A conversation with the National Teacher of the Year

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Rebecca

I felt like my English. I just read it like the English, you know, like they get this in a lot of ways because when a student comes to them and they're like, I just don't really like reading. I have never, never heard an English teacher not respond with, honey, we just haven't found the right book yet. You know, and even like when a student says, I just don't really like math to say, Dude, we just haven't found you the right problem yet.

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Joanie

In today's episode of Room to Grow, we welcome Rebecca Peterson, the 2023 National Teacher of the Year. Rebecca is a math teacher at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And she shares some interesting and compelling ideas with us about how she helps her students to make connections to each other, to their teachers in school, to the content they are learning and to themselves.

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Joanie

We also talk about some broader issues around systems such as math pathways and teacher retention. You don't want to miss this one, so let's get growing. 

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Curtis

Well, Joani, I am super excited again to be recording the Room to Grow podcast with you today, and I'm really excited about today's episode. We've got some really cool topics, but also a fantastic guest that we get to chat with today. So I'm, I'm really happy to be able to get started with this podcast. 

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unknown

Yes, me too. Curtis And as you well know, I have been excited for this conversation since October. We have the great pleasure of being joined today on Room to Grow by Rebecca Peterson, who is the National Teacher of the Year. And I had the great pleasure of meeting and seeing Rebecca speak at the end CTAM conference in Washington, D.C. in October and just could not wait to have her come on the podcast and share some her great ideas with our listeners.

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Joanie

So Rebecca, let's just jump right in and have you introduce yourself. Let's tell us about yourself and your teaching background. And also we would love to hear a little bit of information for those who might not be familiar about the National Teacher of the Year program itself. 

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Rebecca 

Yeah, Well, thank you both so much for having me today. I very much been looking forward to this conversation as well. So, yes, my name is Rebecca Peterson. I am the 2023 National Teacher of the Year, hailing from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And this is my 15th year in education. My first three years were actually at the college level. And then I was, I don't know, very cute. Have made to think I could switch to teaching high school mathematics. I thought, you know, how hard could it be? The college kids love me. 

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Joanie

There you go. It's all the same. 

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Rebecca

But turns out it was. 

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Curtis

Oh yeah. How much fun is that? That's awesome. 

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Rebecca

I like to joke that I came from this classroom space where, you know, students were paying to hear what I had to say in space, where students were, like, more or less forced to hear. And it was. That's right. It was a real sort of shock to my system. And and yeah, so so we'll talk we'll talk more about sort of how I how I made it through and not just made it through, but learned to just really, really love this vocation. And it has become my my passion. But yeah, so a little bit about the National Teacher of the Year program.

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Rebecca

We are we are a cohort of 55 state and territory teachers of the year. So every state sort of, you know, selects their state Teacher of the year, their territory teacher of the year a little bit differently. But I think the process is there's a lot of intersections, right? There's applications and interviews. And so I'm I was selected as Oklahoma Teacher of the year in spring of 2022, which now feels like a lifetime ago.

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Rebecca

And. Wow. And then in the spring of 2023 was selected as National Teacher of the Year. Similar process and a written portfolio interview process giving a keynote. And so I got to do got to go through that whole process with four other incredible finalists in and in February, about a year ago in February of 23 and then yeah, and then was selected and announced a couple of months later, got to go to the White House and and meet the president and first lady and Secretary Cardona in the Oval Office.

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Rebecca

Got to bring my family and, you know, and speak in the Rose Garden and yeah, really surreal moments of I suppose all that to say well two things. And we have my husband and I have a seven, almost eight year old son. And after he saw all the celebrations at our nation's capitol, at the people's house, he said that he wants to be a teacher.

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Rebecca

Now, you know, and I am I am like, this is what happens when we celebrate teachers and when the next generation sees us celebrate teachers at the highest level, like now, they want to join us, you know, they want to join our ranks. And the second thing is that this cohort I'm a part of, like any of the other 54 state and territory teachers of the year.

 And so many people in this country could do this job. And that's what this is. Right. I said didn't win the competition because teaching's not a competition. I was doing for a job and in a few months it'll be somebody else's turn. But what I would encourage your listeners, if they can, if you are in a state where you can nominate for a state teacher of the year and you have someone that you think would be great for that position, do it because it is life changing and the people you meet and the experience, the experiences you get to have and you know, they just like they just change you and I think into towards

like an even truer, more full version of yourself. So that sort of the National Teacher of the Year program. In a nutshell, I do have and released from classroom duties this year to to to talk and learn from educators and and leaders in education. So it's several engagements throughout the year. So one or two. Yeah you're on the road. Yeah but yeah anyway all that to say I'm really looking forward to being back with my students in in the fall.

