing perhaps a sense of math that’s de-stressed. You know, they are allowing themselves to sit next to students and feel as though they are a student, in ways that if you’re co-teaching, you are still like enmeshed in the gears of the whole lesson. I wonder if that’s a part of this too. So I’m hearing from you that we’re taking these teachers who have all admitted to some math anxiety, and that one of the interventions, or one of the findings, was that modeling worked really well for, again, this set of teachers. But you modeling lessons that highlighted mathematics, that was less anxious, that helped the teachers see that students were engaging in really productive un-anxious ways, brave ways. Were there other kinds of takeaways that you experienced there?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (27:24):
Yeah. So in addition to that, we had to think about and start at Step One. One of the teachers that I worked with had done her student teaching with a teacher who had math anxiety, and who never taught math. And so she entered her teaching career, never having taught math before or seen it taught. And so in her situation, she had had one course in her teacher preparation program, that was on fractions.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (27:54):
That’s often the case, right? One math methods course! Help, we have to get it all in in this semester! <Laugh>
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (28:01):
<Laugh> Yes. And so she came in and said, “I feel like I have to start at the beginning.” And so there was no question that was inappropriate, or that we weren’t going to explore or think about. And so that was, I think, the starting place with that particular teacher. And then one other, who was kind of in her same age range, where we had to start thinking about, “OK, how did you learn as a learner? What ways are you seeing your students learn as learners? And then let’s focus on those first as the areas that you wanna explore in your teaching.” And so a lot of that ended up being much more visual and hands-on ways of exploring. And so those were some of the changes in, I think, pedagogy that were the most significant. In a couple of cases, these are early elementary teachers who had had one experience with manipulatives in their whole teaching career up until that point. And so one teacher brought me a bucket of Cuisenaire rods and said, “These are in my room. I don’t know what they are. <Laugh> Are we building things with them? Are they blocks that are just small? <Laugh> Like what are they for?”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:20):
Yes!
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (29:21):
And so, <laugh> it was that idea of, “OK, let’s, let’s explore all the different ways that we can use these, and that we can think about how your students might learn best with this particular tool that you have in your room.”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:34):
So hearing you talk about this research — which by the way, I know, you’re like, for our listeners, it’s all, “Quick, boil down your years and hours of research and synthesize it for us.”
Dan Meyer (29:50):
Your life’s work.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:50):
In a little tiny neat package. But really though, even though I know there’s so many layers to your research, and your work with these teachers, I wanna flag for our listeners that even the things that you’ve identified for us, you were giving teachers space — as coach, giving teachers space, and validating their experience as a mathematician, as you know, as a young student, right? Making space for that experience and validating “Yeah, that was really lousy and your math anxiety is real.” Like, Step One is already powerful. And then you’re creating space where they get to be in their classroom as a learner, right? And have a lesson modeled. And then you’re creating more <laugh> space for them to learn and ask questions. And I have absolutely seen teachers like, “I don’t know what to do with these,” and kind of shove aside the district-provided tools or the curriculum-provided tools. And so even those things, Heidi — Dr. Heidi <laugh> — you know, even if … I don’t know, for me, I am listening to you and just holding those points in mind and feeling like that, alone, if a coach did even just that … I know there’s so much more to it, but what a powerful opportunity for reclaiming math as an educator, right? That’s what I’m feeling.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (31:25):
Well, and I was hoping that there wouldn’t be … I mean, OK, it’s a double-sided hope. If there was something like so novel and so fantastic that was so different from the things that we have already at our disposal, that would’ve made a much better book or dissertation. <Laugh> But the reality is, there are things that we already know work. And we don’t often take the time or, or are given the time to be able to explore those things. Right? So even as coaches, you have district initiatives or things like, “this is what we’re working on this year,” and that’s fantastic, right? We keep those things moving forward. But if we’re thinking about coaching teachers with math anxiety, no teacher with math anxiety is going to be coming to NCTM.
Dan Meyer (32:16):
Right. Right. Or the training.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (32:19):
Or the training. They’re like, “Oh, PD day? Literacy! Yes, please! Bye!” You know, it’s that piece of it. So when we have these moments, the coaching is the opportunity to provide that just-in-time kind of professional development for teachers, if we go at it in a slightly different way. It does not have to be huge. It can be things like, they feel that they’re stronger in literacy. Well, then, let’s explore some of the ideas around math, anxiety and math identity and examples of people who’ve overcome either those things or other barriers in their life. And how can those things help form not only your students’ math identity, but your math identity. And it gives entry points in ways that you have access to if you’re a person’s coach.
Dan Meyer (33:18):
So in that sense, I’d love to know from you, if someone came to you at a coach’s meeting at NCSM and asked you, “What is something I can do right now to support the teachers at my site and my district, who are commonly experiencing math anxiety?” What is something that you would offer them in that brief moment you had with that coach?
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (33:40):
So it is hearing their story first. That’s the big one. And then, can you, in your coaching, provide opportunities to slow down? We all have these pacing guides in some form or another, that drive the things that are coming. Is there a way that you can set up meetings a month or more in advance of the content that those teachers are going to teach? Can we explore a month in advance, that content? And ways to teach it and understand it? There’s the ways to teach it, but there’s also like, “What is this math and how do kids experience this math?” What kind of experiences do we want to have ourselves as learners and then have as kids? If we can create cycles like that, that then don’t feel so rushed. It’s so hard when we’re like, “Oh, we have a planning meeting and we’re meeting with our coach!” And you’re teaching this lesson tomorrow. “Learn all this stuff about adding and subtracting on a number line. Go!” It’s so fast. And so if we had those opportunities to build in cycles, where we could slow down that process, it would make a huge difference in the lives of so many teachers. And it’s finding that time and the willingness. If you listen to teachers, they will work with you. If you validate what happens to them, and acknowledge that sometimes that still happens to us. I mean, I still have experiences like that. Sometimes I’ll walk into a classroom and I’m like, “Oh, I forgot how to do that!” You know, like, “I’ve not reached that far in my remaking of my own education!”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:24):
Yehhhh, heh heh heh.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (35:25):
<laugh>. And you think, “I don’t wanna look like an idiot. I’m the math consultant who’s here to duh duh duh.” All of those things still come up. Yeah. And stopping and saying like, “OK, everybody, this is what’s happening to me right now.” <laugh> The vulnerability you have, you have to think about that. Even if you don’t have experiences of math anxiety in your own life. Let’s say you always rocked out in math, and you’re now a math specialist and you love it. You think it’s the most spectacular thing. There’s some other element in your life where you face some anxiety. All of us do. So it’s about thinking about, “OK, this is where I experience anxiety. Can I find that in the teachers that I work with? And then, can my teachers find that in the students they work with?” You know, the teachers, as they begin to reflect on their own experiences, began noticing which students always went to the nurse during math time, always asked to go to the bathroom during math time, always couldn’t find a pencil, or whatever it happened to be. And they began to be more aware of their students’ behaviors as well, and could then say, “Hey, let’s sit and talk about how you feel in math class. Like, I’ve been noticing that when it’s time for math, like your stomach hurts. Can we talk about like why that might be?” Because those teachers with math are more attuned, often, to those students. And so it just … the time factor, I guess is, is the bottom line.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:59):
I just wanna say, it’s so great to have you in the Lounge. Because I think you’re really bringing this perspective that we haven’t talked about, which … we are not expecting coaches to walk in and know it all. That’s actually the exact opposite. You are allowed to be vulnerable. We are not saying, “Come,” quote-unquote, “Fix this.” It’s like, “Hey, how can you facilitate and make space?” And I feel like you have given us just a taste of like how that might be possible. And you know, I think even if it’s just a chance for teachers to reflect on their own experience in math, even that would probably be kind of revolutionary for — and I don’t say that word lightly — for some PD spaces, especially if they have another peer in their team that is like quote-unquote, “a whiz,” or like, “Oh, I don’t feel like I can be vulnerable in my math anxiety because this teacher seems to know it all.” But you’re creating space where it’s like, “Hey, we all have strengths. We all have areas where we could support each other.” And I love that invitation for coaches. I love that invitation for teachers. And … yeah. I’m just, I’m so glad we get a snapshot of your research. Again, I know, I respect that this is not the whole thing!
Dan Meyer (38:22):
Can we find … is there a link to your dissertation in the show notes, for those of us who peruse dissertations? Can we add something here? Think about —
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (38:29):
Oh, I have no idea!
Dan Meyer (38:30):
Just think about it. Just think about it. But —
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (38:34):
It’s somewhere on ProQuest. It did get some. …
Dan Meyer (38:36):
Right on.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (38:36):
Is that a thing, Dan? Could I go, like, Google your dissertation?
Dan Meyer (38:39):
You definitely could. Yeah, for sure. It’s around. Yeah, same way. Well, that’s awesome. And I think it’s so helpful for those who write those enormous unwieldy essays to, you know, distill it in different ways. I hope it’s been … we’ve enjoyed so much, hearing you carve up a huge project into pieces that were really helpful for us to think about here in the Lounge. Thank you so much for coming on and hanging out with us. Dr. Sabnani, it’s been a pleasure.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (39:06):
Hey, I’m happy to do it any time. Always the biggest joy in the work that I do is little changes in a positive direction.
Dan Meyer (39:18):
Right on.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (39:19):
That’s all that this is about. Right? Whether it’s kids, whether it’s teachers, whether it’s administration. The work that we all do is so valuable, and it is more and more difficult over time. And just giving ourselves a little bit of space to think about and acknowledge that, I think, is really important. So I appreciate you all making space as well. And thinking about this idea. Because <laugh> we’re math people! And we don’t have math anxiety! Right?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:51):
<laugh>
Dan Meyer (39:51):
So people would assume
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (39:54):
<laugh>. Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:54):
Thank you so much. You’re welcome back in the Lounge anytime. <laugh> Thanks so much for listening to our conversation with Dr. Heidi Sabnani, consultant and co-host of the show “Math for All.” I can’t get enough about talking about math anxiety!
Dan Meyer (40:13):
Especially from people who are working with teachers so closely.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:18):
Yes, totally. I loved that lens of, “Hey, look at what happens if we actually focus on the teacher’s experience and help them kind of reclaim this comfort, this sense of identity, relationship with math that’s positive. How does that impact their teaching?” I loved talking about it, and I’m really interested in how that work continues to evolve. So thank you so much Dr. Sabnani, for your time. And you know, listeners, please keep in touch with us on our Facebook, in our discussion group, Math Teacher Lounge Community, or you can find us on Twitter at MTL show.
Dan Meyer (40:58):
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge, wherever you get podcasts. Also, if you like what you’re hearing, please rate us and leave us a review. It will help more listeners find the show. And it just makes me and Bethany feel good about ourselves, too. You can find more information on all of Amplify’s shows at our new podcast hub. Go to Amplify.com/hub.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:20):
You know, Dan, I also always like to say, I find most of my podcasts through recommendations from other listeners, friends, folks. So if you like what you’re hearing, share it in your teacher lounge. Just, like, on break, turn it up and start vibing and having the conversation right there.
Dan Meyer (41:40):
Yep. Yep. I got a better idea. Take the link to this podcast and then copy it and find the longest — the thread in your inbox with the most people on it. One of those ones that’s like, someone accidentally cc’d like 500 people, everyone at your school. Press “reply.” This is crucial. Not “reply,” but “reply all.” Paste that link in. Press “send.” Watch what happens.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:04):
Nothing but good —
Dan Meyer (42:04):
Good fortune will be yours.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:06):
Nothing but good things can happen when you send this to 500 people in the next 10 minutes. Next time on Math Teacher Lounge, we’re gonna be joined by Dr. Marjorie Schaeffer of St. Mary’s College for a conversation about math anxiety, and specifically Dan, how parents and caregivers, how their disposition influences the way their kiddos feel about math.
Dr. Marjorie Schaeffer (42:29):
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 (42:40):
And get this, she’s gonna talk to us about an app that just might be something worth, you know, heading over to the app store for.
Dan Meyer (42:49):
I’ve used some apps, I have opinions, and I can’t wait. We just share recommendations on apps with Dr. Schaeffer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (42:56):
That’s next time on Math Teacher Lounge. Thanks so much for listening.
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Meet the guest
Heidi Sabnani is always surprised that she works in math education. She developed math anxiety as a young student and spent much of her school life and early career avoiding math. After teaching English in the United States and Guatemala, and earning her MA in World Literature, she found herself in the uncomfortable position of working in math classrooms as a school improvement consultant. Once she realized that her life was going to involve math, Heidi decided to relearn math in the ways she wished she had learned the first time around. 18 years later she is still learning with and from the students and teachers she has the privilege to serve.
Heidi’s doctoral research at Northeastern University focused on interventions for math anxiety in elementary teachers. She currently works as a consultant, speaker, and author.
About Math Teacher Lounge
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!
You might also like:
S5-03. Cultivating a joy of learning with Sesame Workshop
Listen as we chat with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content for Sesame Workshop! Continuing our theme of math anxiety this season, we sat down with Dr. Truglio to chat about Sesame Street and her thoughts on how to spread a growth mindset to young children and put them on course to academic achievement and long-term success.
Listen today and don’t forget to grab your MTL study guide to track your learning and make the most of this episode!
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (00:00):
Children don’t come with this math anxiety. Math anxiety is learned.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):
Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.
Dan Meyer (00:11):
And I’m Dan Meyer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:12):
Hello, Dan Meyer.
Dan Meyer (00:14):
Great to see you, Bethany. We are on episode three. Can you believe it?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:18):
So, I feel like we’ve just started scratching the surface about math anxiety. We’ve talked to two amazing researchers. We’ve talked about what math anxiety is, how it’s often screened for some of the causes, some of the consequences … I mean, we’ve had some good conversations. Dan, what do you think?
Dan Meyer (00:38):
Definitely, I think that the consequences have only grown more dire in my head. I’m not sure how you feel about the consequences. But, you know, it is enough for me that we ask students to take mathematics for much of their childhoods, to worry about their anxiety, taking that. But to hear about from these researchers about all the different things that correlate with math achievement and math anxiety—talking about future careers, certainly, but even some other, more serious lifelong concerns? That gives me a lot of motivation to continue this study of math anxiety here with you on the show.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:14):
It is really widespread. It has a big impact, not only on students, but on parents, on educators. You know, it’s—
Dan Meyer (01:23):
Multi-generational.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:25):
Yes. And you know, so often when folks think of math anxiety, what I hear them say is, “Oh, yeah, in high school is when math really ramps up. That’s when anxiety starts.” But we know that it starts in our youngest learners. And our research has already backed that up. We know it. I’ve seen it in my classroom. You may have seen it with some students you work with. And let me tell you, it starts young.
Dan Meyer (01:52):
It does start early. Right now, I have a son that’s just started kindergarten, and he seems relatively math-positive, but we’ve known from our interviews on this show and other kinds of experiences that oftentimes, that feeling —that math is for me, and I am for math, and we are all friends — can turn on a single moment. It seems like one teacher says a thing that changes a student’s perception of themselves as a mathematician or of math itself. So I keep waiting with bated breath, hoping not to find that one moment that changes our current open posture towards mathematics. So now it’s time to really dive into some strategies for combating math anxiety.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:34):
To help us out, we’ve called on a pretty exciting guest. I am so excited, Dan Meyer! We are being joined by Dr. Rosemarie Truglio. She is Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content at Sesame Workshop. Sesame Workshop! As in, “Tell me how to get to Sesame Street.” Dan, I have to tell you, I spent many, many hours of my childhood watching Sesame Street. I have to ask, do you have happy Sesame Street memories? Is this part of your formation, Dan Meyer?
Dan Meyer (03:08):
At this point? In my advancing years, and the brain cells that I have left, Sesame Street is really kind of just a vibe in my head. But that vibe is such a pleasant one. One in which like nothing bad could happen. One in which learning is common and normalized and fun. And you just kind of feel at home, constantly.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:33):
I don’t know about the “just the vibe” part, because for me, it is visceral. I’m there. I am actually … I mean, I might still be there.
Dan Meyer (03:42):
You could reenact some of the skits?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:44):
. You didn’t watch Sesame Street with your kiddos when they were younger?
Dan Meyer (03:49):
We watched a lot of Elmo. A lot of Elmo. Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:52):
Next-generation Sesame Street. Well, I think it’s so perfect that we’re gonna be talking about what Sesame Workshop does to help combat math anxiety and create a positive connection and relationship with mathematics. So I’m really excited to hear what Dr. Truglio and her team have been working on. And here’s our conversation with Dr. Truglio.
Dan Meyer (04:15):
Welcome to the show, Dr. Truglio. It is an honor.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (04:18):
Great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Dan Meyer (04:20):
You are Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content at Sesame Workshop, which definitely sounds like the coolest job in the world to both four-year-old me and also Now me. Would you just help us help us with some backstory of how you ended up here, and what you do at Sesame Workshop?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (04:38):
Sure. It is a pretty cool job. And I am very fortunate that I’ve been in this position for the past 26 years. So, I am a developmental psychologist, and my job is to help Sesame Workshop identify curriculum needs, so that we could address them in the content that we create on the show and across our various platforms. So, Sesame Street is currently in its 53rd season. And we just, wrapped production for the 54th season, which we’ll debut next fall. And Sesame Street began with an experiment: Can television actually teach children school readiness skills, to have them better prepared for school? Especially those children who did not have access to formal education during the preschool years? And it is what we call a whole-child curriculum, because we’re dealing with all of the school readiness needs. So that that includes the academic needs, their social-emotional needs, and their health needs, as well as what we call these cognitive processing skills—how children learn content. Right? So it’s not just content skills, but how you approach learning and how you actually learn content. So as a grad student, I was fortunate to work at the Center for Research on the Influences of Television on Children. Very special center. It was at the University of Kansas. And my advisors, developmental psychologists, they studied the effects of television on children, both the positive effects and the negative effects. And so part of their research was to actually look at the longterm educational effects of Sesame Street. So I was working with Sesame Street content as a grad student, and then came to New York City. My first job was Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. And when this position became available, Director of Research at the time, it was called, I took that job. And so my job was to oversee both the curriculum and the implementation of the curriculum, as well as the research. Because what we know, our co-founder, Joan Ganz Cooney has always said, for Sesame Street to be a successful educational program, production has to work closely with early childhood educators. They are the ones who know the curriculum and, and develop the curriculum goals, as well as the developmental psychologists who actually study how children are paying attention to the content. But more importantly, what are they comprehending from the content? And we all have to work together. Because even though we are the experts, the real experts are the children themselves. So nothing is deemed final until we actually show the children and see what they are learning from the content that we are producing.
Dan Meyer (07:54):
Are you referring to like, test audiences of kids then?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (07:57):
Yeah, I guess you could call it test audiences. I mean, I don’t. I don’t like to call it that because I see them as co-collaborators. I don’t see them as a test audience. Because, as I said, they’re the experts. It’s a collaboration. I mean, they’re the experts. And so I wanna know—
Dan Meyer (08:12):
As collaborators. I got it now. Yeah.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (08:14):
They help us. So that’s exactly what we tell the children too. So it’s called formative research. You know, we, we do what we call, um, storybook testing, an animated version of a storybook to have some little movement and see are they finding the story engaging, but more importantly, are they picking up on the intended educational lesson that we’re trying to teach in the story. So they are co-collaborators. they’re the ones who are helping us get the story just right for them.
Dan Meyer (08:46):
That’s really exciting, and makes me think about what classes might be like if students were regarded in that kind of lens as well. I just wanna say that my four-year-old self is on this interview as well, and is re-contextualizing all the stuff I saw as a kid. And it just felt like, at the time, you folks turned the camera on and went down to the street and we just had this real natural time. And it’s great to hear about all the intense preparation and co-construction at work and work that went into that time. Yeah,
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (09:12):
It’s about a year preparation from start to finish. From the start of identifying, “What is the educational need? Is it an academic need? Is it a social-emotional need? Is it a health need? Is it a cognitive-processing need?” And then once we have the need identified, we have what we call a curriculum seminar. We bring in the experts who are studying this topic with preschoolers, because we wanna get it, we wanna get it right.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:41):
Which, by the way, little behind the scenes: How often do you get to go to set?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (09:46):
So we’re in a production probably about six weeks out of the year. Covid really messed things up. ‘Cause we have to be really—we have very strict Covid protocols, but there is someone on my team—and sometimes we have to, you know, rotate for availability—but there’s always an educator on set.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:06):
Awesome.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (10:07):
Because even though you stick to the script, questions arise; they wanna make changes; sometimes they have to cut; things are running too long and they have to cut and we gotta figure out where to cut. So there’s always an educator on set.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:19):
But sometimes you go and have lunch, like—.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (10:21):
Oh, I go, yes. Sometimes I go—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:23):
And just hang out with Big Bird, right?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (10:24):
Sometimes I go hang out with Big Bird. No, those are my friends!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:27):
They are!
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (10:28):
No, no, I go hang out with them. They’re my friends. Yes.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:32):
When I think about Sesame Street and I think about … like, I can’t help but smile. Because I think I have such fond memories of the characters. I mean, we invited them, my mom invited them, into our home, right? And, you know, now I have a two-year-old and there’s no doubt that I’m gonna introduce him to Sesame Street. And I see how it really does feel like the folks who are doing this work, you and your team, you have a deep respect for children. So it makes sense that you call your test collaborators “collaborators,” right? They’re a part of it. And you know, I love that. And Sesame Street makes me smile. However, I’m like, we’re talking about math anxiety. And it’s so interesting, because as Dan and I were talking about our memories of Sesame Street … you know, it’s like Sesame Street feels like there’s not much anxiety. I mean, there are problems, and there’s problem solving, and it’s not like everything is perfect. But we figure it out. And it’s OK to make mistakes and it’s OK to try again. And a lot of times, we don’t see that in the math classroom—or at least, how folks talk about math. So, how do you all think about anxiety, about how to prevent it? Like, when you’re doing your work, you know that math anxiety is a real thing. But then that’s not translated in these experiences and the relationships with math that you’re building with your viewers.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (12:07):
Yeah, that’s a really good question, because it’s really easy, because our core audience are two- to four-year-olds and they love math. And what’s not to love, right? Because they are figuring the world out as they’re exploring the world. So you said something really interesting, that when you turn on the TV—when you turned on the TV when you were a child, and now you’re a mom of a two-year-old, we wanna make sure that the show represents content that is relevant and meaningful to our target audience. And that comes through with the characters. So all of our characters have very specific personalities, as all children do. And our characters represent all children, in terms of not only personality, but interest and learning styles, ’cause we wanna see—we wanna make sure that children see themselves in these characters. And we have a character who actually loves math. And he’s The Count.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:12):
I’m like, “I know! I know who it is!” I will save you my impression. Although I have done it for my child. But I’ll save our listeners .
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (13:20):
And you know, he’s an adult character. Some of our characters are preschoolers, like Elmo and Abby—they’re preschoolers—and Zoe. But The Count is an adult. He lives in the castle and he just loves numbers. But what’s really important is while we have The Count to explain—not explain to, but to portray to children, cause we don’t explain anything; we show children that math is more than number, right? Math is a pretty wide concept. Which is what I love about math. And the other thing about math is math language. The language of math. ‘Cause when we’re teaching children vocabulary words, we’re also teaching children the concept. Be it a math concept or a science concept or a social-emotional concept. So children don’t come with this math anxiety. Math anxiety is learned and it’s unfortunate. It’s picked up by their observations of the adults in their lives, who sometimes say out loud, “I don’t like math,” or “Math is hard,” or even worse, “I’m not good at math.” Or may even label it as math anxiety. That word won’t mean anything to a young child. But it then provides a, whaddya call it, like a negative valence for something that they never felt negative about. Because as they’re growing and interacting with the world, math is all around them. And there’s that sense of awe and wonder and joy, especially as they’re learning and they’re figuring it out. So I think we have to reframe math. Instead of saying “math anxiety,” we have to talk about the joy of math and all the wonderful joys that come with the exploration of these math concepts. Number is great. We know kids love numbers. We know that they love to count and use a big word here: enumerate . Because so many parents don’t make this distinction. They’ll say, “Oh, my child is counting!” Well, there’s rote counting, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, which is important. But then it’s like there’s an item for each number. So it’s one Cheerio, two Cheerios. And then as you point to each number, you are then figuring out what the set is, of the number of objects that you have. And then you get at what I love to call the meaningfulness of math. Right? Number has meaning. And as I said, it’s all part of your everyday activities. It’s part of—it’s in your kitchen; you’re following recipes; you’re measuring; you’re weighing. It’s at bath time, right? You could have the sorting of nested cups and you could, you know, and once again, the math language: big, bigger, biggest. These are relational concepts. You could then count what sinks and what floats, if you’re doing science. And then you could put them in two different buckets, and count. These are the items that sunk and these are the items that float. So math and bath time could be a lot of fun. And then there’s math and music. Music is so rich with math, as you talk about rhythm and tempo and dynamics and pitch and duration. That’s all math.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:57):
The way that you talk about it, it is so rich, right? It is so multi-layered. And you know, I’ve shared on the podcast before: I’ve actually had parents in parent-teacher conferences say that, “Well, I wasn’t good at math either,” or “Math’s really not my thing.” And it’s really—it is, it’s rooted in that fear. And so I do see the way that you’re talking about it; I see that come through in Sesame Street. That, in a lot of ways, it’s reeducating parents, right? Because we hope that our caregivers are sitting next to their kiddo and enjoying it together and having conversations about it later. And there’s a way that parents then are also getting their own sense of what math can be, expanded. And I think there’s such a beauty in that. And I love the way that you talk about that, that you really are looking at, “Well, we wanna celebrate counting and the joyfulness of that. And let’s use math talk, you know, and let’s use these words and try out these ideas.” And it’s not because you’re trying to check some list. But you’re really exploring it and having fun together.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (18:03):
And you’re embracing it. And you mentioned the word “mistake.” So often when it comes to math, if you make a mistake—you make a mistake in counting or, you know, we’re not doing a lot of math equations on Sesame Street, but that’s when people feel like they can’t do math. ‘Cause they made a mistake. And that’s something that we are trying to address on Sesame Street, that it’s OK to make mistakes and you learn through mistakes. But you have to have—and I’m gonna come up with this other phrase now—you have to have what we call a growth mindset. What that means is that I may not be able to do this yet. Like, it’s called “the power of yet.” So we know that learning any concept, it takes time and practice. And how do we have children embrace the process, right? So often we focus on right and wrong. Now, there is right and wrong with math, of course. You know, there’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer. But how do we focus, not on the end product, but the process through which you are engaging in? So let’s talk about measurement. Let’s talk about measuring the length and the width or the height of something. You might make some mistakes along the way, but you’re processing it. My son used to make all of these little structures for all his little play animals. Well, you know, he would measure and think he got it right. And then when he put the animals in, of course, you know, either the animal was too wide or it was too tall. And he would have to redo it. But you’re not redoing it from scratch, you’re redoing it now from experience. “I realize that if I’m gonna put the giraffe in with the elephant, I’m gonna need something wide as well as high.” Right? For the length, tall. And that’s process. And then, for children, when they figure it out, that “oops” and “aha”—the “aha” was like, “I did it!” And it’s so empowering, you know, giving them agency—not swooping in and saying, “All right, I’ll fix it for you. You know, we got the wide elephant and the tall giraffe and I’ll you know…”. NO! Having them do it. And another fun activity is in what we call informal measurement. And that’s like getting something of an equal size. It could be paper clips or it could be same-size blocks, and then measuring how long something is. So if it’s measured by blocks versus paperclips, you’re gonna have a lot more paperclips than you are blocks. And that kind of comparison is so fascinating for children. And so that’s measurement. And now we have counting. Like, how many paperclips long is something versus how many blocks long is something.
Dan Meyer (21:02):
So checking my understanding here, you’ve talked about how caregivers and other adults can transmit math anxiety by naming it and claiming it for themselves. And you’ve talked about, some really exciting ways that adults can involve students and kids in different kinds of math. I’d love to go upstream with you a little bit and wonder out loud, where does this anxiety come from initially? It’s gotta be more than adult one to kid two talking about anxiety, and transmitting it from human to human. What is the original spring from which all this anxiety flows?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (21:36):
Yeah. I do think it does—a lot of it does come from the adults in their lives. It’s unfortunate, because there is a lot of math talk about it, right? I can’t do math; I’m not good at math. Even when you’re at a restaurant and you get the bill and someone’s figuring out the tip, I can’t tell you how often it’s like, “Pass the bill, because I can’t do math.” Or if you actually then bring gender into it, you know, “Oh, girls aren’t good at math,” and that’s not true. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever, right? So in the younger grades, there’s no gender difference in terms of math ability. What’s also interesting about even socioeconomic status differences, you don’t see a lot of differences between low-income and middle-income children when it comes to math skills. Where you see differences is children’s ability to talk about their mathematical thinking. So if a child doing a math problem is asked, “How did you solve the problem?”, low-income children don’t often have the language to explain their thinking. So that’s something that we did on Sesame Street, where we focused a lot on what we call math talk. So, not just show number and show doing math, but actually narrate and giving the language. Because math literacy is one of the predictors of overall school achievement. So there’s that. They’re getting it from the adults in their lives. They’re getting it, unfortunately, sometimes from their teachers. But I think the anxiety comes from the fear of making mistakes. Because math, there is right and wrong, and always wanting to get the right answer. So that’s why this whole idea of reframing, and saying, “But really, it’s in the process.” So, you know, my son, math is not his strong suit. And I’ve been doing a lot of growth mindset with him as well. And there was a teacher that he had—I think in like 10th or 11th grade—who said, “In a test, I don’t wanna—I’m not even gonna look at the answer. I wanna see the process through which you GOT to this answer. And I’m going to grade the process. So the process could yield a right answer; it could yield a wrong answer. But you’re gonna get graded on the process. Because I wanna see how you are approaching the problem and how you’re thinking it through.” And I think that is a great example of, maybe, to try to reduce math anxiety. Because if you can get people excited about the process through which you’re learning—and that applies to all subjects, it’s not just math!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:36):
I’m like, that applies to life! Right?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (24:38):
That applies to life!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:39):
That’s so spot on. Wow. Yeah.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (24:41):
But I think that there’s so much focus on right and wrong, and not really understanding the value of the process. So on Sesame, we’ve been doing a lot of “oops” and “ahas.” You know, we’re gonna make mistakes, but what’s important is what do you DO when you make a mistake? So there’s a great episode with The Count. A couple of years ago. The Count was counting. Something he does every day. A lot of time, every day, ’cause he’s obsessed with counting and numbers. And he was counting an array of items.
Gladys the Cow (25:17):
I need 10 sandwiches all together.
The Count (25:22):
Well, of course.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (25:23):
And he made a mistake.
Elmo (25:25):
The Count?
The Count (25:25):
Hmm?
The Count (25:25):
Elmo thinks The Count made a little mistake.
The Count (25:31):
No mistake.
The Count (25:32):
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (25:33):
And first time ever, did he make a mistake. And he fell apart.
The Count (25:38):
I must make sure that that never happens again. So I shall never count again.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (25:46):
And that’s an example of showing that, you know, you could get upset when you make a mistake, but what’s important is you gotta come back and you gotta come back to doing what you love. In his case, is counting and letting him know that it was an “oops.” But you learn that mistakes are OK. It’s OK to make a mistake and continue to do what you love.
The Count (26:13):
I must keep trying and you should, too.
Elmo (26:17):
Yeah!
The Count (26:17):
So come, let’s count the carrots together!
Elmo (26:18):
Oh, cool!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:19):
And what a beautiful gift to show kiddos. Show that to kiddos, right? And to the adults. I wanna, you know, really acknowledge it, and say, “Hey look this, it’s OK.” And again, you’re giving them that language. That’s such a gift.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (26:34):
Thank you.
Dan Meyer (26:34):
We spend a lot of time wondering why other subjects don’t seem to suffer from this negative perception. And I think you’ve unlocked a lot of that. You’ve mentioned that there are issues that cut across different subject areas, but I think from my own experience and research and interviews, it seems that in ELA and the social sciences, there’s this aspect where you need to come up with a claim and “how are you seeing this?” And there are multiple defensible claims. And I love how you imported that generous pedagogy over into math with this example of a teacher who says, “You know what? It’s about the process here.” Disassociating answer and process.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (27:09):
And I think the other thing is like, when children are engaged in a project, for parents to point out: “You’re doing math!” Because they don’t realize that they’re doing math. Once again, math is so often equated solely with numbers and mathematical computations. So it was really interesting—the same is true for science. You know, when we’re talking to parents about the use of everyday—like, going to the supermarket or making dinner or bath time, there’s so much math and science in the everyday. And then when you point it out to them—”you’re doing math”—it’s like, “I’m doing math!” Like, you’re setting the table for a family of six: you’re doing math. That’s called one one-to-one correspondence. “I’m doing math: I’m setting the table.” Yeah, but you’re doing math. You can’t set the table because you have to know how many people are gonna be sitting at the table for dinner. You can’t follow a recipe without doing math. You can’t go shopping without doing math. There’s quantity; you gotta figure out how many peppers you gotta buy, or pounds. “I gotta get a bunch of potatoes and I gotta put ’em in the scale. And I have to get two pounds of potatoes.”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:29):
So your book Ready for School: A Parent’s Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages Two to Five. First, as a parent of a young toddler, I gotta say it’s such a tool; it’s such a resource. It’s very conversational. And I think about these ideas a lot, both in my work and, you know, just for fun. And yet, even if this wasn’t my chosen field, I still feel like it’s just so accessible. And I wanna flag something.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (29:01):
Thank you.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:01):
Yeah, no. Thank YOU. . I wanna flag something that you said in the math chapter You were talking about the joy of math, and you said when it comes to our children, caregivers: “take pleasure in reading stories together, especially at bedtime, which in many households is a regular part of a child’s routine. But somehow the notion of introducing math concepts to our children seems daunting. In fact, some studies have shown that parents harbor a strong belief that while it’s important and pleasurable to support their child’s reading skills, it’s the responsibility of the schools to take care of teaching math.” And that quote, I highlighted it, I starred it! And I would love for you to say a little more about that, because you have given us already, like, a bounty of ideas that as caregivers we can do with our kiddos or the kiddos in our lives. And we’ve seen that even what they’re learning in school, it may not be the freeing, joyful math language that we hope our kiddos have access to.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (30:05):
Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. Because a lot of our focus is on how children learn through playful experiences, and how they learn through play in particular. And there are so many playing, either a game or even playing ideas—like we talked about building, you know, a house for animals or building a fort. It’s just so filled with math. And I wish I could narrate for every young parent how I would hope that they would talk as they are co-engaged in this activity. And I think … we asked about, with the anxiety, the adults have to find the joy in math first. They have to see the math. That’s the problem. That’s why I hope that my book provides that. I want you to know that you are doing math and I want you to know that your child is what we call a mathematician—or in the science chapter, is a STEMist. Your child is already doing science, technology, engineering, and math. STEM is so integrated. So to acknowledge them—because babies are doing math! Babies know, they can distinguish between a small quantity and something that is a of a larger quantity and want the larger. Right? So, it’s natural for them. And they are taking it all in. I mean, the joy of watching a child just early counting: you know, one, two. And trying to then figure out the meaningfulness of two. It’s not three objects. There are actually two. And for a parent to see the joy in that I think is step one. And then to see the richness and how expansive math is, and that power of, oops, “I made a mistake, don’t freak out,” and then [not] say, “See, I’m not good at math,” but say, “Let me try again. I know I could figure this out.” Right? It’s all of that supportive language and supportive experiences that builds this mindset, a positive mindset. So that you hope that when you get into the higher grades, they’re not walking in and saying, “I can’t, I can’t do math.”
Dan Meyer (32:26):
Yeah. Super helpful. I think you point at one of the grownups—great powers in the world of kids, which is to label. To name things. And you know, you’ve talked about how grownups should ideally downplay some of their negative experiences with mathematics for the sake of the kid, but also to play up the positive stuff that they’re doing as mathematics. Like that right there, that’s math. I would love to know … you have an extremely loud megaphone to communicate messages about math and the world and everything through Sesame Street. One of the biggest that there is—and I just wonder if you could step out and imagine you had a magic wand to wave over the world in which students grow up, play and learn—what would you do like to help students have better associations or less math anxiety? And, you know, learn more about math itself?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (33:19):
If I had a magic wand, I would give everyone what we call a growth mindset that nothing is fixed and everything can be changed if you put the time and effort into the process, and enjoy the process. The joy of learning. I think, you know, it’s really sad. I don’t wanna be sad on your show. But when we were getting ready for the 50th anniversary, I was wondering, “What is gonna be the curriculum focus?” You know, we just came off of literacy and math literacy and social-emotional development. And we talked about the power of play. Playful learning. And building careers. Give children sophisticated play scenarios so that they could explore what they may wanna be when they grow up. Because there’s a concept: If I can see it, I can play it, I can be it. Right? So where are those portrayals? And it’s like, “What are we gonna do for the 50th?” And I had a convening of experts across all disciplines, and brought them into a room. And I said, you know, “What keeps you up at night? Like, what are you worried about?” Sort of like the State of the Union of Child Development. And this is where the sad part is. They talked about how that sense of joy, that sense of wonder, that sense of curiosity, that sense of flexible thinking and creative thinking, was disappearing in early childhood. Wow. If it’s disappearing in early childhood, we are in big, big trouble . ‘Cause I could see it disappearing later on, you know, as you advance in grade. But what do you mean, it’s disappearing in childhood? And then they talked about the fear of making mistakes. And that goes against—it’s the opposite of a growth mindset. And so we have to bring back that sense of joy, wonder, asking those why questions and embracing them. So it’s another problem parents have. They’re fine with the “why” questions until the “whys” become so difficult they don’t have the answers. And then they don’t want the “why” questions, because now they feel like they’re not smart enough to answer their child’s “why” questions. How do I flip that around to be much more positive and say, “You know, I don’t know! But let’s find out together. Let’s explore together; let’s experiment together.” That’s what I mean about the shift in the mindset, that growth mindset. We should not know all of the answers, but where’s the joy of, “Wow, I don’t know, let’s go find out together”? And that applies to math too. But you have to have that open mindset. You have to—you, as yourself, have to have that growth mindset.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:20):
I love that magic wand. I want that magic wand! And I think what—like Dan said about this megaphone, this opportunity to reach so many young people, so many caregivers—what a gift! And I’m so grateful that you took time to be in the lounge with us, and that you have shared these ideas. Because truly, I think, like you said, it’s really our youngest learners, right? How can we create and cultivate these opportunities for our youngest learners to find the joy in mathematics and just in learning, right?
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (36:54):
Yeah.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:55):
So thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Truglio. We are deeply grateful for your insight and for all the work you do. And we continue to invite the world of Sesame Street into our homes.
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio (37:08):
Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to come into your home, and for you to re-learn with your child as you’re watching Sesame Street. Because it’s very much a parenting show, as it is for a child-directed show, because we are blessed to have these wonderful human cast members who are the stand-ins for parents. And so we are often giving you the language for how to talk about and how to problem-solve together. So thank you.
Dan Meyer (37:43):
Thanks so much for listening to our conversation with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content at Sesame Workshop.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:51):
Dr. Truglio is also the author of Sesame Street Ready for School, A Parents Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages Two to Five, and we’re gonna make sure we put a link to that in the show notes because it is really, really a rich resource. I’m diving in. I have so many ideas bookmarked that I wanna try out with my kiddo.
Dan Meyer (38:09):
Yeah, it’s really exciting to see—like, for a classroom educator, I just kinda assumed that a lot of math learning happens in the classroom context. That’s my lens. So yeah, I loved reading the book and seeing all the different opportunities for parents for just out there in the world, in front of your house, at the supermarket. All the different opportunities there are for mathematical thinking, and then to think about how to bring that into some of those routines and ideas into the classroom, into formal schooling.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (38:35):
Exactly. Exactly. Like Dr. Truglio said, the caregivers’s disposition about mathematics matters so deeply. Your teachers’ dispositions about mathematics, their beliefs, the way that you hear people talking about math, that impacts our learners. That impacts—like, as a student, that impacts what you think is possible for yourself. So I love this, re-educating ourselves about what math can look like out in the world, in everyday conversations. I don’t know. I really, really appreciated this conversation with Dr. Truglio.
Dan Meyer (39:12):
Same. Yeah. We’d love to hear what you folks think about the work. the book, her ideas. Definitely get in touch with us. Subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge, wherever you get podcasts. And keep in touch with us on Facebook at Math Teacher Lounge Community, and on Twitter at MTL show.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:27):
Also, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to Math Teacher Lounge wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a rating and a review. It’ll help more listeners find the show. And while you’re at it, let a friend know about this episode, because you enjoyed it; they might enjoy it. On our next episode, we’re gonna be chatting with Dr. Heidi Sabnani and taking a closer look at best practices for coaching teachers to reduce their own math anxiety.
Dr. Heidi Sabnani (39:56):
One of the teachers that I worked with had done her student teaching with a teacher who had math anxiety and who never taught math. And so she entered her teaching career never having taught math before or seeing it taught.
Dan Meyer (40:10):
Thanks again for listening, folks.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:12):
Bye.
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Meet the guest
Rosemarie T. Truglio, Ph.D. is the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content at Sesame Workshop. Dr. Truglio is responsible for the development of the interdisciplinary curriculum on which Sesame Street is based and oversees content development across platforms (e.g., television, publishing, toys, home video, and theme park activities). She also oversees the curriculum development for all new show production, including Bea’s Block, Mecha Builders, Esme & Roy, Helpsters, and Ghostwriter. Dr. Truglio has written numerous articles in child and developmental psychology journals and presented her work at national and international conferences. Her current book is Ready for School! A Parent’s Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5, published by Running Press (2019).
About Math Teacher Lounge
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.
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Welcome, Florida educators!
Welcome to Amplify Desmos Math Florida! Below, you’ll find links to sample lessons and more information about our Amplify Desmos Math Florida program.
Preview Lessons.
Check out the links below to explore our interactive sample lessons.
Register to learn more about Amplify Desmos Math Florida.
Join us as we sit down with math experts and educators to explore how to support both students and teachers in math classrooms across Florida. This free professional learning series is designed to deliver collaborative, effective, and engaging math practices, as well as free activities to use right away.
A structured approach to problem-based learning
Amplify Desmos Math combines and connects conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and application. Lessons are designed with the Proficiency Progression™, a model that provides teachers with clear instructional moves to build from students’ prior knowledge to grade-level learning.
Student thinking is valuable and can be made evident.
We believe that math class is a place where teachers can elicit, celebrate, and build on their students’ interesting ideas. Those ideas fuel meaningful classroom conversations and drive the learning process.
Robust assessments that drive learning and inform instruction
A variety of performance data in Amplify Desmos Math Florida provides evidence of student learning, while helping students bolster their skills. With explicit guidance on what to look for and how to respond, teachers can effectively support students as they develop their understanding.
Reporting and insights
Teachers and administrators have visibility into what students know about grade-level math with a variety of data reports. By evaluating not only what students know about grade-level math but also providing insight into how they think, teachers can confidently plan whole-class instruction and targeted intervention.
Access to grade-level math for every student, every day
Amplify Desmos Math Florida provides teachers with lessons, strategies, and resources to eliminate barriers and increase access to grade-level-content without reducing the mathematical demand of tasks—all while supporting students in building strong number sense, fluency, and conceptual understanding.
Differentiation when and where it matters most
Teachers are provided with clear student actions to look for, matched with immediately usable suggestions for how to respond to student thinking. Each lesson also includes recommendations for resources to use with students to support, strengthen, and stretch their understanding of the lesson goal.
Boost Personalized Learning
Boost Personalized Learning activities in Amplify Desmos Math Florida target a skill or concept aligned to the day’s core lesson, with each student receiving personalized scaffolds based on what they already know. Designed to build fluency in mathematics, these activities adapt to each student’s unique needs and support skill-based growth.
Intervention Mini-Lessons aligned to core instruction
Amplify Desmos Math Florida Mini-Lessons are aligned to the most critical topics throughout a unit and provide targeted intervention for small groups of students who need additional support or more time.
Boost Math
Boost Math is a K–8 personalized learning and intervention program that provides Learning Pathways to ensure that every student succeeds. Our system supports all aspects of a strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) through learning progressions that connect foundational skills directly to core instruction.
Contact us
Support is always available. Our team is dedicated to helping you every step of the way. Contact your dedicated Florida representative for program access, samples, and additional information.
Welcome to Amplify Desmos Math California!
California educators, welcome to math that motivates. Introducing Amplify Desmos Math California, a curiosity-driven TK–12 program that builds lifelong math proficiency. Each lesson poses problems that invite a variety of approaches before guiding students to synthesize their understanding of the learning goals. Students encounter math problems they’re eager to solve, while teachers spend more time where it’s most impactful—creating a collaborative classroom of learners.
Explore the California Adoption Toolkit resources and discover more about the program in the sections below.
Built for California
The Amplify Desmos Math California program is designed around the vision articulated in the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve to enable all California students to become powerful users of mathematics. Our program incorporates the latest research in student learning, meaning that we:
- Focus on the Big Ideas: Amplify Desmos Math California’s courses, units, and lessons are centered around the Big Ideas. Big Ideas, like standards, are not considered in isolation. In addition to each unit and lesson’s focal Big Ideas, Amplify Desmos Math California also provides connections among the Big Ideas across units and lessons.
- Center on open and engaging tasks: Amplify Desmos Math California is grounded in engaging tasks meant to address students’ often-asked question: “Why am I learning this?” Students are invited into learning with low-floor, high-ceiling tasks that provide an entry point for all. Open tasks in Amplify Desmos Math California provide the space for students to try on multiple strategies and represent their thinking in different ways, and allow student explanation and discussion to serve as the center of the classroom. All lessons offer both print and digital representations.
- Provide enhanced digital experiences: Amplify Desmos Math California includes digitally-enhanced lesson activities, incorporating interactive digital tools alongside print materials. These purposefully-placed resources allow students to visualize mathematical concepts, receive actionable feedback while practicing, encounter personalized learning support from an onscreen tutor, and engage in discussions about their thinking and approaches.
- Treat core instruction and differentiation as integral partners: The Amplify Desmos Math California curriculum provides teachers with lessons, strategies, and resources to eliminate barriers and increase access to grade-level content without reducing the mathematical demand of tasks. Every activity has multiple entry points to ensure that all students are supported and challenged. Intervention and personalized learning activities are directly connected to lesson content and offer students individualized support as they dive into the mathematics.
California Adoption Toolkit resources
Program Description
Linked here is the Program Description for Amplify Desmos Math California.
Our Major Conceptual Ideas Strategy
The renowned mathematician William Paul Thurston said that mathematics is about understanding. The essence of this perspective is woven into the California Mathematics Framework. The Framework is clear that mathematics calls for “original thought and connections of concepts” and that mathematics teaching should “position students as thinkers and members of the classroom community…to support students in seeing themselves as young mathematicians.”
When Amplify developed Amplify Desmos Math California, we built it with one clear priority: grounding it in student understanding. The Framework provided a basis in the Big Ideas, of course, but also in the Drivers of Investigation (DIs), Content Connections (CCs), and Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMPs). Using those components of the Framework, we organized student learning around how students would make sense of the mathematics.
In addition to lessons and learning experiences specifically designated as Explore lessons or Investigations, we utilized the structure of the DIs, CCs, and SMPs in each lesson. Not only is every lesson in our program tied to one or more of the Big Ideas and their connections with one another, every lesson is also framed around these additional components. Each Lesson Overview centers around these questions:
Why? Why are students learning this content?
How? How are students grappling with the mathematical concepts?
What? What contexts encourage students to apply their knowledge?
Each of these questions maps to one of the additional aspects of the Mathematical Framework. Addressing the “Why?” grounds the lesson in one or more of the Drivers of Investigation. Focusing on “How?” encourages students to develop the habits of mind described by the SMPs, becoming explorers in mathematics rather than passive recipients. And maintaining attention on “What?” centers students and teachers on the precise mathematical topics that they are exploring aligned to the four Content Connections.
The Big Ideas and the conceptual and pedagogical shifts in the California Mathematics Framework reflect a shared goal to center education on student understanding. The Amplify Desmos Math California team is eager to support educators and students in their transition to conceptual understanding through our High-Quality Instructional Materials, professional development opportunities, and continued support.
Standards Maps
The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify Desmos Math California for each grade level.
Evaluation Criteria Map
Linked here is the Evaluation Criteria Map for grades K–8. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.
Standards for Mathematical Practice
The links below provide the alignment of Amplify Desmos Math California to the Standards for Mathematical Practice at each grade level.
Big Ideas
Amplify Desmos Math California’s courses, units, and lessons are centered around the Big Ideas. In addition to each unit and lesson’s focal Big Ideas, Amplify Desmos Math California also provides connections among the Big Ideas across units and lessons. Please refer to Keeping the Big Ideas at the Center (linked below) for specific lesson designs and alignment with the Big Ideas for each grade level.
