Today, we delve into the challenges faced by elementary math teachers and explore strategies for fostering mathematical thinking and understanding. Joining us is math educator and coach Sue O'Connell. Sue works with elementary math educators across the country and offers an acute perspective on how we can support teachers right now.
Transcript
Sue O'Connell:
I think the biggest challenge is reconciling with the fact that math is taught differently than it was taught to them when they were students. So moving from that focus on memorization and drill to investigations and explorations.
We used to be focused on answers. And now, of course, we want correct answers, but we have a strong focus on mathematical thinking and understanding. And that change in our standards has meant that we need to teach differently. We need to be able to teach to those standards. And that's difficult for a lot of elementary teachers who were taught in a very different way.
Edie:
Yeah, it was a real shift. I can relate to it, just having young kids going, "Oh, okay. Yeah. Tell me more about how you're doing this in math." So with this huge shift, who's supporting elementary math teachers to face these challenges?
Sue:
Well, that's a good question. And it depends on where the teachers are. If they are lucky, there's a designated math coach to support them. But in many schools, there is not a math coach. Support often falls to an administrator, could be a principal or an assistant principal who may not have as strong a background in mathematics. And of course, has lots of other responsibilities beyond supporting math instruction.
And the amount of support varies too, even when schools will say they have a math coach. I mean, the support goes from no math coach at all for teachers to a math coach who might be responsible for two schools. I've been in districts where a math coach is responsible for 10 different schools and has to jump back and forth between them and then others where they actually have a designated math coach in their building.
Edie:
And what do you think, in seeing all of these scenarios, what ideally do elementary math teachers need from a leader? What are the specific needs you're seeing out there?
Sue:
Well, it would be so much easier for a math coach if it was all the same if everyone needed the same thing. But the reality is it really depends on the teacher. I've worked with teachers who needed support with understanding their standards or specific math content. So we dive into something like fractions and help them better understand the fractions so that they could better teach that to their students. I've worked with others who needed instructional ideas.
They knew their kids didn't know something, but they weren't sure how to get that across to their students. So they needed different ideas of ways to support that. I'm thinking of, I was working with a teacher who was really stuck on worksheet practice, and I was trying to help her find other ways to let her students practice the skills without always relying on pulling out the next worksheet. And so we looked at different ideas. She loved it.
She embraced it. She's kind of now a master in her school of helping people learn to do alternate forms of practice. So she just needed some ideas and a nudge. Some need help with planning. Some need help with organizing. I worked with a teacher who thought she was asking deep questions but really wasn't asking very deep questions, and we spent a lot of time looking at her questioning and helping her learn to rephrase those questions. It really is so different depending on what teacher you're supporting.
Edie:
So I'd love to dig a bit deeper into your coaching moves. For instance, how did you help that teacher move away from worksheet into other forms of practice?
Sue:
Well, one of the first things we did with the worksheets is we just... I pulled out some worksheets and we looked at the worksheets and talked about what students would gain from those worksheets, sort of the pros and cons of those worksheets. And it was amazing that there were a lot more cons that the teacher noticed than pros for using the worksheet, meaning she noticed that they weren't particularly engaging. They were very lengthy practice. They were kind of a little more dry or boring.
And so we talked about some things that we could do to really engage students in the practice. We looked at models and manipulatives and said, "What if? Since that's the way we're teaching the skill using the manipulatives, what if they actually practiced using those manipulatives? What if we put students in pairs to practice? Rather than silently with that worksheet, why don't we put them with a partner and have them do some... do a task with a partner so they could talk about it and share their ideas?"
We looked at things like putting them into game format where you're playing a game, and you might be the person who gets the tic-tac-toe first if we set it up in that kind of a format. That really motivated kids, and they did as many repetitions, but they were engaged in those repetitions where they weren't with that worksheet. And then we went into the classroom and we tried them with her students. And so we took some of those ideas and we put them out, and then we observed what the students were doing, and we listened to their conversations.
And I think it just really hit her that they were getting practice that was as beneficial, but they were really engaged in that practice. And she just became a believer in it. Going from someone who was pulling out a worksheet after worksheet to someone who would look at the worksheets and say, "Oh, I can make this more engaging, more interactive, more visual, and more hands-on. And so better practice for my students."
Edie:
Yeah, I love that. Using the worksheet as the guide for what you're going to develop. Okay. So the worksheet still has some of the core things you want to get at that students need to practice, but then it just becomes this guide for what she's going to develop for engaging material in her classroom.
Sue:
Absolutely. It's about reflecting on what's there and figuring out ways to enhance it. And we figured out the ways to enhance it or her insights were with more visual, with more talk.
Edie:
What grade level was this in?
Sue:
That was in third grade.
