Introducing
Building Math Thinkers Foundations
A live professional learning experience that helps K–12 math educators make better instructional decisions when students shut down, become task avoidant, or depend on adults to do the mathematical thinking.
For K-12 Math Teachers, Special Education Teachers and ELL Teachers working in mathematics classrooms, Instructional Coaches, and the School Leaders who support them.
Individual educators: $125 | School teams: $3,500 for up to 28 educators
Administrators attend with their team at no additional cost.
We all know this student.
The student who raises their hand immediately after instructions are given.
The student who is will persevere through the will assignment as long as you give them all your attention.
The student who needs you to confirm that they are correct after every step before they keep going.
And, the student who actually knows more mathematics than they are willing to show you.
So, how do we proceed? We do what good teachers have always done.
We scaffold.
We model.
We pull small groups.
We activate prior knowledge.
We give sentence starters.
We find another representation.
We break the problem into smaller pieces.
Sometimes it works. The student finishes the problem, they complete the assignment, and then the cycle begins again with the next concept.
Until we realize we’ve been repeating the same cycle, with the same students, and the same level of support for most of the school year.
So that leaves us with the question:
“When does helping students get through a problem become different
from helping them become independent mathematical thinkers?”
Because eventually, we have to step away.
Students need to know what to do when they are working independently, and equally important, they need to know what to do when they get stuck.
And too often, the first time we really ask students to do both without us is during an assessment.
By then, it’s too late to teach them how.
That is the problem I want us to work through together.
The goal isn’t less support.
It’s better support.
Stop scaffolding? Never
Unfinished learning is real.
This workshop ask math educators to consider one question:
Is the support that we provide helping our most underserved students think or are we simply helping complete assignments?
Sometimes those are the same thing. Sometimes they aren’t.
We need to know the difference. Because if every time a student gets stuck, we figure out how to get them unstuck, we take away the opportunity for them to learn what to do with confusion for themselves.
Students need to know that confusion is a natural part of learning mathematics.
But when their confusion automatically triggers an adult stepping in to add another hint or another scaffold, students can begin to interpret being confused as evidence that they can’t do math without help
Over time, that becomes bigger than one problem or one assignment. It can shape what students believe about themselves as mathematics learners.
Our job isn’t to eliminate confusion for students.
It’s to help them learn how to navigate their confusion and persevere to sense-making.
Now is the time to interrupt the cycle.
Students don’t become independent mathematical thinkers simply because we eventually ask them to work independently.
They become independent by having repeated opportunities to figure out what to do when the answer—or the next step—isn’t obvious.
That means we can’t wait until students “have all the skills.”
We can’t wait until the gaps are filled.
And we can’t wait until assessment day to find out whether students can make sense of mathematics without us beside them.
They need opportunities to practice navigating uncertainty while we are still there to support them.
That may mean allowing a student to sit with confusion a little longer before stepping in.
It may mean asking a question instead of giving the next step.
It may mean looking at a scaffold we’ve used for years and asking, What thinking does this leave for the student to do?
And sometimes, it may mean giving exactly the support we would have given before.
The difference is that now we know why we’re giving it and what we want the student to be able to do because of it.
Because the goal isn’t to see how much support we can take away.
The goal is to make sure the support we provide today is building the capacity students will need tomorrow.