Drivers of Investigation and Content Connections
Amplify Desmos Math California incorporates the Drivers of Investigation and Content Connection throughout the program. Throughout the year, students engage with open and authentic tasks of varying durations — from lesson activities to unit-level Explore lessons and longer course-level Investigations. Every lesson and investigation opportunity is grounded around the why, how, and what of the learning experience, and helps teachers bring mathematical concepts to life.
California English Language Development Standards
The links below provide the alignment of Amplify Desmos Math California to the California English Language Development Standards at each grade level.
California Environmental Principles and Concepts
Select lessons, performance tasks, and investigations across grade levels in Amplify Desmos Math California are aligned to one or more of the California Environmental Principles and Concepts. Click the links below to view how the California Environmental Principles and Concepts are represented in each grade level.
Contact us
For questions, samples, or more information, please contact your local Amplify Account Executive:
¡Les damos la bienvenida, familias de mCLASS Math!
Nos entusiasma poder colaborar con usted este año escolar para apoyar el aprendizaje de las matemáticas de su estudiante. Este Caregiver Hub de mCLASS® Math está diseñado para ayudarle a comprender cómo funciona mCLASS Math y brindarle formas sencillas de apoyar el aprendizaje de las matemáticas en casa, antes y después de las evaluaciones.
For English version, please click here.
¿Qué es mCLASS Math?
mCLASS Math es un sistema de evaluación digital que ofrece a los maestros una visión clara de cómo conciben los estudiantes los conceptos matemáticos principales de su nivel escolar. También ayuda a identificar lo que su estudiante ya sabe y en qué aspectos podría necesitar más apoyo. Lo anterior permite que los maestros puedan personalizar la enseñanza y ayudar al desarrollo del aprendizaje de cada estudiante. Las evaluaciones de mCLASS Math son completamente digitales y permiten que los estudiantes demuestren su razonamiento mediante preguntas abiertas. De esa manera, los maestros obtienen una visión inmediata del progreso de los estudiantes y de sus necesidades educativas. Para obtener más información sobre la experiencia del estudiante, haga clic aquí.
Obtenga más información sobre mCLASS Math.
Primeros pasos
¿Por qué es importante evaluar?
Con las evaluaciones de mCLASS Math, los maestros comprenden no solo lo que los estudiantes ya conocen, sino también cómo piensan. Esto les permite apoyar mejor su desarrollo del aprendizaje.
Más allá de respuestas correctas o incorrectas, mCLASS Math captura cómo resuelven problemas los estudiantes, destacando sus fortalezas, experiencias, razonamientos y estrategias individuales (o “assets” (ventajas), como los llamamos colectivamente), y utilizándolos para orientar el proceso de enseñanza. Con esta información, los maestros pueden personalizar el aprendizaje, reconocer las fortalezas de los estudiantes y fomentar un crecimiento significativo.
Obtenga más información sobre la evaluación basada en “assets”.
Formas de apoyar a su estudiante
Junto a su estudiante, obtenga una vista previa de los ítems de muestra en casa.
Exploren los ítems de muestra de mCLASS Math juntos para que su estudiante se sienta más cómodo y familiarizado con la experiencia de evaluación. Estos ejemplos muestran los tipos de preguntas que su estudiante podría ver y cómo va a interactuar con la plataforma.
Mientras revisan los ítems juntos, anime a su estudiante a explicar su razonamiento. Intente hacer preguntas tales como:
- “¿Qué te piden que resuelvas?”
- “¿Cómo puedes demostrar tu pensamiento?”
- “¿Puedes explicar tu respuesta?”
Si su estudiante no consigue avanzar, ayúdele con preguntas como:
- “¿Qué sabes hasta ahora?”
- “¿Cómo podrías representar este problema usando objetos o dibujos?”
Recuerde al estudiante que bloquearse es normal y una parte necesaria del proceso de aprendizaje. Muchos estudiantes (y personas adultas) temen cometer errores, pero las investigaciones demuestran que cometerlos ayuda a que nuestro cerebro se desarrolle. Desarrollar la confianza en el uso de las matemáticas comienza con la práctica en un espacio de apoyo donde el estudiante se sienta seguro.
Apoye a diario el proceso de aprendizaje matemático con Fluency Practice.
Ayude a su estudiante a fortalecer las habilidades matemáticas básicas (suma, resta, multiplicación y división) con solo 5 a 10 minutos diarios de Fluency Practice (Práctica de la fluidez). Fluency Practice utiliza un método de aprendizaje probado llamado repetición espaciada, con el fin de aumentar la precisión, velocidad y confianza en el uso de operaciones y datos matemáticos.
Para obtener una introducción a Fluency Practice haga clic aquí.
Otras ideas para apoyar el aprendizaje de las matemáticas
- Siempre que sea posible, destaque el uso que haga su estudiante de las matemáticas en el mundo real y promueva esta práctica.
- Ayude con la tarea de matemáticas tanto como sea posible.
- Utilice frases intencionales y positivas sobre las matemáticas, incluyendo el uso que su estudiante haga de ellas.
Próximamente: Actividades matemáticas asistidas por cuidadores
Para el aprendizaje en casa, mCLASS ofrece una serie de recursos matemáticos que las familias pueden usar trabajando juntas, incluyendo actividades matemáticas asistidas por los cuidadores para ayudar a reforzar y practicar destrezas en casa.
Le recomendamos que lea el artículo Proteja a los niños en internet de la Comisión Federal de Comercio, cuyo tema es la seguridad digital.
¡Estamos aquí para ayudarle!
¿Tiene alguna pregunta sobre mCLASS Math?
Visite nuestra biblioteca de ayuda (en inglés) y busque respuestas a sus preguntas sobre el programa en nuestros artículos de ayuda.
Para obtener apoyo curricular adicional, comuníquese con su maestro.
Frequently asked questions
Still have questions? We have answers. Check out the following FAQ.
Overview
- Amplify CKLA is based on research showing that closing the background knowledge gap is necessary for supporting the literacy development of all students. To that end, Amplify CKLA teaches literacy through the lens of cross-curricular domains in science, history, literature, and culture. It was developed in response to research that shows the critical impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension and college- and career-readiness.
- The program also reflects the latest early reading research showing the importance of explicit foundational skills instruction. The program develops students’ foundational literacy skills through a systematic scope and sequence with a focus on phonics.
Our research-based language arts curriculum is built on findings showing that higher-level reading comprehension depends on both automatic, fluent decoding and background knowledge. Combining well-established findings from the field of early literacy research with classroom-based feedback, Amplify CKLA ensures that children will learn to listen, speak, read, and write confidently and proficiently. For more information, view the Amplify CKLA Research Guide.
Amplify CKLA is a PreK–5 program. While the PreK and K–2 materials respect the important differences between early childhood education and formal schooling, the Grades 3–5 materials ensure a smooth transition to the academic rigors of middle school.
PreK
The focus in PreK is to maintain a developmentally appropriate early childhood setting; the structures, routines, and activities are engaging and children receive a solid foundation for future language arts instruction.
K–2
The focus in K–2 is developing fluent reading and writing skills, and enhancing language comprehension by building background knowledge and vocabulary. This is accomplished through two strands: the Skills Strand and the Knowledge Strand.
The Skills Strand focuses on decoding, encoding, grammar, handwriting, and the writing process, and it contains decodable chapter books for students to practice just-learned sound-spellings.
The Knowledge Strand builds background knowledge and vocabulary through carefully sequenced read-alouds and complex texts. Teachers read aloud stories that are more complex than the text students can decode on their own, enabling children to engage with complex texts and build background knowledge of a variety of connected topics in history, science, literature, and the arts.
3–5
In Grades 3–5, students are still focused on building reading and writing skills as well as knowledge and vocabulary, but the program no longer has two strands. The various lessons in each unit include read-alouds; whole-group, small-group, and partner reading; close reading; literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions; vocabulary; grammar; writing; morphology and spelling (10–15 words per week); and unit assessments.
Program design
The Skills strand provides intentional and systematic support in building decoding skills. The lessons support learning related to phonemic awareness, sound-letter patterns (or spelling patterns), decoding (both in explicit lessons and with engaging decodable texts), writing mechanics, and writing structure and processes, for 60 minutes daily.
The Knowledge Strand develops young children’s language and background knowledge. By exposing children to rich and complex texts through daily read-alouds, engaging in text-based and analytic discussions of the text and content, and building connections from the text to the work of the classroom through extension activities, the Knowledge Strand provides daily, extensive (60 minutes) broadening and deepening of children’s oral language and comprehension.
Teaching the Skills Strand and Knowledge Strand in parallel helps students avoid cognitive overload and acquire advanced, complex vocabulary in the Knowledge Strand—in essence, reading to learn from day one—while becoming expert decoders in the Skills Strand. The program is designed to bring these two strands together in grades 3–5, as foundational skills and higher-level comprehension and meaning-making gradually intertwine.
The CKLA program takes a comprehensive approach to teaching the code of the English language in the Skills strand. While the English language has only 26 letters, these letters combine to create 150 spelling patterns that represent 44 sounds of language. In most reading programs, children are explicitly taught only a fraction of this information and must glean the rest from ad hoc and incidental exposure to these spelling patterns through text. CKLA focuses on explicitly teaching each of the 44 sounds and the 150 ways that these sounds are represented (via letters and letter combinations). This comprehensive approach assures educators that children have the knowledge they need to address any text and any word.
The Knowledge Strand reflects the fact that knowledge, comprehension, and vocabulary are intimately related. The materials are designed to provide children sustained time on a variety of domains (bodies of knowledge) through shared read-alouds and discussions. This coherent organization of content is critical to building knowledge, inferring new vocabulary, and enabling comprehension. The content-rich, intentionally sequenced nature of the read-alouds within the Knowledge Strand creates the optimal context for incidental and explicit vocabulary-learning opportunities. After the read-aloud, children analyze the text through interactive discussion questions, engage in activities that foster their comprehension of complex sentences and ideas, and extend the ideas of the read-aloud into other activities in the classroom. In this way, the lessons create rich, academically oriented, oral language experiences that promote both receptive and expressive language skills.
Amplify CKLA embeds a variety of diagnostic and classroom assessments into the program materials.
There are curriculum-based assessments of both foundational skills and content knowledge, placement assessments in Grades 1 and 2 for the Skills Strand, and end-of-year Skills Strand assessments in Grades K–3. These assessments are built into the units of instruction/domains within the Teacher Guides. In Grades 4–5, there are beginning-of-year assessments, frequent spelling assessments, and comprehensive unit assessments.
Formative Assessments are integrated into every lesson, allowing teachers to understand exactly how students are doing on meeting lesson goals and standards-based objectives.
Writing in multiple genres is taught through a process that builds from three highly scaffolded steps to seven flexible steps.
In addition to explicit lessons in handwriting, spelling, and grammar, writing is taught throughout K–5. Instruction begins with a three-step writing process: plan, draft, and edit. The process is reinforced as each new writing genre is addressed. Each genre is taught through a gradual reduction in scaffolding over a set of six lessons that includes teacher modeling, group practice, independent practice, and independent application. This systematic approach allows for continued support and predictable learning as children progress in their knowledge of text types and complexity of writing. By Grade 3, students have worked their way up to a five-step writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Beginning in Grade 4, the writing process expands to seven components: planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, and editing (and the optional component of publishing). An important change between the writing process in Grades 3–5 is that the writing process is no longer conceptualized as a series of scaffolded, linear steps that students follow in a set sequence. Rather, students move back and forth between components of the writing process in a flexible manner, similar to the process that mature and experienced writers follow. In addition to specific writing lessons, there are numerous writing opportunities for students throughout the curriculum.
Alignment to the CCSS
Fully implementing the Common Core Standards requires some shifts in prevailing instructional approaches. For early grades language arts, these shifts can be summarized as (1) balancing fiction and nonfiction text, (2) building knowledge, (3) supporting students’ capacity to learn from increasingly complex texts, (4) giving text-based answers, (5) writing from sources, and (6) explicitly supporting the acquisition of academic vocabulary. The following sections document the primary ways that Amplify CKLA meets the demands of these shifts.
- The amount of nonfiction gradually increases, reaching the 50-50 balance of fiction and nonfiction by grade 3.
- Read-alouds in the Knowledge Strand are designed according to the latest research to build knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, the arts, and more.
- The texts in both the Knowledge Strand and the Skills strand increase in complexity as the program progresses within and across grades.
- In the Skills Strand, the language and knowledge demands of the texts increase, but remain decodable based on the aspects of the code that have been taught to date.
- Both strands engage students in appropriate means of providing text-based answers—orally, pictorially, and eventually in writing.
- Together, the Skills and Knowledge Strands enable students to read and digest various sources and then write by drawing on those sources.
- In both strands of the program, Amplify CKLA teaches children the process of using the text as a springboard for understanding.
- The Knowledge Strand offers repeated exposures to academic vocabulary through authentic texts and explicit word instruction.
Materials
PreK
- Teacher Guides, Student Activity Pages, 3–4 Trade Books per domain, Flip Books, Image Cards, Transition and Center Cards, Nursery Rhymes and Songs Posters, and a Big Book (Classic Tales)
Grades K–2
- Knowledge Strand: Teacher Guides, Flip Books, Student Activity Books, Image Cards, and online resources including supplemental lessons
- Skills Strand: Teacher Guides, Activity Books, Student Readers, Big Books, Letter Cards, Spelling Cards, Individual Code Sheets, Code and Chaining Resources (Vowel/Consonant Code Flip Books, Student Chaining Folders), Blending Cards, and online resources including differentiation and remediation guides
Grades 3–5
- Teacher Guides, Student Readers, Activity Books, Poet’s Journal, Writer’s Journal, Core Quests (The Viking Age in Grade 3, Eureka: Student Inventor in Grade 4 and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in grade 5) and Writing Quests (The Contraption in Grade 4, The Robot in Grade 5)
What’s included in our Grades 3–5 language arts curriculum
Grounded in the science of reading, Amplify CKLA for grades 3–5 integrates foundational skills students have learned in grades K–2 while continuing to build rich content knowledge. With Amplify CKLA, you’ll have the instruction and guidance of proven, evidence-based practices to help all of your students become strong readers, writers, and thinkers.
Year at a glance
The Amplify CKLA curriculum is modeled after proven research in early literacy that supports a two-strand approach to literacy instruction in the early years. With this approach, students in Grades K–2 complete one full lesson per day that builds foundational reading skills in the Skills Strand, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge in the Knowledge Strand. The deep content knowledge is sequenced together with research-based foundational skills in Grades K–2 so that students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers, as well as build the context to understand what they’re reading.
In Grades 3–5, lessons combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater emphasis on writing. Students start to use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures, further opening up their worlds.
Units at a glance
Students move fluidly between reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language activities, with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis.
Unit 1
Classic Tales: The Wind in the Willows
Students explore international classic tales, including The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, and “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 2
Animal Classification
Students learn how scientists use animals’ characteristics to classify and study them; students apply knowledge through text-based discussions and writing exercises.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 3
The Human Body: Systems and Senses
This unit involves the study of the human body, building students’ understanding of its senses and skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems.
Number of Lessons: 14
Unit 4
The Ancient Roman Civilization
Students dive into ancient Rome, studying its history, culture, and myths about Roman gods and goddesses.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 5
Light and Sound
Students learn the science behind light and sound, read biographies of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, and write newspaper articles.
Number of Lessons: 17
Unit 6
The Viking Age (with Core Quest)
This unit’s informational and literary texts convey information about the Vikings, their culture, and their exploration.
Number of Lessons: 11
Unit 7
Astronomy: Our Solar System and Beyond
Students learn about astronomy, the universe, and important figures in the history of space exploration, including Nicolaus Copernicus and Mae Jemison.
Number of Lessons: 20
Unit 8
Native Americans: Regions and Cultures
Students compare, contrast, assemble information, and reflect on what they have learned about Native Americans and their ways of life.
Number of Lessons: 13
Unit 9
Early Explorations of North America
Students explore reasons for European exploration, what exploration was like, and who went exploring; then students write opinion pieces using this information.
Number of Lessons: 14
Unit 10
Colonial America
Students learn about colonies in early America, including how colonies were started and the progress colonists made after settling.
Number of Lessons: 16
Unit 11
Ecology
Students learn about different aspects of ecology, including food chains, the balance of nature, changes to the environment, and protecting the environment.
Number of Lessons: 12
Unit 1
Personal Narratives
This unit examines the genre of personal narratives, including nonfiction works written by a first-person narrator involved in the events being described.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 2
Empires in the Middle Ages
This unit covers the history of various empires and geographical regions throughout the Middle Ages.
Number of Lessons: 25
Unit 3
Poetry
Students explore poetry, training in methods and devices poets use and learning to read, write, and interpret formal and free verse poems.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 4
Eureka! Student Inventor
This Core Quest, a narrative-driven unit, immerses students in close-reading adventures and scientific and historical content about inventions. Students write and read opinion, informational, and narrative texts.
Number of Lessons: 10
Unit 5
Geology
This unit focuses on the composition of Earth and the forces that change its surface.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 6
Contemporary Fiction with excerpts from The House on Mango Street
This unit explores narrative literature and writing, using excerpts from The House on Mango Street as its anchor text.
Number of Lessons: 13
Unit 7
American Revolution
Students learn that disagreements about principles of government led colonists in North America to seek independence from Great Britain.
Number of Lessons: 17
Unit 8
Treasure Island
Students focus on character development, setting, plot, and literary devices while reading an abridged version of a classic novel, Treasure Island.
Number of Lessons: 19
Unit 5
Writing Quest (supplemental): The Contraption
In this supplemental Quest, students interact with a mysterious machine fueled by their writing and solve the machine’s puzzles. This Quest features a digital environment controlled by the teacher.
Unit 1
Personal Narratives
This unit examines the genre of personal narratives, including nonfiction works written by a first-person narrator involved in the events being described.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 2
Early American Civilizations
Students study the geography, climate, flora, and fauna of the Americas and the rise and fall of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 3
Poetry
Students explore poetry, training in methods and devices poets use and learning to read, write, and interpret formal and free verse poems.
Number of Lessons: 13
Unit 4
Adventures of Don Quixote
In this unit students trace the development of plot, characters, and literary elements while reading a full-length, adapted version of Don Quixote.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 5
The Renaissance
This unit provides students with a broad exposure to the art and literature of the Renaissance through the works of renowned masters.
Number of Lessons: 19
Unit 6
The Reformation
This unit teaches students about the Reformation, a movement involving religious and political upheaval that shifted the political power in Europe.
Number of Lessons: 10
Unit 7
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Core Quest)
This unit is an immersive Quest that treats Shakespeare’s comedy as both literature and a living text for interpretation and performance.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 8
Native Americans
Students learn how settlers, explorers, and the American government in the 1800s affected Native American cultures and their relationship with the land.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 9
Chemical Matter
Students learn about chemistry and close-reading through a literary and informational work, The Badlands Sleuth, in which the protagonist uses chemistry to solve mysteries.
Number of Lessons: 15
Unit 10
Writing Quest (supplemental): The Robot
Students interact with a classroom pet that learns and grows with their writing. This Quest features a digital environment controlled by the teacher.
Program components
The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day.
Component
FORMAT
Teacher Guides
Teacher Guides for each unit provide engaging lessons with standards-based objectives and formative assessments that empower teachers with proven strategies and research-based tools.
Print or digital
Differentiation resources
The online Assessment and Remediation Guide (Grade 3) and the Decoding and Encoding Supplement (Grades 4–5) provide thousands of pages of targeted activities in decoding, spelling, and other core literacy skills. Supplemental Guides provide opportunities for enrichment.
Digital
Writing Studio
A riveting connected writing program for more time, practice, and challenge in writing, with a focus on informative, narrative, and opinion modes of writing.
Print or digital
Digital experience
The Amplify CKLA digital experience delivers ready-made, customizable, slides-based lesson presentations to enhance instruction and save time. Everything needed to plan and present high-quality, engaging early literacy instruction is in one convenient place.
Digital
Component
FORMAT
Student Readers
Amplify CKLA’s Student Readers anchor each of the content-based units, providing a close-reading experience fueled by rich background knowledge that inspires students to dig deeper.
Activity Books
In addition to providing daily opportunities for students to respond to text and apply skills and knowledge, Activity Books feature formative assessments for each day’s objectives.
Digital experience
The Amplify CKLA digital experience delivers ready-made, customizable, slides-based lesson presentations to enhance instruction and save time. Everything needed to plan and present high-quality, engaging early literacy instruction is in one convenient place.
Digital
Explore more programs
Our programs are designed to support and complement one another. Learn more about our related programs.
Winter Wrap-Up 02: Mathematizing Children’s Literature
While we’re hard at work producing the exciting fifth season of Math Teacher Lounge: The Podcast, we’re continuing to share some of our favorite conversations from our first four seasons. This time around, we’re revisiting our popular episode that connected literacy and math!
In this episode, we sit down with Allison Hintz and Antony Smith, authors of Mathematizing Children’s Literature, to talk about what would happen if we were to approach children’s literature, and life, through a math lens–and how we can apply those same techniques to classroom teaching!
Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:02):
Hi, I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.
Dan Meyer (00:04):
Hi, I’m Dan Meyer.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:05):
And we are so excited for another episode of Math Teacher Lounge. And as you know, podcast format; you’re listening now. I think one beautiful thing about the podcast format is that it gives us a little bit more time to have these rich conversations. And I promise I won’t do it, but I could talk to our guests for hours, hours! Authors Allison Hintz and Tony Smith have just released Mathematizing Children’s Literature: Sparking Connections, Joy, and Wonder Through Read-Alouds and Discussion. And today we get to talk to the authors. Allison, Tony, welcome. Welcome to the lounge.
Allison Hintz (00:53):
Thank you. We’re so grateful to be here.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:55):
We’re so excited to have you here. And I wanna say that my very first—was it my first math conference? Maybe it was my first math conference—up in Seattle, the CGI conference, and I’m all like, you know, wide-eyed and just like, “Can this be a place for me, this math community?” Re-envisioning my relationship with math and thinking about myself as a math teacher, what? And I went to your session on mathematizing children’s literature, and I was just so fired up. I was so wowed by your ideas, your energy, and your passion for students’ thinking. And I feel like as I read this book, I felt like I was hanging out with you. Like you were just so encouraging all the way through. Of educators, of other folks working with young people, and really guiding us how to listen with joy and with an open curious mind.
Dan Meyer (02:03):
Yeah. I would love to hear a bit about the genesis of this book for you folks. Like, I’m coming at this from a secondary educator lens. I’ve got small kids, so that’s also part of my interest here. But I love any book, any idea that seeks to merge what seems like two disparate worlds. Like it’s often the case that we feel like, well, there’s approaches for ELA and approaches for math, and they’re kind of separate disciplines. And these poor elementary teachers have to learn all of them and be experts at all of them. And here you both come along and say, “Hey, what if they are the same kind of technique?” Can you just speak to how this came about?
Allison Hintz (02:38):
Definitely. Tony, do you wanna take a try? Do you want me to start us off?
Antony Smith (02:42):
I can start. We oftentimes present and talk together and so we kinda switch back and forth. So that’s just how we are. So probably about eight or nine years ago, Allison and I, our offices were next to each other on our small campus. We’re both professors and we just happened to have a few children’s books that we looked at together and we were just thumbing through the pages. We really liked children’s literature. And we noticed that I would stop at certain points wondering about character motive or plot or sequence of events or language use. And Allison would stop at very different points in the book and notice number and concepts or something about mathematics. And that’s when we started to wonder, what would it be like if we were sharing a children’s book with a group of children and we put our ideas together? Where would we stop? What would we talk about? What would we ask children about in terms of their thinking and what they notice?
Allison Hintz (03:42):
And so we started playing with these questions that we had and started approaching stories with multiple lenses to see what kinds of things would children notice and what kinds of things might they say. And we were also on our own journey in trying to understand how to plan for and facilitate lively discussions and classrooms that surface really complex mathematics. And it felt like stories were a place where that might be a fruitful context for hearing children’s thinking. We’ve worked with a lot of teachers and students in our region. We live in the Seattle area and we’ve applied for some funding over time that’s really helped us be in a lot of community-based organizations and educational contexts and libraries and pediatricians’ offices and classrooms, various classrooms, and see what’s interesting about this and what might teachers and children do with stories that would surface complex mathematics to think about together.
Antony Smith (04:41):
Over time, we came to the realization that if we wanted to hear children’s ideas, we had to stop bombarding them with questions. <laugh> Yeah. And at first it made it worse that we were asking them math and literacy questions at the same time. And so we realized that what we needed to do was to back off and to ask children what they noticed and wondered.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:01):
Can you say more about that and how that kind of evolved into mathematizing children’s literature?
Antony Smith (05:07):
We did work with a number of very thoughtful, talented classroom teachers and children’s librarians in public library systems who were just so masterful at asking open-ended prompts and questions, rather than kind of like the de facto reading quiz, that a read-aloud can become, which I’ve always disliked as a literacy educator. And we realized in our observing these read-alouds or interactive read-alouds or shared reading experiences that given the opportunity in the space and an adult who was actually listening, that children came up with all of the ideas we would have asked them about and more. So we didn’t have to be bombarding them with questions. They were already much more thoughtful than what would’ve been sufficient to answer our questions.
Allison Hintz (05:58):
And much like mathematics, it was really an iterative process. You know, we had some clunky read-aloud discussions where we were trying to accomplish so much and toggling multiple chart papers and different colored pens and all sorts of “how do we capture these ideas” and “do we separate ’em? do we keep ’em together?” And so it’s really been over time that with partners, we’ve learned these ways of having multiple reads of the same story that allow us to hear what children notice and wonder, and then to delve more deeply into their questions and their ideas through multiple reads where we might spotlight literary ideas that they notice; we might spotlight mathematical ideas that they notice. We might make purposeful integrations between those. But we found it to be most productive—and Kristin Gray really help us think about this—to have an open Notice and Wonder, get everything out much like an open-strategy share. We welcome here, record all the ideas, and it goes all over everywhere. You know, it can be a really not math-y noticing! And those are amazing! So there’s a lot of, um, yes, there is a ladybug on this page! The grandma is wearing green triangle earrings! Oh, your grandma wears green earrings! I mean, it all comes out.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:27):
Wait, have you been in my classroom? ‘Cause that’s exactly— <laugh>
Allison Hintz (07:29):
<laugh> And then, you know, we think of it a lot like if math teachers might use the 5 Practices for selecting and sequencing, or if you might move from an open-strategy share to a targeted share, how can we get out all the questions that children are asking and then step back from them, take some time to really think about what they’re telling us they’re curious about, and plan some purposeful, intentional subsequent discussions that can delve more deeply into their ideas.
Dan Meyer (08:02):
I’d love to go into that a little bit more if that’s all right. Um, I’m gonna speak from someone who doesn’t have an elementary background and I’m gonna voice some worries that I had, some anxiety. One anxiety I have like in a classroom or a curriculum is when there’s no room for student ideas. Right? When it’s like, oh, there’s just room for the curriculum author or the teacher here. That is a sadness. But I when I see an instructional environment like you’re describing here, where there is openness to all kinds of different student ideas, of different levels of formality, from different kinds of cultural fonts of knowledge or wherever, I also get a little bit nervous because that, like, increases the risk that a student might come to understand that “my ideas are not good enough,” whereas in the class with no room for their ideas from their home or their language or their hobbies, like, they’re not gonna internalize the message that, “that wasn’t good enough.” And so I’m really curious as you move from the open Notice and Wonder where kids share all of themselves with you, and then you move to a targeted focus on some sort of disciplinary objective, how do you navigate that tension and help students feel like their contributions are valuable, even though we aren’t taking them up per se?
Allison Hintz (09:18):
That’s such an important question. I mean, I think we’ve grappled with this broadly in math education. I think any time we’re thinking about which ideas we choose to take up to pursue to consider, we have a responsibility to think carefully about whose ideas are being taken up and heard and considered. And so one of the tensions I hear you naming, I think, Dan, is when we engage in lively discussion where children’s thinking’s at the center, how do we make sure to upend and interrupt kinda status norms that run the risk of being deepened? Um, and I think by paying attention to whose ideas are taken up as much as which ideas are taken up, and what’s the mathematics we wanna explore is one tension. Um, another tension I might hear you naming is, you know, the complications that teachers face with time and pressure and coverage, and which mathematics ends up getting worked on. And, um, you know, it’s something we’ve really had to struggle with in mathematics education, where we move to more discussion-oriented classrooms that are really centered in sense-making to know that it takes a lot of time to do this thoughtful, thoughtful work. Um, does that begin to get at some of the tensions you’re raising? Is there, is there more you’re thinking about?
Dan Meyer (10:53):
I think it’s really helpful that you kind of broadened the scope of the question beyond your book to “this is an issue that we are, you know, really challenged by and focused on broadly in math education.” And, um, I appreciate you bringing the element in of whose idea—not just which idea is taken up, but whose idea is taken up—is an opportunity where, let’s say, multiple people raise an idea that is towards an objective the teacher has, they have the opportunity to disrupt certain kinds of status, like ideas about status, in that moment. From your perspective, like, are there techniques to say, I don’t know, parking-lot certain kinds of questions and say like, “Hey, like these are awesome”? I don’t know. I just know that I see kids at like ninth grade. They are very reticent, often. They’ve internalized totally this sense of like, “I’m not gonna just, like, share about the pants the grandma’s wearing, you know; that will not be received well.” And so I’m just kinda wondering how that happens and like, what are the ways we can disrupt that? That process?
Antony Smith (11:54):
So thinking about that, Dan, from the teacher’s perspective, in those kinds of scenarios where you wanna honor each child’s contribution, a couple of things that come to mind: One is that by, you know, initially by modeling what I as a teacher, something that I notice or wonder about, helps kind of set the expectation for what kind of response would be encouraged. And it’s broad, but it gives an example. And then also we really try to record or to chart all of the ideas that are shared so that we can revisit and honor those together. And then either later or on another day, if we choose one or two of those to explore in some way within a more focused read, then another thing that we do is have the idea investigation afterward that continues that thought, but goes back to being as open-ended as possible, so that those students or children who maybe didn’t have their idea as the one that was focused on by the group could go back to that or explore some other idea of their own, so that the idea investigation isn’t a lockstep extension activity, which is why we don’t call it that. So they could again bring in their own perspective. But I have to say from the teacher’s point of view, there is that moment of potential panic <laugh> because there is that power transfer when you’re asking children to help steer where this is going. And if you really mean it, you have to let them steer a little bit. And that can be terrifying. And, um, I always think of one teacher, Ashley, we worked with who read an adorable book, Stack the Cats, by Susie Ghahremani. And in that book, there’s a point where there are eight cats and they’re kind of trying to be a tower of cats and they fall and they’re sort of in the air on that page. And she asked her first graders—she stopped, and she asked, “How, do you think, how will the cats land?” And for about a minute and a half, the entire <laugh> class, was silent. They had their little papers; they had chart paper; they had clipboards; they had everything they needed. But that unusual phenomenon of a group of six- and seven-year-olds actually just sitting and thinking and not being peppered with activities was really stressful, but amazing. And then, after about the 90 seconds, they started out into their exploration of how the eight cats might land. They just needed a minute to think. And it’s so rare that we’re able to let children have that.
Allison Hintz (14:40):
In that same moment, Ashley, who’s a learning partner to us, she turned to us kind of quietly, like, “Should I pose a different question?” And <laugh>, we’re like, “No, let’s stick with it. Let’s see what happens.” So I think it creates this space too, this thinking culture, right? And this culture of “what does that mean to really pose a rich task?That’s open-ended, where there’s multiple access points?” Those eight cats could land in so many different ways. And there was broad access, there was a wide range of all the cats landing, and one’s on their feet, ’cause cats always land on their feet <laugh>, and there was every combination. And so, um, I think what’s really interesting—and to me, this brings back to your wonder, Dan—is, you know, “What’s the risk in openness?” And there’s always risk in openness. Um, it’s scary as a teacher, right? If I’m not the authority of knowledge and I don’t have control over where we’re gonna go, it might get into places that I didn’t anticipate. Or I don’t really feel as solid in the math as I want to. Or I don’t know what it sounds like to stick with silence and wait time, to know if my students are really in productive struggle or if that question was a flop. And so, um, I think this is some practice space for young mathematicians and teachers of mathematics, and just teachers, to explore with that openness and kind of the risk of the openness required for complex thinking to emerge.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:12):
You know, it feels like the way you’re both describing this, it really is a culture shift, right? I kept feeling like I was given permission to be a beginner as I read this book. Like I was really…I loved how you said, I believe it was you, Allison, when you were in the class, you had a couple index card that you kept on your clipboard and that as you walked around, you were like, “Hey, if I don’t know what to ask, I ask one of these questions.” You know? And just this idea that, that, like Dan was saying, there is that loss of control, but that’s also a way to create this culture where students ideas are valued and we are allowing students to really generate the questions, which I thought was such an important idea to explore.
Allison Hintz (17:00):
We started this work long ago, super-excited about math-y books. And we saw a lot of potential in them and we still do. But the limitation we saw is that math-y books, they, they put forth a certain mathematics to be curious about. In some ways they tell you what mathematics to think about. So we started asking ourselves what would happen if we considered any story a chance to engage as mathematical sense-makers. And we started playing with non-math-y books and we got to a place where we could consider every story an opportunity to engage in mathematical thinking. And so we started noticing things over times, oh, these books tend to be really math-y. We call those text-dependent. We’d have to pay attention to the mathematics to understand the story. Whereas this pile of stories, these, they’re not overtly math-y. You could really enjoy the story and not pay attention to mathematics and have an amazing conversation. But what would happen if we thought of about this story as mathematical sense-makers and how might it deepen our understanding of the story? And then this other teetering pile of books, these are books where, you know, children didn’t tend to engage as overtly as mathematicians in it, but there’s opportunities in this story to go back to something—to a moment, to an illustration, to a comment—and think as mathematicians. And those were more about illustration exploring. And so, as we notice these different kinds of books, we really broaden what we thought about. And I think one of the things we really wanna think about in community through this book is what happens if we approach any story, every story, as mathematical sense-makers, because stories are alive in children’s lives, in homes and communities and in schools. And it’s a broad opportunity that we wanna take up. I was thinking, as I stay in this strait for just a moment about book selection, before we move into that process, um, Bethany in a previous MTL, you talked about representation.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:12):
Mm, yeah.
Allison Hintz (19:14):
And do you remember when you shared the image of hair braiding?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:19):
Yes. Vividly, yes. <laugh>.
Allison Hintz (19:22):
Yeah. And can you say just what that meant to you? What that….
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:27):
Yeah. Well, it was from a conference; Sunil Singh had used it and was talking about the artistry in mathematics and beauty in hair braiding. And, um, particularly, he was showing this particular image of this Black woman with her hair braided in profile and looking at the angles and the symmetry. And I shared that, you know, I spent so many hours in the beauty shop with my aunties and my mom and my grandma and continue to, to this day, that it just, it struck me immediately as familiar. And it struck me immediately as seeing an image that was reflective of my lived reality, projected as valuable and worthwhile for consideration in the world of mathematics. Which is not what I felt as a student of mathematics as a young adult or child. So it was this beautiful moment of, for me, the power of when we see images and we allow opportunities for re-envisioning what may be a common practice for that student, or may be something that they see every day.
Allison Hintz (20:44):
And in that same way, that image that was put up, we wanna think really carefully about representation in the stories that we select. And when we think of stories as mirrors or windows, we really wanna be mindful in story selection of whose stories are told and whose stories are heard. And when you said that you would sit down to listen to a story and you felt at ease or that you saw an image and you saw yourself that can be and should be something we really think carefully about when we select the stories that we select.
Dan Meyer (21:21):
It’s a wider path for representation of different kinds of people in literature, because people’s stories seem so much more present and towards the surface of their lives, versus, say, the abstractions and numbers and shapes in mathematics. It feels like more of a struggle to find ways to show people, hey, like you’re here, this, this place belongs to you. So in all these reasons, I think it’s really great you folks are using literature, which has this history of humanities, literally humanities, as a vehicle for mathematics. That seems pretty special here.
Antony Smith (21:56):
We both go to libraries and bookstores and look through books as often as we can, but also our partner, a children’s librarian, Mie-Mie Wu, helped us go through—when we would meet, she would bring three or four hundred books at a time.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:13):
When you described her wheeling in the cart, oh, I wish I been in that room! <Laugh>
Antony Smith (22:18):
And the cart was, you know, probably three or four times bigger than she was sometimes. And we would go through hundreds of books and look at them and listen to her thoughts as a skilled librarian sharing with families, diverse families, and what catches the attention of a three-year-old sitting with her grandfather. And that was really a valuable, helpful experience. And it’s a partnership that continues. So in Last Stop on Market Street—and this is in the book; we talk about this, this children’s book quite a bit—in this story, CJ with his Nana, his grandmother, are riding the bus to the last stop on Market Street in San Francisco, to go, as we will find out, to help serve in a soup kitchen to help the community. And the teacher, Susan Hadreas, had the children record their ideas. She charted them in an open Notice and Wonder read. And one of the ideas that a young boy noticed was that CJ on the bus…a man with a guitar starts playing the guitar on the bus and CJ closes his eyes and it says CJ’s chest grew full. And he was lost in the sound and the sound gave him the feeling of magic. So this boy said, “I wonder, what does that feel like if you’re feeling the magic? What’s that?” And that was one of many ideas in the open Notice and Wonder, and Allison will talk about the math lens read, but first Susan went back and read with them. She had that idea, she circled it on the chart paper, and another day that week, she said, let’s go back and visit this story we really liked. And remember, we wondered what feeling the magic was like. Let’s go back through and let’s keep track of all the feelings and emotions that CJ had across the journey to the soup kitchen in this book. And so they did another read of the story; they were very familiar with it, of course, but they noticed new things and they also, every few pages, stopped and she helped chart all of the emotions that CJ experienced from envy to excitement to sadness. There’s a huge range in this book. And it was fascinating.
Allison Hintz (24:36):
I think one of the things that the children noticed was that CJ’s feelings were shaped by community. And that he shaped and shaped…he was shaped by and helped shape his community. And so the ways that he felt across the story were impacted by the other characters that he comes across. The guitar man on the bus. The bus driver who can pull a coin out from behind someone’s ear. The lady with the butterflies in the jar. Nana helping him to see the rainbow. And the students started, you know, being curious about that. How do we shape and how are we shaped by community? What communities are we a part of? This class is one community. I’m in many communities across my life. And they started to quantify the number of people in the story. So Mrs. Hedreas went back for a math lens read, and she said, let’s just keep track of and pay attention to how many people are in CJ’s life in this day. Because I can hear you starting to think about quantity. This class at the same time in other areas of the day had been working on counting collections, how to keep track, so they got out their tools. Some people pulled out ten frames, some people pulled out clipboards. They had a wide range of things they could use to help them keep track. They developed their own strategy, keep track however you want. She did a quicker read through it, flipping the pages, and then they get into these debates: <laugh> “We already counted that person!” “But they took their hat off and put it down to collect money!
Antony Smith (26:10):
“What about the dog?”
Allison Hintz (26:11):
“That’s the same person!” “Yeah, there’s a dog pound in his community!” <laugh> “Do animals count in our community?”
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:17):
I love it!
Allison Hintz (26:17):
“Yes, they count!” Uh, and so we went through and quantified and there was really this understanding as you saw these people throughout the story that communities can be of different sizes, but community has impact. And you have responsibility in your community to show up and to lean in and to know that bringing your full, authentic, vulnerable self, you shape people and they shape you. And what communities are people a part of. And it turned into this really interesting discussion about quantity and helped us think more about quantity and community. I think a really important moment for us and for that class was the transition from being people who almost did mathematics to a story, like counted things on a page, um, count acorns on a page in an autumn book, to being mathematicians who thought within the story.
Antony Smith (27:17):
And then two idea investigations that came from that —not at the same time, of course, but with the same group of children—one was they identified an emotion of their own and wrote and drew about that. And also, who helped them address or get out of or acknowledge that emotion. And then the other idea investigation was that all of the children drew or kind of mapped out a community that they were part of. Whether it was their neighborhood or their classroom or their soccer team or whatever it was. And so then those investigations strengthened the connections of those concepts to the lives of those children.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:05):
Well, I, actually wanted to ask you about idea investigations. Because I feel like that was such an important invitation in your book. And the way I understood the idea investigation is you’re really paying attention to what’s coming up in your other reads. Right? And then these are opportunities to extend the thinking, or like you said, to extend a particular aspect: What’s your community? Can we map your community? Or what’s a particular emotion? And it was in such contrast to what I think I have probably done in my classroom more than once, which was like, “Oh, we read this story about seals. So now my story problem is gonna be about seals, right? <laugh> Like in the story, you know, Jojo, the seal had five balls. <laugh> So if Jojo still had five balls and two of them bounced away…” You know, or whatever. Right? But that’s not what an idea investigation is. Right?
Allison Hintz (29:03):
Yeah. I think this is where we also had some stumbles and can totally relate to what you’re saying as previous classroom teachers as well. We have come to a place where we are pretty in favor of a super open-ended idea investigation that takes up the things that have surfaced in the multiple reads and making sure it’s a rich task with many, many ways children can engage with that. There’s many, many, many right answers or ways to engage. Less is more there. So we moved way away from, like, even a worksheet that might have an idea from it to blank paper and math tools and places to get into some productive struggle around some of the complex things that were raised.
Antony Smith (29:59):
A challenge with worksheets is that they put a frame around children’s ideas. So either there are only three lines to write on, or there’s only a small box to draw in. Whereas a blank page really opens up the possibility. Um, and so—is it Ann Jonas who wrote Splash!? sorry, I don’t have it in front of me—the book Splash!, about animals that end up in and out of the pond, including a cat that is not happy about ending up in the pond, an idea investigation after that for very young children was, with the list of the different creatures displayed at the front of the room: On blank paper, hey, draw your own pond and decide how many of which and each type of animal you want in your pond and then write about it. Just on blank paper. And so that allowed some children to draw, like, three giant goldfish. But other children drew 17 frogs and three cats. And, and just, it lets children follow—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:02):
It was theirs, right? It was theirs.
Antony Smith (31:04):
Their idea. <laugh> And that comes partly from, I think, as Allison mentioned, we both were classroom teachers before moving into academia. And I remember giving children worksheets, particularly math worksheets, where they weren’t necessarily bad, but right at the bottom, it says like, explain your strategy. And it gives two lines.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:23):
Right! <laugh>
Antony Smith (31:25):
The only thing a seven-year-old can write there is “I thought.” Or “I solved it.” <laugh> And that’s not where we need to go.
Dan Meyer (31:34):
Yeah. If I could just ask the indulgence of the primary crowd here, like, I’m trying to make sense of all this. And I just wanna like, offer my perspective. My summary statement of what’s going on here. I’m trying to—I love how you both came here—
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:45):
<laughs> How ya doin’, Dan? How ya doin’?
Dan Meyer (31:47):
<laughs> I’m, ah, A, I’m loving this a lot. Um, B, I came in here loving how you folks are broadening the work of primary education to kind of find commonalities between these sometimes seemingly disparate kinds of teaching in ELA and math. Love that, I wanna say. But I think you folks are describing, with all these teachers you observed and your own work, is the work of attaching meaning to what students might not realize yet has meaning. Or they might think it only has one kind of meaning. But you, the teacher, with their knowledge, realizes that there are many more dimensions of meaning that can be attached to those thoughts. And I’m hearing that from you folks, when you describe A, what math is and the power of a teacher to name a thing as mathematical. Like, “Oh, you didn’t think math was that, but math is noticing; math is wondering; math is asking questions,” for one. But also this work you’re describing of how, like, first the task has to invite lots of student thoughts and then to say like, “Oh, I see that there’s a similarity to these two.” And to raise those up for a conversation or to ask a question like to extend one person’s, one student’s question a little bit more. But it’s always…I’m just hearing you folks attaching more meaning than the student might have originally thought. I appreciate the conversation. That’s really interesting.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (33:03):
Well, and now that the book is out, I think it’s gonna keep evolving, right? Now that it’s gonna be in the hands of teachers and librarians and educators and caregivers, it’s exciting to see kind of where it goes next. Which actually brings us to our MTL challenge. Dan Meyer, do you wanna share?
Dan Meyer (33:22):
Math Teacher Lounge, we have a challenge for the folks who listen and we’d love for them to hop into the Facebook group Math Teacher Lounge, or hit us up on Twitter at @MTLShow and just, like, kind of exercise beyond listening, exercise the ideas you folks are talking about, some kind of a challenge that can help us dive deeper into your ideas. So what would you folks suggest for our crowd, for our listeners?
Allison Hintz (33:42):
I would love to invite people to playfully experiment with a favorite story, with a story that’s new to you. I would love to invite listeners to sit with a story maybe on your own, and just ask yourself as a mathematician: What do you notice and wonder in this story? Don’t feel any pressure. Maybe sit with a child or some children and listen to what they notice and wonder. Like, really listen! Don’t ask questions! But hear their questions and place children at the center and consider multiple reads. Consider continuing to pursue their questions. And we have a planning template that might support people in kind of sketching out some ideas if you’re open to playing with that too.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:34):
And we will post—
Dan Meyer (34:36):
That’s awesome.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:36):
—a link for that planning template in our Facebook group and on Twitter as well. So thank you so much for that resource, because I think it’ll definitely help. It could help you, like you said, it could help you kind of organize your thoughts or help you think about this work in a new way. So thank you for that resource and thank you for the amazing resource that is Mathematizing Children’s Literature. I am so excited to continue to engage with you both and with listeners as they dive into this book. If folks want to engage with you more, where can they find you? How can they reach you?
Allison Hintz (35:12):
Well, we’re on Twitter.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:14):
Great.
Dan Meyer (35:15):
What’s your home address? <laugh>
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:24):
Wait, let me try that again. <laugh> ‘Cause it does sound like I’m like, <fake ominous voice> “Where can they find you?”
Allison Hintz (35:29):
4-2-5…. <laughs>
Antony Smith (35:32):
At the bookstore!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:34):
Y’all, if folks want to continue this conversation or share these ideas or the math challenge, how can they tag you? How can they, they reach you on the World Wide Web, besides the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group?
Antony Smith (35:50):
Yeah. Well, we are both on Twitter, and we’ve been trying to promote the hashtag #MathematizingChildrensLiterature. It’s very long, but once you type it once, your phone or computer…
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:01):
Easy. Yeah, those click, right? Is that what it is now?
Antony Smith (36:03):
<laugh> The other is that we do for our project, we have an Instagram account that is @MathematizeChildren’sLiterature.
Allison Hintz (36:11):
We care really deeply about hearing from people. You know, we think our ideas are constantly evolving and that there’s such exciting room to grow. And we just felt compelled to share what we were learning now so that together we could learn and build vibrant experiences for young children and teachers and families through stories. So we want to hear from people! We wanna learn about stories that are important in your lives and what children say, and grow these ideas together.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:42):
And credit to Dan, you told me you went and ordered a bunch of the books they have on the suggested read list.
Dan Meyer (36:48):
Oh my gosh.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:49):
You read ’em to your son.
Dan Meyer (36:50):
I got such a side-eye from my significant others around here for what I dropped on Amazon in one night! <laugh> Uh, all these books I didn’t have. Some of them I did. We are not fully illiterate around here! We do love the written word at the Meyer household! But there were a bunch that that I grabbed. I’m morseling them out day by day.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:09):
Wait, at bedtime I read my one-year-old One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab. <laugh> And let me tell you, he had vigorous pointing and “Da? Da da da da?”
Allison Hintz (37:22):
<laugh> Aww, da da!
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:22):
So hey, we’re on the road. <laugh> <music> Deeply grateful, not only for your work and your beautiful book and your work, but also for the invitation to dive into the world of children’s literature in a way that many of us have not before. And it’s fun! Thank you, Tony. And thank you, Allison. And thanks for hanging out in the lounge.
Allison Hintz (37:48):
Thanks for having the lounge!
Antony Smith (37:49):
It’s been fun!
Allison Hintz (37:52):
Thank you both.
Stay connected!
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Meet the guest
Allison B. Hintz: Dr. Hintz’s research and teaching are in the area of mathematics education. Her focus on mathematics came about during her years as a fifth grade teacher – it was alongside her students that she developed her own positive identity as a mathematician! Today she studies teaching and learning, specifically facilitating engaging discussion. Her research and teaching happen in partnership with educators and children in formal and informal settings and focuses on beliefs and practices that support all children in lively mathematics learning. She is a co-author, with Elham Kazemi, of Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions.
Twitter: @allisonhintz124
Antony T. Smith: Antony T. Smith is an associate professor of literacy education at the University of Washington, Bothell. He works alongside teachers to create engaging literacy-mathematics learning experiences through exploring and discussing children’s literature. He is committed to the concepts of motivation, engagement, challenge, and creativity in literacy teaching and learning.
Twitter: @smithant Instagram: mathematizechildrensliterature
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!