Edie:
That was in third, yeah.
Sue:
Mm-hmm.
Edie:
Okay. Yeah. So I'm just listening, reflecting back on the first part of our conversation, and then reflecting on this example, it just seems like there's such an intense level of coaching that's needed at this point in time, isn't there?
Sue:
Absolutely.
Edie:
Because you said it varies from teacher to teacher, from classroom to classroom.
Sue:
But look at the benefits when you have a coach who can get to know you, who can go into your classroom, who can spend time with you, that's when those huge changes happen.
Edie:
So who supports the math coaches and what are their challenges?
Sue:
And that's a very difficult question to answer because some coaches really don't get any support at all.
Edie:
And I guess we use the term coaches like teacher leader, coach. We're kind of using this interchangeably. It's like you mentioned.
Sue:
Exactly.
Edie:
It's many different levels.
Sue:
Someone that's put in the position of supporting colleagues, which is very different than being in the position of a teacher of teaching students. It's another set of skills they need to develop. But I've seen a lot of coaches placed in that position without much training or support. And I worked with a teacher... a coach who was an absolute superstar second-grade teacher, and that's why their principals selected them to be the math coach in their building. The amount of anxiety this teacher had when moving into being a coach was immense. One of her first responsibilities was to go in and support a fifth-grade teacher in her building.
She had been a second-grade teacher for over 10 years. She knew second grade backwards and forwards, but she was so anxious about going in and supporting at a different level. There's a level of content knowledge coaches may need at levels other than what they had been teaching. So they need support. And one of the ways I've seen that math coaches have really responded to support was when there was a coaching group that got together to support each other when they had colleagues because often they're the only coach in their building. They may be the only coach in their district.
I worked with a district who had just decided on placing math coaches in each building. It was really a pleasure to work with them. I worked with them throughout the year. We met quarterly where we'd have full-day meetings where we talk a little bit about content so that we could dive into some content and standards they might want to discuss. We talked about instructional. We kind of spanned a lot of the pieces that are typically something that math coaches could use some reflection and some discussion on.
But at the end of the year, when we talked about some of the most valuable things about this coaching group [inaudible 00:11:10] was they now had colleagues to call, to email, to talk, to share ideas with if they needed support. So that finding that way to give coaches other coaches who will help them and support them and kind of listen to, because often they share some of the same struggles in different buildings with different groups of teachers, but they have no one to talk to and to share ideas with.
Edie:
Yeah. It's not... Teaching in isolation, coaching in isolation, just not ideal.
Sue:
Right. Yes.
Edie:
I'm just going back to the very beginning of the conversation. No matter what curriculum your school has adopted, we're just at this point where all math instruction has drastically changed.
Sue O'Connell:
Absolutely.
Edie:
So this is... we're just at a point in time is what I'm hearing you say, where pretty much everybody needs some level of coaching. The teachers need coaching. The coaches need coaching. We are in a big just growth period, right, with math instruction.
Sue:
We are, and we've been kind of stagnant in that for a while. The standards actually changed a number of years back. We've been wanting to change our teaching of mathematics for many years now, and we haven't gotten where we want to be. We still have many elementary teachers who... first-year teachers who we look back on those... their experiences, and they had the same memorization and drill and practice that people who've been teaching 30 years had. And we think, "Why is that? Why hasn't that changed yet?" And we're realizing that we need something to push that change beyond just that it's in that textbook.
We need this reflection about the change. We need people to internalize and think about why they're changing and have support to change. And so I think what's different is it's been a number of years we've been asking teachers to shift their teaching in elementary mathematics, but we're finally realizing that they need support in order to do that. And one of the ways that we're identifying as support is coaching. That they need someone to ask questions to to help them along the way, and to embrace that we're not going to be able to make those changes without really that support as teachers try and make those changes.
About the Author
Susan O’Connell has decades of experience supporting teachers in making sense of mathematics and effectively shifting how they teach. As a former elementary teacher, reading specialist, and math coach, Sue knows what it’s like in the classroom and her background is evident throughout her work as she unpacks best practices in a clear, practical, and upbeat way.
Sue is the lead author of the new Math by the Book series, a K-5 resource connecting math and children's literature.
She is also the lead author of Math in Practice, a grade-by-grade K-5 professional learning resource. She is also coauthor of the bestselling Putting the Practices Into Action, Mastering the Basic Math Facts in Addition and Subtraction, and Mastering the Basic Math Facts in Multiplication and Division. She served as editor of Heinemann’s popular Math Process Standards series and also wrote the bestselling Now I Get It.
Sue is a nationally known speaker and education consultant who directs Quality Teacher Development, an organization committed to providing outstanding math professional development for schools and districts across the country.