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Music break

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Joanie

Awesome. That's. Well, I just, I just want to thank you for all you did to get to this role, and I appreciate how you described it as not winning a competition, but kind of accepting a job. And I want to say that I think that's so important. And at the same time, you know, you are representative for this year of the of the profession.

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Joanie

And personally, I was very excited to see a math teacher. Obviously, the National Teacher of the Year program is for teachers of any grade level and content area. But to see a high school math teacher step into that role for this year was really exciting. And then to, you know, hear you speak and sort of experience you as the representative of the profession, has been just a complete joy.

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Joanie

So thank you on behalf of all of the other educators you're representing. We we appreciate you so much. Yeah, of course. I want to kind of divest and because as I mentioned, just as we were starting, I first met and got to hear you speak at NCT. And, you know, typically an CTAM conference, you go and you learn about a new teaching strategy or a new educational resources out there to help students learn.

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Joanie

And your session was really a breath of fresh air from the kind of the style and content of the other sessions. And for me, you know, although I appreciate that you accepted a job to represent the teaching profession for a year, I could really see within what you presented at NCT that you represent excellence in the profession as well.

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Joanie

You certainly earned this responsibility from kind of an award standpoint as well. So that was an hour long talk and I'm of course not expecting you to rehash everything that you said, but what I took away from your talk and as I look back at my notes from your talk, was you really focused on this theme of connections and how connections kind of drove you through the course of your career and and drive, you know, how you structured your classroom and how you interact with your students and your school and broader community.

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Joanie

So I would love if you could kind of just give us maybe a quick summary of your talk or even just how do you think about connections and the role that they play in educating students?

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Rebecca

Yeah, Yeah. So yeah, the the title is Creating a Connected Mathematics classroom. And you know, I'm cautiously optimistic that we are waving goodbye to the COVID pandemic right. But I think if we're not careful, there's going to be a new pandemic, particularly that educators have to deal with, and that's the pandemic of loneliness. I think that our students and our ourselves as educators, if we're not careful or we can become really, really lonely, particularly post COVID. And, you know, the science is is really sobering. There's a a research study out of Stanford where they scanned, I think, 163 adolescent brains.

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Rebecca

And they're finding that brains, their brains post-pandemic, are scanning the same way that pre-pandemic only brains that had undergone abuse, neglect or trauma scan. Right. So it's just it's really sobering to think about that our kids brains have changed, you know but when I tell educators that they're like, yeah, I didn't need 163 MRI's from Stanford. So like, our children are different, you know, and, and quite frankly, we're different as well.

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Rebecca

And so that's that's sobering. But the good news is that the science is also really clear and connection is how we heal. And so my talk and CTAM really focused on what I call creating this connected classroom. And to me in a connected classroom, our students are connected to each other, their peers, they're connected to their their teachers and the faculty at the school.

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Rebecca

They are connected to their content that they're learning. They are connected to themselves. In other words, they are starting to understand why they're learning, what they're learning. And they understand sort of they're like physiological responses as well, like when they need to take a beat and they are understanding what motivates them. Right? And then lastly, they're connected to their world within their larger community.

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Rebecca

I teach, you know, sophomores, junior seniors in high school. And and so they're starting to see like how how does my life in to into this little corner called Tulsa, Oklahoma. Right. And to our broader community. So certainly we want our students to experience all that. But I also would like to make the argument that in addition to our students having those five connections, to really have a connected classroom, our educators have to have those five connections as well.

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Rebecca

Right? Our educators also need to be connected to their students, their peers, their content themselves and their communities. And so the the talk was really just I don't I hesitate to call them strategies. I call them like trust acts that we can build with with our students and our colleagues and parents and guardians and our communities in order to build connections in those, you know, five or I guess ten if you if you view them separately.

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Rebecca

But five realms, right. And so I just gave different examples of ways I've done that. I tried like concrete things, right? Like how I connect with parents or how I do social emotional check ins or why it's important to take brain breaks and play games. And then I try to embed lots of links of resources I created, and I'm happy to to share those for for the show notes as well.

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Rebecca

But I was also being realistic and saying, like, all these trust acts, right? None of them have. I never in one year have I done all these things, but my hope was that educators could find, you know, one or two things that really fit them in the moment, you know, because everything we tracked has to fit us. And sometimes when we hear a strategy, we're like, That's cool, but it's not really me, you know?

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Rebecca

Or that's cool, but it doesn't really work for my kids this year or that's cool, but I don't have the bandwidth for it right this second. So my hope was in sharing a lot and sharing broadly that educators could come away with like one or two things that felt like it fit them, felt like it fit their kids, and that would get them excited about returning back to the classroom.

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Rebecca

Because to me, that's what it's all about, right? Like our students deserve teachers who are excited about teaching and our teachers deserve to be excited about teaching as well. And for me, you know, I entered like I said, I came I started at the college level. And so initially to me it was like all about content, content, content.