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¡El programa Boost Reading da la bienvenida a las familias!
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¿Qué es Boost Reading?
Boost Reading es un programa de aceleración y refuerzo en lectoescritura basado en la Ciencia de la lectura que usa tecnología adaptativa para proveer aprendizaje personalizado a estudiantes de K a 5.º grado. El apasionante mundo de Boost Reading se adapta a cada lector o lectora en particular. Su estudiante puede usar el programa durante las horas escolares y, de manera independiente, en casa.
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Recomendamos que lea el artículo Proteja a los niños en internet de la Comisión Federal de Comercio sobre seguridad digital.
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Como los estudiantes pueden usar Boost Reading durante la jornada escolar, recomendamos ponerse en contacto con el maestro o la maestra de su estudiante para determinar cuánto tiempo debería usar este programa en casa. Nuestra orientación general es la siguiente:
Boost Reading
Los estudiantes que usan Boost Reading en los grados K–3.º deberían jugar durante un total de 30–45 minutos por semana, repartidos en sesiones de 10–15 minutos cada una. Los estudiantes que usan Boost Reading en los grados 4.º y 5.º deberían jugar durante un total de 40–60 minutos por semana, repartidos en sesiones de 20–30 minutos cada una.
Boost Reading y Boost Lectura
Recomendamos que, tanto en Boost Reading como en Boost Lectura, los estudiantes deben aspirar a usar ambos programas durante aproximadamente 40 minutos por semana.
Si su estudiante tiene problemas con el contenido, Boost Reading se adaptará para proporcionarle apoyo e instrucciones adicionales dentro del juego. Por esta razón, no se recomienda que los cuidadores brinden ayuda. Aunque puede ser difícil no ofrecer ayuda a su estudiante, el programa fue diseñado cuidadosamente para proporcionar el nivel de apoyo que cada estudiante necesita para avanzar.
Amplify professional development: coaching and tutoring
Amplify provides consistent, job-embedded coaching services to deepen teacher capacity in planning data-driven instruction. Amplify’s high-impact tutoring extends teachers’ reach to all students through data-driven small group instruction.
We have a wide suite of tutoring and coaching services that will help meet your unique needs this school year. Find out more below!
Coaching Overview
| Grade(s) | Coaching Program | Audience | Modality |
|---|---|---|---|
| K–2 | Start Strong Virtual Coaching | Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade teacher teams and school leaders using DIBELS Next OR DIBELS 8th Edition | Remote |
| K–12 | Data Coaching | Teacher teams and school leaders | Remote or Onsite |
Download the overview as a PDF.
Coaching Sessions
Start Strong Virtual Coaching, K–2
Amplify provides virtual coaching to schools and districts using DIBELS to ensure that all K–2 students receive high-quality early literacy instruction that will put them on the pathway for future success.
Start Strong is a consistent, year-long, and job-embedded program where coaches meet virtually with school leaders and K–2 teacher teams in order to build their capacity in planning whole group and small group data-driven instruction based on DIBELS error patterns. School leaders will also receive support on how to lead data and planning meetings and optimize their school schedules.
Through an increased understanding of early literacy development and data-driven instruction, teachers and school leaders in the Start Strong program will be better positioned to increase K–2 student reading achievement as measured by DIBELS.
Audience: K–2 teacher teams and school leaders
Modality: Remote, maximum 8 participants per grade level team
To learn more about launching Start Strong in your school or district, please click here: Start Strong Overview
Data Coaching
Amplify’s data coaching program provides educators throughout a school, district and/or state with ongoing support to take action with their data, make changes to their teaching practices and realize significant gains in student achievement.
The data coaching program is offered in remote and/or onsite sessions and tailored to a school, district or state’s specific needs around intensity and frequency.
Teachers and school leaders work closely with their Amplify data coach to understand, analyze, and develop instructional plans using current student data sources in a collaborative learning environment. Through their participation in the data coaching program, teachers and leaders will be able to create a stronger data-driven culture and increase investment in realizing both short and long term goals in student achievement.
Audience: Teachers and school leaders
Modality: Remote or Onsite
To learn more about launching data coaching in your school or district, please click here: Data Coaching Overview
Tutoring Overview
| Title | Audience | Modality |
|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive Virtual Reading Tutoring Program | Kindergarten through Fifth Grade students | Remote |
| Training for District Tutors | Tutors hired at the district/school level | Remote |
Tutoring Sessions
Comprehensive Virtual Reading Tutoring Program
Amplify will support schools, districts, and states in ensuring all K–5 students have a strong foundation in early literacy skills by providing tutors who develop trusting relationships with students and meet their data-based needs.
In this program, tutors meet with students for 30 minutes, three days each week and use research-based, high-quality instructional materials to close literacy gaps and develop stronger social-emotional learning. While Amplify collaborates with school leaders to determine scheduling and identify participating students, Amplify will manage all other aspects of the program, thus reducing the burden for school leaders to launch this program independently. Amplify services will include, but not be limited to: creating homogeneous student groups, progress monitoring students on a consistent schedule, and hiring, training and managing tutors.
Through targeted, data-driven virtual reading tutoring, participating schools increase their capacity to provide high-quality instruction with caring adults in a small group setting to the students most in need.
Audience: K–5 students
Modality: Remote
To learn more about launching Comprehensive Virtual Tutoring in your school or district, please click the link below: Virtual Tutoring Overview
Training for District Tutors
Amplify will provide guidance and support to schools, districts, and states that are interested in developing systems and structures for launching a tutoring program focused on increasing early literacy skills for K–5 students.
At the start of the planning process, Amplify will support program managers in understanding the necessary systems, structures, and action steps required to implement the program (e.g., hiring and managing tutors). Amplify will help create a tailored training plan for tutors using the Amplify products of either mCLASS Intervention and/or Amplify Reading. The training plan for tutors will include initial product training and best practices for tutoring. Ongoing training will focus on topics such as, but not limited to: data analysis needed for flexible small groups, underlying theories for early literacy development, and strategies for engaging all students. Amplify will also provide ongoing individual support through observation/ feedback cycles for tutors.
Through their participation in the training for district tutors, districts and schools will be able to strategically launch high-quality tutoring programs and support tutors through initial and ongoing training.
Audience: District tutors
Modality: Remote
Contact
We are happy to discuss how to scale any of our coaching and tutoring services to meet the needs of a school or district’s budget or scheduling realities.
If you would like to discuss any of our coaching or tutoring services, please call Dr. Lindsay Sullivan, Ed.D. at (800) 823-1969 or email lsullivan@amplify.com.
Putting equity first
When so much about the world needs to shift, so urgently… here are a few places to start.
Listen: Educator, author, and leader Shawn Joseph shares his passion for social justice and discusses his work advocating for equity in education, shedding light on what he calls the “silent crisis” in literacy instruction.
Learn: Share Shawn Joseph’s discussion guide with your colleagues. Which insights are the most relevant to your district this year?
Lead: Take a look at this curated collection of multicultural and social justice books. Could one spark discussion for your students?
Lead: Share this infographic on the journey to freedom with your class. Ask students to select an event to research and present a two-minute video talk.
Leveraging the science of reading
Go deep on the insights and practices that will help our classrooms (remote or otherwise)–based on the latest science, and adaptable to every shift in the educational landscape.
Learn: Susan Lambert talks to Language Magazine about the science of reading and what it means right now.
Building strong foundational skills
Strong, systematic sound-first instruction is critical to helping students learn to decode and can increase student success. Learn how specific skills can increase your impact.
Learn: Start with Emily Hanford’s “Hard Words” article.
Listen: Jasmine Lane on the importance of equity, and how early literacy teachers can make a difference.
Listen: Bruce McCandliss on the changes a child’s brain shows when learning to read
Lead: Challenge a colleague to this Scarborough’s Rope activity–work through a sample lesson from your district and point out elements of the reading rope.
Sharing knowledge resources
Students need to be able to both read words and get the meaning of what they’re reading. Find out how to help them build key background knowledge from the get-go, so that it compounds over time.
Learn: Begin with Why knowledge matters–then follow up with Natalie Wexler’s podcast
Learn: Take a look at Achieve the Core’s overview of the importance of building knowledge and the groundbreaking “baseball study“
Listen: Anne Lucas on the importance of comprehension and the specific skills that can boost it.
Listen: Tim Shanahan on four crucial aspects in teaching reading and his views on teaching reading in middle school as an extension of evidence-based early literacy practices
Learn: Begin with Why knowledge matters–then follow up with Natalie Wexler’s podcast
Learn: Take a look at Achieve the Core’s overview of the importance of building knowledge and the groundbreaking “baseball study“
Assessing what students need
Assessment this year is more important than ever before–and also more challenging. What does this extended summer slide look like? How can you find time to review what’s needed, while still moving forward?
Learn: Education for Global Development’s thoughts on formative assessment in the time of COVID-19.
Learn: District Administration on why educators want more data– and more guidance on how to use it
Learn: Catch up on dyslexia risk factors and state legislation with our dyslexia toolkit.
Listen: Nancy Nelson on the importance of universal screeners in literacy instruction.
Lead: What can you offer struggling readers and their caregivers? Take a look at the IDA’s COVID-19 Resource Guide.
Thriving through remote learning
Everything about this school year has changed–yet your work is more important than ever before. How can you support your students, and your colleagues, in this new normal? Stop by Amplify Anywhere for ideas that may help.
And while you’re here–please download your free PDF “20 Self-Care Tips for Educators Right Now” (and please take care of yourselves!).
Alana Mangham on Teaching Now
Natalie Wexler on the New Normal
Thinking about back-to-school
Though it feels like the landscape is changing every day, we know we’ve got to find a way to get students back to learning. What will your school day look like? What reinforcement might you need to do in order to ensure equity? We will continue to share resources to support your journey.
Learn: In this recorded webinar, explore some ways CARES Act funding might support your students.
Learn: Hear from Baltimore educator Lucas Drerup on making middle school ELA both enjoyable and rigorous for students.
Listen: Jackson-Madison CAO Jared Myracle shares his thoughts on change management and the science of reading.
Listen: Doug Lemov, managing director of Uncommon Schools, discusses the role of technology in the classroom and remote instruction, and how educators can reconsider how they approach literacy.
Lead: As you consider how and when to reopen, review this article from The Atlantic on Eight steps that will let us reopen schools.
Lead: Guidance from District Administration on reopening safely this fall.
Finding high-quality instructional materials
If you were already thinking about new literacy resources–you’ve now got even more ideas about what high quality looks like. How will your literacy program work for all students? How do you need your literacy resources to support you in the classroom, in remote learning, and for every scenario in between?
Learn: Review this guide to a high-quality curriculum adoption. What factors matter most now, in literacy and in every subject?
Listen: Hear nationally recognized reading experts and authors David and Meredith Liben discuss evidence based solutions and more.
Lead: Download this K-8 ELA Instructional Materials Evaluation Guide. Share with your district leadership. What resources will you all need next year (and beyond) to do the best job possible for your students?
Lead: Talk to a few colleagues in the coming weeks. What are they seeing right now? What are they planning to improve next year?
Staying strong and staying connected!
Looking for ways to connect with other educators and stay updated on the latest research and trends in the science of reading? Check out a few more ways to do so below.
Science of Reading: The Podcast delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Further your professional development with each episode by subscribing and downloading them now.
Science of Reading: The Community is built for those committed to fostering conversation around the science of reading and implementing best practices in the classroom (including the virtual classroom).
Ready for more? Complete the form below to stay up-to-date on the latest resources.
Welcome, reviewers!
Thank you for taking the time to review Amplify ELA for grades 6–8. With Amplify ELA, we enable teachers to foster skills through texts and develop their students’ ability to build meaning through reading. Students dive into complex texts to make observations, grapple with interesting ideas, and find relevance for themselves.
Amplify ELA offers middle school teachers rich texts, opportunities to form better connections with their students through powerful differentiation and assessment tools, and step-by-step instructional guides and resources that save them time and simplify their days.
Overview
This site will allow you to experience our blended program, with access to the Amplify ELA print materials, digital curriculum, and resources to support your review. Our blended model enables teachers to design instruction based on their classroom needs and resources. Our engaging print edition highlights the many digital experiences teachers can share with students through classroom projections. Teachers can make choices about when their students use devices while providing 100-percent standards coverage and without compromising learning.
Amplify ELA’s embedded, easy-to-find features include:
- Full standards coverage. Standards are clearly labeled in each lesson overview, so teachers can save time planning and get back to what they love—teaching.
- Six levels of differentiation. Based on each student’s needs and the performance measures within Amplify ELA reports, a teacher can choose the differentiation level that’s right for everyone.
- Assessments. Teachers benefit from uninterrupted instructional time and a continuously updated picture of each student’s progress with key skills and standards.
- Powerful feedback tools. Comprehensive tools help teachers maximize both the quantity and quality of feedback.
- Robust reporting. Our reporting app offers information on student progress to help inform instructional decisions.
Digital program
The content and instruction in Amplify ELA’s digital program mirror the content provided in the print Teacher Edition and Student Edition, though the digital program offers more opportunity to engage students through the use of multimedia and a variety of learning apps. Teachers will find embedded apps to help with scoring, providing student feedback, and reporting on the digital platform, accessible whether students or working with devices or in print.
Visit learning.amplify.com/ela-trial to review Amplify ELA’s digital program.
Grade 6 print samples
6B: Mysteries & Investigations:
6F: The Titanic Collection
Grade 7 print samples
7C: Brain Science
7D: Poetry & Poe
Grade 8 print samples
8C: Science & Science Fiction
8F: The Space Race Collection
Resources
The science behind our skills instruction
Every day in the Amplify CKLA K–2 classrooms, students practice their existing reading skills while stretching themselves toward new goals.
Regardless their grade level, all students will experience Skills instruction that is:
- Reserach-based: The program is built out of an exhaustive review of reading research, with special emphasis on the findings of the National Reading Panel, Diane McGuinness, Marilyn Jager Adams, and Louisa Moats.
- Explicit: All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered in diverse settings.
- Sequential: An intentional sequence of instruction that gradually builds in complexity ensures students master concepts and gain independence before moving forward.
- Rewarding: Decodable chapter-books and engaging stories featuring dynamic plots and characters inspire kids to read more.
In addition, Skills instruction within the program reflects four key principles.
All Amplify CKLA skills instruction starts with phonological awareness, which research shows benefits the greatest number of students. Students begin by learning to recognize sounds, as well as to articulate them.
Sound Library
The Sound Library provides additional digital support and practice. Sound videos show mouth movements to help students practice articulating new sounds, while sound songs have fun, catchy lyrics that help kids learn to recognize the sounds they’ve just learned.
Once students are familiar with a sound, they’ll learn to analyze it in terms of phonemes, which begins to build the bridge between sounds and letter codes. We support you and your students with a variety of techniques and remediations designed to integrate well into your existing classroom.
Once students can recognize sounds, they learn to form the corresponding letter codes. Amplify CKLA starts by teaching the sound-spellings that appear most frequently in English, which lets your students read and write as many words as possible, as soon as possible.
Amplify CKLA lessons continue to challenge students as they progress, introducing complications like multisyllabic words, “tricky words,” and homophones. In each case, students encounter complications as they become ready for them.
In addition, as students progress through the grades, skills practice continues but becomes integrated with the overall curriculum.
Proven resources for practicing skills
Great reading instruction starts with helping kids develop great reading skills.
In addition to separating skill development lessons from lessons that emphasize comprehension, Amplify CKLA utilizes carefully crafted resources that give kids confidence. As a result, the program helps student develop the foundational skills they need without delaying them from learning key vocabulary and critical thinking skills.
As students move through the curriculum, their understanding of the code becomes more sophisticated. That’s in large part due to Amplify CKLA’s decodable readers that grow more advanced along with students’ skills.
Throughout the K–2 Skills units, we ask students to practice their writing skills along with their reading. Student book reports on the readers and other reflective assignments help build good writing habits early and prepare students for the challenges ahead.
Skills scopes and sequences by grade
Download scopes and sequences for each grade below.
- Grade K Skills Scope and Sequence
- Grade 1 Skills Scope and Sequence
- Grade 2 Skills Scope and Sequence
- Grade 3 Skills Scope and Sequence
- Grade 4 Skills Scope and Sequence
- Grade 5 Skills Scope and Sequence
Dyslexia supports within Amplify CKLA
Amplify CKLA is based on decades of cognitive science and classroom-based research and includes phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency as central literacy components.
The International Dyslexia Association defines Structured Literacy as an approach that focuses on systematic and explicit instruction in word identification and decoding, and includes the following elements: phonology, sound-symbol association, syllables, morphology, syntax, semantics. Further, Structured Literacy calls for evidence-based teaching principles such as:
- Systematic and cumulative instruction.
- Explicit instruction that includes multisensory teaching.
- A diagnostic element so teachers can use evidence from formal and informal assessments to make adjustments in the classroom.
Amplify CKLA not only includes all of these elements, it was built on them.
In Grades K–2, the program uses a unique two-strand instructional approach to target knowledge and skills. The scope and sequence intentionally builds foundational skills by:
- Beginning with critical phonological awareness and phonemic awareness instruction before moving into letter-sound knowledge and basic and advanced decoding and encoding.
- Giving students opportunities to practice decoding and word recognition skills both in isolation and in connected text using 100% decodable readers.
- Ensuring new skills are taught explicitly, practiced and reviewed regularly, and assessed frequently with checks for understanding, formative assessments, and formal assessments, including diagnostic/placement assessments and benchmark assessments.
For students who need more help with decoding and encoding words Amplify CKLA provides activities and materials for targeted reinforcement and intervention by way of two online resources:
- Assessment and Remediation Guides for K-3
- Intervention Toolkit
Contact us
Have a question about the program? Your Account Executive, Tommy Gearhart, is happy to help.
Tommy Gearhart
Senior Account Executive
505-206-7661
tgearhart@amplify.com
Program overview
Boost Math is a personalized learning math instruction and practice program. The game-based experience engages all students in grade-level mathematics in ways that prepare them for success in, and build enthusiasm around, algebra and later math.
Student experience
When students click on their Curioso icon, they are taken into their quest. Quests consist of brief narrative scenes, punctuated with skill practice in the form of games. Once a student completes a scene, their very own collection of personalized skill games appears on the right side of the screen. Students can play these games in any order.
- Students in grades 1 and 2 will experience games related to comparing numbers, measuring, and more.
- Students in grades 3, 4, and 5 will experience games related to fractions, area, multiplication, and more.
- Students will also experience activities known as “Makers,” which are open-ended activities within each quest related to the quest narrative, giving students an opportunity to apply different math applications to the real world.
Note: This is an early subsection of the product. Some content may be appropriate for some students, but difficult for others. This is feedback we want to hear. The designs are also still in-progress, with many aspects yet to be featured. We welcome all suggestions!
Implementation guidelines
We recommend that students should play for a total of 60 minutes per week, broken up into 3–4, 15–20 minute sessions. Consider using Boost Math during the following times:
- Small group or centers time
- Choice time
- During intervention blocks
- After school
- At home
- Remote learning
Getting your students online
Instruct students to navigate to learning.amplify.com, and log in using the method you typically use when logging into Amplify Reading.
Find and click on the icon for Boost Math, as shown above.
Students will then see the screen showing Sequence Falls, the location in which their Boost Math journey takes place.
Troubleshooting guide
To clear your Chrome browser cache/cookies:
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- At the top right, click the three vertical dots.
- Click More Tools, Clear browsing data.
- At the top, choose a time range, select All time.
- Check the boxes next to “Cookies and other site data” and “Cached images and files.”
- Click Clear data.
- From the Safari menu at the top of the screen, select “Safari”
- Select “Preferences” from the drop-down menu
- Open the “Privacy” tab
- Select the “Manage Website Data” button
- Choose “amplify.com” from the list of sites
- Select the “Remove” button
- Select “Done”, then close the window
Please check to ensure “cookies” are accepted on your device.
If you still receive an error message or blank screen when accessing an Amplify page, please email Aya Bukres.
Please email Jehan Miah to confirm your login credentials.
To reset your Amplify password: click Login with Amplify, then click the Forgot Password link. If you do not receive an email with password reset instructions, please check your Spam folder. To ensure messages to not go to your Spam inbox, make sure to include the following addresses as trusted sources:
- do-not-reply@amplify.com
- noreply@amplify.com
- noreply@welcome.amplify.com
The power of phenomena in the science classroom
In conversation, something “phenomenal” is something exceptional, extraordinary.
But in science, an event does not have to be “phenomenal” for it to be a phenomenon.
In fact, a phenomenon in science can be as ordinary and predictable as gravity.
To qualify as a scientific phenomenon, an event simply has to be observable.
That is, a scientific phenomenon is an observable event that occurs in the universe. It’s something we can use our science knowledge to explain or predict. Examples of science phenomena include the erosion of dunes or soil, or the formation of bubbles or ice.
And you know what else is observable? The positive impact of phenomena-based learning on the science classroom. That’s why phenomena-based learning is baked into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
Let’s take a look at why the power of science phenomena to deliver engagement and learning is, dare we say, extraordinary!
The power of phenomena-based learning in science
Many of us learned science a different way, by starting with a general or abstract principle then applying it in the real world.
But when you start with phenomena in science, you start with the observable real-world event. You ask questions: Why is brown water coming out of the pipes built for drinking water? Where did all the monarch butterflies go? You help students see why science is relevant, right from the outset of the inquiry.
Even everyday phenomena—like sunburns, or vision loss—can generate real learning opportunities. Explaining phenomena and designing solutions helps students learn in context, leading to deeper and more transferable knowledge.
The challenge of predicting or explaining the phenomenon becomes the motivation for learning. And it has the added benefit of being how real scientists proceed with their work!
The power of phenomena science lies in its capacity to bring real life into the classroom. A phenomena-based science curriculum engages students by starting with the real and relatable rather than the abstract. It also trains students to be inquisitive, expansive, critical thinkers.
When you shift to a phenomena-based approach, you help students shift from learning about to figuring out.
How the NGSS support phenomena-based learning
The NGSS help students make sense of phenomena in the natural world and in human-designed machines and products.
Learning to explain phenomena and solve problems is the main way that students engage in the three dimensions of the NGSS—they use Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) to develop and apply Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs).
Phenomena-centered classrooms also help teachers monitor student progress. As students work toward explaining phenomena, three-dimensional formative assessment is easily embedded throughout instruction.
How to bring phenomena into the science classroom
The power of phenomena-based learning lies in real-world relevance. Also, phenomena don’t generate learning all by themselves—student questions about phenomena guide teaching and learning.
That’s why it’s helpful to make sure students can connect to the phenomenon at hand. The following are a few steps you can take to integrate this approach into your classroom:
- Ask students what they’re curious about. Why do leaves change color? What is lightning? Why do ice cubes stick to my finger?
- Connect iterations of a given phenomenon to students’ lives. When discussing how sunlight warms the earth, a teacher might use examples of the sun heating sand, or asphalt depending on where students live.
- Use one broad anchor phenomenon for the focus of a unit, and investigate related phenomena that relate to students’ interests and experiences. For example, exploring what we see in the sky will lead to different investigations depending on whether students live in an urban area or far from city lights.
Note that an engaging phenomenon does not have to be flashy or unexpected. Even if students think they already know why it rains, they may discover that they actually can’t explain it. Pushing students to inquire more will help them go beyond repeating things they’ve read, and go from learning facts to asking questions that reveal more about the world around them.
How Amplify Science can help
Amplify Science employs phenomena-based learning throughout the curriculum, which is itself phenomena-based and designed around the NGSS.
In one example, 6th graders take on the role of medical students in a hospital, working to diagnose a patient and analyze the metabolism of world-class athletes. In another, 8th graders work to explain Australia’s high skin cancer rates by investigating how light works and interacts with the world it shines on.
And what’s more, Amplify Science for grades 6–8 received an all-green rating from EdReports!
Learn more.
- Phenomenon Based Learning in NGSS Curriculum | Amplify Science
- What is Phenomenon Based Teaching & Learning? | Amplify Science
- What’s so phenomenal about phenomena?
- Amplify: Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
- Engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards
- What’s included in our phenomena-based science curriculum for elementary schools
- What’s included in our phenomena-based science curriculum for middle schools
Instructional strategies for integrating literacy into your science classroom
Do you ever feel like science is the underdog in your school or district? You’re not alone.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, we know that science can overdeliver. That’s especially true when educators successfully integrate it with other subjects.
You can dive into the power of integrating science and literacy with the latest season of Science Connections. Here’s a sneak peek at what we explore in the first few episodes of Season 3 of our podcast.
Rooting for the underdog
In what sense is science seen as an underdog? Just ask Eric Banilower and Courtney Plumley of Horizon Research, a consulting firm that supports educational improvement and policy development. Host Eric Cross interviews them in Season 3, Episode 1.
As you know, an underdog is generally a weaker or less favored person or entity. Banilower and Plumley find that science instruction often fits that mold.
One thing they found: elementary school teachers’ schedules allow for less instruction of science than math and ELA. They also note that when there’s a break in routine—a special assembly or early dismissal—science is often “the first thing to go,” says Plumley.
They also note that instructors (like many others) are often expected to design their own curriculum.
The conversation offers some solutions for shifting these practices, as well as supporting science instructors in general.
“You don’t ask doctors to develop new treatments and tests. Their job is to get to know their patient, assess what’s going on, and then use research-based methods to develop a plan of action. That analogy [suggests] a scalable approach for raising…the quality of science education,” Banilower says.
What is that approach? According to Banilower, “Giving teachers research-based, high-quality instructional materials that they can use to meet the needs of their students would allow them to focus on getting to know their students, seeing their strengths, [finding areas where they have] room for growth, and…help[ing] those students progress.”
The power of integrating science and literacy into the science classroom
Science does not need to stay in a silo. As we illuminate in Episodes 2 and 3, bringing literacy work into the science classroom can supercharge students’ work in both. (We also explore the topic in this blog post.)
“We know we need to dramatically improve literacy rates in this country, and as we’ll show in the coming episodes, science can be a key ally in that goal,” says our host, Eric Cross.
It goes the other way, too. Language development and literacy instruction can support science. “Win-win, folks,” says Cross.
In Episode 2, senior science educator Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep described how bilingual and multilingual students in her school accelerated their English speaking and learning when they were excited to discuss science phenomena.
Indeed, she notes, the NGSS provides rich linguistic opportunities for students. We used to talk about language in science as all technical, but that’s changed. “Language is now developed through the science learning experiences,” says Gomez Zwiep.
Two key approaches you can use:
- Think of science lessons as a narrative. Gomez Zwiep suggests you ask yourself, “What’s the story arc of my science lesson? How are the science ideas building over time?”
- Welcome language that’s comfortable and conversational for your students. “This expansion of language, including non-standard dialects and even home language, is really important for letting students bring their whole selves into the classroom,” she says.
More ways to enhance literacy in science
Don’t worry—you don’t need to take a second job. “It’s not that you have to become a reading specialist to integrate literacy into science,” says Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. “It’s how our brains work.”
It’s also how science works. “Science teachers and scientists do a lot of reading, writing, speaking, and listening and viewing. They use the five literacy processes all the time,” says Fisher, our guest on Episode 3.
Some strategies Fisher offers:
- Invite multiple aspects of literacy. Think: What role do speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing, play in your class? Provide opportunities for students to do those things each time you meet with them.
- Read challenging texts. “Science is an ideal place to get students reading things that are hard for them. Doses of struggle are good for our brains,” Fisher says. “Complex texts that don’t give up their meanings easily allow students to reread the text, mark it, talk to peers about it, and answer questions with their groups.”
- Get them writing, even in short bursts. “Writing is thinking,” he says. “While you are writing, your brain cannot do anything else.” So if your students understand a given concept, have them write about it.
And that’s just the beginning. Tune in—and stay tuned—for more strategies for encouraging literacy integration in a science classroom.
More ways to learn
- Subscribe to Science Connections to catch up on this eye-opening season.
- Download our Science Connection study guides that highlight tips and strategies for each episode and offer additional resources.
The Reading Rope: Breaking it all down
What do pipe cleaners have to do with learning to read?
In the late 1990s, reading and literacy expert Hollis Scarborough, Ph. D., used pipe cleaners to create a model of the intertwined skills that make up the process of learning to read.
That model is the iconic Reading Rope, the visualization that helps us understand the essential strands of reading and how they work together.
In this post, we’ll examine the components of the Rope both individually and together, then explore how the Rope aligns with the Science of Reading and the five foundational reading skills.
What is the Reading Rope?
The human brain is wired to do many things, but reading is not one of them. The brain does not automatically know that certain marks on a page or screen are designed to represent sounds, or meaning. That’s why we have to teach reading, explicitly and systematically.
And when we teach reading using what science—the Science of Reading—tells us, the brain wires itself to start recognizing and understanding those letters, syllables, and words.
The Reading Rope provides a visual representation of that process and all its essential, interrelated components.
Why is the Reading Rope important for the Science of Reading?
The Reading Rope emphasizes the need for a comprehensive, deliberate approach to reading instruction. It recognizes that reading is not a singular skill, but rather a set of interwoven processes.
By understanding and addressing each of these processes (known in the Rope as strands), educators can provide the targeted instruction that helps readers succeed.
How does the Simple View of Reading connect to the Reading Rope?
One of the research-based frameworks used in the Science of Reading is the Simple View of Reading.
According to the Simple View, two cognitive capacities are required for proficient reading: (1) word recognition and (2) language comprehension.
“Reading comprehension is the product, not the sum, of those two components. If one of them is zero, then overall reading ability is going to be zero,” says Jane Oakhill, Ph.D., professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex.
Those two skills make up the two meta-strands of the Rope. But, as Oakhill explains further on her episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, each strand contains its own subset of distinct skills and processes.
What are the strands of the Reading Rope?
Let’s take a look:
- Word recognition encompasses the ability to accurately and swiftly decode printed words. Phonological awareness, phonics, and sight word recognition contribute to this strand.
- Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) within spoken words. It includes skills such as identifying rhymes, segmenting words into syllables, and manipulating sounds within words. Phonological awareness provides the foundation for phonics instruction.
- Phonics describes the systematic relationship between letters and the sounds they represent. It includes understanding letter-sound correspondences, decoding unfamiliar words by applying sound-symbol relationships, and blending sounds to form words. Phonics instruction gives students the tools to decode printed words.
- Sight word recognition is the ability to recognize and read words automatically, without decoding. Building a repertoire of sight words boosts fluency.
- Language comprehension is the understanding of spoken and written language, including vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and the ability to make inferences and draw conclusions. Language comprehension allows readers to extract meaning from text.
- Vocabulary refers to the words one knows and understands, both orally and in writing. A robust vocabulary enhances comprehension and communication.
- Grammar and syntax are the rules and structures that govern language. Understanding and applying grammatical rules helps students comprehend and construct sentences, enhancing their ability to make meaning from text.
- Inference and conclusion skills describe the abilities of drawing conclusions, making predictions, and deriving implicit meaning. These skills require readers to combine their background knowledge with information in the text to make guesses and reach conclusions.
How do the strands combine to form a process?
These strands are interconnected and mutually supportive. Strong word recognition skills enable efficient decoding, which frees up cognitive resources for language comprehension. Similarly, robust language comprehension skills facilitate deeper word understanding and contextualized reading.
That’s how the Rope represents not just the elements of learning to read, but also the process toward fluency. As students progress, their word recognition becomes increasingly automatic, and their language comprehension becomes increasingly strategic.
- In the word recognition strand, readers focus on decoding individual words, relying on phonological awareness and phonics. With practice and instruction, word recognition becomes more efficient and effortless. This automaticity frees up cognitive resources for comprehension and higher-level thinking.
- In the language comprehension strand, readers learn to engage actively with the text, ask questions, make connections and predictions, and monitor understanding. Strategic readers use comprehension strategies—summarizing, visualizing, self-questioning, and more—to deepen their understanding of what’s on the page.
Those two processes are intertwined and interdependent. The Rope shows that, as readers progress, they get better at combining automatic word recognition with strategic reading skills.
They can effortlessly recognize words, allowing them to focus on comprehending the text and performing higher-level thinking. By strategically applying language comprehension skills, readers construct meaning, make connections, and analyze the text.
This combination of automatic and strategic skills supports reading and facilitates engagement with more complex and challenging texts.
How does the Rope relate to the five foundational skills of reading?
The Rope is made of a lot more than the five foundational skills of reading (phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension). How does it all add up?
While the Reading Rope does not explicitly mention these five skills as a distinct set, the strands do align with them. Here’s how:
- Phonological awareness (and phonemic awareness) is represented in the Rope’s word recognition strand.
- Phonics is also a critical aspect of word recognition.
- Fluency—often considered a combination of accuracy, rate, and prosody—is not represented as its own strand, but it’s closely related to the word recognition strand. As students develop automaticity in word recognition, their reading fluency improves.
- Vocabulary aligns with the language comprehension strand. The development of a robust vocabulary enhances reading comprehension by enabling students to understand and infer the meaning of words encountered in the text.
- Comprehension is built into the language comprehension strand. It includes skills such as understanding sentence structure, making inferences, drawing conclusions, and connecting prior knowledge. These skills help the reader get meaning from the text and connect to higher-level thinking.
The Reading Rope is a game-changing tool, clarifying a complex process and helping teachers target instruction. When the strands come together, they weave the strongest possible foundation for student reading success.
Centering students in math curriculum adaptations
Starting with a high-quality math program
In her research article, “Examining Key Concepts in Research on Teachers’ Use of Mathematics Curricula”, Janine Remillard described curriculum use as a dynamic and ongoing relationship between teachers and resources—a relationship shaped by both the teacher and characteristics of the resource.
I have found that while certain characteristics can make a math curriculum high-quality, it is only through its relationship with teachers that it creates truly meaningful math experiences for students.
In my own teaching experiences and now back in classrooms with teachers, I am convinced that no matter how well-constructed a lesson, it only gets better as teachers plan collaboratively and center their students.
Shaping lessons for the students in your classroom can be challenging because there is not one right way or time to adapt a lesson, and the reasons we adapt vary.
Sometimes we make relatively small tweaks to the wording of a prompt, a question the teacher should pose, or the timing of an activity.
Other times we make more substantial changes to the task or task structure in order to more clearly move toward the learning goal based on what we are seeing and hearing from students.
And then there are the times we realize in the midst of an activity we should have made an adaption in our planning.
I recently taught a 5th grade fractions lesson that provided a perfect example of the dynamic nature of the work.
Engaging in a math curriculum activity
This particular lesson falls at the end of the fraction addition and subtraction unit.
The Warm-Up of this lesson is a Number Talk, which made sense to the 5th grade teachers and I, given the unit focus.
We reviewed the mathematical concepts and problems in our planning session, anticipated that students might find common denominators, and agreed that the synthesis discussion around denominator choice aligned with the problems.
While we anticipated that students would successfully add, the number choices in the string led students to solve each one the same exact way, with the only difference being whether they stated their sum in simplest form or not.
Halfway through, we could see the majority of the students were getting bored and it was hard to infuse curiosity and excitement around denominator choice because students had already generalized a way of finding a common denominator—which at this point in the unit was great!
In the midst of the Number Talk, we paused and debated pivoting our focus to the problems in relation to one another rather than denominator choice. But we knew that doing that would add extra time to the lesson, when we needed the majority of the time for the activities that followed.
So we wrapped it up and moved on, knowing we had time to discuss our choice in an upcoming planning session.
Adapting in ways that center student ideas
After class, I couldn’t stop thinking about revisions I would make if we had the opportunity to plan it all over again. Because although the problems in the string supported mental calculation and aligned with the lesson activities, the students needed something different at this point in their learning.
After reflecting with colleagues, we decided the timing of that particular Number Talk for these students was too late in the unit and wondered if a different routine would have made it more engaging.
Using that Number Talk as a rough draft (shout out to Mandy Jansen), I played around with different number choices and routines we might use in a second take on that lesson.
If we wanted to stick with the same task structure, we could adjust the numbers to create a new Number Talk or True or False? routine that more explicitly encouraged relational reasoning and use of the properties.
For example, the following problem strings still attend to denominators when adding fractions but also open up the space for more interesting and engaging student discourse.
Number Talk
True or False?
If we wanted to use a different structure altogether, we could try the Which One Doesn’t Belong? routine to provide opportunities for students to notice other interesting aspects.
In this activity, students share reasons why one of four items—in this case, equations—doesn’t belong. There is no single right answer because each object could both belong and not belong, depending on the student’s criteria. (If you’ve never tried this routine, it’s a must!)
Because I couldn’t wait until this lesson next year to see what students would do with one of these ideas, I asked them to write about the Which One Doesn’t Belong? The variation among their ideas was exciting.
While I could still see attention to the denominators as in the original Warm-Up, students were now describing their ideas in much more unique ways. If this had been the original Warm-Up, it’s not hard to imagine how much more engaged students would have been—and how much more teachers would have learned about their thinking.
Learning from within the work of teaching
Curriculum materials have shaped my teaching and learning since the beginning of my time in the classroom. They then became the focus of my work at Illustrative Mathematics and now in my current work at Amplify.
I am a strong advocate for high-quality curriculum materials, and at the same time, I also believe that every curriculum can always be improved to better meet the needs of students and teachers.
I continually recognize and appreciate the time I get to spend planning, teaching, and reflecting with teachers about their dynamic and ongoing relationship with curriculum materials.
These opportunities to learn from within the work of teaching are invaluable inputs to our current work at Amplify, where we have the exciting opportunity to improve the characteristics of math resources currently in schools.
Want to learn more from Kristin Gray? Watch her webinar!
Amplify Desmos Math for NYC Public Schools
Welcome! This site contains supporting resources for New York City Public Schools Amplify Desmos Math implementation.
What’s new?
- Gearing up for the 2026-2027 School Year: Check out our Getting Started section on this page for support — including login support, materials lists, program overviews and more!
- Check out the new Admin Reports views coming in SY 2026-2027 for district and school leaders! Click here to learn more.
- Have a question about Amplify Desmos Math? This FAQ doc answers top questions about access, implementation, and features.
- Need help? Check here for who can help! Our dedicated phone number, just for NYC, has team members ready to help! 1-888-960-0380
About the program
Amplify Desmos Math New York is a core K-12 mathematics curriculum designed specifically for NYC Public Schools. It combines problem-based learning with Desmos Classroom technology to build conceptual understanding and align directly with the New York State Next Generation Mathematics Learning Standards. With beautiful print resources, and robust practice, differentiation supports, assessment and reporting, Amplify Desmos Math has received all-green ratings from EdReports. Read the review on EdReports.
Amplify Desmos Math is built on four core tenets:
- Math can motivate students.
- A structured approach to problem-based learning can best tend to all aspects of rigor.
- Student thinking is valuable and visible.
- Students can catch up while keeping up with grade-level math.
Getting started
- Program overviews
- Demo login
- Explore Amplify Desmos Math New York to review content from all grades, K-12, by following these steps.
- Materials
- Family resources
- Logging in during the school year
- Teachers: Log in with Amplify steps 1–3 and steps 4–6 or TeachHub (district-preferred login method)
- Administrators: Log in with Amplify or TeachHub (district-preferred login method)
- Students: Log in with Amplify steps 1–3 and steps 4–6 or TeachHub (district-preferred login method)
- Additional login support
Powerful digital lessons
Amplify Desmos Math lessons are powerful in their ability to elicit student thinking and spark interesting, productive discussions. The lessons pose problems that invite a variety of approaches with their dynamic and interactive learning experiences on devices, as well as experiences on paper that are flexible, creative, and engaging.
Engaging student experience
Relevant content and interactive math tools create an intuitive and engaging student experience. Plus, working together in real time allows students to see that communicating their ideas and learning from each other are important parts of math class.
Visibility into student thinking
Imagine having more visibility into your students’ mathematical thinking. Now imagine that students have access to this same information. With our collaborative lesson interface and teacher dashboard, students have awareness their own thinking and that of their peers—exposing them to a wider variety of approaches to solving the same problem.
Ready-to-teach lessons
Each grade level includes 150 ready-to-teach lessons, complete with slides, step-by-step teaching notes, suggested student and teacher responses, tips for incorporating instructional routines, support for developing mathematical language, and links to useful resources. Teachers can manage what slides students see, controlling the pace of the lesson to suit the needs of the class.
Planning for instruction
Amplify Desmos Math is customized specifically to meet the New York State Next Generation Math Learning Standards. Within each document below, you’ll find direct links to lessons and activities where each individual standard is addressed.
The program is also aligned with the expectations outlined in the New York City Department of Education Definition of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education and the New York State Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework.
Scope and sequence
- Amplify Desmos Math K-5 Scope and Sequence
- Amplify Desmos Math 6-A1 Scope and Sequence
- Amplify Desmos Math Accelerated Scope and Sequence
- Amplify Desmos Math AGA Scope and Sequence
Ready to plan for the 2026-27 school year? These pacing guides (coming soon!) are designed to provide structure, not rigid mandates and resources for NYC.
Multilingual learner supports
Implementation resources
Lesson Sampler
Amplify Desmos Math delivers the instructional power of student-centered learning packaged in a lesson format that’s teacher-friendly and manageable.
With easy-to-follow instructional support, implementing a problem-based program becomes more effective and enjoyable for both you and your students. Paired with the Desmos Classroom digital experience, math class is suddenly fun and dynamic, with plenty of opportunities for students to talk through their reasoning, work with their peers, and gain new understanding.
Universal design
Every student is brilliant, and every student has brilliant mathematical ideas worth sharing and cultivating. Incorporating principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into lessons brings students’ brilliance to the forefront. UDL is a research-based framework designed to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
Diversity and representation
Helping students develop strong, healthy, and flexible math identities is a cornerstone of our program. Throughout the curriculum, students are taught that they themselves are mathematicians, that today’s math has been shaped by a diverse range of mathematicians who deserve to be celebrated, and that learning is never finished.
Assessments
Less exciting, but essential for learning: assessments. Amplify Desmos Math features a robust variety of formative and summative assessments, including readiness checks, exit tickets, quizzes, end-of-unit tests, and benchmarks aligned with New York State Next Generation Mathematics Learning Standards.
Reporting
Not only do our reports reveal progress toward standard mastery, but they also include details on how students performed against the standard in the past and how many encounters are yet to come. This feature alone helps teachers prioritize instruction and intervene with additional resources when necessary.
NYC webinar series
Figuring out how to implement a problem-based learning approach to mathematics can be fun—and challenging. Rest assured that you won’t be alone on this journey; Amplify will be by your side every step of the way. Our back-to-school math webinar series for K–8 administrators and teachers:
- Introduces the new NYC Solves initiative.
- Establishes the foundation for all educators to effectively understand and implement the NYCPS Shifts in Mathematics in their classrooms.
- Provides an overview of Amplify Desmos Math, the pre-approved NYCPS curriculum chosen to ensure that every school can successfully implement these math shifts and is supported with high-level, tailored professional development and coaching throughout the process.
Please see the specific webinars and the recordings below to learn more!
On-demand webinar 1
Would you like to learn more about the NYCPS Shifts in Mathematics and enhance your understanding of each of the five shifts?
Explore how the NYCPS math shifts are transforming mathematics education from a procedural approach to a more engaging, discoverable, and connected learning experience.
Listen to the Understanding the NYCPS Shifts in Mathematics session recording.
On-demand webinar 2
Let’s unpack the why, what, and how to unlock every student’s mathematical mind and build math proficiency for life! In this webinar, we discuss the power of teaching our children to be skilled mathematicians through a structured approach to problem-solving.
Listen to the Unlocking Mathematical Minds: A Structured Approach to Problem-Based Learning session recording.
On-demand webinar 3
For some educators, transitioning to problem-based learning might seem daunting. There’s often concern that the open-ended nature of the approach could derail students from achieving mathematical goals. However, by finding the right balance between open-ended opportunities and structured classroom activities, teachers can encourage students to share their thinking while meeting key learning targets. Uncover simple shifts that educators can implement to foster the perfect balance of open-ended student thinking and focus on mathematical instructional goals.
Listen to the Making the Shift to Problem-Based Learning session recording.
On-demand webinar 4
Amplify Desmos Math New York K–A1 is math that motivates! During this session recording, you’ll experience a grade 6 lesson that captures the essence of NYC Solves.
Listen to the Learn More and Experience Amplify Desmos Math LIVE, an NYCPS-Approved Math Curriculum session recording.
Looking for help?
Support is always within reach. Our team is dedicated to supporting you throughout your review. You can be reached at any time by emailing or calling us directly.
- Support pathways for NYC Core Orders
- Chat: Click the orange icon while logged in to get immediate help.
- Support Portal: Fill out this form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
- Phone: Call our toll-free NYC Support number: (888) 960-0380.
- Email: Send an email to AmplifyNYC@amplify.com.
S3-04: Using AI and ChatGPT in the science classroom
In the latest episode of the Science Connections podcast, we explore AI in education and its impact on students. Listen as I sit down with teachers Donnie Piercey and Jennifer Roberts to discuss ChatGPT and how we can use it to build science and literacy skills in K–12 classrooms while preparing students for the real world.
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!
Jennifer Roberts (00:00:00):
If a kid graduates from school without knowing that AI exists, they’re not gonna be prepared for what they face out in the world.
Eric Cross (00:00:07):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross.
Eric Cross (00:00:12):
This season of the podcast, we’re making the case for everyone’s favorite underdog, science. Recently we’ve been highlighting the magic that can come from integrating science and literacy. So if you haven’t checked out those recent episodes, definitely go back in your feed after you’re done with this one. This time around, we’re going to deep dive into what artificial intelligence means for literacy instruction, and how science can be a force for good, in responsibly exposing students to AI. To help me out, I’m joined by two extremely accomplished educators. Jen Roberts, a veteran high-school English teacher from San Diego, who among many things runs the website LitAndTech.com. And I’m also joined by fifth-grade teacher Donnie Piercey. In addition to being Kentucky’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, Donnie also has an upcoming book about bringing AI into the classroom. Whether you’ve never heard of ChatGPT or whether you’re already using it every day, I think you’ll find this a valuable discussion about the intersection of science, English, and technology. Here’s Jen and Donnie.
Eric Cross (00:01:17):
So first off, welcome to the show. It’s good to see you all. What I wanna do is kind of start off by introducing both of you. And so we’ll just go K–12. So <laugh>, Donnie.
Jennifer Roberts (00:01:30):
Donnie goes first.
Eric Cross (00:01:31):
Donnie’s gonna go first. Donnie out in Kentucky. Just a little background. What do you teach; how long you’ve been in the classroom; and what are you having fun with right now?
Donnie Piercey (00:01:38):
Yeah, so my name is Donnie Piercey. I’m a fifth-grade teacher from Kentucky. Live and teach right here in Lexington, Kentucky, right in the center of the state. I’m the 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. But I’ve been teaching elementary school for the past … I think this is year 16 or 17. It’s long enough where I’ve lost count, and I can’t even count on fingers anymore. My friends like to joke that I’ve taught long enough where now I can count down. You know, it’s like, “All right, only so many more years left.” But yeah, teach all subjects. Science definitely is one of the subjects that I don’t just try to squeeze into my day, but make sure that … it’s not even a devoted subject, but one that I definitely try to — don’t just have that set time, but also try to do some cross-curricular stuff with it. So definitely the rise of AI in these past few months, which feels like years by this point, has definitely played quite the role, in not just changing the way that I’ve been teaching science, but really all my subjects. So, excited to chat with y’all about it.
Eric Cross (00:02:47):
Nice. I’m excited that you’re here. And Jen?
Jennifer Roberts (00:02:51):
Hi, I’m Jen Roberts. I teach ninth-grade English at Point Loma High School, and that’s where I usually stop when I introduce myself. But for your sake—
Eric Cross (00:03:00):
I will keep introducing you if you stop there. <laugh>
Jennifer Roberts (00:03:04):
I am nationally board-certified in English Language Arts for early adolescence. I am the co-author of a book called Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning, from Stenhouse, with my fabulous co-author Diana Neebe. Shout out to Diana. I blog at LitAndTech.com about teaching and technology and literacy and the intersection of those things. And I’m looking forward to talking about how AI is showing up in my classroom and the fun things I’m doing with it.
Donnie Piercey (00:03:31):
And one of us is actually secretly a robot, and you have to guess which one.
Jennifer Roberts (00:03:35):
Have to guess which one. Yes. <laugh>
Eric Cross (00:03:37):
That would be super-meta. And you were the CUE — Computer-Using Educator — outstanding teacher or educator? Whatever. Either one. Of the year.
Jennifer Roberts (00:03:45):
I was the CUE ’22 Outstanding Educator. Yes. And I’ve won a few other things as well.
Eric Cross (00:03:53):
The gaming backpack.
Jennifer Roberts (00:03:54):
I’ve won a gaming backpack recently! Yes. I once won an iPad in a Twitter chat.
Eric Cross (00:03:58):
What?
Donnie Piercey (00:03:58):
What’s a gaming backpack? Hold on. We need to talk about that.
