Math Justice League Blog

Dear Math Justice League, 

“Leap in. Get Stuck. Push Through.” is the motto we strive to embrace at the Odyssey School of Denver.  This idea of taking risks, grappling, and persevering is not only something we want our students to do, but want everyone in our community to embrace. This past school year our work plan goal around math embodied the mindset of “leaping in, getting stuck, and pushing through.”   I had the honor and privilege of serving as our school’s math culture lead, in addition to my role as a first grade teacher.  Through this work, I learned some valuable lessons about leading math culture change through vulnerability, collaboration, taking small steps, feedback, and celebrating growth.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned this year is about vulnerability.  Creating math culture change requires vulnerability, plain and simple- from students, from math teachers, and from myself.

So often teachers are inherently expected to be the authority on all things.  Not only do teachers serve as counselors, nurses, mediators, IT techs, referees, coaches, cheerleaders, etc.,  but they are traditionally seen as the all-knowing expert; wherein the teacher gives knowledge and information while students passively receive it. Among other work, our math culture professional development this year worked to un-do this traditional view of learning.  

Through my role as math culture lead, I have learned that the culture that you want to have for students is also the culture you want to have for staff.  Namely, that it’s okay to take risks, to make mistakes, to not have the answer right away, to be a learner yourself.  If we want students to take risks when solving math problems and when talking about their math thinking, then we also want teachers to model this vulnerability. 

Some of the ways in which I modeled vulnerability for students and teachers were:

• I was in the work myself, learning alongside other math teachers. I learned that I could not ask them to try something new in their classroom if I was not willing to do the same.

• I opened up my classroom for other teachers to come in to observe during abbreviated lesson studies we called learning labs so teachers could see me testing out strategies, grappling, and growing. Teachers saw that I did not have all the answers, I made mistakes, and tried to learn from them. It was not perfect and a bit messy at times, but that is where true learning comes from.

• I videotaped myself teaching and used this to analyze my practice.  (If watching yourself teach doesn’t require some vulnerability –  and humility – then I don’t know what does!)

Strong collaboration was also a key component of our math culture work this year.  Just as we want students to be able to discuss and analyze math thinking, we want teachers to have a strong community of math discourse and be able to support each other in this work.  This requires the intentional creation of school structures that support regular teacher collaboration, which in turn nurtures a culture of shared learning and agency. We began the year by sticking to a calendar of story problems, organized by problem type.  As the year progressed and we continued to engage in bimonthly collaborative conversations about our students’ math work, we slowly built in more flexibility and teacher agency.  While we were all teaching The EL Education K-5 Problem Solving Routine in a fairly similar way, teachers personalized their instruction and made it their own.  

We also learned a valuable lesson about the necessity of taking small steps, and focusing on specific areas for growth at specific times.  As a team, we have a tendency to want to do everything all at once, and do it all really well. Instead, we learned to trust the process and recognize that we could not do everything we wanted in one school year.  We started by working on the launch portion of our lessons, the “leap in” component.  We then got better at teaching students how to grapple, or, like our motto, “get stuck.”  We then moved our focus to the discourse, or how to “push through.”  All of this important work required vulnerability from students, teachers, and myself, as well as school structures that support teacher collaboration.

Finally, this year I learned how important feedback is for creating math culture change at a school. In my 20 plus years as an educator, I can comfortably say that teachers tend to be their own worst critics.  When asking a teacher about a lesson, they are often quick to tell you what didn’t go as planned or what they would do differently.  Teachers can sometimes be their own worst critics.

Part of my role was to help teachers change the narrative about their math instruction.  Honestly, we struggled to see all the growth we were making.  To address this, we intentionally made time to regularly celebrate student and teacher growth and to identify bright spots, modifying this Bright Spot Interview Protocol for our end of year reflection.  I made it a priority to give teachers feedback that helped them recognize not only all the great things their students are doing, but their own professional growth, progress, and impact.

In Crew, 

Anne Oberdzinski

1st Grade Teacher & Math Culture Lead

Odyssey School of Denver