Math Justice League Blog

Dear Math Justice League,

Teaching is hard. We invest countless hours into lesson plans, assessments, and flexible groupings—only to see things go awry during implementation. Math instruction is particularly challenging because many of us teach math as we learned it—a rigid set of rules and procedures. Despite our desire to nurture courageous, capable problem solvers, when we work in isolation we tend to rely on what is comfortable for us, the same ineffective strategies that contributed to today’s numeracy crisis—while expecting different outcomes. But it is not all doom and gloom! It is possible to shift a school community’s core beliefs about math and learning outcomes, and we have the blueprints for how to do it.

Shift from Isolation to a Culture of Crew

In both small and large math departments, decisions about pedagogy and instruction are often made in solitude. This isolation, combined with our fixed beliefs about math, creates challenges – not only for us as educators but also for our students, who must navigate varying and sometimes conflicting teaching pedagogies year after year.

At Expeditionary Learning Middle School (ELMS), we set out to change that. Over two to three years, with the support of our instructional coach, Jill, our EL Education Coach, Michelle Flores, and myself Derek Stoll, as our Math Culture Lead, we transformed from siloed classrooms into a “Mighty Math Crew.” We began by sharing our personal stories: Why did we become math teachers? What experiences shaped our beliefs? This dialogue was especially powerful because our crew included math specialists and non-math teachers who are involved in our math interventions.

Create A Shared Math Vision

From these courageous conversations, we built a shared vision anchored in the belief that EVERYONE is a math person. We embraced the idea that mathematical problem-solving isn’t innate—it’s developed. Much like assembling a complex puzzle or crafting a piece of art, doing mathematics takes persistence, flexible thinking, consistent feedback and a growth mindset.

At ELMS, our math vision would focus on creating opportunities that are challenging, meaningful, rigorous, and collaborative. This vision wasn’t just a chart on the wall; it was our rallying cry. Every year, as a team, we discuss, refine, and calibrate our math vision. In addition, we use a similar process with our students, where we create opportunities for them to share their math stories, co-develop the math culture of our classrooms, and connect to our school math vision.

Establish School Structures in Service of the Math Vision

To infuse the beliefs of our math vision into all aspects of our math program, we established a biweekly Professional Learning Community (PLC) where our Mighty Math Crew could collaborate. In these meetings, we set “big picture” goals that connected the “what” of our instruction with the “why” behind it. Our priorities included:

• Students regularly collect, review, and celebrate their data;

• Use progress monitoring assessments and supplemental instructional tools so that students get regular, targeted intervention; and

• Get students to discuss and create models/representations of math every day.

Our PLC worked to strengthen our tier 1, discussion-based instruction and our tier 2/3 interventions. Every day, every student received a dedicated 30-minute math intervention block. We ensured this time was meaningful by:

• Grouping students flexibly based on data (see Figure 1 for a sample schedule);

  • Using a holistic math progress monitoring tool (NWEA) to track progress over the course of the year;

  • Using targeted, shorter progress monitoring assessments to plan for instruction and track progress toward specific learning goals of an intervention unit;

• Engaging students in reflection and goal setting with their data (see Figure 2 for a sample reflection tool); 

• Regularly looking at student work to better understand and advance their thinking;

• Supporting students to use and connect physical, visual, and symbolic math models –  which serve as problem-solving tools and build fluency rooted in conceptual understanding; and

• Teaching students how to show all of their thinking on paper.

The Results

The whole school initiatives we implemented to shift our culture of mathematics have yielded remarkable results. Last year, our diverse, urban, public middle school saw math proficiency rates reach new heights, significantly outperforming district averages as shown in the graph below and on par with New York State averages.