Jennifer Roberts (00:04:01):
We will talk about that. <laugh> And then, I was once a finalist for county Teacher of the Year. That’s as close as I got to Donnie. Donnie was the Kentucky Teacher of the Year. He got to go to the White House and stuff. That was exciting.
Donnie Piercey (00:04:13):
<laugh> I mean, to be fair, there’s only three million people in Kentucky, and about what, 50 million people that live in California? <Laugh> So odds are definitely stacked in my favor, I think.
Jennifer Roberts (00:04:23):
So you’re saying we’re even there? Is that, is that what you’re going for?
Donnie Piercey (00:04:25):
Yeah, evens out. Evens out.
Eric Cross (00:04:27):
So I’ve been looking forward to talking to you both for a while now, and talking about artificial intelligence. It’s like the big thing. And both of you, at different ends of the spectrum and in my life, have contributed to this. Donnie, you’ve been sharing so much great information online about how you’re using AI in elementary. Jen, you are the reason I got into education technology years ago, right when I was becoming a teacher. And so being able to talk with you both about it excites me a lot. So first off, for the listeners who may not have any experience with it — and there’s still a lot of people out there who have not been exposed to it, haven’t got their feet wet with it yet — I’m hoping we could start off maybe with an explanation of … we could do AI, ChatGPT, I know that’s the big one. But simply explaining what it is, just for the new person. And whoever wants to start off can tell us about it. Or maybe we’ll start … we’ll, let’s actually, let’s do this: Let’s continue going like K–12? So Donnie, maybe you could … what’s your pitch to the new person of, “Hey, this is what it is”?
Donnie Piercey (00:05:31):
All right. So, AI, artificial intelligence, probably the way that most people are exposed to it, at least since November when it launched, is through ChatGPT. Where if you Google it, you know it’s made by a company called OpenAI. The best way to describe what it is … when you go there for the first time, make an account, it’s free. You have like a little search window, looks like a Google search bar. And instead of searching for information, you can ask it to create stuff for you. So for example, like on Google search, you might type in a question like, “Who was the 19th president of the United States?” Where on ChatGPT, instead of just searching for information, it creates stuff for you. So you could say, you could ask it to, “Hey, write a poem about the 19th president of the United States.” Or, “Write a short little essay comparing, I don’t know, Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr.” And it would do that for you. You know, that’s most people’s first exposure to AI, at least in these past few months. Instead of … you know, it’s artificial intelligence, but it’s not just chatbots. There’s lots of other AI that exist out there.
Jennifer Roberts (00:06:47):
And I think that’s the thing: that people don’t realize how much AI is already in their lives.
Donnie Piercey (00:06:51):
For sure. Yeah.
Jennifer Roberts (00:06:52):
You know, they just haven’t seen … the term that I see being used a lot now is “generative AI.” AI that can produce something. It can produce writing, it can produce art, it can produce a script, it can produce a character. But the AI that has been helping you pick what to watch next on Netflix and the AI that’s helping Google help you get where you wanna go on Google Maps faster, those are forms of artificial intelligence as well.
Donnie Piercey (00:07:21):
Yeah. I mean, even those, when you get that that message in Gmail, and instead of having to type out that response that says, “Yeah, that sounds great,” you can just click the little button that says, “Yeah, that sounds great.” I mean, that’s been in Gmail for years, but that’s artificial intelligence too.
Eric Cross (00:07:39):
Absolutely. So why is it important, do you think, for educators to, to be familiar with it? Like, why are we all so excited about it?
Jennifer Roberts (00:07:47):
So, educators need to know what kids are into, and kids are obviously into ChatGPT. And anyone who’s an educator right now has probably already had something cross their desk — or more likely their computer screen — that was written by AI and passed off as a student’s own work. And that is, of course, the great fear among teachers everywhere, that this is what kids are just gonna do these days and they won’t be able to catch it and children won’t be doing their own work and this and this. But I think the big reason teachers need to know what’s going on is because teachers need to be futurists. Our clientele will live in the future. We teach kids, kids will become adults, adults will live in the world. And so if we’re not thinking about and trying to predict on some level what’s gonna happen 5, 10, 15 years from now … we might be wrong, but what if we’re right?
Jennifer Roberts (00:08:38):
And if we’re not at least trying to think about what is their future world gonna look like, then we’re not serving our students well. I did a whole night talk on that. So I think ChatGPT is part of that. I teach seniors. I had this moment of realization I felt a few months ago. I’m like, “This is gonna be the world they graduate into. They need to know what this is before they leave me.” If I don’t teach them how to use this well, and not the way they’re using it — which is to copy and paste the teacher’s assignment and drop it into ChatGPT and take whatever it spits out and turning that in without even looking at it — if I don’t teach ’em how to use it critically, if I don’t teach them how to write effective prompts, if I don’t teach them how to use the AI as a tool, as a collaborator, then they’re gonna graduate into a world where they lose out to people who do know how to do that. And I think the advantage goes to kids who have access and knowledge of what’s in front of them and what’s available, and can use all of the tools at their disposal. Because when you’re writing in school and you write with a collaborator, that could be considered cheating. But when you do that out in the adult world, that’s considered doing a good job. <Laugh> Being a team player. <Laugh> You know, adults don’t work alone for the most part. And adults are expected to churn out beautiful, perfect content no matter how they got there. So if I’m not teaching my kids how to use this, they’re not being ready. They’re not gonna be ready to be the adults that I want them to be.
Donnie Piercey (00:10:07):
A hundred percent agree. And I also believe … as you know, I teach elementary school. I also don’t think anybody is saying that on the first day of kindergarten, you hand a kid a Chromebook and load up an AI chatbot or ChatGPT and say, Hey, this thing’s gonna do all your work for you for the next 12 years; just coast through life. You don’t have to think creatively. You don’t have to learn how to develop a paragraph or learn how to write a speech or develop an idea. Like, I don’t think anybody’s saying that, because as an elementary school teacher, there’s many days when I’m like, “Y’all, we’re just putting the Chromebooks away today and we’re just gonna go old-school. We’re just gonna maybe just jot down five quick ideas and stand up and present those ideas to the class.”
Donnie Piercey (00:10:54):
Because while AI definitely will, like you were saying, Jen, play a significant role in the lives of our students who are, not just graduating, but the 10- and 11-year-olds in my classroom this year. A significant role in their lives. It’s also really important to recognize that we’re not saying that this means that “Hey, kids don’t have to work anymore.” They still have to put forth that effort. There’s still — one of the ways that you become a good writer is by trial and error. And sometimes that trial and error comes through talking to a teacher or talking like you were saying to a peer or collaborating with a peer and saying to them, “Well, this sentence here, this paragraph here, really doesn’t make sense.” And I do believe one of the ways — especially as AI starts to become more fine-tuned and starts to be embedded more and more in tools like Google Docs and Microsoft Word — is it’s almost going to be a tutor to students.
Donnie Piercey (00:11:56):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Where I could very easily see in a few years, or maybe a few months, who knows what Google or any of these other big companies has rolling out, where a student could highlight a paragraph that they wrote simply, and then say, “Hey, proofread this for me,” or “Check for coherence.” Or even just ask a simple question: “Does this paragraph make sense?” Because you can already do that. You can copy a paragraph over into a chatbot and say, “Hey, does this make sense?” You know, “Rate my idea from one to 10,” and it’ll do that for ’em.
Jennifer Roberts (00:12:26):
We did that last week <laugh>.
Donnie Piercey (00:12:28):
Yeah. Right. I mean, that’s the thing. That technology exists now. It’s just not totally embedded yet. But based on what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, that’s gonna happen sooner rather than later. And it’s really, really important that we teach our students that, “No, you’re not just gonna use this, this tool to cheat, but you can use this tool to help you become a more creative student.”
Jennifer Roberts (00:12:50):
This is the use case in my classroom. Can I talk about that? You ready for that?
Eric Cross (00:12:53):
Please.
Jennifer Roberts (00:12:54):
OK.
Eric Cross (00:12:54):
Please.
Jennifer Roberts (00:12:55):
So my ninth graders are writing a comparative analysis essay, where I took them to the student art gallery and I made them pick two pieces of completely unknown student art and take notes on it, so they could go back and write this essay. And as soon as we got back to class, I said, can ChatGPT write this for you? And they all kind of froze ’cause I didn’t tell them what ChatGPT was. And they weren’t sure if they were allowed to know or not. And finally one of them kind of bravely raised his hand and said, “No.” And I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Well, the AI hasn’t seen the art. How can it write an essay about art when the art is completely original that we just went and looked at?” I said, “It’s almost like I planned it that way, isn’t it?” And they laughed nervously. And then I said, “Does that mean it can’t help us with this assignment?” And they said, “Well, no — of course it can’t help us, because it has not seen the art.” And I said, “Well. …” And I open ChatGPT, and I typed in what they were trying to do: “I need to write a comparative analysis essay comparing two pieces of student art on these reasons. And I need to choose which one did it better, basically. Can you help me with an outline?” and ChatGPT produced a lovely outline. And I looked at that with my students and we looked at it together and I said, “This is what it gave us. Would this be helpful to you?” And they’re like, “Yeah, that would be helpful to us.” So we — to be clear here, I was the only one using ChatGPT in the room. They were not actually using it. We were using it together. I copied and pasted the outline that it gave us and put it in their learning management system where they could access it so they could use the outline that the robot provided, and then they could use that to make their own writing better. So then I let them write for a little while, and, after they’d written for a little while, I said, “Does anybody wanna let me share your first paragraph with ChatGPT and see what it thinks of how you’re doing?” And a brave student raised his hand and we took his paragraph and we put it in ChatGPT, and it spit back advice. We said, “This is what I have so far for my first paragraph. Do you have any advice for me?” And we gave it the writing, and the first piece of advice it gave back was very generic, you know, “Add a hook,” you know, like kind of thing. But after that, it started to get more specific about things he was actually doing in his writing. And it started to give him some feedback. And we looked at that together as a class. And I said, “Does any of that feedback help you?” And he said, “Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m gonna go add some revisions to my paragraph.” And other students did too. They looked at the feedback he got and used that to improve their writing. And so everybody went and revised. And I said, “Look, if you take what the robot gives you and you copy and paste it, and you turn it in as your own work, it’s gonna get flagged for plagiarism. And that’s not gonna go well. But if it gives you writing advice the same way I would give you writing advice, and you decide that advice is good, and you take that advice and you incorporate it into your own writing yourself, then the robot’s making you better, but you’re still the one doing your own writing.” And the writing they turned in from that assignment was, was better. It wasn’t written by ChatGPT; it was still about the student art that they found in the gallery. But I showed them a path. Like, it can help you with an outline, it can help you with feedback. Right? These are fair ways to use it that’s gonna make you better. And they really liked that. They really liked — no one had shown them that before. The idea that you don’t just take the teacher’s prompt and give it to it … like, these are new uses to students and worked well.
Eric Cross (00:16:17):
So right now, you both just laid out these ways that you’re using it. And I do this with people that I’m trying to introduce to ChatGPT or AI. ‘Cause I get excited. Anyone could write a 500-word persuasive essay on the use of color in The Great Gatsby or The Outsiders, and they can get something back within seconds. But for a lot of educators, it might feel like the sky is falling.
Donnie Piercey (00:16:43):
Oh, understandably! Understandably. I mean, that totally makes sense.
Eric Cross (00:16:49):
What would you say to them? Donnie, go ahead.
Donnie Piercey (00:16:51):
Yeah. Well, I feel like every teacher kind of goes through the same experience when they see like a generative chatbot. I mean, all these major companies are gonna start incorporating AI, the generative AI piece. And a lot of times, when they see it for the first time, two things. First they’ll say “Oh, but I’ll know that that’s not my students’ writing.” Which, frankly, I think is a good thing, because that tells me that the teachers know their students’ writing. They’ve seen them write in person. They’ve conferenced with them one-on-one. And if a student were to turn something in to me, who I know might be a struggling writer, maybe it’s not their strength, and all of a sudden they’re turning in this10-page dissertation-worthy thesis written at a PhD level, I’m like, “All right, man, you’re nine. Can we talk about where this came from?” <laugh> But I also don’t think that at like the heart, I don’t feel like kids want to cheat. I really don’t. I feel like sometimes like kids are in a situation where they’re like, “OK, I’ve got nothing left. I gotta get this assignment done.” And when those kind of things happen, that’s when we as teachers, we have those one-on-one conversations. Even when I showed my students ChatGPT and even some of the AI image-generating stuff for the first time, and I talked to them about, “What do y’all think about this?” Because, you know, they’re under 13. In my district, ChatGPT is blocked for students. Staff, we have access to it. And that’s just because one, it’s so new, and at the same time, we need to figure out, “What’s the best way they can go about using this tool?” But when we were talking about it as a class, you know, I didn’t want to ignore the elephant in the room. So I asked them, I said, “Hey, do you feel like this is something that you all would use to. …” I mean, I used the word. I said “cheat.” And to be honest, the majority of the students in my class, they were taken aback. They’re like, “What? You think we just would cheat all the time?” Right? <Laugh> And I’m like, “Oh, well good. I’m glad to know that integrity is still alive and well.” But yeah, that’s definitely my thoughts on it, as far as not only the student integrity piece — I think that that’s the big thing that you need to just bring up with your students. Because again, I like to think that I’ve seen my students write enough that if they were going to turn something in that wasn’t their voice, or it didn’t sound like them, like I could have that conversation. And don’t be surprised, too, if in the next … I don’t know, one month to a year, there’s lots of AI detectors that exist. A lot of them are these like third-party things. You can go ahead, but I would not be surprised if in the next year or so, like you start to see those AI detectors be built into Google Docs, into Microsoft Word, into even Canva. And honestly, it’s almost like a fail-safe button for teachers, that we could say “All right, this is telling me that this is 99% probably written by AI.” So you can have that conversation with a student that way.
Jennifer Roberts (00:20:03):
I mean, if you’re worried about it, Formative, right now, will even tell you if something is copy-and-pasted into the boxes that they give you for students to write in. I find that kids who cheat are desperate, you know. Especially at the high school level. They’re panic mode. And, and usually their panic comes from, “I have no idea how to even start this assignment.” And so part of what I wanna use ChatGPT for is to lower that barrier for them. Like, you’ve got an assignment, you don’t know where to start. Tell the robot, tell ChatGPT, about the assignment and ask it for a list of steps. You know, ask it for an outline. Ask it for a time management plan. I see so much tremendous potential for this to help many of my students with IEPs who have executive functioning issues.
Donnie Piercey (00:20:49):
Oh, a hundred percent, right?
Jennifer Roberts (00:20:51):
Yes, a hundred percent. This can be their personal assistant who, you know, instead of me sitting with them one-on-one and saying, you know, “This is the task you need to do, let’s break it down into these six discrete chunks,” the artificial intelligence can do that for them. And it can do that for teachers too. <laugh>
Donnie Piercey (00:21:09):
Jen, I was just thinking about, how long until we see like the phrase artificial intelligence written onto a student’s IEP? I could see that happening very, very soon.
Jennifer Roberts (00:21:20):
Right? They should be able to use that. And then, also, of course, all of its amazing beneficials for teachers. I had to completely rewrite a unit of my curriculum. I knew what I wanted to do. I had some ideas of things I wanted to put in there. And I resorted to, I went to EducationCopilot.com and typed in my stuff that I had: You know, what standards I wanted to cover, what outcomes I was hoping for mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it generated an eight-week unit for me. And I actually told it then to go back and do it as a 12-week unit so that I’d have more stuff in there to go and cherry-pick to decide what I really wanted to do. But it gave me ideas. It gave me places to start. It saved me an hour of just brainstorming. And I don’t think that was cheating. I still got to go in and decide which ideas were valid. And I still got to … you know, I mean, I’m a teacher. Can I get accused of cheating? I don’t think that’s a thing. It’s—
Eric Cross (00:22:18):
That’s collaborating! It’s collaborating!
Donnie Piercey (00:22:20):
Collaborating! It’s a feature! It’s a feature.
Jennifer Roberts (00:22:22):
It’s Tony Stark talking to Jarvis. You know, they’re figuring it out together.
Donnie Piercey (00:22:26):
Oh, when you use the AI, Jennifer, do you call yours Jarvis? In my class we call him Jeeves. ‘Cause remember Ask Jeeves?
Jennifer Roberts (00:22:33):
I think Eric calls it Jarvis.
Eric Cross (00:22:35):
Yeah. Jarvis is gonna be the AI’s name when, when I can get that fully functioning. There are some things that you had said, I just wanna circle back on. Donnie, Jen — so what I heard was like, best intentions. The part you said about integrity and students wanting to cheat … even the mindset that we go in assuming our students, what they would want to do and assuming best intentions, really kind of frames how you look at this kind of technology. And then Jen, you kind of brought up why students cheat, and realizing that either they don’t feel equipped, or maybe it’s time management, or something else. But most people — and I believe this as an educator — most students want to learn, and they want to be able to perform and achieve. And when they cheat, it’s because they didn’t feel like they could, for whatever reason. Whether it’s it’s outside factors, whether it’s something internal, motivation, whatever it is.
Jennifer Roberts (00:23:24):
Or they were very disconnected and just didn’t care.
Eric Cross (00:23:27):
Sure.
Jennifer Roberts (00:23:27):
This is just busy work the teacher’s giving me, so I’m gonna give it very little of my time and energy. But I think, yeah, it can be that. But if the kid cares about it, if they wanna learn, they wanna learn, you know?
Eric Cross (00:23:40):
Right.
Jennifer Roberts (00:23:40):
This is the day of the internet. Any kid can learn anything they really want to learn. And we see that all the time in our classes. The kid who has zero interest in what I’m teaching in English, but he is an expert coder, and that’s what he wants to spend his time learning. He’s like, “Can I read this C++ book as my independent reading book?” And I’m like, “You know, actually, you can. Go ahead.” <Laugh>
Eric Cross (00:24:01):
Yeah. And for both of you, saying that this makes content more accessible … and I think Donnie, or Jen, you said something about IEPs. I actually put in having it write an IEP to see what would happen. I gave it a prompt for a student’s ability level and I asked it to create a plan. And then I asked it to create a rationale. And it did! And it was good! I went through and vetted it. And right now … you know, a lot of it is funny, ’cause the conversation I’m having with different teachers is kind of like the Wikipedia one. Remember when Wikipedia first got out and everyone was like trying to discourage everybody from using it, because, well, it could be changed by anybody? And now everyone’s like, “Oh, check Wikipedia, and then steal the sources, ’cause they’re already done for you.” Like, the mindset has shifted since then. And I was talking to someone and they said, “Well. …” And I said, “We can use AI, it could be a tutor, these other things. …” And they said, “Yeah, but what happens?” And then insert apocalyptic scenario. Like, what happens if you don’t have access to wifi? And it reminded me of, for some reason, cooking classes. So in the 1700s you probably had to be able to farm to be able to generate your food. Right? Like, you had to get it from somewhere. But if you take a culinary class now, you just go to the grocery store. And someone might say, “Well, but you should know how to farm, ’cause what if there was this worldwide apocalypse and nobody could go to the grocery stores?” <Laugh> And you’re like, “Well, balance of probability though.” You know, it’s like we’ve been really been living in these iterations of life, and I think this next step for some folks … like, we don’t even realize, even like something like bank statements, right? So many folks are paperless. And there’s always a what-if scenario. What if you need it and the internet goes down. But we get so used to to to technology advancing and making our lives different. This kind of seems like that next iteration. And I wanna ask you this question: Are we looking at like the next calculator? The next internet, with this tech? Or do you think it’s too early to say?
Donnie Piercey (00:26:01):
Well, I’ve seen a lot of people compare ChatGPT to a calculator. I’ve seen that pop up on social media. There’s, “Oh well, no, this is like when the calculator was invented. Everyone was up in arms about how ‘that’s not what math students should do.’ Math should be pencil and paper, math should be this.’” However, you can give a kid a calculator and you can give ’em a word problem and they can punch in all the numbers, but they could do the wrong operation or they could put the decimal point in the wrong place, ’cause the student is still the one who’s controlling what’s on the calculator. Where with AI, all you gotta do is just copy it and then paste it into the bot and it’ll spit out whatever the question asked it for. Whether it was, you know, a 500-word rationale or proof for something in geometry, or if it’s analyzing data on a chart, it’ll do all that.
Jennifer Roberts (00:27:00):
Yes. But it’s not that magical. It’s back to what Eric did with the IEP. He put in a prompt and then he knew enough to ask for a rationale and then he knew enough about IEPs to critically read the results he got and make sure they actually worked for what he needed. He had to know all that. He was an expert using it to do an expert thing. My husband’s a computer scientist; he got ChatGPT to help him write an app, and it was a new programming language to him, and he could put in the data and he could ask for things that I would’ve never thought to ask for. But because he knows the language of computer science, he knew what to ask for. And when it gave him results that were bad, he could see that, and he could say, “Yes, but do it again, but without this,” or “make this part more efficient.” He, again, knew what to ask for. So I think the generative AI is, as a partner with humans, a powerful thing. But if the human doesn’t know what they’re doing, yeah. You’re still not gonna get great results.
Donnie Piercey (00:28:03):
<laugh> And I think that’s why I’m coming at this from the elementary school perspective, right? Because in K–5 students are still learning, like, “Hey, where does the decimal point go?” They’re still learning, you know, if you’re dividing by a two-digit number, where does the first digit go, if you go in the old long-division algorithm? And so they’re still acquiring that base-level knowledge that … I don’t know, maybe this is similar to in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum says, “It didn’t take any knowledge to attain,” you know, “they stood on the shoulders of geniuses,” that whole thing. Like they had to acquire the knowledge for themselves, was his whole point. And so that’s why I don’t think it’s exactly the same as the calculator. It is definitely going to change things, in a similar way that the calculator did. But to me it’s just a whole new animal. And I don’t know if it’s going to be like the next internet, Eric — if you’re gonna get little devices that have AI built into it, like a Star Wars kind of thing, like a droid or something that follows you around — all that would be kind of cool, not gonna lie. But whether it’s something that you’ll access through the internet, something that’s built into your TV, that part I don’t know. But I do know that there’s a reason why all of these apps and all these companies are investing so much — not just energy, but time and money into it. Because they’re recognizing. “OK, this really has the potential to change things.” But if used well, and used safely, to change people’s lives for the better.
Eric Cross (00:29:41):
So I definitely hear that you both agree with the statement that if AI ChatGPT was used in the classroom, it could be a force for good. And literacy development. And I wanna shift gears a bit and then come back to the AI. So with that said — and we’re gonna get into some best practices in a minute — in Science Connections right now in this season, we’re making the case for how science can do more in classrooms and in schools. And so I’m I’m curious about what both of you think about the role in science fostering a better future when it comes to AI and education. And this season we’re really talking a lot about literacy. You know, in schools, so often it’s taught in a siloed way. And Donnie, you’re doing multi-subject. Jen, you’re single-subject: English. And we’ve really been trying to make this case for how science can actually support literacy, and these skills that students are trying to develop. So we’re going a little old-school, kind of diving into your content specialty, but maybe even pre-AI, or maybe AI has a component in this. But Don, maybe we’ll start with you. How has science been a way that has been helpful for your own literacy instruction? I know you do a lot of science, because I see your Google Earth stuff and the thing you did with the solar systems back in the day. And I think —.
Donnie Piercey (00:30:54):
Oh my gosh! You remember my <laugh> … wow.
Eric Cross (00:30:58):
That was amazing!
Donnie Piercey (00:31:00):
We haven’t done that since the pandemic. But I had my students go out, and using Google Earth, we built a scale model. Each of the students partnered up and they planned out on Google Earth a scale model of the solar system. They picked an object from around their house and we talked about like, “Don’t pick something bigger than a beach ball, or else, you know, your Neptune’s gonna end up like 10 miles away.” But you know, they just picked like a small ball, like a basketball, soccer ball, something like that. Or football, for international friends. And then we calculated the size of every other planet. And then on Google Earth, using their front lawn as where the sun was, then we went and we calculated where other planets would be, and then we actually drove to those locations and like held up the objects that would represent Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn, and all that. But it was a lot of fun.
Eric Cross (00:31:59):
And is that still accessible? ‘Cause I know you have some websites that you put resources out there.
Donnie Piercey (00:32:03):
Yeah. Yeah, I can … I wanna say on my Resources page — Resources.MrPiercey.com — I’ve got a link on there to a couple of student examples that I can share. And if not, when we get off this call, I’m gonna go on and put them on there <laugh> so people can find it. I’ll even throw on there just the assignment itself. So if you wanted to copy that and do that with your students, you could.
Eric Cross (00:32:27):
Donnie, the reason why I brought that up is because I saw that you had posted that or shared it a long time ago, and I just thought it was the coolest thing that you could totally do with middle-school students or high-school students. Jen, when I became a teacher, you said, “We’re all teachers of literacy.”
Jennifer Roberts (00:32:43):
<laugh> Yeah. I think we forgot to tell them that I was one of your professors.
Eric Cross (00:32:47):
Yes. <Jennifer laughs> One of the people who’ve definitely influenced and shaped my teaching. And that statement has never left my mind: that we’re all teachers of literacy. And I want to ask you, at the high-school level, how can science educators, or how can science — how have you seen it, or how does it, support literacy, when it’s done right?
Jennifer Roberts (00:33:09):
Like I said, I think we’re all teachers of literacy, but I think literacy is bigger than just reading and writing. I don’t think someone is literate if they can’t talk somewhat knowledgeably about what’s happening with climate change. I don’t think someone’s literate if they don’t know what’s going on in the world. And I think so much of what’s going on in the world has to do with science. We’re doing that all the time. If I could teach English just by giving kids articles about science, things to read, that would make my day. Right? We would never read another piece of fiction again. It would all be, you know, what’s happening to the ice sheet in Greenland. My students thrive on reading non-fiction. And then whenever that non-fiction touches on science is even more interesting. And whenever I can get them writing about data, particularly their own data that they collected, I think that’s building those science literacy skills as well. So I think science and English blend together very, very well. I think the literacy aspects of that are fantastic. There are more subject-specific vocabulary words, advanced vocabulary words, in science than any other discipline. And I don’t see why those shouldn’t come up in English as well. You know, my seniors will do a unit at the end of the year on the new space race. Unless I replace it with a unit about generative AI, which I’m seriously considering doing, ’cause I think they really need to learn about bias in AI algorithms and things like that. And I would like to have them read a whole bunch about that stuff. And I wanna give them the open letter that all those CEOs signed that said that AI research should slow down, and make them part of that live conversation about what’s happening in that field. So science comes into that. You know, when we read Into the Wild, we start talking about a whole bunch of scientific concepts. And when it rains in Southern California, we pull up weather maps and look at radar and talk about that and how that works.
Donnie Piercey (00:34:59):
That’s like once every 10 years, Jen? <Laugh>
Jennifer Roberts (00:35:02):
Well, actually, this year it rained a lot. It rained a lot in San Diego. Which is actually very high-interest for them. ‘Cause they wanna know, is it gonna be raining at lunchtime?
Eric Cross (00:35:12):
Jen, you said something … you have your students writing about data?
Jennifer Roberts (00:35:16):
Oh yeah.
Eric Cross (00:35:17):
Can you tell me more about that?
Jennifer Roberts (00:35:19):
So, this is something we’ve done with the ninth grade team for a long time now, is writing about their own data. So it started with a unit about stereotypes and stereotype threat. And they would collect data individually and then they would enter that data into a Google form and then we would give them the spreadsheet of the aggregate data from the whole ninth grade. And then we morphed that unit into one about academic honesty, and they filled out a survey at the beginning of the unit about their feelings about academic honesty and about experiences with academic honesty and cheating and homework and things like that. And then we would do the unit. We’d do all the readings in the unit. And they’d have these “aha” moments about things that were happening at other schools. And then at the end of the unit, we would give them back their own aggregate data and ask them to write about whether or not academic honesty was an issue at our school. And then to support that answer with evidence from their own dataset. So they had that spreadsheet to comb through and figure out, you know, where am I gonna stand on this? We give them the multiple-choice questions we gave them as the graphs, in Google Slides, so that they could write about them and talk about them, too. So yeah, getting kids to write about data. And the the sentence frames we gave them were sentence frames out of, They Say, I Say, from the chapter on writing about science. And <laugh> as they write this stuff, they’re like, “I feel so smart writing this way.” And I’m like, “I know, ’cause you’re writing about big important topics!” Right? And writing about their own data come to think of it is another great way to make an assignment both very personal to them, but also make it ChatGPT-proof, you know, if you’re looking for something that kids can’t just hand to the robot, the robot doesn’t have that data set.
Eric Cross (00:37:08):
Absolutely. And Donnie, at the elementary level, do you, do you make connections between science and literacy? In your class? You talked about with math, definitely with the solar system, but now, I’m curious, what are your newer projects? What have you been working on lately?
Jennifer Roberts (00:37:23):
What’s up now, Donnie?
Eric Cross (00:37:24):
Yeah, what are you doing?
Donnie Piercey (00:37:25):
Oh, man. Well, let me think. I’m just trying to think of some fun projects that we’ve done this year. Science that we can tie in Literacy and also some student creation. Just recently we had a … so I’ve wanted to expose my students to famous scientists that weren’t just white dudes from Europe. So for this year, what I did — and I actually used AI for this — I went into ChatGPT and I asked for 64 famous scientists and it listed them all off. And then I asked it, like, how many of these were white? And I think it said like 61 of them. You know, it had like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and a couple of other … I didn’t know who they were. So I’m like, “All right, so we need to make this more diverse and make this more equitable.” ‘Cause you know, with the student population in my classroom, try to find equal representation to make sure they can see themselves in some of these scientists. So, eventually got it narrowed down to where I had about 64 scientists. Half are women, half are men from all continents except Antarctica. I assigned these scientists to my students. Some got two; some got three. And their assignment was to go and one, do some individual research on this person, find out what they were famous for, what they were most well-known for, turn it actually into a persuasive piece, where I said, “Hey, you’re gonna have one slide.” And I’ll tell you why I gave him one slide in a minute. On that one slide, you’ve gotta convince the person who sees it that this scientist is the most important scientist since the dawn of creation. I said, “You could use images, text — I don’t care if they were famous for something that you didn’t even understand what it was. It’s a persuasive piece. You’re 10. Go all out. Add gifs, do that whole thing.
Eric Cross (00:39:21):
This is awesome.
Jennifer Roberts (00:39:21):
I wanna do this project.
Donnie Piercey (00:39:23):
And if you picked up on the number 64, and I did this in March, so what we did was throughout the weeks of March Madness of the women’s and men’s NCAA tournament, whenever a game was going on, we had another round of voting. I just paired ’em up. I was gonna like seed them, like 1 to 64 — that’s just way too much work for me <laugh>. So I just kind of did random kind of thing. But all the students had to do — they just saw the slides side-by-side, and the only question they had was, “Based on what you see here, who is the most important scientist? This person or this person?” And it eventually came down to Carl Sagan going up against Marie Curie.
Eric Cross (00:40:04):
OK, that’s a good matchup.
Donnie Piercey (00:40:06):
Yeah, well, the Marie Curie slide, they just liked the radium piece. So they added like some green glowing gifs. And I said, “Guys, it doesn’t always grow glow green.” But whatever. Anyway, eventually Carl Sagan, in case you wanted to know, according to the 10-year-olds in my classroom, is the most important scientist in the history of the world. So I don’t know if I agree with that per se — I think maybe Newton or somebody else might have had something else to say about it — but fun assignment. It was a unique way to expose my students to a bunch of ideas. I remember the student that I assigned Newton, the only thing that that she knew about Isaac Newton was “Didn’t he get hit in the head with an apple?” And I said, “Well, not exactly, I think you might have read or maybe seen too many like old-school cartoons or whatever.” But she ended up doing some research. She’s like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that before! That equal and opposite reaction thing.” Didn’t know what it meant. I had another student that just got really … you know, if you’ve ever been on one of those YouTube kicks where it’s just, you go like nine levels deep onto like, “What does this theorem mean?” Student sits in back of my classroom, I walked by one day and he’s just watching something on like the fifth dimension and what it might be. And I said, “Oh, your scientist got you started on that.” So definitely was a lot of fun. Unique way to combine reading, writing, but also expose my students to some ideas. And we’re definitely gonna do it again. I’ve actually done this assignment before. I picked 64 random elements on the periodic table. But their only slide that they have to make is “What’s your element? What is it used for? And then, why is this the most important element since the dawn of creation?” <Laugh> And, you know, there’s always that student that gets hydrogen. They’re just like “Sweet!” Right? They get excited about that one. <laugh>
Eric Cross (00:41:59):
Explosions.
Donnie Piercey (00:42:00):
Yeah. But then, for that kid who likes a challenge, or that student with the “gifted” label, you give them, like, einsteinium or palladium. Some of the more challenging ones. And they go all out with this. I didn’t use AI for that one, but it was kind of fun, and I figured it’d be neat to share an idea that another teacher could try.
Eric Cross (00:42:20):
Well you probably have at least two teachers right now that are gonna go and try that. And we’re both looking at you. So.
Donnie Piercey (00:42:24):
Go for it.
Eric Cross (00:42:25):
Thanks for that idea. I’m imagining my students coming in with jerseys with “neon.”
Donnie Piercey (00:42:29):
Oh yeah. <laugh>
Eric Cross (00:42:30):
“Neon” on it. Just all ’80s out.
Donnie Piercey (00:42:33):
The game behind it, too, is you tell kids — again, this is just so the 10-year-olds in my class don’t get their feelings hurt — but I say, “Hey, and if your element gets knocked out, you just have to start cheering for whoever beats you in the tournament.” So by the end, you kind of got half the class cheering for one and half the class cheering for whatever.
Jennifer Roberts (00:42:53):
So the only thing I got outta that whole story that I’ve got for you is, as a child I met Carl Sagan. That’s all I got.
Donnie Piercey (00:43:02):
For real?
Jennifer Roberts (00:43:02):
For real.
Donnie Piercey (00:43:03):
So did he talk with that cadence and tone?
Jennifer Roberts (00:43:06):
Yes.
Donnie Piercey (00:43:06):
Like in real life? Wow.
Jennifer Roberts (00:43:07):
Yes. My father was one of the cinematographers on the original Cosmos. And I got to go to the set a few times.
Donnie Piercey (00:43:14):
That’s incredible!
Jennifer Roberts (00:43:15):
I did not appreciate what I was seeing as a child. But as an adult, I’m like, “That was cool. I was there.”
Donnie Piercey (00:43:20):
“You can see my shadow off in the distance.”
Jennifer Roberts (00:43:23):
I mean, maybe that’s part of why I’ve always had an interest in science. I’ve always had fantastic science teachers. Every science teacher I ever had was amazing.
Donnie Piercey (00:43:31):
I credit mine to Mr. Wizard. I don’t know if you ever watched Mr. Wizard and Beakman’s World?
Eric Cross (00:43:35):
I remember Mr. Wizard. Yep. Yep. I definitely remember Mr. Wizard, Beakman’s World, all those. That was on Nickelodeon back in the day. I had to get up early to watch that one. But there’s a YouTube video—
Donnie Piercey (00:43:44):
Six am!
Eric Cross (00:43:44):
<laugh> It was! It was super-early! But there was one, Don, I don’t know if you’ve seen this on YouTube, but it said “Mr. Wizard Is Mean,” and it’s just clips of when he’s—
Donnie Piercey (00:43:56):
Yelling at kids!
Eric Cross (00:43:56):
Chastising. Or being really direct. It’s just one after another.
Donnie Piercey (00:44:02):
He always asked ’em a question and if the kid, you know, didn’t answer it right, he’d be like, “Well, you’re not right, but you’re wrong.” You know, whatever. <Laugh>
Eric Cross (00:44:14):
I have to make sure I’m not subconsciously saying Mr. Wizard quotes when I’m talking in the classroom, when things are happening. But yeah, that video’s hilarious. So I just want to bring us back to AI, and ask this question: Do you think science has a special role to play when it comes to teaching kids about AI responsibly? Does science have a special role in that?
Jennifer Roberts (00:44:36):
I think the responsible piece of AI I wanna teach my students about is the part about the bias in the algorithms and the bias in the training. And I want them to understand how it works, well enough to make informed decisions about how it impacts their lives.
Donnie Piercey (00:44:56):
Hmm.
Jennifer Roberts (00:44:57):
Because I do have concerns about a tool that was trained on the internet. And the answers it gives you is the average of the internet. And do we trust the internet? And the answer from kids is always, “Well sorta, no.” <Laugh> So I want them to understand the social science behind that.
Donnie Piercey (00:45:18):
Yeah. And just along that same point, having the students recognize that just because, you know, you copy-and-paste a question in, the answer it spits out might not always be correct. So, teaching them that just like you would with a source that you find about a topic that you’re researching, you’ve gotta fact-check.
Jennifer Roberts (00:45:44):
It’s just like being a good scientist. A good scientist wouldn’t always accept a single result or the first result. You know, you would look at multiple angles. You would try things different ways. Last week I took the article my seniors were reading about victim compensation after 9-11, and in front of them, I gave ChatGPT, I said, “Are you familiar with this article by Amanda Ripley? And ChatGPT came back and said, “Oh yes, this was written in the Atlantic in 2020 and it’s about these things, blah, blah blah.” And my students looked at that and went, “That’s not the article we read.” And I said, “I know. It got it wrong. That’s amazing!” Yeah. And I was so happy that it got it wrong! ‘Cause I wanted them to see that happen.
Donnie Piercey (00:46:21):
And I guess one of the big science questions there, or one of the big science components there, is that idea of inquiry. Right? It’s almost like you have to teach students how to ask those deep questions about what AI spits out.
Eric Cross (00:46:35):
All of those tips are great. And it leads me to this last question I want to ask. New teachers that are out there — it actually doesn’t even matter; new teachers, experienced teachers, all of us are kind of new at different levels of this race. We’re all kind of starting it together. I mean, it hit mainstream. We’re all getting exposed to it. You all really dive into it. When tech comes out, I know you two really like, “OK, how can we use this to transform education and do awesome things for kids?”
Donnie Piercey (00:47:04):
Usually, when new tech comes out, “How can this make my life easier?” is usually the question. Yeah.
Jennifer Roberts (00:47:09):
“How can I save myself time with this?” Yes.
Donnie Piercey (00:47:11):
“How can this result in me watching more TV and you know, less grading,” sometimes.
Eric Cross (00:47:16):
And I start there like you, but then I end up more time that I fill with another project. And I need to learn how to stop doing that. I’m like, “Oh! I got more free time! … to go take on this other task.”
Jennifer Roberts (00:47:28):
Oh, all of my tech adoption is driven by “how can I work less?”
Eric Cross (00:47:32):
So you’re you’re talking to a new teacher, teacher’s getting exposed to this, they’re starting the school year or they’re just getting their feet wet with it. What advice would you give them about AI, incorporated into content or even just best practices? Where you’re at right now in your own journey, and someone’s asking you about it —what would you share with ’em? And Jen, I want to start with you.
Jennifer Roberts (00:47:53):
So, the first thing I did is I was in the middle of grading, you know, 62 essays from my seniors about Into the Wild, when ChatGPT became a thing last November. And I wanted to see what would happen. So the first thing I did was take the prompt that I had given my students and gave it to ChatGPT, ’cause I had just graded a whole bunch of those essays and my brain was very attuned to what my rubric was doing and what I was expecting as the outcome. So I could take what ChatGPT gave me as that quote unquote “essay” and evaluate it critically. And I was ready to do that. So my first advice is take something you’re already asking students to do and ask ChatGPT to do the same thing. So that as you look at the student results, you can compare that to what ChatGPTgives you. If what you’re finding is that ChatGPT can generate something that would earn a decent grade from you, you might need to change that assignment. And it doesn’t need to be a big change, but it might need a tweak or something, so that it, it does rely on the student voice, the students to do something more personal. I’m finding very helpful in my classroom is having my kids do projects where they are recording themselves on — I like Flip. So they’re writing a scene together and they’re having to record the scene together. And I’m emphasizing more of the speaking roles than the writing roles necessarily. So yes, first, take something you’re already doing, paste in to ChatGPT, see what the results are, see how that fits with what your students are doing, and then do that for every assignment you give and just sort of see what comes out of that, and see which assignments are failing and which assignments are working. ‘Cause that’s gonna give you a sense, when you do see one of those results from your students, you’ll be able to recognize it. But it’ll also help you tweak your assignments and decide, “How can I make this a little more original or a little bit more authentic for my students?” And if the robot, if the AI, can’t generate a response, what could the AI do that would be helpful to your students? Would be my next question. So can you use the AI to help them generate an outline? Can you use the AI to help them generate a list of steps to help them get started? And when you’re comfortable enough doing that by yourself, then don’t be afraid to open it in front of your class. If it’s not blocked at your school site, which I hope it’s not. Because I think the advantage goes to kids who have access to this in the long run, or at least see what it is and know what it is. Right? Because if a kid graduates from school without knowing that AI exists, they’re not gonna be prepared for what they face out in the world. So give them a chance to see you using it. Model effectively using it. I have a blog post about that. I just wrote it. LitAndTech.com. You can check that out. “Introducing 9th graders to ChatGPT.” How it went, right? There’s a chart there you can have. It’s my very first draft of this, but it seems to be very popular. So, you know, show students how it can be used as their mentor. If I can’t come read your paragraph because I have 36 kids in my classroom and I cannot stop and read everybody’s first paragraph, can you, if you want to, give your first paragraph to ChatGPT and ask for advice? And will that advice be helpful to you? So showing students how it can be used responsibly is, I think, something every teacher should be doing right now. And don’t hold back just because you’re afraid you’re gonna be teaching them what this is. They know what this is. Right?
Donnie Piercey (00:51:13):
They know what it is.
Jennifer Roberts (00:51:13):
Especially if you teach high school. They know what it is. I’ve had parents thank me for showing them how to use it responsibly. You know, this can actually be a really useful tool, but if you’re trying to make it do your work for you, it will probably fail you. If you’re trying to use it to help you do your work, it will probably be helpful. Sort of the way I’m breaking it down for them at this point. You want the great metaphor? The great metaphor is if you build a robot and send it to the top of a mountain, did you climb that mountain? No. If you build a robot and ask it to help you get to the top of the mountain, and you and the robot go together, did you climb that mountain? Yes.
Eric Cross (00:51:53):
I like that. I’m thinking through this. I’m processing that now.
Donnie Piercey (00:51:57):
Me too.
Eric Cross (00:51:59):
Yeah. I just imagine a robot holding my hand climbing Mount Everest and I’m like, “Yeah, I did it.”
Donnie Piercey (00:52:04):
If I got a robot though, like I would have to dress it like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Like I would just have to.
Eric Cross (00:52:10):
Of course.
Donnie Piercey (00:52:10):
Of course.
Eric Cross (00:52:13):
Donnie, same question. Advice. Teachers getting immersed into it. Tips. What would you say?
Donnie Piercey (00:52:20):
So, I would definitely agree with everything that Jen said. Just, if anything else, to familiarize yourself with it. Almost like pretend like it’s a student in your classroom and it’s answering questions, just so that way you can see what it can do. And you’re kind of training yourself, like, “Oh, well, if I ever need examples, exemplars.” If you’re in a writing piece and you don’t wanna sit there and write out four different types of student responses — you know, advanced writer, beginning writer, whatever — great way to to do that is you just—
Jennifer Roberts (00:52:48):
Oh yeah. We did that.
Donnie Piercey (00:52:48):
—copy the prompt in and give a beautifully written piece that a fifth grader would be impressed with. Boom. It’ll do it for you. In my classroom, the way that I approach it is I kinda look at AI as almost like this butler that I don’t have to pay. That if I need it to do something for me, it’s just bookmarked. I can click it. And I mean, sometimes I just talk to it like it’s a person. And it’s almost like, in the chat window, I’m just rambling at it, what I’m trying to do. And it’s almost like I’m talking to a coworker, and I’m trying to hedge out some ideas for a lesson. Simple example: For a science lesson, if you’re trying to come up with … let’s say you’re a fifth-grade — or, sorry, I teach fifth grade. Say you’re a seventh-grade science teacher. And you’re trying to teach the students in your class about Newton’s third law of motion. You know, every action [has an ] equal and opposite reaction. Look around your room. See what you have. Maybe look around and you’re like, “All right, I got a whiteboard, microscope, I’ve got magnets, a cylinder. …” And you just copy all this stuff into ChatGPT. Say, like, “Hey, I have all of these items. Cotton balls, peanut butter, whatever.” And say, “I’m trying to teach students Newton’s third law of motion. Give me some ideas of some ways I could teach it using some of these materials.” And it’ll do it! It’ll give you like five to 10 ideas!
Jennifer Roberts (00:54:15):
And then tell it what your students are into. Like, my students are really into basketball. Can you work that into this lesson?
Donnie Piercey (00:54:21):
Yeah! They’re into the Avengers! Hey, find some way to tie Spider-Man into this. You know, that was a pun that didn’t go so well. But, you know <laugh> figure out some way that you could incorporate this and it’ll do it. And Eric, like you said, it won’t be perfect. Right? But if anything else, if you’re a starting teacher and you’re trying to brainstorm ideas — try it.
Eric Cross (00:54:44):
And Donnie, as you were saying that, I was thinking — first, I imagined Spider-Man shooting cotton balls with peanut butter all over them — and then my mind went to having students have these items, like you were saying. And then they create labs, working alongside AI. To do inquiry. To create a lab about something, and then going and performing and collecting data. OK, that’s — now I wanna go do that tomorrow!
Donnie Piercey (00:55:10):
Listen, it is so easy to do. If you have an extra computer in your classroom. … We were talking about Jarvis and Iron Man and Tony Stark earlier. Make a new chat in ChatGPT. Tell it, “I want you to pretend that you are Tony Stark. Only answer questions as if you are Tony Stark.” Or “Pretend you’re Jarvis.” Whatever. “Stay in character the whole time. I’m going to have sixth grade students come up to you and ask you questions about science or forces of nature, and only answer questions like you’re Iron Man.” And guess what? You keep that station in your classroom. Students are working on a project — you know, in elementary school, a lot of times we’ll have that, “ask three before me” — you’re supposed to ask three friends before you go and bug the teacher. Well, maybe one of those “three before me” can be that little computer station, where they go up and ask Tony Stark a question, and then it answers them as Jarvis or Iron Man. I mean, we’re really just scratching the surface with all this AI stuff. And as more and more companies and more and more creatives are gonna start to realize everything that it can do, we’re gonna start to see it more and more. And hopefully we as teachers can really figure out how to use this tool to, of course, help students, but also help them be creative and explore and learn on their own.
Eric Cross (00:56:35):
That’s amazing. And just both of you are just dropping gems right now. And I wanna wrap up by saying — and I’ve said this before on earlier podcasts I’ve done — but at this phase in my life, the people that I’m the biggest fans of are teachers. And it’s true. I don’t mean that in a cliche way. When I watch celebrities and things like that, when I watch professional sports, that doesn’t fill me the way it used to when I was a kid. At this point, as a professional, I get inspired by other educators who are just doing awesome things. And when I think about educators who are doing that, you two are on that list of people that make me better. And when I get better, I can do better things for my kids. And so, one, I want to thank you for staying in the classroom and continue to support students. They’re so lucky to have you both. The second thing I wanted to say is, Jen, I wanna start with you. Where can people — and I know we said at the beginning — but where can people find the stuff that you put out? You got blogs, your social, your book.
Jennifer Roberts (00:57:28):
I got lots of social. Twitter, I’m JenRoberts1 on Twitter. And then my blog is LitAndTech.com. And then I’m on lots of the new social too, the Mastodons, the Spoutables, the Posts — those kinds of things — as just Jen Roberts, because I got in early and I got my real name without a 1. And there was some other one I’m on recently that I’ve forgotten about. But there’s lots of ’em. They’re fun. And I’m Jen Roberts. You can find me there.
Donnie Piercey (00:57:56):
And I’m SergeantPepperD on AOL, if anyone’s interested.
Eric Cross (00:58:00):
If you wanna hit Donnie up on AIM. <Laugh>
Donnie Piercey (00:58:03):
SergeantPepperD.
Jennifer Roberts (00:58:04):
You know, speaking of rock stars and people who do amazing things, I did write a blog post about using ChatGPT in the classroom, but I hear Donnie wrote a whole book.
Eric Cross (00:58:13):
Oh yeah. So, Donnie! Donnie, that’s a great segue. Thanks Jen. Donnie, how do people find out more? And can you tell us about this book you wrote, that’s coming out in the summer?