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Rebecca

And don't misunderstand me, I love mathematics, I love the content I teach, but I realize very quickly when I switched to the high school level that I, I mean, I read a person who says it so well, write like kids don't learn from people I don't like and that yeah, the content really important. How are we going to get to the content?

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Rebecca

How are we doing it to the brain, right? If we don't reach the heart first? And so for me, we have to create these connections for our students and then once we have these connections, in my experience, our students will will really like, devour that content alongside us once we build those connections. 

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Curtis

I love that. I love that. I love hearing your heart behind all that you shared both with us just now and with our listeners, but also with the folks who attended your session. And thank you also for pointing out I get caught up a lot of times, and I think it's probably it's probably common among teachers who attend conferences and attend these sessions and see all of the wonderful things that people are suggesting that we do and then they go, But I can't do all of that or possibly do all of that.

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Curtis

And thank you for pointing out and making it okay for me to choose one or two. Yeah, that really resonate with me. I think that's I think that's super important that we remember that most of the time. The things that we're suggesting that we're talking about are things that we can do little bits at a time and we can't do all of it at once and not set out.

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Rebecca

You cannot do thank you for making it. Yeah, right. And also that there's like no one way to be an incredible educator, right? Like you just and you can't do all the things so do the things that feel good and feel right for you and your students. Yeah. This year or this week, you know? 

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Joanie

Exactly. It can be that simple. As in that moment, right? Like, how are you personally feeling? What do you what do you maybe need that day? And I, you know, reflect back on my own time in the classroom. And so often I would come in, you know, maybe having had a hard faculty meeting or not sleeping well the night before or having a cold coming on and just, you know, needing to pivot in the moment, I think it's part of what makes the teaching profession so challenging is is how many decisions teachers make in the moment like that.

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Joanie and Rebecca

But I think that that I've seen sorry since 1500 decisions a day looks crazy like that doesn't happen in the normal, but having and I think that's the power in what you shared is really being able to think about all those levels of connection and you know some again, I don't want to rehash, I do, but I don't want to rehash your own CTM talk.

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Joanie

You know, a lot of the things that you talked about are not big time consuming things, right? It could be just like the way you spend the first 2 minutes of the class period or something that you do. You know, every Friday at the end of the day, my kids write a thank you note to somebody who made their week better.

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Joanie

You know, those are things that are not necessarily a hard left. And, you know, Curtis and I have said on many other podcast episodes how how energized and, you know, fulfilling it that it is to do those things with students and know that they're making a difference. That can be very powerful for us as educators as well. 

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Rebecca

Yeah, And I think not just not just in the moment, but even like I find myself, like looking forward to it, right? Like, yeah, like today we're going to do, you know. Yeah, right. Thank you notes or practice a little bit of mindfulness or play a game. And I think we have to like, we have to build in those things that our students look forward to, but that like, we look forward to facilitating for them as well. And I think that's a way we can really build our resilience and build our stamina.

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Music break

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Curtis

And I'm thinking a little bit about, you know, what you're talking about there. This is one of my big my big soapboxes, thinking about rapport with my students. Yeah. And you said it so well that student students don't don't learn from someone they don't like in establishing that connection with your students that way. I'm trying to think you also talked about this students, the importance of them connecting to to the content that they're actually learning.

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Curtis

And so are there some things that you can think about or that you shared in that session? I was not like Joni. I didn't get an opportunity to sit in your session, but are there some things that you think we can talk about briefly, maybe about how to establish those connections between students in the content that they're learning?

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Rebecca

Yeah, so many. So one of my favorite things to do is, is really give students some autonomy in in what they are learning and how they're learning it. So what I mean by that is a great like a wrap up to a unit or a quarter or a semester is I'll have students choose a way to summarize what they just learned.

00;19;24;19 - 00;19;47;11

Rebecca

And some students choose to present. Some students make a music video, some students write a children's book or or make a board game. I mean, I mean, they're just so creative, right? And that's another another piece of where I can be like, I can't wait to come up with, you know, And as we know, it's going to be all over the spectrum.

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Rebecca

But yeah, giving students autonomy and how they synthesize to me is important. It's also important to give them boundaries and direction as well. Right. And say this is you have this assessment and here is, you know, here are some guidelines I'm going to have to have you do in order to to be as successful as as as we want on this upcoming assessment.

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Rebecca

But I do think autonomy and creativity, we know that those help our students just get excited about the content. I also I also really enjoy and not every year do I have time for it, but letting students delve into mathematics outside of our curriculum. And I'll send this for the show notes as well. But my friend Sam Shaw in in New York has this really cool project called Explore Mathematics, and he just has his students kind of like pick and choose from from time and tons of different ideas where they can do that.