Donnie Piercey (00:58:22):
Yeah, so the book I wrote is called 50 Strategies for Integrating AI Into the Classroom. It’s published by Teacher Created Materials. They reached out to me. They had seen some of the stuff that I was doing, not just with ChatGPT, but also some image-generating AI stuff. You know, I got featured on Good Morning America, which was kind of cool. And they saw that and they said, ‘Hey, that looks really neat.” Reached out to me and asked me to write a book. And the idea behind the book, that launches this summer, it’s just 50 ideas, 50 prompts, different things that, as a classroom teacher, that you can do. So, you know, I think there’s so many AI books that are out there now. A lot of them are big ideas, which I think are important. Definitely important discussions that need to be, have around, the ethics of AI. What’s the role that AI should play in the classroom. But I just wanted to write a book, kind of like the discussion that, that Jen and I were just having, which is like, “Can we just share a whole bunch of ideas, different things that we could try with our students?” So definitely check it out. And I appreciate you giving me a shout-out too. That was cool, Eric. Thank you.
Eric Cross (00:59:35):
Of course. Definitely. And Donnie, your Twitter is again. …
Donnie Piercey (00:59:39):
Oh, @MrPiercey, M R P I E R C E Y.
Eric Cross (00:59:44):
Follow Donnie. Follow Jen. Tons of stuff on there. Both of you, thank you so much. For your time, for talking about students and how we can take care of them, science, literacy, AI. I hope we can talk about this again. I feel like even if in just six months, we might be saying different things. In a year, the landscape might completely change. And that makes it really fun. But thank you both for being on the show.
Jennifer Roberts (01:00:04):
Thank you for having us, Eric.
Donnie Piercey (01:00:05):
Thank you so much, Eric. We appreciate it, bud.
Eric Cross (01:00:10):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Jen Roberts and Donnie Piercey. Jen Roberts is a veteran English teacher at San Diego’s Point Loma High School and author of the book Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning. You can keep up with her at LitAndTech.com. And Donnie Piercey is a fifth-grade teacher from Lexington, Kentucky. He hosts the podcast Teachers Passing Notes. Stay up-to-date with him at Resources.MrPiercey.com. And let us know what you think of this episode in our Facebook discussion group, Science Connections: The Community. Make sure you don’t miss any new episodes of Science Connections by subscribing to the show, wherever you get podcasts. And as always, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more people and AI robots find the show. You can find more information on all of Amplify’s shows on our podcast hub, Amplify.com/hub. Thanks again for listening.
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Meet the guests
Jen Roberts is a Nationally Board Certified high school English teacher with 25+ years of experience teaching Social Science and English Language Arts in grades 7-12. She has had 1:1 laptops for her students since 2008 and is the co-author of Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning. A Google for Education Certified Innovator since 2011, Jen was named the CUE Outstanding Educator in 2022. Her interests include literacy instruction, standards based grading, and leveraging Google tools to make her teaching more efficient and effective.
Donnie Piercey, the 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, is a fifth-grade teacher in Lexington, Kentucky. With a passion for utilizing technology to promote student inquiry, learning, and engagement, he has been teaching since 2007. In addition to being in the classroom, he runs a podcast, Teachers Passing Notes that is produced by the Peabody Award winning GZMShows, and holds several recognitions, including a National Geographic Fellowship to Antarctica in 2018. His most recent work in Artificial Intelligence has not gone unnoticed, earning him multiple appearances on Good Morning America, the Associated Press, and PBS. His upcoming book, “50 Strategies for Integrating AI in the Classroom” published by Teacher Created Materials, is written for educators looking for practical classroom approaches to using AI. All told, Donnie has been invited to keynote and present at schools in thirty-three states and on five continents.
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.
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S3-02: How science strengthens literacy and language development
In our second episode of the season, we continue finding ways that science is overlooked and how it can be better utilized in schools—and as an ally to other subjects!
We sat down with Susan Gomez Zwiep, former middle school science teacher and senior science educator and staff advocate at BSCS Science Learning. She shared past experiences and research that shows the benefits of integrating science and literacy, as well as strategies for applying these ideas in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (00:00):
We started to see this trend of students communicating more in English because they were excited about the science that they had been learning.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host Eric Cross. In this third season, we’re exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And last time around, we delved into the data showing that compared to other subjects, science is often put on the back burner. Now it’s time to explore why it’s so important to change that and how to do it effectively. So over the course of these coming episodes, we’re gonna make the case for science and equip you with data and strategies for advancing science in your own home, school, or community. To kick things off, we’re going to spend a few episodes going in depth on the integration of science and English instruction. We know we need to dramatically improve literacy rates in this country, and as we’ll show in the coming episodes, science can be a key ally in that goal. We’ll also show how language development and literacy instruction can support science. Yes, it can be a win-win, folks. To start out, I’m joined by someone who has been studying science and language development for more than a decade. Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep is a senior science educator and staff advocate for BSCS Science Learning. On this episode, she talks about her own experience as a middle school science teacher and share some key insights and strategies from the research on integrating science and English language development. Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep.
Eric Cross (01:36):
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here and having this really important conversation. So I’m so glad you can make it, Susan.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:43):
Yeah, I’m excited to be here.
Eric Cross (01:44):
We’re gonna talk all about language development and science. But first I was hoping that you can just kind of set the stage and tell the listeners about yourself and how you came about to studying this specific subject.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:57):
Sure. So I am a California native. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and that’s where I started teaching. I have an undergraduate degree in integrated biology from UC Berkeley. And I thought I was gonna go be a field scientist. And while I was waiting for grad school applications to run their course, I took a substitute job in Montebello to kind of bide my time. And because I had a science degree, they asked if I would take a permanent placement, well, a temporary permanent placement. And I said sure. And found myself teaching seventh and eighth grade general science to a population that at the time was about 68% English language learners, in a school that you would consider urban, under-resourced with a community that was large percentage immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America. And I never looked back. I kept that job.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (03:04):
I loved it. I love the middle school classroom. I love teaching science to my middle school students and truly, truly just found a really good home for my love of science, but also my love for talking about science and helping other people understand science. So at some point I was entertained with the idea of going to graduate school. So while I was still teaching, I actually did a Ph.D. At the University of Southern California in the science education field. And once there, realized that I actually had a unique experience in higher ed, that experience of teaching with populations that are learning English or have home languages other than English, was actually not common in higher ed circles. And being from that community was also not common. And so I pretty quickly leveraged that experience to combat what I think is universally agreed as an equity issue that in my school where I taught, the district had advocated for ELs to get an extra hour of language development in order to promote their English language proficiency.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (04:28):
And, our principal wisely said, there are not enough English-only students in this school to do that without losing all of our science teachers because there’s not enough kids left to actually fill a day, a teacher’s day. And she said, these kids learn more language in their science courses than they do anywhere else, so I don’t wanna remove that. But the reality is, is that at that time–this was in the late nineties, early two thousands–if you were not proficient in English, you went to more time with language development. And that makes a lot of sense in some ways. But when you look at the big picture, you realize, well, that means those kids aren’t going to science and they’re not having opportunities to have consistent quality science learning opportunities simply because they spoke a language other than English at home. And so that’s really how I fell into this work.
Eric Cross (05:28):
And that has a downstream effect. I mean, once you start pulling students from a course, that automatically sets the trajectory for later outcomes, which we ultimately see in STEM fields where we, we don’t see the population of our students represented in the STEM fields. Now, I know this goes back a few years, but you were doing research for your Ph.D. What did you start to follow?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (05:50):
Yeah, so I eventually took a position at Cal State Long Beach, which was not by chance, it’s a Hispanic-serving institution, and that’s where I wanted to do my academic work. And once I was there, sought funding with a district to support elementary science learning. So it had a teacher professional learning component that was both summer and in-class, sort of like PD in the classroom component. And the district came back and said, the only way you are gonna get time to even talk about science in elementary school is if it’s attached to language development. And so that’s what we did. It was a three-year grant, there was a sister grant that followed–so all told, it was about a five-year program where we basically said, what if instead of following the traditional ELD, English Language Development curriculum, we modified and put science as the context for language development in the K2 bands.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (07:01):
Teachers at the district traditionally had not been excited about their language development curriculum until we said, we’re gonna take that and we’re gonna do some science instead. And then they were like, no, no, no! We love our ELD curriculum. But they hung in there with us. The project was successful enough that it actually became a K4 and then a K5 project. The district ended up having to put in a ton of money into this because the grant only paid for so much. But their schools actually wanted “in” ’cause what they heard is when we put science as a context for language development, kids were talking more. Kids were speaking in English more. Kids were writing more. Kids were engaged. And the ultimate, kids were developing English quickly and in a community where you could actually operate within the community without speaking English. These are Spanish-speaking communities and the schools operated in Spanish outside the classroom. So if you walked into the school’s office, the principal secretary, the person who manned the door, spoke Spanish. The field supervisors that the lunch supervisors spoke Spanish.
Eric Cross (08:17):
The non-teaching staff that are supporting the rest of the students outside of the classroom.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (08:23):
Yeah. Everybody spoke Spanish and they spoke Spanish at school. And even the principals came back and said, from being in this project, that the kids were coming into the office and had transitioned to communicating in English, especially when they wanted to talk about science, and they really wanted to talk about science ’cause they were super excited about the stuff that they were learning. So we started to see this trend of students communicating more in English because they were excited about the science that they had been learning. And yeah, that sold itself and we had schools jumping in.
Eric Cross (09:01):
So you started off in a situation where you were told that you had to, if you wanna get science and you had to merge it into English, basically. And is it fair to say that that’s because of testing requirements that schools have on them? Like this is what gets analyzed or what was the purpose behind that?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (09:15):
It was district policy and it was site policy and those policies were put into place for very good intentions. Students don’t get reclassified into English only, and reclassification is how you traditionally got access to all this other programming, electives, AP college prep, all those other things. And the best way to get them reclassified was to learn English, and to learn it sooner rather than later. So it was in an attempt to get kids reclassified from English learner to English proficient.
Eric Cross (09:55):
And then during that process it was able to be expanded to K4. And then with these open-minded teachers, you gave them the content, they used science as the context for learning. And then your students who were mostly emerging bilinguals and multilingual students, you found that they started speaking English more frequently. What did you make of that result? Like what did you come to after seeing all that happen?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (10:20):
So I do wanna say that there’s a couple of reasons why we think this works so well. But I have to really acknowledge that there were linguistics, second language acquisition experts that were part of this team. And we wouldn’t have been able to make any of this work if it was purely science educators leading this cause. There’s a lot we didn’t understand about language development, and they really helped us. But one of the things that we think is unique about science, there’s a few really important aspects–one is that we all have experiences in the natural world, since we can process outside information, right? We all have observations, things we’ve observed with our eyes, we’ve heard, we’ve felt, and all of those experiences build some pretty good science ideas before we enter formal schooling. You know, kids already have ideas about this.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (11:20):
We don’t have to give them language for it. They already have these concepts and experiences. The other thing is that we are inherently interested in the natural world we occupy. And so we’re curious, science is often considered cool, there are science channels and science fiction movies and science fiction books and magazines–and this is just … it’s just cool. And that tended to be the trigger, you know, when we gave kids something interesting to observe. A Ziploc bag with water that we added an Alka-Seltzer to, and strange things starts happening in the baggie. That curiosity, that excitement allowed kids to leap over any concerns they had about the language they were supposed to use in the classroom. One of the most difficult things about learning a language is using a language that is imperfect. So saying things and communicating in a language that you are not a hundred percent confident about, that you’re not sure you’re using the right words or the right tenses. But when kids were excited about this thing in a Ziploc bag, they didn’t care. They communicated however they could, sometimes in their primary language or their home language, sometimes in imperfect English, but by and large they just communicated. They did it in oral language, like listening and speaking, but they also did it in writing. And that was easy. Like we didn’t have to do anything other than provide interesting science experiences. And that’s, that’s pretty common.
Eric Cross (13:06):
Yeah. I feel like, to co-sign on the science is cool, it is objectively, if a matter of fact, even just looking at the Oscars, like we have multiverse, you know, we have sci-fi you know, the costume designer of Wakanda Forever. We have all of these different movies that are all founded in some kind of these scientific principles. And so the idea that science is cool and organic, naturally engaging is something I think we, we all can connect to and it resonates with all of us. So I feel like is sort of your origin story too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:33):
That’s the origin story.
Eric Cross (13:34):
That’s the origin story right there, to continue with this like movie theme. Now if we fast forward to today, based on all the research that you’ve seen since then, and your experience, why would you advocate merging English language development and science?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:49):
Well, for one, the research that we conducted actually provided some really nice evidence that showed, even though we had essentially stole minutes from language development time and inserted science. And on state mandated tests and on their students’ language proficiency measures, the kids in the program with the blended, did significantly better than students who were getting ELD instruction alone. Traditional ELD instruction. And that kind of blew our mind. We would’ve been happy if they had done just fine. Like we could put science into a student’s day and do no harm. They could get their language development; they could get science. But in fact, what we found was that they did better. That they actually gained English more quickly and it showed up in multiple measures, including the state English language arts assessment, which again, kind of blew our mind.
Eric Cross (14:55):
So just to be clear about the study that you did, you looked at two groups and one was the blended science and English language development, and then the other one was a control group. And the blended group ended up showing more improvement.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (15:09):
Yes. So there’s quite a bit of research now, this research was done in the early two thousands, and the research has built around it to really suggest that this does seem to be a more efficient way to promote language development while still maintaining students’ access to a core content area. But in recent years, the standards have shifted and that has been just a remarkable, wonderful change. And both standards have shifted. So when we did our research, we did it under the old California Science standards that were fairly heavy in technical terms. They were heavy in science concepts rather than kids doing things. And they were a much narrower focus.
Eric Cross (16:04):
And these are the standards that most of us grew up on, right? Those of us who are pretty much teachers in the classroom today pretty much grew up on what you’re talking about. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (16:12):
That’s fair to say, yes. So the new standards that we have now, the California NGSS Standards emphasize not just ideas, but they also emphasize students doing things in science. And we didn’t have to build-in language portions to the standards. They now exist. The NGSS is a very, very rich linguistic opportunity for students. And at the same time, the way we’ve thought about language development has also shifted. We used to talk about language and science… we used to think about science as a lot of words, and you had to know the words, you had to have this technical language. And we’ve sort of shifted that to really thinking about, language is no longer a prerequisite for science learning. Language is now developed through the science learning or the content learning experiences.
Eric Cross (17:11):
So now there’s more chances to integrate English into science. Have you seen success stories or have you seen examples of this? Maybe just anecdotes of teachers kind of doing this since you’ve been doing this research and kind of watching. If so, would you mind sharing one or two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (17:30):
Yeah. And I will just give a nod to Dr. Dr. Okie Lee who’s now at NYU who has really led sort of this reconception of language and science. And one of the ways she talks about it is this notion that I enter this learning experience, I enter this observation of this phenomena with fairly naive, simple scientific ideas. And my language about it is equally simple. But as I develop more and more ideas, as my understanding of the phenomenon, what I figured out becomes more sophisticated, I need more sophisticated language. And so what we’re starting to see are these spaces where teachers are building science ideas and science and understanding along with the language. And in order to do that, you really need to know what’s the storyline arc of my science lesson? What do they figure out in lesson one? What do they figure out in lesson two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (18:35):
What do they figure out in lesson three? How are the science ideas building over time? So that I can then look at the language that they’re using and what language supports do I need in order to allow students to not only engage and figure things out, but communicate their ideas about it. And so we’re seeing teachers blow up what we call language, what we call text. It’s not just words. It’s not just sentences written on a paper, but it’s models, it’s pictorial representations, it’s gestures, it’s this wide range. We pretty much said, let’s blow language up. Let’s like use all of the linguistic registers that we have in order to make meaning of what we’re seeing it in together in this classroom. So that’s one thing that we’re starting to see. The other thing is that teachers are really allowing students opportunities to use what we call social language, non-standard dialects.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (19:40):
The language I use at home and with my friends. Because earlier I had said, we have all these experiences and those experiences in the world are tied up in my social register. They’re tied up in my home language ’cause that’s where I experience them. And to let students have access to using that language in the classroom, especially initially in a unit, means we’re giving ’em access to those experiences that they have that are related to the phenomena under study. So I totally understand the benefit of promoting academic language and promoting language frames and forms that we use in more academic settings. But it’s a sticky wicket. You have to be careful how you tell students about the way you want them to communicate. Because when we tell them that language that you use at home with your friends and family is not welcome here, we can send a message that they’re not welcome here. And that those experiences that they have outside of classroom about how things fall, the way sunlight heats up different surfaces, where you’ll find plants and what plants you will find based on conditions. All of those experiences, we’re sending a message that those are not welcome in the classroom. And so this expansion of language, including non-standard dialects and even home language, is really important for letting students bring their whole selves into the classroom.
Eric Cross (21:23):
I love what you just said. It legitimizes the funds of knowledge, the language, the cultures that our students are bringing to the table. I remember when I first learned the word code-switching in college and you know, I’m biracial, I grew up in my home community and my school community were two different communities and I ethnically, culturally belonged to both. And I had to code-switch in order to kind of survive and be accepted into different communities. And not until I was in college did I actually understand what I was doing. Now there were all kinds of teasing and jokes that went on to how I would talk if I code-switched improperly. And in my classroom, I would see students who would explain concepts in a way that was maybe like a casual register. They just were explaining it the best way they could.
Eric Cross (22:10):
And the way they were speaking was kind of denigrated or it was seen as negative even though they were communicating their concept. And when I became a middle school teacher, one of my, I don’t know, it’s like sometimes when you teach, you get to, you change how you were taught or what you experience and legitimizing my students’ language, and they would tell these beautiful stories and in their most common like, casual language, but they’re explaining the concept brilliantly. And it was phenomenal to see this barrier be removed of saying, you have to talk like this in order to be a scientist or you have to say these right words. And, and that’s what I feel like I’m hearing that in how you’re describing kind of how science has been done and what language can do to certain groups of students.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (22:58):
Yeah, very much so. And you know, back to the origin story, you know, I grew up in a multi-generational household. My mom, my aunt, my grandmother, Spanish was their first language, but they lost it because my mom was raised in Riverside and she, you know, went to school in the, the fifties and sixties and back then you weren’t allowed to speak Spanish at school. And so they lost the language.
Eric Cross (23:27):
They weren’t allowed to speak it at all.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (23:29):
At all. I didn’t directly observe it, but that is the story that my family tells, that there was no English spoken anywhere on school grounds. And that was a different issue. Right? That was very much for people unfamiliar with some of the history in Southern California. Their segregated schools, severe racism, linguistic racism, racial racism against Mexicans was a real thing. But yet I grew up in this household where the sort of way of speaking, like I think many Mexican households, the context is everything. So you can’t get to the facts until you’ve told the whole context of everything happening around it. So we used to joke that we couldn’t send my grandmother to the doctor by herself ’cause he had 15 minutes, and she was gonna take 20 just to tell him how she got there before she got to why she was there. But this telling of the context, the telling of the story around the idea is part of the linguistic, this sort of linguistic way of my household. When I got to school, I had to learn to drop it because teachers found me off topic. You know, I still have to be careful how I express things and sometimes I’m not a fast storyteller <laugh>, and I monitor that for myself. So I can only imagine what it’s like to be a kid in a classroom.
Eric Cross (24:59):
Right. And there are so many constraints in the school day, you know, especially if you’re multi-subject and you’re elementary and you’re teaching multiple subjects and someone’s trying to tell a story and you’re just like, land the plane! And they’ve, you know, gotta tell ’em the story, but realizing that when you look at it through a lens of like, culturally, this is how we communicate, then it reframes what the student is trying to do. They’re communicating to you based on how they’ve learned to communicate and they’re including essential parts of the story. And so how do you both honor that while also, you know, certain things like brevity and being concise and things like that that they’ll have to learn. But also honoring that and making sure that there’s space for that in your classroom. Even me, I’m thinking about this where I had students record this video and it was one minute to two-and-a-half minutes explaining three concepts. And I had students coming up to me afterwards saying, Mr. Cross, I need to record two videos because two-and-a-half minutes is not long enough. And I was like, how? I even extended it. But I’m realizing and listening to you and going, they’re probably not just getting to the point. They’re probably including more context into this because that’s how they story tell and that was actually part of the lesson.
Eric Cross (26:12):
So now I need to go back and extend their time that I’ve given them for <laugh> that project. I wanna come back to kind of, since we’re on this topic about why this is also an equity issue. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we were talking about language, you touched on this a bit, and we were talking about integrating into science, but can we go a little bit further into how this integrated approach maybe can benefit English language learners in particular? And maybe anything else that’s related to equity that comes to mind.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (26:40):
So there’s a couple of layers of the equity issue. The most tangible and clear is student access. If we wait until students develop English proficiency to allow them access to quality science learning, we lose a tremendous number of students that could not only could they benefit from science, we could benefit from their entering this science conversation. And I was at a university and I was in a college of natural sciences and we were dedicated to increasing the diversity of the faculty. And it was a struggle ’cause the number of Ph.D. science ed or biology or chemistry academics that come from marginalized populations is very, very small. And it’s not by accident. You know, the number of students that make it into the next level, that make it into college prep courses, that make it into STEM majors, that complete STEM majors and go on to either careers or advanced degrees narrows at every possible step.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (28:01):
And so the equity issue is really one of access. And as basic as that is, it’s the easiest to solve. So that’s the first layer of equity. But the second issue around equity is how we engage these students once they’re in this space. Do we make it possible for them to see themselves as a scientist or an engineer? Are we creating learning experiences that not only allow them to use all the sense-making resources that they have, but do we make them feel like they’re valuable and useful in that space? Because there’s a lot of people that will say, I could be successful as a scientist, but I’m not willing to give up who I am in order to do that. And that’s a real thing. There’s a lot of research about like, why are they leaving? Like why, you know, is it because they’re not able?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (29:05):
Is it because they don’t see themselves as being capable? And now I think we’re looking at this as a different issue. It’s not that students don’t see themselves as capable and not that they’re not achieving. They see the cost that it will take to enter these fields and essentially not be able to be their full selves. So that’s the second equity issue. And in both cases we lose. As a society, we lose. We lose access to the full range of human resources that we have, and we lose access to their unique perspectives that they would bring to real problems facing us. It’s like all hands-on deck. We need to stop making it too difficult to participate in the conversation and we need to be more inclusive about how we invite these other perspectives and how we respect and utilize their ways of sense-making. That may not be Western science ways that we have in our books now, but hopefully those science materials are gonna change and we’re gonna start to see other ways of sense-making and other people involved in the stories that we tell around science concepts.
Eric Cross (30:29):
And just to be clear, this practice in integration, while it lifts up equity for marginalized or underrepresented groups or students who are emerging bilinguals or students who typically we don’t see representation of, this approach also benefits native speakers as well. Correct?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (30:47):
Yeah. And there’s actually a group of native speakers that come from text poor homes. It’s typical in underserved communities. Poor people living in poverty that may be native English speakers. They may not be marginalized populations. But they don’t have access to like text. And so that’s another group altogether that needs linguistic support. And then once you have all voices in the room contributing, everybody benefits because now the conversation, the building understanding conversation we’re having or the sense-making conversation that we’re having has everybody involved. And we all benefit from that.
Eric Cross (31:33):
And we see, I think one of the benefits about a country like the U.S., is we have such a heterogeneous group of people. And when we’re moving in the same direction, we’re all coming to the same problem, but from different perspectives and we’re able to come up with more innovative and novel solutions to them. And that’s kind of what I’m hearing is like as we generate scientists that are all coming from different backgrounds, we’re gonna be able to solve future problems, current problems a lot more effectively because nobody has a monopoly on perspective. Nobody has a monopoly on knowledge or the fastest way to do something or the best way to do something.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (32:11):
Right. Right. And traditionally we really have privileged particular experiences, particular ways of sense-making particular linguistic registers. And if we could just kind of put that privileged ways aside and open up space for everybody to feel like they have a voice, I think the next generation could change the world. I think they could solve some real problems. I’m truly hopeful that they would see themselves not just as capable, but as necessary in these pursuits.
Eric Cross (32:50):
So what does it actually look like today to do this work in instruction well? So to integrate the science, to integrate literacy, to take the benefits of the things that we’ve been talking about. What are some practical things that educators could do to get started, whether it’s in early, you know, K5 or middle school or even high school.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (33:13):
So I will say, I’m gonna kind of separate ’cause in the elementary space, students are primarily developing literacy in multiple languages. The language of the classroom, typically English, home language, languages, they may be multilingual. In the secondary setting where students tend to have developed social language in some language, it’s a little different. So I’m gonna kind of separate those two. So for elementary spaces where teachers tend to teach multiple things, I recommend that you get a partner. Don’t do this work alone. You cannot do this work alone. I mean you can, but it’s very frustrating and not nearly as much fun. So you really wanna take a look at what is the science that kids are going to be engaged in. Because when we look at science first and build language development around it, the experience tends to be more authentic and organic.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (34:18):
And what we used to do is we used to, like when we were talking about the science, we’d monitor the language we were using and then use that to say these are the registers. This is the language that we use when we were thinking about this. So if students are gonna use this, these are the scaffolds they’re gonna need. ‘Cause to do it, well, to do it efficiently, the scaffolds need to be specific to the science learning. So if we’re doing cause and effect, those are specific linguistic scaffolds that are different than if, say we’re doing model and systems and systems models, those are a whole other slew of scaffolds. And so you wanna be really tending to, what is the science being discussed and what is the language that kids are going to use and build scaffolds around it.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (35:10):
And then you also wanna think about what is the social language? What are the experience that kids will have either in words or pictures that I can leverage in this space. And then you wanna do that for the arc of the unit and slowly increase sophistication around those linguistic supports, as well as the science learning. But if kids have social language and they’re now in, there’s a group we call long-term English learners who have not been reclassified way beyond what the typical reclassification is. And that actually is important to think about because if you think about the kinder group, the group of kindergartners that enter a school when they’re five or six, those kids are going to go from grade to grade to grade. And as students develop proficiency, will get reclassified and they move out of this group that we’re still calling English learners.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (36:10):
So by the time you get to like seventh, eighth, ninth grade, if they’re still students in that category, they have very different needs on average than the group we started with. Often when we talk about secondary or these long-term English learners, we can leverage social language a lot more, but have to build the scaffolds more carefully around, for lack of a better word, the more academic content transferring that those social nonverbal language into more sophisticated forms. I think in any setting, you wanna utilize your resources. If I’m in a secondary space and I have a language development teacher and I’m not talking to her or him or they, that’s a problem. You need to go talk to the other people that have these same kids and talk to them about, how are you engaging in language, what are you doing?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (37:07):
Because you know, you could actually have a lesson, maybe this is a lesson about energy and you’re using a model and the kids are creating an initial model. And over in ELD land, they’re doing some linguistic supports. They’re working on some forms and functions of language. You could talk about the catapult, you could talk about the solar heater. You could use the context of the science conversation, which has a whole bunch of tangible experiences. You know, there’s the solar heater in front of you. I don’t need to keep it all in my head ’cause it’s in front of me and we can point to things and talk about things by manipulating the materials. And then I can take all of that and my ELD partner can use that as context when available. But it takes collaboration, but it’s collaboration well spent. And it’s more challenging in the initial phases of the collaboration. Once you kind of the get into the groove, it becomes a lot easier.
Eric Cross (38:16):
The meta of this, as we talk about integrating science and literacy is, and this is great advice, but it’s basically integrate your science teachers with your English teachers and co-plan and do this work together. It’s a force multiplier. One, you’re both, you’re getting two specialists together. It also, I’m just listening to just the parallels. It also resembles what you actually do in the STEM fields of collaboration working together to problem-solve, and you’re modeling for your students what you want to happen. And if I was an administrator listening to this, someone who had control, like master schedules and things like that, there also needs to be space created for these teachers to talk to each other and plan and do all these other things to kind of maybe come up with like interdisciplinary units or even just meet and begin the conversation. It just seems like such great advice.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (39:07):
Yeah. We’re professionals. We have academic degrees and credentials and experience in the classroom and yet more often than not, we leave it to the students in the seats to make the connections between my class and the class they go to next. And that’s not fair. We need to be talking to each other. So if we’re talking about argumentation, argumentation in science and argumentation in ELA and argumentation in math–we’re not even talking about the same thing. I mean, cognitively we’re talking about taking some evidence and creating a claim and supporting it, but what we mean by evidence is very different in the different disciplines. What counts as more convincing evidence changes. And yet we assume that because we say evidence in one class, the kids know what we’re talking about. And the kids are sitting there going, which one is this? Which evidence are you talking about? Because last period it was something else. And so I think we also need to really consider who’s in the best position to clarify the connections and the integration because we leave it to kids more often than not right now.
Eric Cross (40:19):
I agree. Just having those conversations and defining your terms and agreeing on them just to make it easier for students. ‘Cause you’re right, they are left to make those connections or bridge the gaps. And when you have an education system for many schools, I think most of us, it’s still pretty siloed. You’re still kind of like, especially when you’re in secondary, it’s we’re doing this or even elementary, different times of the day you do different subjects, versus the way that we experience life itself or even our professions. We’re actually integrating science and math and reading and writing throughout the day, and ebbs and flows going back and forth. And without making those explicit connections, we’re leaving a lot of things to chance, hoping that the learning’s there in such a valuable moment. Before we go, I’m wondering if you have a parting message for listeners about the topic of integrating science and literacy. You’ve already said so many amazing things, but you have the platform speaking to educators and folks out there. What would you wanna say to them?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (41:18):
This is not an easy endeavor. The system that we operate in does not make this effort easy, but it is worth it. It is worth it to the kids in our classrooms. It is worth it to the building of a scientific community and a scientifically literate populace. It’s important to solving problems in the future. It’s important to have kids feel like regardless of how they say things, that they belong in a classroom. If we can relax the sort of linguistic demands on kids and let them enter science learning in a way that allows them to use all their resources and they’re curious, they can really leverage both areas in a way that they don’t do individually. It’s really hard to think about what it is I’m trying to say if I’m worried about how I have to say it. And so we really need to think about, when are those times that we’re gonna let kids just tell us what it is that they’re excited about and when is it that we’re going to help them craft a more formalized language around those ideas. Right now we do a really good job at that second half. We need to do better at the first.
Eric Cross (42:46):
Susan, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your expertise and your wisdom and your passion for serving the students and for bringing everybody to the table through language and through science. We really appreciate it and the listeners will too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (43:03):
Thank you so much. This is my favorite topic.
Eric Cross (43:06):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep, senior science educator and staff advocate at BSCS Science Learning. And please remember to subscribe to Science Connections so that you don’t miss any of the episodes in this exciting third season. And while you’re there, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more listeners find the show. Next time on the show, we’re going to continue exploring the how and why of integrating science and literacy instruction.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of their time reading the work of other scientists and writing their findings, writing grant proposals, presenting at conferences. A huge part of the work of a scientist is not just at a bench conducting experiments, but even if you’re conducting experiments, you’re using your literacy processes to think about what you’re seeing in your experiment.
Eric Cross (43:57):
That’s next time on Science Connections. Thanks so much for listening.
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Meet the guests
Susan Gomez Zwiep began her career in science education as a middle school science teacher in Los Angeles where she spent over 12 years working in urban schools. Prior to joining BSCS, Susan worked at California State University, Long Beach as a Professor of Science Education.
Susan has also worked as a Regional Director for the K-12 Alliance, providing high-quality professional development in science and mathematics for K12 educators, including the CA NGSS Early Implementer Initiative. Susan consistently works toward establishing equitable access for all students to rigorous, inquiry-based science instruction and supporting teachers in their journey to become advocates for students, science education, and their own professional development.
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.
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S3-01: Science as the underdog, and the research behind it
Get ready for season 3 of Science Connections: The Podcast!
In our first episode, we unpack the research around our season theme of science as the underdog with Horizon Research, Inc. Vice President Eric R. Banilower and Senior Researcher Courtney Plumley. Eric and Courtney dive into the research they’ve found and their experiences as former educators to show how science is often overlooked in K–12 classrooms. We discuss how the science classroom compares to other subjects in terms of time and resources, how schools are a reflection of society, and what’s needed to change science and its impact on a larger scale.
We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!
Courtney Plumley (00:00):
We asked teachers how much science, professional development, they’ve had in the last three years, and nearly half of elementary teachers said none.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. I am super-excited to be kicking off the third season with the show. This entire season will be exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And we’re gonna make the case for science, by showing how and why it can be used more effectively. In the coming episodes, we’re gonna talk about how science can be better integrated into other content areas like literacy and math, and explore some of the benefits that you might not be thinking about good science instruction. But first, science as the underdog. I bet some of you out there feel like science is the underdog in your community at school. I know I have at times. To kick off this season, I’m gonna talk to two people who really studied this question by looking at the state of science instruction across the US. Eric Banilower is Vice President of Horizon Research and Courtney Plumley is Senior Researcher at Horizon Research. Eric was the principal investigator and Courtney an author of the latest in a series of studies called “The National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” We’re gonna dive into the findings of their most recent report to see what the data’s showing us. Please enjoy my discussion with Eric Banilower and Courtney Plumley. Courtney, hello. And thank you so much for joining us.
Courtney Plumley (01:25):
Hi Eric. It’s nice to be here.
Eric Cross (01:26):
And Eric, welcome.
Eric R. Banilower (01:27):
We’re thrilled to be here, so thank you for having us.
Eric Cross (01:30):
I was reading through the report. Four hundred…a very thorough report, 471 pages, I think, as I got it?
Eric R. Banilower (01:37):
And that’s only one of the many reports from that study.
Eric Cross (01:40):
Yeah. You all have done your work, so I’m really excited to to talk to you about this. And on this season of the show, we’re exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And I think a lot of our listeners, we feel like science is an underdog either in their school or in their district. But you’ve actually done some research on this, in a 2018 study, “The National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” So I wanna talk about this report. But first I was hoping you can kind of set the stage. How did you come to work on this report, and then, big picture, what were you hoping to find out?
Eric R. Banilower (02:10):
So the 2018 study that you just mentioned was actually the sixth iteration of a series of studies dating back to 1977. And we collect data every decade or so—you know, plus or minus a few years. And really, what we’re trying to do is get a snapshot of what the science and math education system looks like in in the nation. So my role grew. I started working at Horizon in about 1998, after teaching high school for five years in California. And then going to graduate school. And right about that time, the company was doing the 2000 iteration of the survey. And I worked on it with the team here at Horizon. And then we did it again in 2012. And I had a much more prominent role in that study, and became the kind of leader of the study. And in 2018, the most recent version, we just did it again. So the goal of this study is really to kind of examine key aspects of the K–12 STEM education system. And the main audience of the work has traditionally been policy makers, researchers, and practitioners who work at the federal, state, and district level.
Eric Cross (03:30):
So this study, you took kind of a sample size, but it’s reflective of trends that we tend to see across the nation as a whole. Would that be fair to say?
Eric R. Banilower (03:38):
Yes, definitely it is. It is a random sample of schools in the country. So we start with a list of all the public and private schools in the nation, and then do a random sample of those schools, and then work really, really hard to recruit schools to agree to be in the study. And that has gotten harder every time we’ve done the study, for many understandable reasons. And then once we have schools on board, we sample teachers within schools. So we don’t even survey every teacher in a school. It’s really a sub-sample. So that we can make inferences about the nation as a whole.
Eric Cross (04:14):
Makes sense. And so Courtney, what did you find out about the time spent on science instruction in US schools?
Courtney Plumley (04:22):
So, I’m gonna talk about elementary teachers to begin with.
Eric Cross (04:26):
Because that was your past life, right?
Courtney Plumley (04:28):
I am a former elementary teacher, yeah. So that’s kind of where my head is. And that’s relatable for me. Right? So we asked teachers, like, how many days of the week or weeks of the year that they teach elementary school. And fewer than 20% teach science every day of the school year. They kind of do one or two things, for the most part. They teach a couple days a week or they teach every day of the week, but only for, like, maybe six weeks, and then they swap with social studies and they kind of do that across the school year. Which is really different from, like, math, right? We also asked elementary teachers, how often do they teach math, and it’s every day of the year. Then we also asked them how many minutes they teach when they’re teaching, and we kind of did the math to figure out, all right, if they taught science every day of the school year, how many minutes would it be in a single day, so that we could make a more comparable comparison with math and ELA. If you were to work it out, how many minutes of science an elementary teacher teaches across the year, and break it down to per day, it’s like 18 minutes for the lower elementary grades, 27 for the upper elementary grades. Which is not a lot. But it’s pretty much an hour a day in math, and 80 plus minutes in ELA. So, a lot less. And then, you know, when I was teaching, the first thing to go was always science, right? If there was an assembly, if there was early release or whatever, that was the first thing to go. So those numbers might even be higher. Just because they aren’t factoring that kind of thing in, too.
Eric Cross (06:05):
So, now I’m curious. That is something that I’ve seen just anecdotally, science being the first thing to go. I feel like I’ve seen that almost…it’s almost become a meme, that I’ve heard that so often. Just in your experience, why do you think that is that huge disparity between the two?
Courtney Plumley (06:26):
Well, I mean, when I was teaching, I was teaching third grade. I had an end-of-grade test in math and ELA for my kids. I didn’t have one in science. So the administration said, “Hey, if you’re gonna drop something, drop something that’s not tested.”
Eric Cross (06:41):
Simple as that. And Eric, you, past life: physics teacher. High school. What did you see? ‘Cause our listeners run the gamut from elementary all the way up to high school. What did you see, as far as relative science instruction in the secondary level?
Eric R. Banilower (07:00):
Sure. You know, secondary is just a whole different situation than elementary. Rght? Because you have departmentalization. I taught science. I didn’t have to teach other subjects. And students had periods, and they still do, sorry, they still have periods, even though it’s been a long time since I taught. And you know, they rotate from one class to another. So all the classes were essentially the same length. So, you know, when I was teaching, it was about 50-minute periods. So in terms of minutes of a class or minutes on a subject, it’s not really different. But what is different is what students are required to take in order to graduate high school. One of the things we asked schools about in this study was how many years of a subject do students have to take in order to graduate? And what we saw was in mathematics, over half the schools in the nation require students to take four years of mathematics to graduate. OK? And the vast majority of the rest, about 44%, require three years in science. Most schools require three years. Very few require four years. And many, or a fair number, still only require two years to graduate. So the expectation of what students are taking is lower in science than it is in mathematics.
Eric Cross (08:20):
So you were seeing the same trend in secondary, essentially.
Eric R. Banilower (08:24):
Yes.
Eric Cross (08:24):
The amount of time devoted to the instruction of science…we’re kind of seeing it mirrored just across K–12 across the board.
Eric R. Banilower (08:33):
That’s correct.
Eric Cross (08:34):
And that’s across the country. ‘Cause the sample size represents teachers from Alaska, Hawaii, the South, SoCal, everywhere. So what’s been the reaction to that number? Like 18 to 20 minutes is…I mean, it’s, it’s half of my lunch at our school. What’s been the reaction to that number since this data has been published?
Eric R. Banilower (08:58):
I don’t know, Courtney, if you want to take that…
Courtney Plumley (09:00):
It’s a lot of what you just did. Like, what??? Like, how is it possible to teach all the things you need to teach in such a little amount of time?
Eric R. Banilower (09:08):
What’s really kind of surprising to me, though — though now that I’ve worked on three iterations of the study, it no longer surprises me, but it did at first — is that these numbers really aren’t changing since we’ve started doing this study. You know, people thought maybe with No Child Left Behind and the increase in accountability, time on science might actually go down, because there was more testing in math and English Language Arts. It didn’t happen. It was pretty much constant, that this has been kind of the state of science education for a long time.
Eric Cross (09:44):
So Eric, if I’m hearing you right: The past studies, we’re not seeing an increase or a decline. This has been this way for how many years, roughly, would you say? Since it’s been studied?
Eric R. Banilower (09:54):
You know, I’d have to go back to the 1977 report to get the numbers, but I’m gonna say since then, it has not changed much, if at all.
Eric Cross (10:03):
So this has kind of been entrenched. This has been the norm for almost for the career of a teacher, almost generationally. We’re looking at anyone who’s been in the highest levels of leadership to someone just entering the classroom, this has been the way it’s always been. This is kind of for many people what they’ve only known.
Eric R. Banilower (10:20):
Right.
Eric Cross (10:21):
Kind of become the norm.
Courtney Plumley (10:21):
We didn’t even have science when I was in elementary school. We had science on a cart that came by, you know, every other week.
Eric Cross (10:28):
Was that like a food truck, but like the science version of it? It shows up and does quick science and takes off?
Courtney Plumley (10:35):
And New York was, I mean — we always watched Voyage of the Mimi. I don’t know if you ever watched that. But that’s what we watched every single time the Science on the Cart came. So it’s like a marine biology show. Ben Affleck was on it when he was a kid.
Eric Cross (10:48):
<laugh> Really? For me it was, Mr. Wizard. For some of my students, even now, Bill Nye. You know, the Bill Nye show or something would come on. So what happens when you look at less wealthy districts? Is there a relationship between community resources and science instruction, or is it pretty much equal no matter what the district resources are, the school’s resources are? Did you see any data there?
Eric R. Banilower (11:12):
Yes. We actually did a lot of disaggregating the data by community type, student demographics in the schools, to look to see whether there were areas of inequities across the country. And, you know, one of the factors we looked at was kind of a measure of socioeconomic status. You know, wealth in the community. By looking at percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. And interestingly, in terms of time on science instruction, there is actually not a relationship between income level and how much time is spent at the elementary level on science, which actually surprised us.
Eric Cross (11:54):
Because you might have expected it to be the other way now. And granted, it’s 18 to 20 minutes, there isn’t much more to shave off off of that. But were there other differences, like when you compared those communities? Maybe it wasn’t the amount of science instruction, but was there anything else, like teacher preparedness, resources? Were there anything else that you did see discrepancies in? Or was it equal across the board?
Eric R. Banilower (12:13):
No, unfortunately there, there have been, and still are, a number of areas where community resources are related to pretty substantial differences in educational opportunities that students have. So, you know, we’re talking about the high school science requirements. One of the things that we saw was that high schools in less wealthy communities tend to offer less rigorous science courses than high schools in better-off-financially communities. So they may not be AP courses or second year advanced courses to the same extent that there are in the wealthier communities. That’s one big difference that we saw. Another one was what you were just saying about, sort of, the teachers who teach in these communities. You know, I think that for many years people have had a feeling that the best teachers go to the better off schools because it’s easier to teach there. Well, we see that the schools with the most poverty, they tend to have the newer teachers, who are just starting their career. They tend to have teachers who are less well prepared to teach their subject. And there’s a host of other differences we found. And you know, you mentioned the report being 400 pages. This other report that looks at these differences is also quite long, and, you know, identified a number of areas where there are these disparities in the system.
Eric Cross (13:43):
Well, we appreciate you synthesizing this for us, because this is super-important. And you’ve fleshed out a lot of things. And the fact that it’s driven by data, we as science teachers, we as scientists, being objective, really, really value that. Because this is actually validating a lot of the things that our listeners and myself, we experience anecdotally. But you don’t have a lot of things to network you. And sometimes, when you see this, you wonder if it’s just you, or is are other people experiencing this? And so as you start talking about this data, realizing, oh wow, this is not something in isolation. This is systemic. This is something that’s impacted. And then Eric, what you said about schools that were lower-income, that were under-resourced, and didn’t offer those advanced classes, what are some of the impacts of that, maybe downstream, of doing that? Not having those AP classes? I just kind of wanted to put that out there and ask you.
Eric R. Banilower (14:31):
You know, this is a really…this is a current debate right now, about what the goals of schooling K–12 should be. You know, are all kids meant to go to college? Should there be alternative paths? And you know, I know when I was teaching, I would have students say, “Why do I need to know this? I’m not gonna go into science. I’m not gonna study physics. Why do I need to take this?” And, you know, the answer I used to give them was, “You never know where your life is gonna end up and what opportunities you’ll have. And by having these educational experiences, you have more opportunities available to you. Whether or not you choose to go down those paths, you have opportunities. And when you don’t take this kind of coursework, you know, even if you don’t want to go to college, you limit your potential careers. Because so many careers nowadays require some technical knowledge, some knowledge of science, even if it’s not explicitly a science job. It is embedded in our society now. We are a technological and science-based society.”
Eric Cross (15:37):
It reminds me of something that I’ve told my students, that if you become a scientist, that’s awesome. I love that. But if you don’t, and you want to be a dancer or an actor or a lawyer or anything that may not be directly related to STEM, I want you to choose it because it was a choice, and not a lack of options. So as long as you’re choosing not to go in STEM, and you don’t make that decision because you can’t, or because you weren’t given the opportunity. So that’s how I’ve always had this mindset as a teacher. And I’ve explained it to my students. So if you say, “Cross, you know what I want to do, I wanna be an awesome chef,” which, you know, low-key that’s science, right? <laugh> Molecular gastronomy, we know that. But like, you be the best chef. But as long as you’re being a chef because you choose that, and you’re like, “I love science, but I don’t wanna go that direction,” we’re good.
Eric R. Banilower (16:26):
Right. And if you think about, a lot of social justice issues with pollution and climate change, and you look at which communities are more affected by some of these larger environmental problems and challenges, it tends to be the lower socioeconomic communities, the more poverty-stricken communities have worse water, have worse air quality. And so if, if people from these communities are going to make informed decisions about who they’re gonna vote for, about what policies they’re gonna support, those are science topics that you have to have some understanding in order to make informed decisions in your life.
Eric Cross (17:09):
Courtney, you were one of the Swiss Army Knife teachers. This is how I perceive it for elementary. You had to teach everything. And shout out to all of my elementary school teachers that have to be mathematicians and grammar whizzes and scientists and PE instructors and social emotional, all of those different things. you also looked at teacher preparedness. How did teachers feel about teaching science compared to other subjects like language arts and math? Did you see anything there?
Courtney Plumley (17:39):
We did, we did. And I’m glad you said, “How did they feel about it?” Because one thing that, you know, in a survey you can’t really do is capture how someone actually…how good someone actually…the quality of someone’s instruction. But you can ask them how prepared they feel. And you can even ask them like stats, like, “What did you major in in college?” You know. But you really are going on based on what what they say. So we ask them how prepared they feel to teach all the core subjects. And two-thirds of elementary teachers felt very well prepared to teach reading. They felt very well prepared to teach math. But when it comes to science, it’s less than a third felt very well prepared. And you know, like you said, when you’re teaching elementary school, you’re teaching all the subjects. But also in science, there’s usually four main instructional units in a school year. And they’re all from different science disciplines. So not only are you going on, like, “Maybe in college took a lot of bio classes, but I didn’t take any physics classes, and now I have to teach physics to my kids and I have no experience there.” So, you know, we also ask them how well-prepared they felt in these different disciplines. And the numbers are even smaller, you know. Fewer than a quarter felt very well-prepared in life science. And like 13% felt very well-prepared in physical science. So there’s definitely a big difference between how much teachers feel prepared for ELA and math versus science.
Eric Cross (19:08):
And just from a human perspective, when we don’t feel prepared for something, we’re not really gonna probably lean into it as much as we are into our strengths. Like, that’s just kind of how we are across the board.
Courtney Plumley (19:18):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (19:18):
I’m even like that with my own chores in the house. Or when I have things I need to get done, and I might not be as good at doing those things—it’s gonna be a heavy cognitive load; I’m gonna have to do some background research—I tend to find other areas to excel in. Like, I’m gonna be productive in this other area. I’m gonna really crush it here. But this other thing gets put to the back burner.
Courtney Plumley (19:36):
Totally. And the same reason I might skip science today, <laugh> ’cause it’s scary.
Eric Cross (19:41):
Yeah, exactly. But I love this book. <Laugh> Or we could do this math, and let’s really, really dive deep into it. Now, did you also look at professional development and instructional resources that are being provided?
Courtney Plumley (19:53):
We did.
Eric Cross (19:54):
And on the whole, how was the amount—and I’m seeing a trend here, so I’m kind of feeling like I know where this might go—but I wanted to ask it, did the amount of professional development and resources for science, was there much of a difference between that and other subjects?
Eric R. Banilower (20:10):
Well, I’ll start on this, and Courtney, feel free to jump in. You know, one of the things that we asked was how much kind of discretionary funding do schools devote to science and how much to mathematics? So, for consumables or equipment and supplies or computer software for teachers to use in the classroom. And it’s hard to compare, I think, across subjects because the demands for this kind of supplies, et cetera, is very different, I think, in science than it is in mathematics. Right? We have a lot of, you know, equipment for doing investigations, consumable supplies in science. And those things need to be replenished on a regular basis. It turns out, when we look at the data for school discretionary spending on this kind of stuff, the median school spends less than $2 per student at the elementary level on science, compared to over $6 for mathematics. At the high school level, it’s kind of reversed. Schools spend more money on high school science than they do on high school math. but even still, at the high school, it’s less than $7 per student. Which is not a lot of money being devoted to thinking about all the materials, supplies, chemicals, et cetera, that you need to teach science well, at the high school level. More disturbing is the fact that, you know, we were talking about inequities before, schools that serve less well-off communities spend less than schools that serve wealthier communities, by quite a big amount.
Eric Cross (21:46):
So essentially the per-student thing just kind of popped out to me: So, like, an expensive Starbucks drink is what we’re spending on science per student.
Eric R. Banilower (21:57):
At the high school level. Yes.
Eric Cross (21:58):
At the high school level. And I get those catalogs in the mail, from all of those big science companies. You can’t get much for seven bucks. At least, nothing high-level. And I know I do a lot of 99-cent store science. I go down the street, go to the 99-cent store. Thankfully we could do a lot of awesome science with just, you know, cheap things. But a lot of the higher level experiences, they’re pricey. But the experiences are so rich! And $7 at the high school level is nothing. It’s not much at all.
Eric R. Banilower (22:28):
Yeah. It is definitely, you know, kind of shocking to think about what we’re investing in our children’s future.
Eric Cross (22:37):
Now, just to put you both on the spot, ’cause I feel like that we’ve identified some…we’re seeing a trend here, we’re seeing a pattern. We’re talking about, you know, being science teachers. There’s a pattern going on here. Do you think it’s fair to characterize science as the underdog?
Courtney Plumley (22:52):
I think in elementary school, it is a fair statement. Because, like we said before, I mean they’re gonna preference math and ELA almost all the time. I mean, the other thing you’d asked a little bit ago was about professional development, too. And we do have some data on that. And we ask teachers, you know, how much science professional development they’ve had in the last three years. And nearly half of elementary teachers said none. And I know I didn’t have any science professional development. If I was gonna pick from among the catalog, I was picking one that I needed more, like math. Math and ELA. I keep making that statement, but just over and over, it’s the truth.
Eric Cross (23:31):
And going back to what you said earlier, because that’s where the accountability was, right? And that kind of came top-down.
Courtney Plumley (23:38):
Yes.
Eric Cross (23:38):
And influenced everything else.
Eric R. Banilower (23:40):
Yeah. Now, really interesting thing that we did, a year or so ago, ’cause someone asked us, you know, “Hey, could you look at this?” is we compared elementary science instructional time among states where science counted towards accountability versus states where science doesn’t count towards accountability. And at the upper elementary grades, more time was spent on science in schools in states where they had science accountability. Now I’m not arguing for adding science to accountability systems. But that’s a pretty telling piece of data.
Eric Cross (24:19):
What gets measured gets done.
Eric R. Banilower (24:20):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (24:20):
Or what was getting evaluated was getting done. And that raises, that opens up a myriad of other questions about testing, and what that reveals, and all of those different things. But at the end of the day, what you’re finding is that the things that were getting tested were the things that were getting the priority.
Eric R. Banilower (24:36):
That’s right.
Eric Cross (24:37):
How did we get to this point? And Eric, you said it goes back at least to ’77, but we look at society and we’re…I wanna say we’re post-pandemic, but we’re we’re not. but we’re trying to, we’re trying to get past that. But we’re looking at…we had innovations in biology, we have innovations right now in green energy and electric cars and all of these things that are STEM-based. We know that these are things that have moved humanity forward. And we look at the pipeline of people who are in STEM and we, we see the disparities and things like that. Why was science given less of a priority? I’m just curious. Maybe, Courtney, we could start with you, if you have any ideas. Or Eric. Either one. But how did we get here?
Eric R. Banilower (25:22):
<laugh> I think Courtney wants me to take that one. I’m older so I’ve seen more <laugh>. So, you know, I have the gray hair. She doesn’t. I think it’s complicated. And I know this sounds cliche, but but schools are a reflection of society, right? And, and so science education, you know, if you think back when Sputnik was launched, there became this great demand in America to improve and produce more scientists and engineers in response to this Cold War threat. Right? And then in the ’80s there was rising, oh, the gathering storm was an economic argument that we needed to increase science and math, you know, education and people going into those fields in order to compete economically against the global competitors. And I think that America has always produced a fair number, a large number, of high-quality scientists and engineers, you know. And we still lead the world in many ways. But where we’ve identified as a problem is who has those opportunities to go into those fields. You know, it used to be a very select, a very male-dominated, white male-dominated field. Right? And other people didn’t have the opportunity, or they were shown the way out pretty early. And we, I think, have come to realize as a country that, you know, the, the greater the diversity of thought that we can get into these discussions, the more innovative we can be and the more productive as a society we can be. And so I think we’ve had this shift in the country to, instead of thinking about just the quality for the select few, but to be thinking about the quality for everyone. And so that makes it seem like some of these challenges are greater than they used to be. And I think they’re different challenges, right? We’ve evolved as a society and I think schools have evolved.
Eric Cross (27:40):
There is a conversation I was in on a plane with a person who was a materials manager for a company that made the adhesive for sandpaper. And we were flying…I was flying to Denmark and he was flying to some other Scandinavian country. And we were just talking about it. And he came from another industry, and somehow the conversation led to science. I don’t know how that happened. But somehow I just started talking about science and I asked him about, Eric, kind of what you said about the US kind of leading the way in science innovation versus the rest of the world. And I asked him why. And he said one of the reasons why is because the heterogeneous thought. The different groups of people that are coming to a problem actually create more innovative and novel solutions. Versus when it’s more homogeneous. And everyone’s either culturally or just for whatever reason, kind of thinks a certain way. While they might have a more efficient way, the variety of solutions are not as varied and not as novel. I was reminded of that story based on what you just said. So it’s really interesting. So it seems to be that it benefits if we have more heterogeneous groups, more folks who are contributing to STEM, because that’s gonna be solving the next problem more efficiently. Or I guess maybe in my head it seems like the next we need…we do really well when we have a dragon to slay. I mean, it seems like we come together when that’s the case, right? Like, I dunno.
Eric R. Banilower (29:06):
No, I think that’s…I think that’s accurate.
Eric Cross (29:09):
Later on the season of the podcast, we’re gonna explore ways to better integrate science with other subjects like literacy and math. Were you able to study at all any more integrated approaches to science instruction? Does any of your research support that approach?
Courtney Plumley (29:25):
Not on the national survey, we didn’t study that. And it’s something that we’ve talked about before, because it’s difficult to get teachers to…we were talking about instructional time. It’s hard for teachers to put a number on it when they’re integrating, because, you know, it’s not like I have my science block from 3 to 3:30 anymore. Now it’s kind of scattered about. But it’s something that has been in the ether. We’ve been looking at it in a couple of projects. So there’s some evidence that it can be effective, especially for getting more, you know…the idea is you can get more time for science if you are integrating with other subjects. But one thing to kind of caution is like, students need to have opportunities to learn each discipline when they’re doing integrated instruction. So you don’t wanna just have, like, math in your science. Kids already know to just, like, support it. Then it’s hard to take time from math to put it into science when they’re not actually learning anything new. That’s the easy thing to do, though, is say, “Oh, my kids already know how to measure. We did that in a previous unit. So now we’ll we’ll do it as part of our science instruction.” So it’s a lot of work to make it so they’re learning something new, mathematics and science, at the same time. And it’s not really something that we think that teachers should be having to do on their own, with all the other things that teachers have to do. The last thing they need to do is be creating their own, you know, curriculum. Something that’s already…you know, it’s not straightforward. So we’ve been talking about it, we think it’s really something that instructional materials maybe need to be focusing on instead of teachers having to do that on their own,
Eric Cross (31:01):
Teachers would implement it, but asking them to create it is a whole different thing, and it’s a huge ask.
Courtney Plumley (31:08):
Yes.
Eric Cross (31:08):
Yeah. And, did I hear you right? So the ideal situation would’ve been the students learning a newer math concept, but embedded in a science kind of context? Or was that the better way? Versus, “I’m gonna take a math concept they already know and then just put it into the science setting?”
Courtney Plumley (31:26):
Well, if the idea is that you can get more science time if you’re, you know, integrating things, so you can maybe take time away from a specific math block by putting it with science, or whatever, then if the math is something that the kids already know, now you’re just taking away. I think that that has to be new in both cases, in order to justify having more time.
Eric Cross (31:49):
Right. Eric, in the secondary level, any thoughts on that? On integrating these disciplines together?
Eric R. Banilower (31:56):
I think, you know, just like at the elementary level, it can be challenging to do it well. When I taught, I taught my last couple years in a kind of school-within-a-school kind of situation, where our goal was to try to integrate science, mathematics, and language arts. And it’s hard to do that in a meaningful way. And we did not have curriculum materials given to us to help us do this. We were trying to figure out how to do this on our own, while we were teaching 200 kids a day in our subjects. Right? And five preparations. And you know, it’s a big ask of any teacher. And there are teachers who thrive on this and are great at this. And, you know, that’s one thing I wanna, make clear: our data is about the system, and we are former teachers. Almost everyone who works at Horizon is a former teacher. We have the greatest respect for teachers and what they do. And what our data is showing is are kind of like areas where the system isn’t providing teachers and their students the opportunities to do great things. I think at the high school level, there has been this idea of project-based learning where students are bringing together different skills, different ideas from across disciplines. And I think there’s, again, a lot of potential in doing that. But trying to develop those experiences so that they are doing service to the different subjects, so students are learning what they’re supposed to learn in English Language Arts, that they’re learning, important mathematics, and that this is in a science context, where they are getting to do and understand what science is and how science, as a discipline, operates…that’s just a really hard thing to develop.
Eric Cross (33:53):
So what I’m hearing—and I really appreciate the nuance in this, because it’s not a simple “Yes. Integrated is better,”—I’m hearing “Yes. Quality control.” “Yes. It needs to be written not by teachers; they’re the practitioners.” It’s “Yes. And,” not just simply binary. Which…it’s so easy to wanna chunk things and say yes or no on things. But this one seems a much more nuanced approach. And in a future episode, you mentioned project-based learning, we’re gonna try and talk to people who have thoughts on this. And I really appreciate that you talked about project-based learning, because also, how do you evaluate that? How do you evaluate whether or not it is high quality? Is this is something I see? You know, high-quality standards, highest quality science teaching, highly qualified teachers. It’s something that I see often. Now, based on all your research, this is kind of the 30,000-foot view. What advice might you have for people who are thinking about changing the way science is taught in this country? Which hasn’t changed since 1977, at least since we’ve been measuring it. Any advice for people who do want to act? Another way to ask, it might be, if you were given a magic wand, <laugh>, you have all power, what might you do if you can control the entire vertical system?
Eric R. Banilower (35:07):
Yeah, so a clarification, I do think science instruction has changed. It has evolved. I think there’s a lot of really good things going on in different pockets of the country. One of the challenges is bringing those good ideas and good practices to scale. Right? There are approximately 1.2 million teachers of science K–12 in this country. That’s a lot of people. And about 80% of those are elementary teachers who are responsible for teaching other subjects as well. So my thinking is often about, “How do we take what we know and that we’ve learned through decades of research is effective, and impact a large number of teachers, and therefore a large number of students?” And you know, Courtney I think has hinted at this already. And you’ve mentioned it too, Eric, is that teaching is a profession, right? And it’s a craft. But in no other profession do practitioners have the expectation that they’re developing their own tools and methods for their work. I know when I was in my teacher preparation program, and it’s still extremely common, one of the assignments perspective teachers are given is to develop a unit and develop a lesson, right? You don’t have doctors being asked to develop new treatments and new tests to use. Their job is to get to know their patient, assess what’s going on, and then using research-based methods to develop a plan of action, right? And I think that analogy works really well in education and is a way that we could have a scalable approach for kind of raising the floor across the country for the quality of science education. Giving teachers research-based materials, high-quality instructional materials, that they can then use and adapt to meet the needs of their students, would allow them to focus on getting to know their students, seeing what their strengths are, seeing where they have room for growth, and using the materials they’re given to help those students progress. And I think that is definitely a way where we could have a big impact at a large scale.
Eric Cross (37:39):
Courtney, same question: Magic wand, all power. You can change systems from the elementary perspective. What would you do? I’m assuming part of it’s gonna be changing that 18 to 20 minute time. But even for that to happen, what would you do? What would you change?
Courtney Plumley (37:57):
Well, I don’t know. Like, for it to change, I don’t know the answer to that. But yes, increasing the time would be great. And like Eric was saying, giving teachers— ’cause again, I’m coming in, not enough probably background in science—and then, you know, when I was, when I was teaching, we had one set of textbooks for the entire grade. Six classes, right? Like, share them. But third graders aren’t gonna read textbooks anyway, right? So instead I’m going to the teacher store. I’m pulling things off the shelf. And like, “OK, yeah, sure, I’ll use this.” And nowadays, teachers are going to Teachers Pay Teachers or whatever. Because I didn’t have anything good to use. So like Eric is saying, if I had instructional materials that were good instructional materials that were gonna teach my kids, that they were gonna be engaged, that they weren’t sitting and listening to science, but they were doing science, you know, and I had professional development to actually help me do it? That’s what I think we need to have. And I mean, I know there are some people out there that are working on that, but it’s not a lot. I mean, if you look at Ed Reports, they rate how well-aligned science curriculum are to standards. And there are two right now that have Ed Reports green lights. There’s Amplify and there’s OpenSciEd. You know, so there’s not much out there for teachers to use. And, so it’s hard. It’s hard. Where am I gonna go and get this stuff if it doesn’t exist? And so I’m making it up by myself. Which we already said is not the best use of teachers’ time, when they’ve got so many other demands on their time.
Eric Cross (39:27):
Eric and Courtney, listening to both of your responses, it created a visual in my mind. And Eric, I loved your analogy of…I started thinking of a chef, a welder, and a farmer. And I thought about the chef saying like, “You’re a great chef! Now, can you go farm, and make your own food, so that you can cook it?” Or the welder who has to make his own welding tools and go smelting. You know, making the different rods. I’m not a welder. But you know, all those different parts. Or the farmer who has to build his own tractor and innovate all that stuff. You’re absolutely right, the way you articulated that. And then Courtney, you essentially said, “Give them the tools and then teach them how to use it so they can go and actually be effective with it, because you’re in front of kids doing so many different things.” There’s only so much time in the day, and teachers want to do these things; they want to, but you end up having to triage when you’re asked to. Going back to Eric’s analogy, if you’re in the ER, but you’re also creating the vaccines and you’re also doing the research on which types of vaccines are gonna be the most effective, that’s, that’s a lot to ask. And so, I appreciate both your responses on that. Now, last question, what are you both working on now? This report came out in 2018. What’s, what’s next on the horizon? Actually literally, that’s no pun intended. <laugh> What’s next? <laugh> What’s next for, for you both? What are you working on?
Eric R. Banilower (40:42):
Well, you know, we would love to do another national survey, in a few years. We have to get funding to do it. And you know, that’s always something that takes effort and isn’t a guarantee. We’ve written grants to do these studies in the past, and there’s also the dealing with the reality of the situation. I think a lot of schools, still coming off the tail end of dealing with Covid, are overwhelmed. And we’ve had a hard time, I mentioned before, recruiting schools, and it gets harder every time, just ’cause they have so much on their plate. And I couldn’t see going to a school now and saying, “Hey, one more thing. Do you mind?” So I think we have to kind of wait a little bit for things to settle down before we can do another one of these studies. It just doesn’t seem feasible right now. But we’d love to in the not-too-distant future. Other than that, Courtney and I actually work on some projects together and some projects not together. One of the things that we’re working on together is a study of a fifth grade science curriculum that was developed by Okhee Lee at NYU and her colleagues, that is both aligned with the NGSS and purposely designed to support multilingual learners in developing both their science knowledge and skills as well as their language skills. And we’ve been working with the crew at NYU to study this curriculum and try to figure out, how well it’s working and under what circumstances. So that’s been a really interesting project that’s going on right now.
Courtney Plumley (42:26):
I recently worked on a report with the Carnegie Corporation in New York that actually I think, compliments what we’ve been talking about a lot. It’s about the status of K–12 education in the US—or science education in the US! <Laugh>—and so as part of that report we interviewed like 50 science education experts across the country. We surveyed teachers, people in the university settings, researchers, and everything to kind of get a little bit more update of the state of science education right now. And so a lot of the things we’ve been talking about, we still are talking about with the people in this report four years later. So, work in progress. <Laugh>
Eric Cross (43:09):
And again, going back to 1977, based on what Eric was saying earlier, we’re looking at these large systems, these systemic changes don’t happen overnight.
Eric R. Banilower (43:20):
That’s right.
Eric Cross (43:21):
It’s very slow-moving.
Eric R. Banilower (43:22):
That’s right. I would say there is progress. I think we’ve learned a lot. We are getting better. Are we there yet? No, we’re not happy with where we are. But I think, you know, I think it’s important to be hopeful about the direction things are going in.
Eric Cross (43:37):
Well-said. I agree. Courtney. Eric, thank you so much for unpacking that report that speaks to, that validates what so many teachers across the country are experiencing. And thank you for your advocacy for high-quality science education and your passion for supporting teachers and being that voice from a data-driven perspective of what teachers experience and then advocating for solutions for them. It’s super-encouraging for me, and I know it’s gonna be really encouraging for a lot of our listeners. So thank you.
Eric R. Banilower (44:10):
Thank you for having us.
Courtney Plumley (44:12):
Yeah. Thank you, Eric.
Eric Cross (44:15):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Eric Banilower, Vice President of Horizon Research, and Courtney Plumley, Senior Researcher at Horizon Research. For much more, check out the show notes for a link to the 2018 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education. And please remember to subscribe to Science Connections wherever you get podcasts, so that you’re not missing any of the upcoming episodes in Season three. Next time on the show, we’re gonna start laying out the road map for using science more effectively. And we’ll start by looking at the how and the why of integrating literacy instruction.
Susan Gomez Zwiep (44:49):
When we look at Science First and build language development around it, the experience tends to be more authentic and organic.
Eric Cross (44:58):
That’s next time on Science Connections: The Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
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Meet the guests
Eric R. Banilower is a Vice President at Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI), and has worked in education for over 30 years. Eric was previously a high school physics and physical science teacher before he joined HRI in 1997, where he has worked on a number of research and evaluation projects. Most recently, he has been the Principal Investigator of the 2012 and 2018 iterations of the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education, a nationally representative survey focusing on the status of the K–12 STEM education system.
Courtney Plumley is a Senior Researcher at Horizon Research, Inc. She began her career in education as an elementary school teacher before starting at HRI in 2009. In her time at HRI she has worked on many K-12 STEM research and evaluation projects. Most recently, Ms. Plumley has worked with Carnegie Corporation of New York on mapping the landscape of K-12 science education in the US and is managing the field test for the OpenSciEd elementary materials.
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.
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S1-06: Supporting students with a creative twist: A conversation with Kentucky Science Teacher of the Year, Shad Lacefield
In this episode, Eric sits down with the Kentucky Science Teacher of the Year, Shad Lacefield. Shad shares his experience teaching during the first year of the pandemic, where Shad dressed up in over 100 costumes to create a unique and engaging online learning experience for his students. Shad also explains ways he connects with his students to celebrate student success, as well as large-scale efforts he leads within his school to cultivate the love of learning science content. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.
Shad Lacefield (00:00):
When you stay relevant, it’s being engaged with your students and figuring out, or what are, what are they liking? And every year it’s gonna be different. And that helps you stay relevant. When you have conversations and you build relationships with your kids,Eric Cross (00:13):
Welcome to science connections. I’m your host. Eric Cross. My guest today is Shad Layfield. Shad is a teacher at garden Springs elementary and a part-time professor at Asbury University in Kentucky during the first year of the pandemic, Mr. Layfield dressed up in over a hundred costumes to create a unique and engaging online learning experience for his students. He also created Vader visits, where he visited students at their homes, dressed as Darth Vader to celebrate their online successes and keep them encouraged. During a challenging time. In this episode, we discuss how creativity impacts engagement, transferring lessons learned from distance teaching back to in-person instruction, and how upper grades can apply the same principles to improve student learning. I hope you enjoy this discussion with shad lays field. So you’ve been in fourth grade for four years, and then you were in second grade and fifth grade. And so like how long have you been teaching for like total?
Shad Lacefield (01:09):
So this is my 15th year teaching.
Eric Cross (01:12):
Really? Yeah. You’ve been in the game for a while.
Shad Lacefield (01:15):
Yeah. Yep. It, it doesn’t, and it’s always surprising to parents too during that, that first like, come in and meet your teacher. And I walk in, I’m like, yeah, I’ve been teaching for 15 years and every time it gets ’em, they’re like no way. And I’m like, yeah,
Eric Cross (01:28):
That’s, that’s a good thing though. That’s a good thing. Right?
Eric Cross (01:31):
You know? So like, well the energy and then, and you’re just how you’re perceived. Like you’re, they’re just, I don’t know. It’s something about work with young people. Like it keeps you young.
Shad Lacefield (01:39):
That’s what it is. Absolutely.
Eric Cross (01:41):
So how did, how, like, what’s your origin story? Like, how did you become a teacher? Like what, what was it? Was it something like you knew second career, like right outta school? Like how did you end up in the classroom?
Shad Lacefield (01:53):
Yeah. No, and I love this question cause I’m a big Marvel and, and superhero. So origin stories are all, I love a good origin story. So I grew up on a 13 acre farm in a little bitty town called Gustin, Kentucky, and very early on, like we were instilled my parents, amazing, amazing parents. But they really instilled like a, a super important work ethic in our lives of like, it’s, it’s all about hard work and it’s important that you’re working hard in whatever it is that you do. And I’m one of six kids as well in my family.
Eric Cross (02:24):
Where are you in the–
Shad Lacefield (02:25):
I’m second to last.
Eric Cross (02:26):
Second to last. Okay. So you’re the second youngest.
Shad Lacefield (02:29):
Yes. Okay. And and so, and so growing up, like with that, like, you know, I worked in tobacco, I worked in hay, you know, we did things being on the farm and stuff like that. And within my family as well, there’s four boys. And so when I decided to go to college I was the first guy in my family to go to college. And the first and only boy that ended up going to college. And so it was like this big deal, like, oh, you know, we got one of our boys gonna go to college. So what is he gonna be? And I was like, well, if I’m gonna put forth the, the time and effort and then the financial strain that it would cause cuz we were not poor at all. My dad worked two jobs to make sure, but I really felt the responsibility of like, if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna work in a profession.
Shad Lacefield (03:09):
That’s gonna make a lot of money. And here I am as a teacher now. So I didn’t go to college to be a teacher. I actually was pre dentistry. I thought, now here’s a profession. You can, a lot of money. You don’t work weekends or holidays, you know, I can still be the doctor thing. And so I’m gonna be pre dentistry. But like all good origin stories. There was a, there was a flip. So in my first year I started working at the most majestic place that you will ever go. It’s called Squire, boon, caverns. It’s a cave in Southern Indiana. And it’s an amazingly beautiful little place. You have to like one lane highway, like road to go back there up and down. Like you, you think you’re never gonna make it. And if it rains too much, the bridge will flood and you actually can’t even get back there.
Shad Lacefield (03:52):
So that’s how we’re talking like way back in the sticks. But once you get back, back there totally worth it. And as part of the job you were a tour I also did grist mill demonstrations and gym mining adventures, or, you know, as they’re gym mining and stuff like that. And within that, I started working with school aged kids and on very large tours and stuff. And my manager at the time, Claudia, I’m still great friends with and we still take our kids back there. Every summer she, to me, you’re really good with kids. Like you’re really good with kids. We have this scout program that’s on the weekends. And then during the summers and you would be teaching kindergarten through eighth grade kids, geology and forestry. What do you think about doing that? And I said, well, right, let’s try that out. And then I got the teaching bug and it hit and I was like, oh my gosh, like I don’t wanna spend my life doing something that is all about money or, or that is like, this is where it’s at. Like, I love this, I enjoy this. I enjoy the response that I get when I’m talking. And kids are excited about learning and getting new information and learning new stuff. And so then I change my major and here I am now, all these years later teaching instead of being a dentist,
Eric Cross (05:04):
Are there, are there days, do you ever have days where you’re like, you know, dentistry, it’s still an option. Like I can, I can go back.
Shad Lacefield (05:12):
Oh, rare, rare occasions. Rarely. Yeah.
Eric Cross (05:16):
Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. Fair enough. I, I, I always joke and say that like we have, you know, sometimes I have my, my alternate job on the hard days, which is for me, it’s working at the gap where I just want to fold clothes and go home at the end of the day, you know, on those really rough days. And you know, it’s never the kids, right. It’s always other things. The kids are like the great part. And then there’s all these other things. And I just wanna work at the gap. I just wanna work at the gap. Fold some clothes. Yes, sir. Yes. Ma’am absolutely. I can find that size for you. And then I just go home cause about their job when they go home at the end of the day, when you work at the gap, at least sorry, gap workers. I’m sure hard of that, but my perception in my mind is that you close up shop and then you’re done. Yeah,
Shad Lacefield (05:52):
Absolutely. Like you said, they can turn it, like it’s a turnoff at the end. Exactly. As teachers we know, like you don’t ever turn it off, it’s always there.
Eric Cross (06:00):
Yeah. So one of the things that I was super excited about when I, when I first heard about you is I went on your website and there’s so many things I feel like I can just talk about your website and just the, the content that you’ve produced. I, I, there’s so many directions I can go. But one, one of the things I want to ask you is, is about that. Now, one of the things that’s on there, and this is coming from a fellow star wars, Fisha who finished Bobba FET and the Mandalorian recently and is Jones in four OB one to come out.
Shad Lacefield (06:33):
Oh, so yes,
Eric Cross (06:35):
I live in Southern California next to Disneyland visited Galaxy’s edge star wars. You have these things called VA Vader visits. And so what do you do in those? And like, where did you get the idea for these Vader visits?
Shad Lacefield (06:50):
So the costumes were bringing the kids into the classroom. But when they left my room because you would, we only had them for a certain amount of time. There was still a lot of extra work that they needed to get done. And what I was seeing was I could get them to come in and they were really engaged during my lesson. But then afterwards, when it came to work completion or getting things done, there was, it was starting to fall off. As you know, we were experiencing, you know, more and more craziness of what’s going on. So then as an incentive, I decided if you have everything turned in, by the end of the day, I’m gonna dress up in my Darth Vader outfit, full costume, the, you know, the, the full helmet, like everything. And I’m gonna show up to your house and we’re gonna hang out and play any game at all that you wanna play.
Shad Lacefield (07:34):
So then it was a way of rewarding. My kids for getting everything turned in. But same time I felt like it would also help me build a relationship with them. That was a very challenging part of online learning. Like, again, I want you to feel like you’re a part of my classroom. I wanna feel like I’m invested in you and wanna learn about you. And it was a commitment because some of those kids put me through the ringer, whether it was we’re gonna do gymnastics on a trampoline. And again, I’m in full costume doing gymnast on the trampoline, or we’re doing soccer drills with their soccer coach at their house playing football games. I mean, all kinds of stuff. I made a Yachty game for a kid that loves Harry Potter. And it was really a big part of getting work turned in because, and it’s the crazy thought they wanted to spend time with me. Like that’s what it was. And so it was like, yeah, absolutely. I’ll keep dressing up. I did over 50 plus Vater visits. It wasn’t just for my homeroom. It was for all of fourth grade. So I went over 50 visits and it was cool to see kids in their home and talk to them and meet their parents. It was a great opportunity for me to engage with parents as well. How is online learning, going, what can I do to support you? Do you guys have any questions and stuff like that? So
Eric Cross (08:39):
This thing of relationships is like leading to work completion, which isn’t, which isn’t always the, the thing that we think to as educators of like how, you know, work completion. A lot of times we think of like structures or you know, certain protocols that you do in class get work completion, but here you are addressing as Darth Vader. And, and you said students were turning in more work because they’re connected to, you saw an increase in, in yeah. Engagement.
Shad Lacefield (09:07):
And absolutely. And, and I remember even saying that to myself, like this is, this is what’s getting them. But it, it was, and as part of the Vader visit as well with the videos we recorded all of them and I said, I’m gonna make you a YouTube star. And so I would, I, I recorded them. I put ’em on my YouTube channel. And so a lot of the videos that are on my website, all those Vader visits are like the kids showing off and playing against the teacher. And I promise you, I didn’t take it easy on any one of those kids. Like when it was like a verse match, I went all out and I told ’em. I was like, if you beat me, you know, it’s gonna be like, you earned it.
Eric Cross (09:38):
What a great way to leverage, just what, what is relevant to our students? Like you used your platform and then now you’re showcasing them on your, you know, your platform or what you were using. And then they’re seeing each other. And I could just see, regardless of the grade level, like just students, like beam from, from getting that kind of positive praise through, through, you know a medium that doesn’t, that tends to be more of a, just content consumption, but you’re kind of watching other folks do stuff, but now it’s about them. Like, and they’re, they’re getting that attention directly. Now I have to ask about the Vader costume. Did you, did you buy it for this event or did you already have that Darth Vader costume in your closet?
Shad Lacefield (10:19):
I had parts of the costume, but not the complete costume. And honestly, the very first Vader visit I had, I had the Vader mask that makes sounds, and like you could talk and it makes you sound like Vader.
Eric Cross (10:29):
My dark saber is on order. Yes. And it keeps getting delayed from best buy. It’s supposed to arrive in April, but I do have dark staple and order that I ordered back in November. So the best to your point, I don’t know who doesn’t have one, I’m waiting for mine though.
Shad Lacefield (10:42):
There you go, come on. Best buy come through for us. So
Eric Cross (10:44):
You, you did all this investment in time and, and you created all this content, but then we went back in person. Were, were you able to bring this back into the classroom or any of the things that you had generated during distance learning back in the classroom? Or are you, are you using some of the things that you learned? Like what, or is it just completely separate and you’re just doing something completely different. Now
Shad Lacefield (11:04):
That’s a great question. So I still try to dress up at least once every week, if not once every other week just to make whatever we’re doing fun, cuz I already have costumes that were connected to the content that I was doing. So had I had made a character called captain Soundwave that will use when I’m teaching my amplify lessons over sound. And so then I, you know, I have that or I would have, you know, specific characters that were designed for certain lessons that I would do. And so I still
Eric Cross (11:32):
Lemme interrupt you real quick. Where did you get these character ideas from? Cause they are super creative. I clicked on one random one. And you have had like a, a knitted like skull cap and like some blue shiny like cloak and I like who is this guy? I think, is that him? Is that captain sound wave? That’s
Shad Lacefield (11:48):
That’s hilarious. That was, that was my attempted Elsa. Oh, that was yeah. Started buying more and more costumes and and making characters and putting costumes together. And so yeah, it just ends up being this thing where you never know when I’m gonna show up in a completely random costume and be like today, we’re getting ready to learn about how sedimentary rocks form. And I dressed in my rock outfit, which is the old school rock with the turtleneck and the gold chain with,
Eric Cross (12:16):
Wait, do you have a Fanny pack too?
Shad Lacefield (12:17):
I have a Fanny pack. Yes you have. Yep. You nailed it. And they’re like, what does this guy
Eric Cross (12:22):
Do? He raise the one eyebrow. Can you do the, the rock eyebrow? Oh yeah, you got this. Oh, people on the podcast. Can’t see. Chad’s got it down. He’s got it down. He’s got the, he’s got the eyebrow going. Okay, so you, so I feel like I can go on a tangent and talk about all your costumes that you have, but the thinking about this. So tons of engagement, younger people now taking like some of the principles that you’ve learned from this, how can, how can upper grades like bring this joy to their classroom? Like middle school students, you know, older kids sometimes, you know, they can, they’re still kids, but you know, they might not be the same thing as fourth graders. Like would you, do you have any ideas of like how teachers and upper grades can kind of take these elements that you’ve done and, and apply them?
Shad Lacefield (13:04):
Absolutely. So some of the things that you had talked about, like with YouTube can also be applied to like TikTok videos and things like that, that kids are, are willing to watch and, and be engaged in. And so those things, I feel like I’ve seen other middle and high school teachers really utilize in their classroom. But honestly, and this is a new initiative that we’ve started in our district. Minecraft has been something that a lot of kids play and are really engaged in and has shown an amazing engagement for all of our kids when it comes to science engagement, particularly. And so with that, so there’s 126 million active Minecraft players right now in the world. And Minecraft is one of the largest selling video games. The average age, cuz they’re always like, oh, Minecraft is for kids who actually the average age is like 24.
Shad Lacefield (13:51):
So a lot of the older kids are playing Minecraft as well with the younger kids. And with that in mind, it was a way when I looked at Minecraft and specifically like Minecraft educational edition came out and it was during COVID and it was free. So if you had a school email or it’s like the, what the go 365 account, you could get it for free and all of our kids got it for free. And so then, then we went from playing Minecraft on the computer as like a fun game to me looking at it and saying like, wait a minute. I feel like when I’m doing energy conversions, we can take Redstone and Minecraft and kids can now show how a simple system using different parts and devices can work and understand even more con creates how energy is converted from one form to another.
Shad Lacefield (14:39):
And so let’s make this a, a, a, an actual activity. Let’s take what I’m teaching in the classroom. And if they get done early as an enrichment piece, because there’s not a ton of science and enrichment activities at times for kids to be able to do, like, what do I do when I’m done, Minecraft ended up being that. And so I could have these elaborate worlds that I would build for them that they could then go and play and be super engaged in and show me way more on this Minecraft world, what they knew than what they were writing on paper sometimes, cuz I, you know, you’d get like a sentences out of them on paper, but then all of a sudden when they would build this elaborate system and you just had them record and talk, it was like, oh my gosh, you understand way more than I was thinking that you did with that last exit slip, an assessment that we did.
Shad Lacefield (15:25):
And so like, this is awesome. So then I went to my district and I actually proposed an idea what if we did tire Minecraft build challenges for the whole district? So our district has 37 elementary schools and I was like, I think this could be something that, you know, as we’re looking for science, curriculum engagement and making kids excited about learning science and stuff again, cuz that was always the hard part. I feel like sometimes with COVID everything kids lost this love of, of being in the classroom and, and, and learning and that it was like, you know, getting them to come back into the classroom and, and finding, learning fun again. It was like this, this started to get ’em excited and like, yeah, I get to play in Minecraft and I’m learning at the same time. And it was working for all kinds of content areas.
Shad Lacefield (16:07):
We’re doing a blast off to, to Mars. We it’s called blast off to us. We’re partnering with CLO of the future. They’re working with SpaceX. Our kids will actually get to send postcards to space and yes, it’s, it’s a super cool thing. And I love my district and all of the office of technology, individuals, Ashley Josh and Kelly for putting this together. And so it asks this question if you could a community in space, what would it be like? And the goal is that kids will write on the back what they want. And then we send this postcard off to space, they stamp it saying it’s been in space and the kids get to have it back and, and be able to use it. But what, what we decided, what we could do with Minecraft is what if they actually built the colony on Mars, like really research put time and effort into reading scientific articles about plants and how plants would grow and, and water and, and structures and apply all of that in a massive build challenge. And then that be, you know what we’re doing? That can be the answer to the question. And so it’s not just a couple sentences on a postcard, but it’s like a week or two week unit that pulls all this scientific content and standards that we’re working with and really allows kids to show so much creativity like on my Twitter I’ve been posting like pictures and stuff like that of some of the students builds. And I’m gonna continue to do that throughout the build challenge.
Eric Cross (17:26):
Now, are you using Minecraft EDU?
Shad Lacefield (17:28):
Yes. That is correct.
Eric Cross (17:29):
I love Minecraft EDU. Like it, it, you talking about it inspires me to, to try to dive back into it. One of the things sometimes I feel limited by is the time that I have and the things that we’re trying to cover. And it’s almost, it almost feels like we’re doing something wrong using a video game to teach, but it’s such a great educational tool. Like you said, you just said that students are able to show what they know in, in a way by creating something that’s different than if they would’ve just written it, but they’re actually creating, and this is one of the things, I guess you kind of hit on this, but I wanted to probe it a little more. Is do you have your students creating content like you do? Cause I kind of heard that they, you were, did you say that they were explaining or doing a video recording or describing it? How are they, how are they, how are they doing that work?
Shad Lacefield (18:17):
Yeah. So what they actually do is they’ll write a script and they will use Screencastify to record and then upload to Flipgrid. And then that way they can actually show their build to all of fourth grade. Since we weren’t allowed to be in the same class, like we were all departmentalized, so then we will have voting challenges. So after you record, you get to see everyone’s videos, you get to like and comment and leave feedback on their builds. So you can see what the other kids created. And then then from those initial videos and voting, we selected a certain of kids that then go on to the district level for our Minecraft build challenge. And then those videos are viewed by administration and other teachers to vote again. And then you end up having grade level winners and then an overall winner, which shout out to my boy in fourth grade, who was our overall winner, Eli, super proud of him.
Shad Lacefield (19:07):
He, he made this really, really space saving system, which was hidden stairs that ran off of Redstone and used motion, energy. And again, in his video, he talks about like how motion energy has changed to electrical energy and then back into motion through the process of how this hidden staircase would be in the wall. And then you’d be able to use this lever to then release that staircase. So you could go up and down but it was just, and again, when you, when you let kids talk about energy conversions and you let them build all of a sudden, you have kids making security systems for banks. Another kid that made a feeding system for kids for animals at the zoo, and it was just like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that this was what you guys could run out and do. When I, when I taught you how energy conversions work, that this is what you could produce and come over, like this is mind blowing. I love it,
Eric Cross (19:56):
What our kids can do and what they can create always kind of blows us away when we give them an opportunity to kind of have that freedom to, to create and take their knowledge and actually do something with it versus channel it into what, show me what, you know, but only do it like this. This is, this is the lane that you have to stay in. How do you get these ideas and, and stay, stay relevant? Like so many of the things like you’re touching, like pop culture, you, you have this hand in education technology, you have you’re, you’re doing video editing. Like where are you drawing from? Cause I’m just thinking like, as a teacher listening to this, that might be newer. And they go to the side like, oh my gosh, this, this guy is doing these so many things like where are you drawing from for inspiration or ideas?
Shad Lacefield (20:39):
I think a lot of it is like you say, when, when you stay relevant, it’s being engaged with your students and figuring out, or what are, what are they liking? And every year it’s gonna be different. And that helps you stay relevant. When you have conversations and you build relationships with your kids to figure out, you know, what’s going on. Because I was not a big Minecraft person. It was the group that came in that really challenged me to do Minecraft because it, it showed up on their Chromebooks one day and all of a sudden it’s like, oh, we can play Minecraft all the time. And I said, no, you can’t play Minecraft until that I’ve had training. And I know what’s going on because I’m super nervous about this new thing. And I wanna make sure you guys aren’t doing something that you’re not supposed to.
Shad Lacefield (21:13):
And like, they hounded me hardcore about you better do you need to do that training, Mr. Lacefield, you need to, we wanna play Minecraft. You better be doing this. Right. And so I was like, all right, man, I’ll, I’ll invest. I’ll, I’ll put some time into this training. And I’m so glad that I did yeah, again, that’s it just like building relationships and having those conversations help you realize like, what’s, what’s what are they interested in? What what’s going on and what would be really funny, even connecting that back to the costumes. What would it be really funny if I showed up in you know, today, princess Jasmine.
Eric Cross (21:42):
Yeah.
Shad Lacefield (21:43):
Been yes. Done that. That’s a great one. I,
Eric Cross (21:45):
I, I just went to the social studies page. I, and I stop laughing while you were talking. Cause I saw the princess Jasmine.
Shad Lacefield (21:52):
Oh yeah. Folks.
Eric Cross (21:53):
I’m telling you, you have to go, you have to go to his videos and see what he’s done. I mean, they’re just, they’re just amazing with my middle school students. They, I, I find myself having to be into things that I’m not normally into. And we have these intergenerational relationships, right? Like I think teachers are unique in this I aspect where I can connect with a 12 year old with what 12 year olds are in no matter where this 12 year old’s from. Cuz I get 12 year old culture. But sometimes when I go back into my adult world, like I forget that like, Hey yeah, haven’t watched a new anime you know, or, or whatever, you know, up
Shad Lacefield (22:26):
That. Yeah. No said too. And a kid will show up wearing a, a shirt to school and I’m like, I wasn’t the world’s that like, I’ve never even seen that before. And you’re like, okay, I’m gonna have to learn what that is cuz that yeah.
Eric Cross (22:38):
And then the next student asks you about, Hey, do you like, do you like these this game? I’m like, yeah, yeah, let me go Google that game real quick. Yeah, I’m totally into it. I’m downloading on my phone real quick. And, and now I’m connected to all kinds of obscure random interests, but to your, to what you said, it like, it helps keep us fresh, right? With I, with ideas, there, there is something that is super practical that you’ve done that you’ve created that I’ve encouraged teachers to do. And I think you really nailed it. On your site, you have these video tutorials. When I look at those, I, I think about how much time you must have saved yourself of not having to explain the same exact thing multiple times. Because you’ve created this virtual help section that allows students to log in amplify earth, check, Flipgrid, whatever. Like do you, when you’re, when you’re teaching students, do you, do you use those in direct students there so they can kind of support themselves? Or is that, what, how did that come to be when you, when you made these, these virtual tools? Because I could just imagine these are time savers for you.
Shad Lacefield (23:49):
Absolutely. Cuz again, like you said, it’s it saves on time. So a lot of when you have kids that are already visual learners as well, and they love watching YouTube and they learn stuff from YouTube, why not? I mean, make the video and then attach it to my Google classroom, keeping everything online. Everyone always has access. And by still having those videos, it allows kids to hear the directions multiple time, but on their time and at their pace. So then it’s posted on the assignment. So even though I probably still will give those directions verbally out loud if a kid forgets and maybe they feel a little nervous about asking in front of their peers, like, oh, how do I do this again? Or, oh, I don’t remember how to do that. That video is linked on there. So that way they can go back and watch it.
Eric Cross (24:28):
It’s almost like a little co-teacher that you have like a little aide that’s like, but it’s you, but it’s like a mini you who’s helping you out. I found that putting sometimes those tutorial videos on ed puzzle, where at different points in time, you can set it up so that at a certain timestamp, it asks a question and you can control it. So they can’t move faster past it until they respond to the question and you have the question be about whatever you just said. And then it, it syncs with Google classroom. So you can import all the grades and you can see how far through the video they got. But that was one other layer that I was able to do. So I can have some accountability and make sure that okay, everybody watched it and they answered all five questions of like, how do you do this?
Shad Lacefield (25:07):
Oh, see, now you’re sharing stuff with me, Eric, because I, I’m not as familiar with ed puzzle. I’ve used like near pod and per deck, but I mean just you saying that I’m like, okay, I need to check out ed puzzle and, and see what, what this is all about. Cause that sounds awesome.
Eric Cross (25:20):
Hey, I shared something with Chad and it it’s useful. I’m I’m feeling good right now. I’m feel I’m feeling good. So as we, as we kind of wind down one, couple questions I wanna ask. One of ’em is you’ve been in teaching for, for 15 years and I, I talk to you like right now and I get this energy and this vibe that’s just so upbeat, so positive. How do you stay fresh, fresh. And how did you stay fresh during a time when things have been so hard, you know, and it, and still is for so many educators, how do you stay encouraged? Like what, what have you done and, and to stay in, in education for, for this long,
Shad Lacefield (26:00):
I think it, it even goes back to like when I made my initial decision to switch my major to education, like I, I really felt like I found so thing that I thoroughly loved and enjoyed, and I always feel like you go through seasons. Like, and I definitely, when, when COVID hit, like you went through a season of where you start to feel again, that pressure like do I really like doing this as much as I thought that I like doing this and am I ready for this next thing? And then I just go back to just the, well, why did I do this to begin with? And, and it gets me, you know, excited to be like, I did it for the kids, like, and it’s about the kids. And I get joy when they’re laughing and smiling. So again, with the videos, it’s like, how can I make ’em laugh and smile because if they’re laughing and smiling and having a good time, I’m gonna get, you know, jacked and ready to start teaching again.
Eric Cross (26:48):
And I just hear that so much in what you’re saying is you’re serving your kids is, is being more than that building the relationship, that connection. And then through all that, the learning happens. The last question I wanna ask you is who’s one teacher that created a memorable experience for you or inspired you. Is it someone that you remember when you were in school or learn experience that just, that stands out to you to this day? Cuz as teachers, we remember thi like our kids remember us and it’s weird to be in that position to think that we’re gonna be that person. So is there anybody or anything that stands out to you that you remember from a, a teacher and experience?
Shad Lacefield (27:27):
Gosh, I have, I have a lot that you know, from my fifth grade science teacher, Mr. Goodman, who we did the ecology meet and the ecology team, and we went to OT Creek park and we competed against other schools about science, connected materials to my physics teacher in high school that let us build boats out of cardboard and take it to the only hotel in our town and the pool. And we had like boat races with the cardboard boats that we did. But really I, I go back to Squire boon and Claudia my manager and I remember not only was, she’s such a, a pivotal like getting me into teaching. But I remember the, the curriculum that we were using at the time that I was. And again, it goes back to what if I was to teach that curriculum, I would not still be a teacher because again, as sometimes you experience with curriculum, it can be boring and not engaging. And I was already putting my own flare on it at SQUI boon during the scout lessons. And I said, what if I just completely rewrote this curriculum? What if I made it really fun and put my own, spin on it? And, and she was like, absolutely, absolutely do that. And I feel like that encouragement as teachers, when we encourage kids to be creative when we encourage kids to, to take risk and to try new things we end up getting such amazing results that we didn’t even expect
Eric Cross (28:45):
Thought I out to Mr. Goodman for the ecology meet the physics teacher for the, the boat races, which are hilarious, by the way, if you’ve ever been able to watch students, did you make ’em at a cardboard?
Shad Lacefield (28:53):
We did. Yep.
Eric Cross (28:54):
Yeah. Those are hilarious to watch. And Claudia for giving the freedom to let you be a educational DJ and remix things to make it fun. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for your inspiration and for sharing your stuff like publicly and letting other people see it and, and get ideas. It’s, I’m sure there’s more people than, you know, and more teachers than, you know, that are looking at that and getting their own ideas and coming up with their own. It might not be star wars, but coming up with their own inspiration, maybe it’s like Harry Potter or Lord of the rings or some like that.
Shad Lacefield (29:26):
Yeah. Whatever. You’re passionate about. Pull that in.
Eric Cross (29:31):
Thanks so much for joining me and Shad 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. That’s STEM@amplify.com and make sure to click, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts until next time.
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Meet the guest
Shad Lacefield is a teacher at Garden Springs Elementary and part-time professor at Asbury University in Kentucky. Mr. Lacefield leads professional development in his district, and has been a guest speaker for Eastern Kentucky University, Campbellsville University, and Amplify Education. His topics include classroom managment, integrating techology, and student engagement. He earned his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Campbellsville University in 2007, and his master’s in science from Southwest Baptist University in 2011. Shad has either taught or coached every grade K-12, and in his 14 years in education he has served as a lead teacher in literacy, math, science, and social studies. He currently coordiantes with the FCPS Office of Instructional Technology to plan Minecraft build challenges for elementary students, and is working on setting up a science field trip that turns a golf course into a STEM lab. During the first year of the pandemic, Shad dressed up in over 100 costumes to create a unique and engaging online learning experience for his students. He also created Vader Visits where he visited students at their homes dressed as Darth Vader to celebrate their online successes, and keep them encouraged during a challenging time. His creative teaching style, and over 50 “Vader Visits” with students, have been featured on WKYT-TV, LEX-18, Spectrum 1 News, and several local and college news publications. Shad lives in Lexington Kentucky with his wife Whitney Lacefield and their three children.
Check out his website, YouTube channel, and Facebook account!
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 – 03. Math professional learning experiences with Elham Kazemi
How do we continue to grow and be more reflective about our own teaching? In this episode, Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer chat with Elham Kazemi to explore how to look at teaching as a collaborative experiment. Moving more toward analyzing student thinking and how that contributes to teaching itself, leaves more space for one’s own understanding of math to grow throughout your career. When one revises their teaching based on the data we’re collecting from students and peers, this allows us to be both teachers and learners forever.
Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.
Dan Meyer (00:04):
Hey folks, welcome to math teacher lounge. My name is Dan Meyer
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):
And I’m Bethany, Lockhart Johnson.
Dan Meyer (00:09):
And this is the teacher learning week. We’re thinking this week about how we grow as teachers. And to start with, I just wanted to ask Bethany, uh, first Bethany, how are you doing? And second <laugh>. Um, what is, what, what has been your like most favorite and least favorite, most effective least effective professional learning experience when you were a classroom teacher?
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:30):
I think for me, most effective was definitely when I could use it right away. Right. Whatever we were talking about, whatever we were learning, like I got to go put it into practice. Sure. Uh, I, I remember we did something where we designed a lesson and then we went and taught it like one person taught it and the rest of the people watched. And then we kind of like got to workshop it, which that was like a one off the fact that we got to go out of our classroom and go observe somebody teaching. It was gold. It was gold. Um, so that was probably the most effective, because there was so much opportunity for reflection and least effective was something that felt like just completely unconnected to, you know, kind of either so theoretical that it wasn’t like touching on what we were navigating right there in the classroom. I don’t know. What about you? What can you think of times that, are you gonna say times you led a PD? Those were the most effective?
Dan Meyer (01:26):
Yeah. My favorite ones are my sessions, of course. But if I had to throw those out for a second, um, yeah, I, I like, I want, I want both, I want it all. I want the, um, the big ideas that take a long time to settle in that also have like small bits that can carve off and use relatively quickly to test my understanding of the ID is, yeah. I’ve had some, some PD where I’m like, this is very relevant to tomorrow. And I also don’t care. Like for instance, like how to use the CD, the, the, like the, the software, you know, on the, on my curriculum, for instance, it’s like, okay, yeah, this is just a little, little too practical. You know what I’m saying? I want some bigger ideas to chew on. Um, I would also say like, I love my favorite PD by a long was writing up thoughts about how the day went and putting that on the internet in a public place that we used to call a blog and where people would come along, cuz there was like 10 blogs and like, tell me like that’s no good.
Dan Meyer (02:16):
Like the thing that you like is not a thing you should like, here’s the thing you should like instead, or try instead, or just this weird community that sprung up, you know, when I was, uh, starting to teach relatively new teacher and uh, I feel like I grew a lot
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:28):
Go back to this idea blog. If people would call you, they’d call you on the phone. What, what
Dan Meyer (02:32):
Was they would fax me? They, it would be a fact. So
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:35):
Fax,
Dan Meyer (02:36):
I got it. Fax a comment. Yeah. Got it. So, uh, that’s, that’s Bethany and I, and we’re super excited to have people who have a bit broader of a perspective, a bit more of the land than what, what the two of us, um, think about with our own professional learning experiences.
Dan Meyer (02:52):
We’ve invited on an expert. We hope will help us understand alternate ways to do professional learning as teachers to grow as teachers besides, you know, all of us getting into the same room once every, every, uh, few months together, Elm Cosmi is a professor of mathematics education at the university of Washington, Elm studies, how strong professional communities develop in schools and how schools can be organized. So teachers learn from and what their students, this work is informed by equity oriented research on thinking, uh, on children’s mathematical thinking and classroom practice. She is co-author with Allison hints of intentional talk, which focuses on leading productive discussions in mathematics. And she edited coral counting and counting collections with Megan Frankie and Angela tau, which focuses on the importance of counting from preschool to fifth grade. Looking forward to a great chat with Elham, welcome Elham to the show.
Elham Kazemi (03:43):
Thanks for having me, my favorite topic ever to talk with you both about,
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:47):
I think something that I just deeply, deeply respected admire is that I feel like you are constantly sharing about how you are learning. You’re continue to learn, continue to, to try out new ideas and you do a very good job of like highlighting things that you’ve learned, whether that’s sharing it through a tweet or sharing it amongst colleagues or peers. And I, I just really appreciate that because I feel like being in the mathematics community with you, I feel like I grow by, I just like paying attention to like, Hey, she’s a learner, she’s done all these amazing things and thinks in these amazing ways and has shifted my thinking in such amazing ways. But she’s saying, Hey, I I’m still learning. So yeah. Hi, thank you. Thank you for your, I don’t know. We’re just glad to have you here.
Elham Kazemi (04:41):
Thanks. I do feel like the perpetual student, like I’ve never left school and I wonder like one day maybe I will, when I grow older, when I grow up, will I ever leave school? Maybe not.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:52):
<laugh>
Dan Meyer (04:53):
Great. Let’s dig in. Yeah. So please tell us you partnered with a school for some professional learning that wasn’t the sort where you would go in and offer brilliant ideas and then leave. But rather it, it seemed like it was more of a job embedded sort, the sort of thing that might have a life of its own after, you know, after the, the grant ends or the program ends. Can you describe what it was you did and what the effect was?
Elham Kazemi (05:15):
I think I wanna first say that everything that I have done and experimented with as really the result of working with fabulous people, teachers, coaches, principals, other, um, colleagues and peers in the field who are constantly trying to work on what good teaching looks like and how you learn to do it. And mostly because we care about kids and we care about what students experience in the classroom. And we want kids to love school, to have school, be a place where they’re known, they’re loved, um, that they look forward to being in every day. And I think there’s that, um, the why that, that, um, per that makes you want to learn is really about the students and being, doing things in service of them. Because when, uh, as one of my colleagues said, when children thrive, teachers thrive. So what does it mean for us to thrive?
Elham Kazemi (06:06):
If we are focused on our kids’ experiences in schools, what we did at this, this particular school and a group of schools is kind of tap into a, all that curiosity and drive that teachers have to do a good job and to use their imaginations well, and to engage the actual ideas that children have in their classroom together, not separately, not like get a great idea and be inspired by it and then go figure it out by yourself, but be inspired by ideas and then try to figure them out together. Because, um, as you both know, very talented teachers, uh, who also have been inspired to change your classroom teaching. Once you figure something out or as you’re figuring it out, there’s all kinds of intricacies. Like I remember when I first learned about three act tasks, I thought what a brilliant idea, but it’s not so simple to try to enact the brilliance of it because you can simplify it too much or you can get stuck and not really know how do you move from one act to the next, or what’s the point of the third act?
Elham Kazemi (07:12):
Do you just like reveal the answer and that’s it. And then you move on. Um, how do you even do design the tasks to begin with all of those things, raise questions and working on them together, uh, and carving up that space and time to work on them together is sorely missing in schools. And so that’s what we were able to do with the schools that I parted and it is find the time and then design the structures so that teachers could, um, <affirmative> think about their teaching together and then also be in the classroom together with kids. So the kids see that we are also learning to be responsive to them. That’s the point. So we have to work stuff out when kids are present, which is the part that usually trips a lot of people up.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:55):
Well, that to me is I think the part that shifted my teaching and continues to is this, it is a culture shift to tell your students, to invite your students into your learning, to tell them I’m, I’m learning too. It was an invitation to, to be vulnerable in a way that I think sometimes teachers are very afraid to be vulnerable. Uh, if they don’t know what the student response is gonna be, or they don’t know, they don’t wanna seem like they don’t know the answers or they don’t know how to figure out a problem. I think that’s a real shift in the, in the culture for, for compared to maybe what we, we experienced growing up.
Dan Meyer (08:33):
I hated not knowing the answer to a math problem. I admitting I, I was uncertain with the mathematics, but to admit that I am like a, a work in aggress as a teacher, feels like an extra admission, an extra layer of humility, which is, I don’t know, it’s a really special thing that you were up to with that school. I’d love to hear like about specific structures that you worked with to help make that transition feel, you know, more natural, more welcoming, more productive.
Elham Kazemi (08:58):
So, I mean, you probably have experienced common planning time, right? This is a thing that often happens for us teachers. I think that common planning time looks a lot sometimes like, uh, what are we gonna do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Okay. What do we need? What are the materials we need? Who is gonna do that? Will you write this? And that’s what kind of common planning time, and then it’s over. And then you might see each other at lunch and say, well, how did that go? And you’ll talk a little bit about it, but common planning time and learning labs, which is sort of what the, what we call the, the PD that we designed means. Okay. So let’s take three act task. We, we write a little bit about it. We’ve seen a couple, but okay. What would it really mean to plan this particular one?
Elham Kazemi (09:42):
So common planning time is thinking like, how are we gonna launch that first act? What are we actually gonna say? What do we think the kids are gonna say? Why would we say it that way? What if they say something else? Um, and then, okay, so what does it actually sounds like to transition from act one, to act two? What might we say, what would happen with this particular task and actually getting into the details of how you imagine, like, what, what you would do when you were actually planning the specifics of a particular lesson, but leaving it loose enough that you’re not trying to make it perfect. And I think that’s the trick. So, so that you are not so invested, that goes in that particular way or that you fail. If it doesn’t go that way. Um, but that you have something you wanna learn together and trying out this three act task with a particular group of kids so that when you go into the classroom, first of all, you’ve all thought through the full R of the lesson.
Elham Kazemi (10:40):
And you’re curious enough about what’s gonna happen at particular points that you’ve left room for uncertainty and the taking of some risks. So then when you go together into a classroom and kids start to say things that you didn’t anticipate you or, or they start to do something that you’re so jazzed about, that you didn’t anticipate that you’re like, this is the thing we should pursue more. You give each other permission to do that. You’re like, whoa, wait, did you hear what so? And so said, I think we should follow that road and see where it takes us, or, huh. Okay, hold on. And that’s what we call teacher timeouts, where you actually confer briefly and you tell the kids, this is a super special day. We’ve tried to design something. We’re very curious how you are gonna react to it. So we’re gonna try it out. And along the way, we might pause to get your ideas or for us to make some decisions and steer the ship in a, in a new directions and see what happens. So we’re gonna be sitting closely to you among you. Um, and you get to be our teachers today while we teach. That’s how it’s framed.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:46):
Like, what were you seeing in professional development or in that wasn’t happening amongst teachers? Like where, where are the gaps? Because it feels like so much of your work. You’ve just looked in such nuanced ways at how teachers can continue to grow and be more reflective of their own teaching. And I’m just kind of curious where that came from or where you’re seeing the landscape.
Elham Kazemi (12:10):
Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, I, oh, everything I know about, children’s thinking to Megan Frankie and the beautiful body of work called CGI, but, um, one of the things that we noticed, there’s so many great CGI workshops, and even like all the seminars and conference presentations and amazing things that you can design to have engaging work time for teach in, in professional development, outside of their classroom, people get super jazzed, you know, they get, um, uh, they have meaningful experiences, but to contextualize that back into their classrooms with their own students is like where, where often I would see like, wait, the same group of teachers I just saw in my classroom or in either in math methods or in this PD seminar, or even myself, like noticing, like I have seen and thought about stuff a lot. But when I went to go do it with a particular group of kids, holy moly was that so hard. And I saw all kinds of new complexities that I didn’t anticipate. And if I were just left to my own devices, I might very easily say, whew, this seems a little too hard.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:21):
Right,
Elham Kazemi (13:22):
Right. And that’s the thing that I always hated. I was like, oh, if only we had, or you, or if you watched somebody do a demo lesson and you saw something that was like, kind of cool that you wish you had done afterwards. I often this happened in reflections. I wish we had, because we weren’t allowed to interrupt each other during teaching. Cuz somehow that would be rude or that would undermine the teacher’s authority. But that’s only the way we frame it. If we say actually we’re all capable people. So a question we ask ourselves during instruction doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It means actually we’re thinking together then the interruptions aren’t about undermining authority. They’re about thinking together.
Dan Meyer (14:04):
There’s a performative aspect to a lot of teaching. Like the like teaching feels like a performance and you don’t, the movie’s playing or there’s a play that’s going on. It feels like inappropriate to interrupt that in any way. Cause the performance is going and I, I love what this that’s. I love what this idea does to kind of, to redefine teaching is not a performance, but this, this co-constructed thing. Or if it’s a performance, it’s a performance, the stars, all of us, like we’re all a part of the cast and always a it’s always the dress rehearsal.
Elham Kazemi (14:30):
<laugh> it is like the dress rehearsal. Although some of my brilliant colleagues with backgrounds in drama and theater, Sarah Kavanaugh and Holly GU and Elizabeth dure, they actually were at a meeting together. And they talked about how this like breaks the fourth wall, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, which is out of theater, um, where the performer speaks to the audience, you know, I know you’re there and I have something to say to you. Yep. And I was like, well, we should, why can’t we do that in teaching? So we actually wrote a little paper, um, that’s called breaking the fourth wall as a way. That’s so cool as a metaphor for understanding and reframing what these interruptions could meet. Cuz we often get people when we about this for academic audience who say like, aren’t you using the children and what are the children gonna do while you just pause? Are they supposed to freeze? And uh, you know, while you talk about them, but it’s not really that it’s like, Hey students, we’re here because of you. So shouldn’t, we try to involve you and are decision making. To some extent, it’s not like we don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re doing things because we wanna advance your learning.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:40):
I mean, I still remember the first time I did a teacher time out and it, it was, I, it was breaking the four, it was this like, okay, you’re gonna see what happens, kids like, look at my, my tap dances stopped. And you’re you mean like, you know, whoa, wait a second. And I think it is about how you frame it. Right? It’s a celebration of their thinking and you, you use the term ambitious teaching and it, to me that is such a joyful way to think about it.
Elham Kazemi (16:06):
It is risky. And you would never say anything to shame any student, no. Or to shame your colleagues. Clearly it’s not a about that kind of discussion. Right. And they’re so brief. They’re like, it, it seconds. It’s not like you’re wasting time. You’re actually trying to understand what’s happening here. And I’ve just had so many instances where something goes on. Um, like we were doing a growing patterns task in a classroom and the student built the fourth term and they built stuff that did not follow the pattern. And I was so confused. I, I just didn’t understand like what was going on. And one of the kids said, well, if you, if you did follow the pattern, that’s not her words. But you know, she’s like, well, if we built it this way, that would be too obvious. Because if you just, if you saw that and you’re like, oh, that lesson failed.
Elham Kazemi (16:59):
Now we, our kids don’t understand what patterns are. We did it. Like, we gotta pause here and we gotta say, and we’re like, well, what do you mean? Can you say more about that? And basically what they said is that, um, well, first of all, they’re, they’re right. A pattern could change at any time, but it’s like, it would be more interesting if they, they knew how many cubes it would take for the fourth term that it would be nine, but they’re like, Hey, let’s rearrange that nine in some cool new ways. <laugh> cause that’s more interesting. It was like more interesting to them if, if they didn’t keep the pattern. So like, you kind of had to wrestle with that in the moment <affirmative> with them. And that’s how they can actually be partners with you in the teacher, timeout.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (17:40):
Right. That’s making it about them and their learning. It’s not about that. It’s not about your performance and like looking all shiny and, and I’ve got it all together and I know exactly how this lesson’s gonna go. It that’s so interesting.
Elham Kazemi (17:53):
And sometimes you pause and like some cuz somebody else who’s watching is noticing something about what the kids are doing. And while you’re, if you’re happen to be the person who’s upfront at the time leading, you’ve got so many things going on in your head that some times the person who’s just been sitting on the rug with the kids mm-hmm <affirmative> has noticed something. And they’re like, can I ask something right now? And that’s a great teacher timeout too. Mm. Because they’re interrupting you cuz they’re like, I think I, I wanna see what kids will say. If we ask this question next and those moments have been like amazing because someone has noticed something that another person hasn’t in the room and it’s been very helpful to illuminate how kids are processing something or what two ideas they could connect. That would be really powerful based on what we were hoping to learn that day or do with the kids that day.
Dan Meyer (18:47):
It’s like you have a bonus brain attached to you there in the room. Sounds really powerful. I wonder a couple about the student experience of this. I’m imagine if I was a student in the room and I heard the two teachers like kind of pause, take this time out and like talk about how interesting my thinking was like behind my back a little bit, like trying to strategize about something interesting. I had said, I just imagine I would, I would feel very good about like, that would be a very positive experience for me. Um, but I’m just curious, can you speak to how students reacted when they’re,
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:16):
You mean, if you had been a student in the class and you saw two teachers conferring about your work?
Dan Meyer (19:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Like I, my classmates had of thing that was like, it, it kind of like was so novel that it stymied the teachers and then they like had to pause and like talk about what are we doing? Oh, I don’t know. I can imagine that’d be like know a fun feeling. Maybe I just tell more about me than about the kids, but
Elham Kazemi (19:35):
<laugh> it points to like, how would you go about starting to do this work? Right. Because one is you do, you do have to tell kids, Hey, I’m here with so and so and so, and so, and so, and so it might be just two of you. It might be five of you. It might be more and you know how we’ve been working on X thing in class? Well, today we wanted to try this new thing and, but we’re not sure how it’s gonna go and we need, we need your feedback. Right. So here’s something that might happen. We might pause you, you, I mean, you really do directly tell the kids to do that. And then we’re gonna ask you how it felt and we’re gonna share those feelings with one another. So you do that, you do a little exit card or you,
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (20:19):
How, what felt the pause or how,
Elham Kazemi (20:22):
How, yeah. How did it feel that, how did this lesson go or how did a lesson, how did it feel when you heard, you know, ALM and Dan talk to each other, doing this lesson and they might say, Hey, it’s cool. It’s fun. Kids have definitely chimed in, in like, if we ask a question like, should we do this next or this, somebody will pipe in and say, do that, you know, do this thing. Instead. If, if you kind of pipe in to say, can I ask a question? They just turn to you and look at you and answer your question. Right. So, and we always thank them and we just like pump it up. Right? Like this is so cool because this is all about you. And usually when you say today, you’re gonna be our teachers, especially the little kids. They like get all giggly. Totally.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:02):
Right.
Elham Kazemi (21:04):
Love it.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:05):
You know, you, you were sharing about this really unique situation, which I wish it wasn’t as unique where you had the whole school involved, but how did that happen? And what if you don’t have the whole school involved? What if it’s just me in my grade level, who’s like, I kind of wanna try this, but what
Elham Kazemi (21:22):
<laugh>, I think you could start with your, a peer in your school or a colleague in your school. Yeah. I mean, it’s a little seed, right. And it’s a little seed and then you could make it grow. I also believe in starting small and growing, cuz you do have to invite people into a different way of thinking about what it means to learn together. So you need to experience it, um, in order to believe it.
Dan Meyer (21:49):
Yeah. It feels like we would not want to write off any student as like, oh, they just don’t wanna learn. I think a lot of, a lot of us just like don’t buy that, that there’s other reasons why people need that. A teacher shouldn’t like shouldn’t, that’s not true of students that they have been told they can’t learn or there’s various circumstances the same. I, I suppose the same as like should be true is true of teachers. Like no teacher doesn’t want to learn more about teaching is at least a helpful Axiom to use, to approach the work of teacher growth. And so maybe they, yeah, maybe I feel like I’m the only person in my school who wants to do this, but perhaps that’s not actually true. Perhaps it’s just a matter of creating an imagination or the right kind of enticement or I don’t know what, um, but to start small and grow from there makes a lot of sense.
Elham Kazemi (22:32):
I feel now, like it would be weird and a lot harder for me to invite someone to just come in and watch me teach and sit quietly in the back when I don’t know anything about what they’re thinking and wait until afterwards to get their opinion.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:46):
Oh yes.
Elham Kazemi (22:47):
I would be much more willing to co-plan with someone so that we were both on the same page about what we were trying to do and then when you’re in the classroom with me. So that’s the other thing that’s important cuz I don’t think you can just be in the classroom together and I, you know, interrupt each other’s teachers, if you haven’t planned together, cuz you do have to have some common understanding of what are we trying to do here? Oh the
Dan Meyer (23:10):
Intent here.
Elham Kazemi (23:11):
Yeah. So I would definitely say don’t just show up in each other’s classroom and start interrupting each other. <laugh> if you don’t know what the heck is going on. Yeah.
Dan Meyer (23:21):
Yeah. I, I know that’s directed at one person on this call in particular. I hear that.
Elham Kazemi (23:25):
I know who we’re talking about, but you know, I would be way more intimidating for me if I was trying to do a three act task and Dan just came to watch me do it <laugh> and he hadn’t planned with me. He didn’t know why I selected that task. I had no opportunity to talk to him. Then it would be, Hey Dan, would you just like do this with me? Let’s think through this. Why would you do this then? What, what have you normally done? Oh, okay. Why have you done that? Right. And then to like, okay, let’s try it together. Um, and then, and then along the way, if I have questions, you’re there with me. So sometimes there is someone more experience like if right. And sometimes you’re both just like, I just don’t have that much experience with this. I’m learning this for the first time.
Elham Kazemi (24:04):
Right. And the beauty of the math ed community, whether it’s on Twitter or is that we’re kind of pretty accessible to each other. Right. So if I read something and I have a question about it, you bet I’m gonna reach out to the author <laugh> and say, I’ve been thinking about your work and this is what’s been coming up for us. Can you? So like, it definitely happened with hands down conversations. We tried it in the learning lab and we just couldn’t figure out like that. How do you intercede, like into the hands down conversation cuz the kids are supposed to have a conversation. So we had to like give Kaia and her co-author a few specific examples so they could help our thinking so that we could try it again. Right. And make it better. And I think that is, is what it means to be learning in community is that you use the resources more broadly.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:52):
That’s a beautiful reminder too. And it also helps me feel a little better about all the messages I’ve sent you. Like what does this mean? Can you help me with this?
Elham Kazemi (24:59):
<laugh> I mean, that just makes you feel alive. <laugh> I think
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (25:06):
So. I think P part of the beauty of you talking about starting small is that it does give those of us who maybe aren’t seeing that those opportunities for collaboration reflected in our school culture, it gives us kind of some hope for like, wait, don’t just like, think you can’t start. I, how do you, how do you see, how do you see it growing? Or, or do you think like if you could magically <laugh> like wave your wand and, and create some shifts around, around, uh, the culture where folks are feeling isolated or maybe don’t feel like they have the needs to do this work. What could that look like?
Elham Kazemi (25:51):
Yeah. What could that look like? So time, like we need some imagination around the use of time in schools and I have seen some really amazing opportunities where teachers get to co-teach, which means that they really have to co-plan when, um, there’s a break in a regular school session and there’s like an intercession or like a, like an elective that, um, that doesn’t, I haven’t seen it happen a lot in public schools, but I have seen it happen a lot in independent schools where they’ll have like, stop, stop the presses. It’s like a drop everything and read, but it’s like a drop everything and do an R arts week. And then all the kids in the school get shuffled. So they into multiage groupings and the teachers get to plan something special for like the week. But you could start with like a day, which would at least get you to plan something together and try to teach together and be just in each other’s spaces. And I think that might be kind of an interesting way to start where you have to like mess with the schedule somehow. Cuz the schedule is the beast in schools
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:59):
Is kind of the first step. Like we are going to create a shared activity, a shared instructional goal, a shared like where do I start?
Elham Kazemi (27:09):
What, where do you start? I mean, there’s so many good books. We all read, start with something that grabs your imagination. That you’re like, if I got to do this in my class, I’d be so jazzed. And I think my kids would love it. Why would they love it? You know, whatever it is. There’s so many good ideas that people are instantly blogging about publishing, um, slow reveal graphs. I love those two. I have like all these things. I was like, I would love to try these out, but I, I gotta do them with somebody cuz I need a sounding board about like how, what does it mean to do it well? And what does it mean to just do it at the surface level and do it a, you know, in a kind of a crappy way. And we don’t wanna do a crappy job. We wanna do a good job, but you have to start, you have to start sometimes in an awkward, crappy way. Like, you know, and get past that stage. Cause often we try a bunch of stuff, eh, and then we drop it. But like you gotta work on it to make it really
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (27:58):
Good. And if you’ve already tried it and it didn’t go so well it’s, this could be an invitation, like, you know, it doesn’t mean give up on the idea. It means like, Hey let, let’s let’s collaborate. Let’s you know, come into my class. Let’s co plan this.
Elham Kazemi (28:10):
So I would challenge people to think about the schedule. <laugh> try to do something just a little bit different. You know, like when we do learning labs, people are like, well, how do you do that? And there’s no money for it. Actually. We just use our money in a slightly different way to make or that everybody four people get a sub, which I know right now, sub shortages is crazy, crazy, but then combine your classes or do something different. Yeah. You know, um, involve people differently somehow in your, in your school environment to get that time,
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:43):
Really see this as a priority. This is a, this is there’s is intense value in this time to collaborate. Yeah.
Elham Kazemi (28:51):
Yeah. There’s so many side benefits for, I think for kids and teachers when you’re able to do this.
Dan Meyer (28:58):
Yeah. You’ve heard of folks. Uh, usually our, our math teacher challenge, our lounge challenge has been, uh, pedagogical in nature or a new CU. And uh, this is a different kind of one. This is, uh, go, go be a Rabel Razr go Rouse rabble at your, uh, front office and figure out the right way to get some funding or some time or shuffle a master schedule in such a way that you have collaboration, time to plan to co-teach to interrupt one another and uh, let us know how it goes. We are super excited and super interested in all of that. Thank you, uh, Elham for being with us here today and sharing all of your wisdom about how teachers grow.
Elham Kazemi (29:36):
Thanks for reminding me. You too loved
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:38):
It. We’re never done learning. We’re never done learning. Nope.
Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:44):
Aha. Thank you so much for joining us in the lounge. I think all of us have sat through effective and ineffective professional learning sessions and just helping us to envision of how this can truly help PD can truly transform our classrooms. It is it’s exciting. It’s exciting. And I think we’ve all learned a lot from our conversation. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And don’t forget, you can connect with us in the lounge on Facebook at math teacher lounge or on Twitter at MTL show. Let’s keep this conversation going. Keep it going. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Everybody. <silence>.
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Meet the guest
Elham Kazemi is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Washington. She studies how strong professional communities develop in schools and how schools can be organized so teachers learn from and with their students. This work is informed by equity-oriented research on organizational learning, children’s mathematical thinking, and classroom practice. She is co-author with Allison Hintz of Intentional Talk, which focuses on leading productive discussions in mathematics. She also edited Choral Counting and Counting Collections with Megan Franke and Angela Turrou, which focuses on the importance of counting from preschool to 5th grade.
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!
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S3 – 06. Bethany and Dan take on Twitter!
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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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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.
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!
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Hooray! We’re thrilled you’re considering giving Boost Reading a try! This site contains all the resources you’ll need to learn more about the program and get started with your pilot. We’re confident you’re going to love how Boost Reading puts your mCLASS data to work.
Resources to support your pilot
What is Boost Reading?
Boost Reading is a digital reading program that complements ELA programs with adaptive and targeted practice in foundational reading skills. While it can be used on its own, Boost Reading also integrates with mCLASS, which means that you get extra benefits like automatic rostering and placement in the program based on a student’s mCLASS composite score. From that point forward, the program takes every student on a personalized journey that addresses gaps and bolsters foundational skills at a pace that supports their individual development.
How do I get started with Boost Reading?
Good news! Boost Reading has already been enabled within your mCLASS accounts. To get started with the program, you’ve got only two steps left: adjusting your student login settings and setting up your student devices. The resource below will walk you through how to do both.
- [Video] Boost Reading quick start tutorial
- [Video] Boost Reading dashboard tour
- [PDF] Boost Reading launch packet
Note: Boost Reading works on most classroom devices, including Windows Devices with Windows 7+, Chromebooks with Chrome OS, and Mac devices with OS 10.11+ or iOS 11+.
What else can you tell me about Boost Reading?
As students engage in skill practice, their paths through the game world adapt to meet their unique learning needs. Boost Reading includes more than 40 standards-aligned games that build language, foundational skills, and comprehension skills, while also developing:
- Phonological awareness
- Phonics
- Vocabulary
- Text analysis
- Comprehension
- Microcomprehension (i.e., the smaller aspects of comprehension that make up the reader’s mental model of a text)
Some additional resources that you might find helpful:
For questions, please contact your Amplify representatives:
Dianne Lee
California Sales Director
dilee@amplify.com
(949) 246-2083
Christina Lugo
Pilot Coordinator – Statewide
clugo@amplify.com
(949) 838-7600
JoAnna Chocooj
Pilot Coordinator – Northern California
jchocooj@amplify.com
(707) 290-1728
Brooke Johnson
Pilot Coordinator – Southern California
bjohnson@amplify.com
(858) 349-2134
Boost Reading pilot for mCLASS® schools
Hooray! We’re thrilled you’re considering giving Boost Reading a try! This site contains all the resources you’ll need to learn more about the program and get started with your pilot. We’re confident you’re going to love how Boost Reading puts your mCLASS data to work.
Resources to support your pilot
What is Boost Reading?
Boost Reading is a digital reading program that complements ELA programs with adaptive and targeted practice in foundational reading skills. While it can be used on its own,Boost Reading also integrates with mCLASS, which means that you get extra benefits like automatic rostering and placement in the program based on a student’s mCLASS composite score. From that point forward, the program takes every student on a personalized journey that addresses gaps and bolsters foundational skills at a pace that supports their individual development.
How do I get started with Boost Reading?
Good news! Boost Reading has already been enabled within your mCLASS account. To get started with the program, you’ve got only two steps left: adjusting your student login settings and setting up your student devices. The resource below will walk you through how to do both.
- [Video] Boost Reading quick start tutorial
- [Video] Boost Reading dashboard tour
- [PDF] Boost Reading launch packet
Note: Boost Reading works on most classroom devices, including Windows Devices with Windows 7+, Chromebooks with Chrome OS, and Mac devices with OS 10.11+ or iOS 11+.
What else can you tell me about Boost Reading?
As students engage in skill practice, their paths through the game world adapt to meet their unique learning needs. Boost Reading includes more than 40 standards-aligned games that build language, foundational skills, and comprehension skills, while also developing:
- Phonological awareness
- Phonics
- Vocabulary
- Text analysis
- Comprehension
- Microcomprehension (i.e., the smaller aspects of comprehension that make up the reader’s mental model of a text)
Some additional resources that you might find helpful:
For questions, please contact your Amplify representatives
Monty Lammers
Senior Account Executive
Email: mlammers@amplify.com
Phone: (719) 964-4501
Welcome to Boost Reading: Remote Learning Edition!
Amplify is committed to helping school and district partners make instructional resources like Boost Reading: Remote Edition available to students who may be unable to attend school.
This site contains all the resources you’ll need to get started using Boost Reading: Remote Edition with your students as soon as possible. We’re confident that as a community, we can continue to support learning to read remotely.
Are you an mCLASS® user? Click here to get started.
Getting started
What you need to know about Boost Reading
Boost Reading is a student-driven, digital literacy program that provides students with differentiated and adaptive practice in all key areas of literacy instruction. Teachers have access to rich data insights into student usage and progress they can use to inform remote instruction.
How does it work with other programs?
Boost Reading is a great complement to any core or assessment program, especially Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) and mCLASS.
When and how to use Boost Reading
We recommend students use the program independently for 30-45 minutes a week. This implementation model has led to student growth, especially for dual language learners.
Students will need access to one of the following devices: Windows Devices with Windows 7+, Chromebooks with Chrome OS, and Mac devices with OS 10.11+ or iOS 11+.
How do I get started with Amplify Reading?
Good news! Amplify Reading has already been enabled within your mCLASS and Acadience Reading accounts. To get started with the program, you’ve got only two steps left: creating your class code and setting up your devices.
- [Video] How to access Amplify Reading from within mCLASS and Acadience Reading
- [Video] How to enable class login
- [Video] How to create shortcuts on devices
- [PDF] Amplify Reading launch packet
Note: Amplify Reading works on most classroom devices, including Windows Devices with Windows 7+, Chromebooks with Chrome OS, and Mac devices with OS 10.11+ or iOS 11+.
What else can you tell me about Amplify Reading?
As students engage in skill practice, their paths through the game world adapt to meet their unique learning needs. Amplify Reading includes more than 40 standards-aligned games that build language, foundational skills, and comprehension skills, while also developing:
- Phonological awareness
- Phonics
- Vocabulary
- Text analysis
- Comprehension
- Microcomprehension (i.e., the smaller aspects of comprehension that make up the reader’s mental model of a text)
Some additional resources that you might find helpful:
How do I get started with Boost Reading?
Good news! You and your students now have access to Boost Reading. To get started, you’ll need to sign in with your Amplify credentials at mclass.devamplify.wpengine.com. Next, you’ll want to distribute Boost Reading credentials to your students.
Where do I find my credentials?
You should have received an email from noreply@devamplify.wpengine.com with your new account information. If you do not see it in your inbox, please check your spam folder.
How to download and distribute student credentials:
- [Article] How to download and distribute student login information
- [PDF] Parent/guardian letter in English
- [PDF] Parent/guardian letter in Spanish
How to support login at home:
You can direct parents to the following videos for an overview of the program and how to get started.
- [VIDEO] How to get your child started with Boost Reading (English)
- [VIDEO] How to get your child started with Boost Reading (Spanish)
After students start playing, you can check in on their progress via your teacher dashboard.
Printable extension activities
Consider sending the following activities home with your students as part of their weekly Boost Reading routine. Each printable activity has instructions in both English and Spanish.
Packet 1
Access support
Intercom chat
Our Intercom feature gives you the ability to chat with customer support, technical support, and pedagogical support teams in real time directly from the digital platform. This ensures that issues that arise in the classroom can be addressed as quickly as possible. Support teams can be reached from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. EDT, Monday through Friday.
Our customer support, technical support, and pedagogical support teams can be reached by email at help@devamplify.wpengine.com from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. EDT, Monday through Friday.
Learn more
Review the resources below to dive deeper into what makes Boost Reading unique.
- [PDF] The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension
- [PDF] Social Emotional Learning in Boost Reading
- [Video] What does growth mindset sound like? Hear students and teachers talk about Boost Reading
- [Podcast] A Conversation with Anne Lucas about Comprehension Processes
Join our Facebook group Science of Reading: The Community to discuss the latest in reading research and instructional practices.
Creating lasting change in K–5 math and literacy instruction
Transforming math and literacy education takes more than just tips and tricks—it requires vision, commitment, and the right support. Whether you’re rethinking early literacy skills instruction, refining math core curriculum, or fostering a culture of collaboration, you need strong leadership and proven strategies for real change to occur.
“Sustained, meaningful change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Kymyona Burk, Ed.D., a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd and the keynote speaker at our recent Leading With Vision symposium. “It requires commitment, collaboration, and a clear vision for supporting both educators and students.”
At the symposium—which included keynotes, panels, and math and literacy tracks—education experts from across the country shared experiences navigating instructional shifts, leading curriculum implementation, and setting schools up for success. From building buy-in to making data-driven decisions, their actionable insights can empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change in your district.
Read on for a recap of the core presentations. You can also watch or listen along—and, for extra credit, download the workbook to deepen your learning.
Opening keynote: Key Factors for Successful Transformation in Literacy and Math
Kymyona Burk, Ed.D.
Senior Policy Fellow, ExcelinEd
In her session, Kymona Burk made the case that real student learning progress in literacy and math doesn’t come from policy alone—it requires systemic, research-based change in classrooms. Too often, schools focus on interventions for struggling students instead of strengthening core instruction to prevent gaps in the first place. She pointed to Mississippi’s success in narrowing achievement gaps as proof that evidence-based teaching, teacher support, and family engagement drive meaningful, lasting improvement.
A key factor in that success, she argued, was a firm commitment to the Science of Reading. “We have decades of research on how children learn to read, and we can’t afford to ignore it,” she said.
Burk also stressed math’s similarities to literacy when it comes to effective teaching methods. Just as students need structured, research-backed reading instruction, they also need math teaching and instructional materials that build deep understanding rather than rely on rote memorization. Achieving this, she said, requires strong materials, better teacher training, and a commitment to using data to refine strategies. The path to better outcomes isn’t a mystery—what’s needed is leadership and persistence.
Key takeaways:
- Tier 1 instruction is the foundation. Schools must prioritize high-quality core instruction to prevent learning gaps.
- Literacy and math both need urgent attention. Math reform has lagged behind literacy efforts, but both require evidence-based teaching and structured support.
- Teachers need more than just training. Professional development must be paired with coaching, collaboration, and access to the right materials.
- Sustained effort leads to results. Mississippi’s success proves that achievement gaps can be closed with consistent investment in people, resources, and accountability.
Leadership Lessons Learned in Baltimore City Schools That Impact Change Everywhere
Janise Lane
VP of Customer Transformation, Amplify; former Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, Baltimore City Schools
Janise Lane’s talk centered on Baltimore City Schools’ multi-year effort to implement a more effective literacy curriculum, highlighting the importance of managing both the logistical and emotional aspects of change. While the district had strong, committed educators, student performance remained stagnant, prompting a curriculum audit and a shift toward evidence-based instruction.
Lane described how to build buy-in and sustainability by ensuring that change is not dictated solely by district leadership. “We had to shift from a system where decisions were made at the top, to one where teachers, families, and community members were true decision-makers,” Lane said.
She also emphasized the need to recognize and address resistance. “Everybody approaches change differently, and it’s our job as leaders to attend to all of those emotions,” Lane said. The key to success, she noted, is creating structured pathways for implementation while remaining adaptable and open to feedback and real classroom experiences.
Key takeaways:
- Balance structure with flexibility. A clear plan is necessary, but it must adapt based on feedback, data, and the realities of implementation.
- Small wins build momentum. Celebrating early progress helps shift mindsets from skepticism to belief in the change.
- Trust and transparency matter. Educators need to see that leadership is engaged, responsive, and committed to making change work for everyone.
Making Math People: Key Shifts in How We Think of Math Assessment
Patrick Callahan, Ph.D.
Educator; Founder, Math ANEX
During his talk, Patrick Callahan emphasized the ways that asset-based assessments measure not just what students don’t know, but the depths of their mathematical thinking. Instead of relying on traditional multiple-choice tests, his approach encourages open-ended responses, allowing teachers to analyze how students arrive at their answers.
Callahan noted that by looking beyond correctness to understand reasoning, teachers can better target instruction. “If all I see is that 37% of my students got an area problem right, I might think I need to reteach area,” Callahan explained. “But if I analyze responses, I see that some kids are correctly multiplying but misunderstanding overlapping rectangles, while others are actually calculating perimeter instead. That tells me exactly where to focus my instruction.”
His research also shows a correlation between students who demonstrated conceptual understanding (such as interpreting remainders in division problems) and higher performance on standardized tests—evidence that fostering deep thinking supports both engagement and achievement.
Key takeaways:
- Assessments should focus on thinking, not just accuracy. Open-ended questions provide deeper learning opportunities.
- Targeted teaching saves time. Knowing why students struggle prevents unnecessary reteaching.
- Classroom discussions boost comprehension. Encouraging students to explain their thinking deepens understanding.
Creating a Supportive Environment for Educators During Times of Instructional Change
Ricky Robertson
Educator; author; consultant
“The number one influence on team effectiveness is psychological safety,” Ricky Robertson said during his symposium session. “Not how talented the individuals are, but how they interact with one another.” His talk focused on how the knowledge that one can speak up without fear of punishment or humiliation affects school culture, educator well-being, and student success, citing research such as Google’s Project Aristotle that demonstrates how high-performing teams thrive not on individual expertise but the quality of interactions among team members.
He also noted that toxic workplace dynamics—such as fear-based leadership, cliques, and bullying—contribute to burnout, disengagement, and resistance to change. Stressing that “strategies don’t transform schools, systems do,” he shared case studies of schools that changed their culture by fostering open communication, restructuring leadership teams, and implementing clear decision-making processes. Creating a safe environment isn’t just about being nice, Robertson said. Robertson noted that creating a safe environment isn’t just about being nice, but about building systems that allow educators to collaborate, support one another, and better serve their students.
Key takeaways:
- Psychological safety boosts performance. Schools that report a high sense of psychological safety see increased collaboration, innovation, and teacher retention.
- Structured collaboration matters. Schools with clear communication protocols and leadership structures create more productive teams.
- Change starts with educators. Supporting teachers’ well-being and professional growth is the foundation for student success.
More to explore
¡Les damos la bienvenida, familias de Boost Reading!
Nos complace darles la bienvenida a usted y a su estudiante al Caregiver Hub de Boost Reading en este nuevo año escolar. Hemos reunido una serie de recursos y guías que ayudarán a que usted pueda brindar apoyo a su estudiante a lo largo de todo el año y a que este aproveche al máximo nuestra plataforma.
For English version, please click here.
¿Qué es Boost Reading?
Boost Reading es un programa de intervención digital dirigido por estudiantes y basado en la Ciencia de la lectura (Science of Reading). El apasionante mundo de Boost Reading utiliza tecnología adaptativa para brindar apoyo de recuperación personalizado a estudiantes de grados K a 5, adaptándose a las necesidades únicas de cada lector. Su estudiante puede usar el programa durante el horario de clase y también de forma independiente en casa.
¡Le damos la bienvenida a Boost Reading!
¿Cuál es mi rol?
Asegúrese de que su estudiante pueda iniciar sesión por cuenta propia.
Le recomendamos que ayude a su estudiante a iniciar sesión en casa a través de Clever u otra plataforma. El maestro también puede descargar e imprimir un código QR o un nombre de usuario y contraseña únicos que su estudiante pueda usar para iniciar sesión. Si tiene dudas sobre el proceso de inicio de sesión o no recibió los datos de ingreso, comuníquese con el maestro.
Sugerencias
- Practique el inicio de sesión con su estudiante de manera regular hasta que pueda iniciar sesión de forma independiente.
- Mantenga sus datos de ingreso en un solo lugar para que su estudiante sepa adónde recurrir si los olvida.
Procure un espacio tranquilo para que su estudiante pueda trabajar.
Prepare a su estudiante para usar Boost Reading en casa: asegúrese de que tenga auriculares y un lugar tranquilo para jugar. Boost Reading es un programa personalizado que responde a las necesidades de cada estudiante, así que no necesitará asistirlo con su aprendizaje. Una vez que su estudiante pueda iniciar sesión, podrá comenzar a usar el programa por cuenta propia.
Aparte tiempo para que su estudiante pueda jugar de forma independiente.
Es posible que su estudiante comience con una actividad de nivelación que ayudará al programa a asignarle el mejor contenido, de acuerdo con su nivel de lectura. Para garantizar la nivelación más precisa posible, es importante que el estudiante realice cada actividad de manera independiente. ¡Anime a su estudiante a que se esfuerce y se divierta!
Revise la seguridad digital.
Le recomendamos que revise Proteja a los niños en internet, un sitio web de la Comisión Federal de Comercio, cuyo tema es la seguridad digital.
¡Diviértanse más!
Cada estudiante tiene un compañero digital llamado Curioso. ¡Imprima estas páginas para colorear, y compártalas con su estudiante para que decore su propio Curioso!
Descargue las páginas para colorear Curiosos.
Cómo obtener ayuda
¡Estamos aquí para ayudarle!
¿Tiene alguna pregunta sobre Boost Reading?
Visite nuestra biblioteca de ayuda (en inglés) y busque respuestas a sus preguntas sobre el programa en nuestros artículos de ayuda.
Para obtener apoyo curricular adicional, comuníquese con su maestro.
Preguntas frecuentes
Como los estudiantes pueden usar Boost Reading durante la jornada escolar, recomendamos ponerse en contacto con el maestro o la maestra de su estudiante para determinar cuánto tiempo debería usar este programa en casa. Nuestra orientación general es la siguiente:
Boost Reading
Los estudiantes que usan Boost Reading en los grados K–3.º deberían jugar durante un total de 30–45 minutos por semana, repartidos en sesiones de 10–15 minutos cada una. Los estudiantes que usan Boost Reading en los grados 4.º y 5.º deberían jugar durante un total de 40–60 minutos por semana, repartidos en sesiones de 20–30 minutos cada una.
Boost Reading y Boost Lectura
Recomendamos que, tanto en Boost Reading como en Boost Lectura, los estudiantes deben aspirar a usar ambos programas durante aproximadamente 40 minutos por semana.
Si su estudiante tiene problemas con el contenido, le recomendamos que no intervenga. Aunque sabemos que esto puede resultar difícil, Boost Reading está diseñado para adaptarse según las respuestas de su estudiante y proporcionarle un mayor apoyo e instrucción con el fin de que pueda avanzar en el juego.
Amplify Desmos Math
for New York
Welcome to Amplify Desmos Math, a powerful new core program from Amplify and Desmos Classroom built for NYC teachers and students.
Amplify Desmos Math is built on four core tenets:
- Math can motivate students.
- A structured approach to problem-based learning can best tend to all aspects of rigor.
- Student thinking is valuable and visible.
- Students can catch up while keeping up with grade-level math.
What if your students asked to do more math?
Amplify Desmos Math lessons are powerful in their ability to elicit student thinking and spark interesting, productive discussions.
The lessons pose problems that invite a variety of approaches with their dynamic and interactive learning experiences on devices, as well as experiences on paper that are flexible, creative, and engaging.
As students work online, they interact with visuals and simulations that show their thinking and decisions. When appropriate, students see other students’ responses and engage in collaborative math discussions.
A Responsive Feedback feature responds to student thinking by showing the mathematical meaning behind it. This is more powerful than simply evaluating thinking as right or wrong, because it motivates and engages students in the learning process.
In this Grade 6 activity, students internalize the coordinate plane by plotting points to navigate the marble through the maze to collect the star.
This prepares students to accurately and efficiently plot points with positive and negative coordinates on grids with different scales and explain the relationship between ordered pairs that differ only by the signs of the coordinates.
In this Grade 7 activity, students explore positive and negative integer operations using the up and down movement of a submarine.
Students are then prepared apply this understanding in a variety of word problem contexts.
In this Grade 8 activity, students create rate, distance, and time equations based on turtle races.
This prepares students to understand that a graph representing a proportional relationship is a line through (0, 0) and (1, k). They also begin to see connections between a context and features of a corresponding graph, equation, and table.
Data at your fingertips on the road to mastery
Facilitate a collaborative, connected classroom community.
The powerful teacher facilitation tools in Amplify Desmos Math give teachers insight into student thinking in real time. Teachers can select student work to display and discuss quickly and easily, leading to better questions that guide more productive discussions.
Amplify Desmos Math helps guide the learning process by connecting students to each other and to an understanding that they can use math to make sense of the world. Students learn and collaborate in every lesson. Whether using print, digital, or a mix of both, students stay connected to each other’s ideas and thinking, fueling classroom conversations and a shared understanding of math.
Standards alignment
Amplify Desmos Math is customized specifically to meet the New York State Next Generation Math Learning Standards. Within each document below, you’ll find direct links to lessons and activities where each individual standard is addressed.
Grade 6 correlation
Grade 7 correlation
Grade 8 correlation
The program is also aligned with the expectations outlined in the New York City Department of Education Definition of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education and the New York State Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework. Download the CR-SE alignment.
Digital review
Ready to explore the program? To log in, click the orange “Review now” button below, select “Log in with Amplify” and use the following login credentials:
Username: t.nycadmsample-01@tryamplify.net
Password: AmplifyNumber1
To review Algebra 1 content from Desmos Math 6–A1, which serves as the foundation for Amplify Desmos Math, click this link after logging in using the credentials above.
Support
Throughout your review, you can reach our support team by email or phone. We are available any time over:
Live chat: Click the orange icon while logged in to get immediate help.
Phone: Call our toll-free number: (888)-960-0380.
Email: Send an email to help@amplify.com. In the message body, please include your name and question. Provide as much detail as possible, so we can help you find a solution.
Unlock targeted instruction for all students.
Boost Math® is a K–8 personalized learning and intervention program that provides Learning Pathways to ensure that every student succeeds. Our system supports all aspects of a strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) through learning progressions that connect foundational skills directly to core instruction.
Boost Math for grades K–5 is available starting in the 2025–26 school year. Boost Math for grades 6–8 will be available in the 2026–27 school year.
Why Boost Math?
As math gaps continue to widen, many traditional intervention tools pull students off grade level or offer disconnected practice. Teachers are left piecing together supports, and students are left further behind.
Boost Math supports all MTSS models with instructional resources that include:
- Self-paced, digital learning supported by a virtual tutor.
- Teacher-led, small-group sessions.
- Additional independent student and pair activities.
Our approach
Each pathway includes a progression of learning activities that build understanding of a key grade-level topic. Students are grouped into the Intervention Pathway or the Practice Pathway based on mCLASS Math data.
Each pathway:
- Has research-backed small-group and independent activities to help every student experience success.
- Gives teachers the ability to quickly assign at least 45 minutes of digital activities per week.
- Utilizes an asset-based approach by building on what students already know.
The goal is to help teachers deliver instruction that accelerates learning and builds student confidence.
Multi-modal instruction built for MTSS
Instructional resources for small-group rotations include teacher-led instruction, student–driven activities, and digital personalized learning.
Learning pathways connected to grade-level learning
Intervention and Practice Pathways provide a progression of instructional activities aligned to topics you’re teaching.
Driven by mCLASS® Math data
Instructional groupings are generated based on assessment results.
Benchmarks and progress monitoring assessments are also available. Learn more about our math assessments.
Built to work alongside your core math program
Boost Math is designed to complement the core math program you’re already using. Whether you are differentiating whole-class instruction, leading small-group intervention, or giving students an additional opportunity for practice or challenge, our Intervention and Practice Learning Pathways support all students in what they need most, aligned directly to the major work of the grade.
Teachers can follow along with their core math program through correlations or preset digital instruction plans, or pull resources by skills, topic, or standard.
Integrated core programs include Reveal Math®, enVision®, Eureka Math2®, Into Math®, IM® v.360, with more coming soon.
The Boost Math resource alignments to curriculum materials are published by third parties. The resource alignments are provided by Amplify Education, Inc. (Amplify) and are not affiliated with, sponsored by, reviewed, approved, or endorsed by such third parties. Boost Math™ is a registered trademark of Amplify. All other intellectual property rights are the property of their respective owners.
One integrated math solution
Amplify’s comprehensive math suite, Amplify Desmos Math, provides seamless alignment to help teachers identify and capitalize on student strengths, foster deep investment, and build student agency.
Everything is in one place—with screening and progress monitoring, core instruction, integrated personalized learning, and embedded intervention teachers can trust.
Amplify Classroom
Amplify Classroom is a free teaching and learning platform that places student engagement at the center of instruction.
Amplify Classroom features free lessons, lesson-building tools, sharing features, and more. Built by math educators, the platform makes differentiation easier for teachers, personalizing instruction for students in real time.
Create your teacher account on classroom.amplify.com.
Explore more programs.
Amplify programs are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about our related programs.
What’s included
Boost Close Reading for 6–8 uses captivating storylines to engage students in powerful personalized reading instruction and practice. Whether students are learning to read fluently or sharpening close reading skills, Boost Close Reading accelerates their growth while freeing educators up to work with small groups or individual students. Explore more of the program here.
Boost Close Reading is a recipient of Digital Promise’s Research-Based Design and Learner Variability certifications.
Program at a glance
Boost Close Reading is a research-based, standards aligned program that supports students along an adaptive path of increasingly complicated texts and literary concepts. Students find these games embedded in an engaging narrative world that grows as they do, whether they are learning foundational skills or mastering close reading.
Books at a glance
At the middle school level, Boost Close Reading sets students in a dystopian future world run by Machines, where people are told what to read and what to think. Students are recruited into the rebellion and trained in the powerful ways authors convey meaning and affect their audience. This interactive graphic novel is divided into three books with each chapter focusing on a different skill or concept.
Chapter 1: Arguments and their structure
Students learn to build arguments using claims, evidence, and reasons.
Chapter 2: Setting and Mood
Students learn to analyze how descriptions of setting evoke mood for the reader.
Chapter 3: Pathos
Students learn to evaluate methods of persuasion in pathos arguments.
Chapter 4: Word choice and tone
Students learn to analyze word choices to determine tone.
Chapter 5: Logos
Students learn to identify, analyze, and create logos arguments.
Chapter 6: Figurative language
Students learn to analyze and use figurative language.
Chapter 7: Ethos
Students learn to identify, analyze, and create ethos arguments.
Chapter 8: Review and Synthesis
Students review what they’ve learned in the past seven lessons and apply their knowledge to create an original protest text.
Chapter 1: Narrative Arguments
Students learn to analyze the use of narrative in arguments.
Chapter 2: Characterization
Students learn to identify different types of characterization and make inferences from indirect characterization.
Chapter 3: Description in arguments
Students learn to identify sensory language and analyze its use in arguments.
Chapter 4: Conflict and character change
Students learn to identify different types of conflict and analyze how characters change in response to conflict.
Chapter 5: Causal reasoning
Students learn to analyze, evaluate, and create causal arguments.
Chapter 6: Themes
Students learn to use analysis of character change to determine and express the theme of a literary work.
Chapter 7: Evaluating arguments and fallacies
Students learn to evaluate pathos, logos, and ethos arguments by checking for completeness and coherence and identifying common fallacies.
Chapter 8: Review and synthesis
Students review what they’ve learned in the past seven chapters and apply their knowledge to putting the finishing touches on an original text.
Chapter 1: Complex arguments
Students learn to map out and analyze complex argument structures.
Chapter 2: Narrative voice
Students learn to identify the narrative point of view and analyze the purpose and effects of narrative voice.
Chapter 3: Arguments by analogy
Students learn to analyze and evaluate arguments by analogy.
Chapter 4: Style
Students learn to identify the elements of style and analyze how they are used to achieve an author’s purpose.
Chapter 5: Dialectic
Students learn to participate in dialectics by using logos arguments and crafting appropriate counterpoints.
Chapter 6: Review and synthesis
Students review the literary and argumentative tools they’ve learned throughout the three books and apply them to creating an effective rhetorical message.
Digital components
The program includes resources that give students chances to apply skills they’ve learned and teachers the ability to track student progress across multiple data points.
Component
Format
Teacher dashboard
The teacher dashboard requires zero set-up time and uses detailed data to provide insights into student progress. Teachers can drill down into student profiles to see specific areas of focus and where they are struggling.
Digital
Component
Format
Practice mode
In addition to the books, speeches, and articles weaved into the narrative arc of the game, students may also access hundreds of texts in practice mode. Here, they can continue to hone their mastery of close reading skills on a wide range of authentic texts.
digital
Overview
Among English Language Learner (ELL) students, Spanish is the most common language spoken at home—77% of students with limited English proficiency in the U.S. public schools claim Spanish as their primary language at home.
Amplify’s new Spanish-language companion program for Amplify CKLA meets an essential need for educators, and fulfills a central mission for all of us who aspire to achieve true equity in education. With Amplify Caminos, teachers will be able to develop student comprehension in Spanish through a content-rich curriculum while also building bridges to English literacy.
Amplify Caminos was developed by a bilingual team from across the Latinx Hispanic diaspora with a concerted effort to create relevant connections for students so the classroom experience strikes the ideal balance between the security of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown.
Amplify Caminos is a Spanish language arts curriculum for grades K–5 and can be used on its own. It can also be used alongside Amplify CKLA to provide students with equitable instruction in Spanish and English across a range of instructional models, including dual language immersion and transitional classrooms.
Amplify Caminos is a program for Grades K–5.
In Grades K-2, the Knowledge Strand builds background knowledge and vocabulary through carefully sequenced read-alouds and complex texts. Teachers read stories aloud that are more complex than the text students can decode on their own, enabling children to engage with complex texts and build background knowledge of a variety of connected topics in history, science, literature, and the arts.
In Grades 3–5, students are still focused on building reading and writing skills as well as knowledge and vocabulary, but the program no longer has two strands. The various lessons in each unit include read-alouds; whole group, small group, and partner reading; close reading; literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions; vocabulary; grammar; writing; and unit assessments.
The Amplify Caminos Skills Strand for K–2 is under development.
Available for the 2021–22 school year, Amplify Caminos can support teachers in multiple language teaching models, including dual language immersion classrooms, transitional classrooms, newcomer or bridge programs, and other unique models.
It can be taught alongside Amplify CKLA or as a standalone.
Program design
Grades K–2
Knowledge Teacher Guides, Flip Books, Student Knowledge Activity Books, Image Cards, recorded Read-Alouds, and planning and professional development resources.
Grades 3–5
Teacher Guides, Student Readers, Activity Books, Poet’s Journal, Writer’s Journal, Text Anthologies for Grades 4 and 5, Core Quests, Writing Quests (The Contraption in Grade 4, The Robot in Grade 5), and planning and professional development resources.
Website Privacy Policy
Last Modified: February 2026
Update: February 2, 2026: This Privacy Policy has been updated to address additional rights for individuals in the European Union/UK.
Below is the Website Privacy Policy for the amplify.com site (“Privacy Policy”). For purposes of clarity and as further outlined below, this Privacy Policy does not apply to student data. You can visit this page to read about the principles and policy governing student data collected and maintained on behalf of our school customers.
We advise you to read this Privacy Policy in its entirety, including the jurisdiction-specific provisions in the appendix. Our Notice at Collection for California Residents is available in the Notice for our California Customers.
Who We Are / What This Privacy Policy Covers
Amplify Education, Inc. (“Amplify”) recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we may collect through your use of this website (the “Site”).
This Privacy Policy does not apply to Amplify’s handling of:
- student data or other information collected from users of Amplify’s products that support classroom instruction and learning, which are governed by our Customer Privacy Policy.
- staff or applicant data that we process in accordance with our staff or applicant privacy notice, respectively.
If you have any question as to what legal agreement or privacy policy controls the collection and use of your information, please contact us using information below in the Contact Us section.
This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and is subject to our Website Terms of Use, which governs your use of the Site.
Our Role: We are the controller of all personal information (as defined below) that we receive through our Site and can be reached by email at privacy@amplify.com or by mail at Amplify Education, Inc., 55 Washington St.#800, Brooklyn, NY, 11201.
1. What personal information do we collect?
When you visit and / or interact with our Site, we may collect the following information about you that, alone or in combination, could be used to identify you or your device (“personal information”):
- Contact Information, such as name, district / school name, professional affiliation, title / role, email address, shipping address, address and phone number.
- Account Information, such as customer user login and password.
- Demographic Information, such as age and gender.
- Information You Submit, such as information voluntarily provided on message boards, feedback sections, and other public areas of the Site.
- Site Activity Information, which is collected when you access and interact with the Site, we and our Service Providers (as defined below) may collect certain information about those visits. For example, we or our Service Providers may receive and record information about your computer and browser, including your IP address, browser type, and other software or hardware information. If you access the Site from a mobile or other device, we may collect a unique device identifier assigned to that device, or other characteristics of the device hardware, operating system and configurations for that device. On certain pages of the Site, we may use third party tools to help us look at mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, data or text entered, and the pages you visit.
- Location Information, such as state, country and / or zip code, which we use to help us customize your experience, as well as to help us facilitate your privacy rights.
- Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information: such as customer service interactions, call recordings, chat transcripts, files you attach, and email, text, or other correspondence.
If you make a purchase through our online store, you may provide payment and other information directly to our third party e-commerce platform to complete your purchase.
We ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any government identifiers (such as social security numbers) or information related to racial or ethnic origin, health, or criminal background on or through the Site or otherwise.
2. Where/How do we collect personal information?
Amplify may collect personal information directly from you at various points, including the following:
- Product Information and Newsletters. When you submit a request to obtain information about our products, services or other informational material or subscribe to one of our newsletters, you may be asked to submit information such as name, professional affiliation, email address, company name, address and phone and details on your query or interests in our products and services. This information is collected to help us process your request.
- Customer Support. When you submit a form to contact our customer service, you may be asked to submit information such as name, e-mail, district, customer user login and password and details on your query. In addition, some features of our Site, such as our customer live chat functionality or other customer service systems may allow you to voluntarily provide personal information to us. This information is collected to help us process your request. Please only provide what is needed to facilitate the support request.
- Product Orders. If you use e-commerce areas of our Site to order our products, we request information from you on our order form. To purchase products through the Site, you must provide contact information (such as name and shipping address) and financial information (such as credit card number). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill your orders. We will also use this information to contact you to confirm your order or to inform you of any issues or delays.
- Registration. You may be asked to submit information to use certain parts of the Site (such as posting comments on certain areas of the Site), register for an event or webinar, or view restricted content that may be available on the Site. For instance, you may be asked to provide your name, email address and event or webinar-related preferences to help us process your registration or content request.
- Public Areas and Discussion Forums. Any information you share in public areas, such as message boards or feedback sections, becomes public. Please be careful about what you disclose and do not post any personal information that you expect to keep private.
- Contests and Sweepstakes. When we run a contest or sweepstakes relating to the Site or Amplify, it will be accompanied by a set of rules. The rules for each contest/sweepstakes will specify how the information gathered from you for your entry will be used and disclosed.
As you visit or use our Site, we may collect Site activity information through cookies and similar technologies.
- Cookies, Pixels, and Other Tracking Technologies. Cookies and other tracking technologies (such as pixels, beacons, and Adobe Flash technology) are small data files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They allow the website or mobile app to remember your actions and preferences over a period of time. We use the following types of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies – These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our Site. These cookies are not generally stored beyond the browser session and are less likely to include personal information. This category of cookies cannot be disabled.
- Functionality Cookies – We use these cookies so that we recognize you on our Site and remember your previously selected preferences. These cookies are stored on your device between browsing sessions but expire after a pre-defined period. These cookies enable our Site to “recognize” you when you use our Site, including your preferences such as your preferred language , time, and location. A mix of first party (placed by us) and third-party cookies (placed by third parties) are used.
- Analytics Cookies – These cookies help us and our Service Providers compile statistics and analytics about users of the Site, including Site Activity Information. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how users interact with the Platform. Google Analytics uses cookies to track your interactions with the Site, then collects that information and reports it to us. This information helps us improve the Site so that we can better serve you. To learn more about Google Analytics, visit https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en. If you wish, you can opt-out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, available on https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- Advertising Cookies – We use these cookies to collect information about your visit to our Site, the content you viewed, the links you followed and information about your browser, device, and your IP address. We sometimes share some limited aspects of this data with third parties for advertising purposes. We may also share Site Activity Information collected through cookies with our advertising partners. This means that when you visit another website, you may be shown advertising based on your browsing patterns on our Site.
For information on how to opt-out of these technologies, please see What Choices Do You Have? below.
- Social Plugins. Certain areas of our Site permit you to utilize social media functionality, such as the Facebook “Like” or Google “+1” buttons (“Social Plugins”). To use a Social Plugin, you must authorize the third-party provider of that Social Plugin, e.g. Facebook or Google, to access, collect, and/or disclose your information related to your use of that Social Plugin, subject to that company’s privacy policies, which may differ from this Privacy Policy. In addition, such providers may be able to collect information about you, including your activity on the Site, and they may notify your connections on their social networking platform about your use of the Site. Such services may also employ unique identifiers that allow your activity to be monitored across multiple websites for purposes of delivering more targeted advertising to you.
Amplify also receives information from other sources.
- Information from Other Sources. We may supplement any information we collect via this Site with information from publicly or commercially available sources.
3. How do we use personal information?
We may use any personal information and other information we collect from and about you for the following purposes and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy:
- To provide and manage the Site. We use the personal information we collect from and about you to provide the Site and features to you, including to measure and improve its services and features, to personalize your experience by delivering relevant content, to deliver marketing messages, to allow you to comment on content, to provide you with customer support, and to respond to inquiries. We may also use and disclose aggregate or anonymous data about your use of and activity on the Site to assist us in this regard and for any other purpose.
- To contact you. Amplify may periodically send promotional materials (e.g., newsletters) or notifications related to the Site and to Amplify’s business to the contact information you provided to us at registration.
- To improve our products and services. We may use your personal information for our business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, developing new products and services, enhancing the Site, improving our services, identifying usage trends, and determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.
- For marketing and advertising. We may use your personal information to help us market our products to you or your school district.
4. To whom do we disclose personal information?
We may disclose any personal information and other information we collect from and about you for the following purposes and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy:
- To share with our affiliated education companies. Amplify may share your personal information with Amplify’s affiliated education companies for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
- To allow service providers to assist us. We may engage third party service providers, agents and partners (“Service Providers”) to perform functions on our behalf, such as analytics, credit card processing, shipping or stocking orders and providing customer service. We may disclose your personal information to such Service Providers to enable them to assist us in these efforts.
- To allow our marketing and advertising partners to assist us. We may engage marketing and advertising partners to help us market and advertise our products and services, including via digital ads sent in connection with your visit to the Site. We may disclose Site Activity information, as well as contact information and other aggregate insights to such partners to enable them to assist us in these efforts.
- To protect the rights of Amplify and our users. There may be instances when Amplify may disclose your personal information, in situations where Amplify has a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary or appropriate in order to: (i) protect, enforce, or defend the legal rights, privacy, safety, operations, or property of Amplify, our parents, subsidiaries or affiliates or our or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements, including our terms of use); (ii) protect the rights, safety, privacy, security or property of users of the Site or others; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; (iv) comply with the law or legal process, including laws outside your country of residence; (v) respond to requests from public and government authorities, including those outside your country of residence; or (vi) allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
- To complete a merger or sale of assets. If Amplify sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger, transfer or other disposition of all or part of its business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), Amplify may transfer your personal information to the party or parties involved in the transaction.
5. What rights and choices do you have?
Opt-out of Marketing Communications. If you want to stop receiving promotional materials from Amplify, you can follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email. There are certain service notification emails that you may not opt-out of, such as notifications of changes to the Site or policies. If you have additional questions, please contact us using information below in the Contact Us section.
Opt-of Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies. There are a few ways to opt out or delete cookies.
- On Your Browser. Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies, but your browser may permit you to change your settings to notify you of a cookie being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the “Help” section of your browser for more information. Please note that by blocking any or all cookies you may not have access to certain features, content or personalization that may be available through the Site. Please also note that you must opt out separately on each device (including each web browser on each device) that you use to access our Site if you wish to opt out, and if you clear your cookies or if you use a different browser or device, you will need to renew your opt-out preferences.
- Interest-Based Advertising. Some advertisers and marketing companies participate in the self-regulatory programs of the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) and European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (“eDAA”) in connection with online interest-based advertising. DAA and eDAA provide consumers with the ability to opt out of receiving interest-based advertising from their program participants at the following links:
What Rights Do You Have?
- Please see section 3 of our supplemental disclosures: “Additional U.S. State Privacy Law Rights” for information about your U.S. privacy rights
- Please see section 4 of our supplemental disclosures: “Notice for European Economic Area and United Kingdom Customers” for information about your EU/UK privacy rights.
6. Security
Amplify uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel and physical measures to safeguard personal information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure or modification.
7. Data retention / Deletion
We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law. Even after we have deleted your personal information from our systems, copies of some information from your account may remain viewable in some circumstances – where, for example, you have shared information with social media platforms and other unaffiliated services. We may also retain backup information related to your account on our servers for some time after cancellation for fraud detection or to comply with applicable law or our internal security policies. Because of the nature of caching technology, your account may not be instantly inaccessible to others, and there may be a delay in the removal of the content from elsewhere on the Internet and from search engines.
8. Data Storage and Transfers
We are a United States Company, and our servers are hosted, managed, and controlled by us in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, we use industry standards to protect your data when it leaves your country of residence and your data will always be protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy, Applicable Laws and our Agreement regardless of the storage location.
Additionally, where we transfer your personal information to service providers outside of the United Kingdom (UK), European Economic Area (EEA), or other region that offers similar protections, we use specific appropriate safeguards to contractually obligate such service providers to protect personal information in accordance with Amplify’s commitment to privacy and security and applicable data protection laws.
If you have questions or wish to obtain more information about the international transfer of your personal information or the implemented safeguards, please contact us using the contact information below.
9. External third-party services
The Site may be linked to sites operated by unaffiliated companies, and may carry advertisements or offer content, functionality, games, newsletters, contests or sweepstakes, or applications developed and maintained by unaffiliated companies. Amplify is not responsible for the privacy practices of unaffiliated companies, and once you leave the Site via a link or enable an unaffiliated service, you are subject to the applicable privacy policy of the unaffiliated service.
10. Updates to this policy
Amplify may modify this Privacy Policy. Please look at the Last Revised Date at the top of this Privacy Policy to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Site. If you do not wish to be bound by the terms of the revised Privacy Policy, you must discontinue your use of the Site.
11. Contact us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
Email: privacy@amplify.com
Mail: Amplify Education, Inc.
55 Washington St.#800
Brooklyn, NY, 11201
Phone: (800) 823-1969
Attn: General Counsel
Appendix – Supplemental Disclosures
1. Notice for our California Customers
We retain your personal information for as long as you are an active user of our Site or continue to have an account with us, and in accordance with our legal obligations (which may require us to hold information to provide financial and other reporting and to defend against potential claims). If you are a California resident, please see below for information about your rights pursuant to California law.
Personal Information We Collect |
How We Use Personal Information |
| Contact Information |
|
| Account Information |
|
| Payment Information |
|
| Information You Submit |
|
| Site Activity Information |
|
| Location Information |
|
| Inferences |
|
Some of the information described above may be considered “sensitive” under the laws of certain jurisdictions (including payment information and account login credentials (“Sensitive Information”). Whether information is Sensitive Information will depend on the laws of your jurisdiction. We only use Sensitive Information, such as payment information and account credentials for necessary or reasonably expected purposes – specifically, to provide you with our Services (i.e., fulfill purchases and to allow account logins).
Shine the Light
California’s Shine the Light law (Civil Code § 1798.83) permits California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of certain categories of personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. We do not share personal information, as defined by California’s Shine the Light law, with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes.
Notice of Financial Incentive
As part of our services, there may be opportunities for you to complete surveys and questionnaires. As an incentive for completing the survey or questionnaire, you can voluntarily provide your personal information, which in turn enters you into a raffle drawing or enables us to provide you with other benefits, discounts, offers, or deals that may constitute a financial incentive under California law (“Financial Incentive”). The categories of personal information required for us to provide the Financial Incentives include: contact information and any other information that you choose to provide when you complete the survey.
Participation is voluntary and you can opt out at any time before your survey is complete.
The value of the personal information we collect in connection with our Financial Incentives is equivalent to the value of the benefit offered.
2. Additional U.S. State Privacy Law Rights
Residents of certain U.S. states have the following rights, regarding your personal information (each of which are subject to various exceptions and limitations):
- Access. You have the right to request, up to two times every 12 months, that we disclose to you the categories of personal information collected about you, the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected, the categories of personal information sold or shared, the business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing the personal information, the categories of third parties with whom personal information was shared, and the specific pieces of personal information collected about you.
- Correct. You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information collected from you.
- Deletion. You can request that we delete your personal information that we maintain about you.
- Opt-out (Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information). Under several U.S. state privacy laws, consumers have the right to opt-out of the “sale” of their personal information (defined very broadly to include situations where we provide personal information to partners who provide advertising services to us) and the “sharing” of personal information in connection with the display of targeted advertising across third party websites. While we do not sell your personal information, we do share it in connection with our advertising efforts. Please also note that we do not knowingly sell or share the Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age.
We also honor the Global Privacy Control, a browser-based opt-out signal. We do not respond to other browser-based signals that do not meet applicable state law requirements, which may include older Do Not Track signals.
- No Discrimination. You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.
- Appeals. You have a right to appeal decisions concerning your ability to exercise your consumer rights.
- Submission of Requests. You may exercise the above rights by emailing us at privacy@amplify.com. Note that we may deny certain requests, or fulfill a request only in part, based on our legal rights and obligations. For example, we may retain personal information as permitted by law, such as for tax or other record keeping purposes, to maintain an active account, and to process transactions and facilitate customer requests.
- Authorized Agent. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. When submitting the request, please ensure the authorized agent identifies himself/herself/itself as an authorized agent and can show written permission from you to represent you. We may contact you directly to confirm that you have authorized the agent to act on your behalf or confirm your identity.
- Verification. Whether you submit a request directly on your own behalf, or through an authorized agent, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity prior to responding to your requests. The verification steps will vary depending on the sensitivity of the personal information and whether you have an account with us.
3. Notice for European Economic Area and United Kingdom Customers
As detailed at the beginning of our Privacy Policy (under the section titled “Our Role”), Amplify acts as a controller with respect to personal information collected as you interact with our Site.
Lawful Basis for Processing
We rely on the following lawful bases for our processing activities:
- Consent;
- We obtain your consent to collect and process device and usage data via cookies on our Site to understand how individuals use our Site and to help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing campaigns.
- Pursuant to a contract with the user of our Site;
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to provide and manage our Site, including payment processing, where this is required in order for us to perform our obligations under our contract with you.
- To comply with our legal obligations;
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to ensure the safety and security of our Site where we are complying with security requirements under data protection and cyber and information security law.
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to comply with our legal obligations which includes, for example, to access, retain or share certain personal information where we receive a valid request from a government body, law enforcement body, judicial body regulator or similar, to deal with legal claims and prospective legal claims, and to ensure we are complying with applicable laws.
- When we have a legitimate interest in doing so, which is not outweighed by the risks to the individual. We rely on our legitimate interest to process all categories of personal information:
- to provide, manage, and improve the Site where such activities are not strictly required under our contract, including personalizing your experience on the Site.
- to ensure the safety and security of our Site where this is important but not required under the data protection law or cyber and information security laws.
- to respond to queries or otherwise communicate with you in relation to our Site and the operation of our business where this is not strictly required under a contract with you.
- internal research and certain marketing purposes (e.g. to periodically send newsletters and other promotional materials), which will not be based on Student Data or directed to K–12 students.
Your Data Subject Rights
If you are located in the EEA/UK, you have the following rights, subject to certain exceptions:
- Right of access: You have the right to ask us for confirmation on whether we are processing your personal information and access to that personal information.
- Right to correction: You have the right to have your personal information corrected.
- Right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information.
- Right to withdraw consent: You have the right to withdraw consent that you have provided.
- Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
- Right to restriction of processing: You have the right to request the limiting of our processing under limited circumstances.
- Right to data portability: You have the right to receive the personal information that you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and you have the right to transmit that information to another controller, including to have it transmitted directly, where technically feasible.
- Right to object: You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information
To exercise any of these rights, contact us as set forth in the section entitled “Contact Us” above and specify which European privacy right you intend to exercise. We may require additional information from you to allow us to confirm your identity. Please note that we store information as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, and may continue to retain and use the information even after a data subject request for purposes of our legitimate interests, including to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, and enforce our agreements.
Complaints
If you have any issues with our compliance, you have the right to lodge a complaint with an EEA or UK supervisory authority. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you approach a data protection regulator, and would welcome you directing an inquiry first to us. To do so, please contact us by email at privacy@amplify.com or by mail at Amplify Education, Inc., 55 Washington St.#800, Brooklyn, NY, 11201.
Love at the center of literacy, with Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson
Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson is an education leader who advocates for students with diverse academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs. She is Deputy Chief of Curriculum and Instruction in Philadelphia, where she leads the Curriculum Equity Initiative. She previously led the development of an instructional guide for supporting students with disabilities. Her dissertation on Multi-Tiered System of Supports implementation has a focus on evidence-based reading interventions. She approaches the Science of Reading conversation from an equity lens, focused on all students having access to culturally and linguistically inclusive instruction.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“I have never met a student that did not want to learn how to read or a family that did not understand the importance of their children knowing how to read.”
“We have to listen to our young people in order to be able to move with that sense of urgency.”
"Liberation is connected to our students being literate… In order for our students to truly be free, we [need to] understand the power that reading has in their future.”
“We have to remember who we are serving and why we are serving them.”
“A lot of times when you’re in a large system and you’re leading a large system, it can become very robotic, like a machine. You do this, you get this, you do this, you get this. But there’s a human aspect that if you have not considered that human aspect, you could very well end up in the same place that you’re trying to move away from.”
“And while it’s a five-year strategic plan, we do have a sense of urgency and I’m sure within that there are gonna be benchmarks and hundred-day plans and smaller plans to make sure that we are actually doubling down again on the things that truly matter, that are gonna lead, outcomes for our students here in the school district.”
“If we’re only in the business of educating some students, then what are we really doing? It’s important to look at the students that are not benefitting and really identifying the things that work for that population of students rather than continuing with practices that aren’t meeting the needs of the students we’re serving.”
Featured Episodes
Embodying your passion, purpose, and personal values as an educator, starring Daniela Anello
Meet Our Guest(s):
Daniela Anello
Daniela Anella, CEO, leads the strategic vision, implementation and growth of DC Bilingual both academically and operationally. Under her leadership, DC Bilingual received the National Blue Ribbon School Award in 2024 for Educational Excellence. This is her 16th year at the school; she’s also served as literacy coach, resident principal, interim principal, and head of school.
Daniela sits on multiple boards and councils, including the State Early Childhood Development Coordinating Council (SECDCC), the My School DC Common Lottery Board, the National Charter Collaborative Board, and others. She is a graduate of the New Leaders Emerging Leaders program and the Aspiring Principals Program. She earned her Literary Specialist Master of Arts at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a bachelor of arts in elementary education and teaching at SUNY Geneseo.
Meet our host, Ana Torres.
Ana has been an educator for 30 years, working in both the K–8 and higher education sectors. She served as an administrator and instructor at various public and private colleges and universities and as a bilingual and dual language teacher, dual language math and reading interventionist, dual language instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal in K–8 schools. Ana is currently the Senior Biliteracy and Multilingual Product Specialist at Amplify, and delivers literacy and biliteracy presentations across the nation. Ana’s passion and advocacy for biliteracy and support for all students from all walks of life has led her to educate leaders, teachers, and parents about the positive impact of bilingualism and biliteracy in our world.
Meet our Classroom Insider, Eric Cross.
Eric Cross is a middle school science teacher who hopes to someday be a lifelong educator, like the guests on Beyond My Years! In each episode, Eric connects with host Ana Torres to discuss her guests’ best insights, gleaned from their long and rewarding careers in the classroom. Then, Eric talks about bringing some of their wisdom into his current classroom and busy life.
Quotes
“I needed to be in a place where I could be my full self, demonstrating all of the identities that make me who I am.”
“The first step is recognizing your own identity and your own values and the aspects of you that you want to see reflected in the place that you're going to pour your love and heart into.”
“Change and improvement happen over time.”
“Go where you’re going to grow.”
“If I'm in an environment where I can't be my authentic self, and I know what that is and I know what I value, then it might be time for me to go somewhere where I can flourish.”
“A system is not a person. If you build something on a person, then when that person leaves or gets burned out, your system falls apart.”
Science of Reading Essentials: Dyslexia
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Francisco Usero-González, Ph.D.
Francisco Usero-González, Ph.D., is a multilingual and education consultant specializing in culturally and linguistically responsive approaches for Hispanic bilingual students. Through his scientific training and teaching experience—nationally and internationally—he has increased his knowledge of biliteracy program design and implementation, participated in national and international educational conferences, and published several papers in international educational journals.
Margaret “Margo” Malaika Weaver
Margo Weaver had unplugged from school and retreated into the corners of her environment until her diagnosis of dyslexia helped her make sense of things. She went from being on academic probation to regularly landing on the Honor Roll and Dean’s List. She became a two-time California All-State Softball player and now plays for Bowie State University in Maryland, where she studies Digital Art Animation.
Elijah Valencia
Elijah Valencia’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance and an indictment of systems intended to help young people prepare for society. Without the ability to read well, Elijah was unable to keep his life on track. While incarcerated, he was diagnosed with dyslexia and given the support needed to develop his reading skills. Upon release, he earned an associate’s degree and has become a youth counselor and hotel manager.
Sally Shaywitz, M.D.
Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., is Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development at Yale University and co-director and co-founder of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. A leading expert on dyslexia, she has authored over 350 scientific papers, delivered a Congressional keynote, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Tim Odegard, Ph.D.
Tim Odegard, Ph.D., holds the Katherine Davis Murfree Chair of Excellence in Dyslexic Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. He leads the efforts of the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia, serves as editor-in-chief of Annals of Dyslexia and consulting editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and is a former editor at large for Perspectives on Language and Literacy. He is also a reading therapist, having completed a two-year dyslexia specialist training program at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas.
Nadine Gaab, Ph.D.
Nadine Gaab, Ph.D., studies typical and atypical learning trajectories from infancy to adolescence, with a special emphasis on language, reading, and literacy development, and the role of the environment in shaping these trajectories. Her work is at the intersection of developmental psychology, learning sciences, neuroscience, educational technology, and educational policy within a learning disability framework. She’s interested in multifactorial frameworks of learning differences with an emphasis on early identification, and “preventative education.” One key aspect is the translation of research findings to address contemporary challenges in educational practice and policy.
Hadyn Fleming
Hadyn Fleming is a student featured on Science of Reading: The Podcast who openly shares his experiences growing up with dyslexia. In his episode, he discusses his journey to becoming a confident reader and debunks common dyslexia myths. His story offers valuable insight into the profound impact educators can have on a student’s success and self-belief.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is Chief Academic Officer of Literacy at Amplify and host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Lambert is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Lambert explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. A former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, she’s dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“The knowledge has been out there for decades, and still we have so many students in classrooms who are not identified and not supported. And it's a shame, because the impact of living with dyslexia—especially when it's not identified—can be profound.”
“What we know is prevention is always the best, and you can't prevent somebody from being dyslexic. But what you can do is you can prevent them from having compounding struggles in learning how to read.”
“When you have something, but it doesn't have a name, it leads to anxiety. So when you know that you have something and it has a name, that makes such a difference.”
“You don't wanna just screen the whole world or your whole district and then not do anything about it. Good screening needs to be followed by a good evidence-based response to screening.”
“In this world of intervention, we need to take responsibility for getting students the intervention that they need to have, so they're not leaving us in this next grade and the next grade and the next grade still being non-readers.”
“That old mindset of having something or not having something, black or white, is a real hindrance to actually making sure that we have protections for all students, regardless of if they fit this ‘you have dyslexia or not.’ We have a structural and systems challenge now.”
“Kiddos start to learn to read, and just at a basic preK level of understanding, you can identify some level of risk there and intervene appropriately. You can screen early and you can intervene just as early, to help close those gaps.”
Unlocking a systematic approach to math fluency instruction
Meet Our Guest(s):
Myuriel von Aspen
Myuriel is the multiple subject coordinator for the MAT + Credential program at the University of California, Irvine. She has both teaching and coaching experience in elementary schools in Orange County, California, including seven years as a first and fourth grade teacher in a Spanish-English dual immersion school. She has worked in projects with Student Achievement Partners, UnboundED, and Illustrative Mathematics. Myuriel holds a bachelor of science in computer science from the Florida International University, and a master of business administration and master of arts in teaching from the University of California, Irvine. The core belief that drives her work is that all children are capable of learning challenging math. Our role as educators is to remove barriers, provide access and opportunities for children to make sense, engage in meaningful discussions, and develop their identities as competent doers and learners.
Meet our hosts: Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer
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.
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.
Transcripts and additional resources:
Quotes
“Math is not about answer-getting. It’s not about ‘I get it right or I don’t,’ but, ‘Do I deeply understand and can I justify and explain all those math practices?’ That we know is what really shows that a student knows math deeply.”
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No broken children—only broken systems, starring Kareem Weaver
Meet Our Guest(s):
Kareem Weaver
Kareem Weaver is an award-winning educator and community advocate with extensive experience leading schools and systems in district, juvenile justice, and managed-care settings. His advocacy is featured in the 2023 documentary The Right to Read.
Kareem has worked with the Council of the Great City Schools, the College Board, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission on literacy as a civil right. He has offered diagnostic support to districts, states, and educator preparation programs; presented at over 100 conferences, departments of education, universities, and community organizations; and led field visits for system leaders, all in service of bringing clarity to the literacy crisis and illuminating the most productive path forward so that all children have access to Full and Complete Reading, which is a Universal Mandate (FULCRUM). He is the current second vice president and education committee chair for the Oakland NAACP.
Meet our host, Ana Torres.
Ana has been an educator for 30 years, working in both the K–8 and higher education sectors. She served as an administrator and instructor at various public and private colleges and universities and as a bilingual and dual language teacher, dual language math and reading interventionist, dual language instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal in K–8 schools. Ana is currently the bilingual and multilingual specialist on Amplify’s product specialist team, and delivers literacy and biliteracy presentations across the nation. Ana’s passion and advocacy for biliteracy and multiculturalism has led her to educate leaders, teachers, and parents about the positive impact of bilingualism and biliteracy in our world.
Meet our Classroom Insider, Eric Cross.
Eric Cross is a middle school science teacher who hopes to someday be a lifelong educator, like the guests on Beyond My Years! In each episode, Eric connects with host Ana Torres to discuss her guests’ best insights gleaned from their long and rewarding careers in the classroom. Then, Eric talks about bringing some of their wisdom into his current classroom and busy life.
Transcripts and additional resources:
Quotes
“I’m at the age now where I really don’t have much patience for things that aren’t gonna make a difference.”
“We can busy ourselves doing a lot of other things, but when you learn to read, your life trajectory changes drastically.”
“Where do we want our young people to go? What opportunities, what paths do we want them to have access to? Reading is a gateway for life.”
“If you can’t grow people, what are you doing in a seat? If you’re an administrator and you can’t grow teachers’ practice, then you’re a manager, not an administrator.”
“Hope is wonderful, but that’s not a strategy. You have to be very specific about what you’re going to fix, what you’re going to address, and what you’re going to master.”
“There are no broken children; there’s broken systems.”
“Self-care has gotta be on the front of the agenda, not the back burner. Many educators, we just are so busy in the grind of teaching and learning, we forget.”
“ Being prepared in so many aspects of life outside of the classroom makes you better in the classroom.”
Teaching with heart, starring Joyce Abbott
Meet Our Guest(s):
Joyce Abbott
Joyce Abbott is a dynamic retired educator from the School District of Philadelphia. Her journey began with a ten-year service in the U.S. Army, earning her the rank of Staff Sergeant. Following her honorable discharge and numerous awards, her pathway to education was paved through the nationally acclaimed Troops to Teachers program. Joyce commanded respect and admiration for her instructional practices and classroom management, leading to multiple awards and features in the Philadelphia Daily News.
In her role as Climate Manager at Andrew Hamilton School, Joyce made commendable strides in improving the school’s climate and culture. She was also the inspiration behind the Emmy-winning show “Abbott Elementary,” created by her former student Quinta Brunson. She recently received recognition for her work from the city of Philadelphia, which proclaimed Sept. 26 Joyce Abbott Day. Joyce holds a Bachelor of Science in business and economics from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and a Master of Education from Cheyney University.
Meet our host, Ana Torres.
Ana has been an educator for 30 years, working in both the K–8 and higher education sectors. She served as an administrator and instructor at various public and private colleges and universities and as a bilingual and dual language teacher, dual language math and reading interventionist, dual language instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal in K–8 schools. Ana is currently the Senior Biliteracy and Multilingual Product Specialist on Amplify’s Product Specialist team, and delivers literacy and biliteracy presentations across the nation. Ana’s passion and advocacy for biliteracy and multiculturalism has led her to educate leaders, teachers, and parents about the positive impact of bilingualism and biliteracy in our world.
Meet our Classroom Insider, Eric Cross.
Eric Cross is a middle school science teacher who hopes to someday be a lifelong educator, like the guests on Beyond My Years! In each episode, Eric connects with host Ana Torres to discuss her guests’ best insights gleaned from their long and rewarding careers in the classroom. Then, Eric talks about bringing some of their wisdom into his current classroom and busy life.
Transcripts and additional resources:
Quotes
“Sometimes your bad days are going to outweigh your good days, but when you … remain focused and see what your goal is, and you look at those students and say, ‘This is my main focus,’ that can be the greatest motivator.”
“A lot of times they are dependent upon you to teach them in every aspect of their life. When you understand the community, you can serve.”
“Me and my military buddies definitely had respect for each other. And we operated as a team, regardless of our differences, because sometimes you may not agree with every teacher on your team, which many times I did not. But you have to keep your focus toward our mission, [which] is to move a certain child or do this for the student body.”
“They know when you care. And they will have a whole different level of respect for you when they know you care. And you set the bar high for them. That shows that you care, because you know that they can do it and you believe in them.” —Joyce Abbott
“I think it’s so important in the schools that they embrace the younger teachers, because you only get better through learning and through support.”
“When you’re passionate about a profession and committed to the goal of the whole school, you’re going to do what you can to help these new teachers because they have to learn. So many leave because they’re encountering so many problems and they don’t feel that they’re supported effectively.”
Empowering diverse learners in math, starring Keri Brown
Meet Our Guest(s):
Keri Brown
Keri Brown is an experienced K–2 educator, national presenter, and curriculum author from Alabama. She has taught both kindergarten and first grade and has also supported students through K–2 intervention. With over 17 years in education, Keri is passionate about using research-based practices, hands-on learning, and meaningful tech to support young learners. She loves helping fellow teachers through practical strategies they can use right away. You can find her sharing ideas on her website and Instagram.
Meet our host, Ana Torres.
Ana has been an educator for 30 years, working in both the K–8 and higher education sectors. She served as an administrator and instructor at various public and private colleges and universities and as a bilingual and dual language teacher, dual language math and reading interventionist, dual language instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal in K–8 schools. Ana is currently the Senior Biliteracy and Multilingual Product Specialist at Amplify, and delivers literacy and biliteracy presentations across the nation. Ana’s passion and advocacy for biliteracy and support for all students from all walks of life has led her to educate leaders, teachers, and parents about the positive impact of bilingualism and biliteracy in our world.
Meet our Classroom Insider, Eric Cross.
Eric Cross is a middle school science teacher who hopes to someday be a lifelong educator, like the guests on Beyond My Years! In each episode, Eric connects with host Ana Torres to discuss her guests’ best insights, gleaned from their long and rewarding careers in the classroom. Then, Eric talks about bringing some of their wisdom into his current classroom and busy life.
Quotes
“We start small with just talking to them, helping them figure out how to have a conversation about math. They can talk about everything else, but we have to teach them how to talk about math. We have to give them the words, give them the tools.”
“There's only so many ways you can teach the same thing. When I was teaching addition, there's only so many ways I could do it. But if that's their goal and that's what we're working on, I’ve got to try to come up with a hundred different ways to teach addition until they have mastered addition. And so you get very creative.”
“When [I] see the light bulb come on in a kid, I'm like, ‘Ah, this is why I teach.'”
“It's impactful to spend that little extra time saying, ‘Let me build some relationships and show these babies how to be students in my classroom.'”
“Predictable routines really help students feel safe, because they know what's going to happen.”
“When things are consistent and repeated, [students] know what to expect and it's not as big of a cognitive lift for them to do it. Each time eventually gets easier and you can get into the deeper learning.”
“That human aspect, that dependability, that consistency is a big, big barrier for students when they don't feel like it's there. When we can create that by creating these routines, learning happens deeper and faster.”
“Explaining requires you to juggle information in your working memory and then turn it into language.”
Mississippi Department of Education approves Amplify’s mCLASS programs for dyslexia screening
Amplify, a company that creates next-generation curriculum and assessment programs, announced that the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) approved its mCLASS literacy assessments for the state-mandated dyslexia screening in kindergarten and first grade. Amplify’s mCLASS assessments were already approved for Mississippi’s universal early literacy screenings for grades K–3, making Amplify and mCLASS the only assessment provider approved on both lists.
“We’re excited to be able to further support Mississippi educators with mCLASS,” said Krista Curran, SVP and General Manager, Assessment and Intervention, at Amplify. “Having both universal screening and screening for dyslexia on the mCLASS platform should make it easy for Mississippi schools to address two different needs in one tool. We continue to evolve mCLASS to better support our teachers and students – these mCLASS advances to support the early identification of students at risk for dyslexia have been embraced in schools across the country.”
Researchers estimate that 5-15% of students struggle with dyslexia. The recent trends in legislation across the country are a great step forward for early screening and identification of students at risk. As of of this writing, 21 states have have enacted dyslexia screening legislation, and more states are positioned to do to in the coming years. These states recognize that early screening, along with early intervention in areas like phonological awareness and decoding, are essential in providing students with the support they need, closing any gaps, and preventing further difficulty.
mCLASS delivers what educators need to help every student read fluently and confidently. Based on over 30 years of research, mCLASS assessments dive deep, giving educators a complete view of each student and insight into student response patterns. Unlike other programs that rely on inferences, mCLASS lets educators know exactly which aspect of a skill a student is struggling with. mCLASS instruction, driven by mCLASS assessment results, provides teachers and students with targeted lessons and activities to support students on their journey to become confident readers.
In addition to MDE’s recent approval of mCLASS assessments, Amplify has served the state since 2014 through the Mississippi Data Coaching Program. The Program is designed to address the varied needs of teachers and leaders to strengthen their understanding and use of data to enhance instruction and improve student outcomes. As a result of Amplify’s work in Mississippi, third grade reading assessment pass scores have increased by 8.9% and high school graduation rates have increased by 12.4% in participating schools. Amplify is committed to to continuing to support vital initiatives designed to strengthen K-12 education in the State of Mississippi. To learn more about the MS Data Coaching program, please visit the following link. For more regarding Amplify’s mCLASS assessment programs, click here.
About Amplify
A pioneer in K–12 education since 2000, Amplify is leading the way in next-generation curriculum and assessment. Our captivating core and supplemental programs in ELA, math, and science engage all students in rigorous learning and inspire them to think deeply, creatively, and for themselves. Our formative assessment products turn data into practical instructional support to help all students build a strong foundation in early reading and math. All of our programs provide teachers with powerful tools that help them understand and respond to the needs of every student. Today, Amplify serves more than three million students in all 50 states. For more information, visit amplify.com.
Contact: media@amplify.com
Amplify announces integration of goal-setting product, Huddle, into its line of curriculum products
Brooklyn, NY (January 21, 2020) — Amplify, a publisher of next-generation curriculum and assessment programs, and Huddle, the maker of student goal-setting technology, have announced the integration of Huddle’s goal-setting product into Amplify’s portfolio of blended curriculum programs. Amplify will have exclusive access to incorporate Huddle’s technology and feature set within the school market.
“Huddle offers an exciting opportunity for Amplify to bring core curriculum programs into the classroom that help students not only engage deeply in academic content but also develop a mindset for success,” said Larry Berger, founder and chief executive officer of Amplify.
“In response to schools seeking ways to help their students develop a growth mindset, we sought to create a tool that enables more conversations between students and teachers about their goals and makes it easy to keep students motivated along the way,” commented Sean Farrell, co-founder and chief executive officer of Huddle. “We are honored to have the opportunity to broaden Huddle’s reach and excited to see it grow within the Amplify family.”
Huddle’s Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer Kathleen Sheehy noted, “Amplify is known for creating instructional materials that are high quality and designed with students in mind. We know that the students and teachers who use Amplify’s programs are going to love Huddle’s useful and engaging tools for helping every student accomplish their goals.”
One of the unique aspects of Huddle’s technology is its ability to integrate seamlessly with existing digital products. Rather than require teachers and students to log into another site or app, Huddle can embed itself within the programs they use everyday while bringing a host of goal-setting, coaching, and motivational features that enhance their experience.
About Amplify
A pioneer in K–12 education since 2000, Amplify is leading the way in next-generation curriculum and assessment. Our captivating core and supplemental programs in ELA, math, and science engage all students in rigorous learning and inspire them to think deeply, creatively, and for themselves. Our formative assessment products turn data into practical instructional support to help all students build a strong foundation in early reading and math. All of our programs provide teachers with powerful tools that help them understand and respond to the needs of every student. Today, Amplify serves five million students in all 50 states. For more information, visit amplify.com.
About Huddle
Founded in 2018, Huddle provides a digital solution to help students create personal and academic goals, automatically track their progress, and facilitate 1:1 meetings with teachers to check in and discuss progress.
Amplify acquires Desmos curriculum to build the future of math instruction; Desmos calculators to remain independent and free to all
BROOKLYN, N.Y., May 18, 2022 — Amplify, a next-generation publisher of curriculum and assessment, announced today that it has acquired the curriculum and instructional technology of Desmos, the acclaimed developer of digital math tools and curriculum. The deal is the culmination of a close partnership between Amplify and Desmos over the past two years. Desmos’ world-renowned calculators will remain independent as part of a separate Public Benefit Corporation called Desmos Studio that will focus on the development of free, best-in-class online calculators and other tools.
The Amplify and Desmos curriculum teams will now deeply integrate the technology and content they’ve both been developing and piloting for several years. The resulting combined program, based on IM K–12 Math™, will bring together Amplify’s proven ability to deliver the highest quality STEM curriculum to millions of students, and the groundbreaking digital tools and instructional approach of Desmos. Desmos technology will also power new modes of creative, collaborative learning in the next generation of Amplify’s science and literacy core programs.
Now a part of Amplify, teacher.desmos.com will be called Desmos Classroom and will continue to provide free lesson-building tools and lessons to teachers around the world. Users can expect more instructional content, professional learning resources, and classroom learning tools, continuing to enhance Desmos Classroom as the most powerful free resource for math educators.
“We have admired Desmos for more than a decade, watching them sail from strength to strength on a current of excellence and teacher enthusiasm. The past two years of working closely together reinforced a shared vision for improving math education,” said Larry Berger, Amplify’s chief executive officer. “We will now merge our math curriculum development efforts, with the goal of building a new kind of teaching and learning experience that helps every student love learning math and gain access to math’s power and beauty.”
Desmos Studio will become a separate Public Benefit Corporation led by original Founder and Chief Executive Officer Eli Luberoff, and will continue to build and grow the Desmos suite of calculators and other tools, and the community that relies on them. The calculators will remain free to teachers and students globally and available for companies to license for use in their products. Its partnerships with over 75 organizations around the world will provide Desmos Studio with the resources to continue intensive research and development around Desmos calculators and other tools long into the future.
“We chose this unique deal with Amplify because, in our years working together, it’s become clear that Amplify shares our pedagogical vision and our commitment to quality, and recognizes what’s made Desmos special. We know that Amplify’s exceptional team can help us continue to improve while bringing our curriculum and activities to as many teachers and students as possible,” said Eli Luberoff, founder and chief executive officer of Desmos. “As an independent entity, Desmos Studio will continue to improve the calculators that teachers and students know and love. The Desmos calculator is now embedded in math classrooms across the world, and for that reason should be managed as a resource for the public good, which means keeping it free for educators and students while continuously improving it for years to come.”
About Amplify
A pioneer in K–12 education since 2000, Amplify is leading the way in next-generation curriculum and assessment. Our core and supplemental programs in ELA, math, and science engage all students in rigorous learning and inspire them to think deeply, creatively, and for themselves. Our formative assessment products help teachers identify the targeted instruction students need to build a strong foundation in early reading and math. All of our programs provide educators with powerful tools that help them understand and respond to the needs of every student. Today, Amplify serves more than 10 million students in all 50 states. For more information, visit amplify.com.
About Desmos
Desmos wants to build a world where every student learns math and loves learning math, where a student’s access to the power and beauty of math doesn’t depend on their place of birth, race, ethnicity, gender, or any other aspect of their identity. Our free suite of calculators are used annually by millions of teachers and students around the world, and our activities and curriculum power the daily work of hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students. For more information, visit desmos.com.
Contact: media@amplify.com