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Rebecca

They can explore mathematics, and it's outside of the content. But he gives really beautiful and concrete parameters and help students choose still like developmentally appropriate tasks. Right? But but again, math that they might not see directly in like algebra two or geometry or pre-calculus. And so that's I love doing that. And then another just kind of small but maybe not so small.

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Rebecca

Thing is I love to showcase the mathematics that I'm passionate about through like the decor in my classroom, right? So like, I have a whole wall dedicated to women in STEM because I grew up in a time where I was told that girls brains just aren't quite wired right for mathematics. And so for me, like, it's really important that, that I represent women in mathematics as like the way I live in the way I teach, but also just in like the way I decorate my classroom.

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Rebecca

Right. And I think that's important not only for for female students. I think it's really important for male students to see that that, of course, women should have a seat at the table. I like to joke that maybe it wouldn't have taken mankind 2000 years to figure out like the fundamental theorem of calculus that women didn't love. That 

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Joanie & Curtis

I love that shots fired. Nothing personal, Curtis. Nothing personal. Wow.

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Music break

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Joanie

 You. I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity and maybe transition us to another topic. And I know, you know, you you as an educator, you bring your thoughts about the system as a whole to this role of national Teacher of the Year. And, you know, you have this platform and you have opportunity that, you know, many of our listeners who are I'm going to say just but with air quotes, just classroom teachers like they're that's an amazing thing in and of itself.

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Joanie

But you have an opportunity that a sort of typical classroom teacher doesn't have to engage in some of these conversations about the system and structures and what's working and what could be better. And I know that in our planning conversations, you talked a little bit about high school math pathways and, you know, courses as something that you're really interested in and passionate about.

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Joanie

So I would love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on that and what opportunities you've had to engage in those conversations in your in your role as National Teacher of the Year. 

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Rebecca

Yeah. Thank you for that. I and you're right, this is so similar to classroom teaching in a lot of ways and so different, right? Because I think when I'm in the classroom, I'm sort of like, you know, roll my sleeves up, head to the ground, let's go. And with this role, you kind of have to like chin up and like look around and sort of see what's going on outside the classroom. And so a lot of those conversations, you're right, are about about systems and I've done quite a bit of reflecting on on high school math pathways.

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Rebecca

And I think so when I first started, I here at Union High School in 2012, off the heels of of college teaching, I was given mostly Algebra two classes to teach. And at the time they were state tested very, very strict objectives. What I mean by that is not a whole lot of like teacher autonomy in that particular course in Oklahoma at the time.

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Rebecca

Right. And then on top of that, that was that's the vast majority of students were are required to take that course in order to graduate. So take it past the state assessment or like you don't get a college ready high school diploma. So lots of pressure on on me as a teacher. Right.

00;25;06;25 - 00;25;36;20

Rebecca

And I really didn't like it. Like I just found myself really not enjoying teaching that course and I found myself so and I would say, like the students I had were juniors and seniors taking Algebra two, right? So they were not going to have the opportunity to take calculus in high school. So let me preface it with that.

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Rebecca

So I just kept teaching this right, and it started to become I started to feel like I was not teaching mathematics. I felt like I was like producing little solvers of X, you know, like, can you solve X in a quadratic and a logarithmic and irrational and a radical equation? Like, I just thought, like, that's sort of what it boiled down to.

00;26;00;24 - 00;26;31;21

Rebecca

And I sort of didn't know why we were doing it that way. And so I said I went to my principal and said, like, I need to teach something else. And he said, like, it's we don't have like, you're you're too young to teach this, you know, to teach like calculus. So never mind the fact that you have a master's in advanced calculus, but now you probably taught it at the college level.

00;26;31;21 - 00;26;49;14

Rebecca

And I taught but I'd already taught it, But I was too young, so that's okay. It was good for me, to be honest. It was really good for me. So he said, If you want though, you can have what we would consider a remedial math course. It's called intermediate algebra. So students who were not quite ready for algebra two and I said, Sure, it's not state tested.

00;26;49;16 - 00;27;22;26

Rebecca

So I got to teach intermediate algebra. And, you know, these were supposedly students who yes, they were like, marked as not not ready for algebra two for whatever reason. But I found myself loving, loving this course. The content was that the objective s were, you know, if you were to to rank them. Sure. They were not as like, I don't know, intense I guess, as an algebra two course.

00;27;22;26 - 00;27;46;27

Rebecca

But I had all this autonomy, right? And then eventually I did get into teaching AP calculus and I loved teaching that course. So after a couple of years I found myself teaching AP calculus and intermediate algebra. And so, you know, one class was for students who, by Oklahoma standards were one anywhere from 1 to 3 years ahead of the traditional pathway.

00;27;46;29 - 00;28;32;26

Unknown

And the others were dubbed as like 1 to 2 years, quote, behind. And I'm using these terms not as Rebecca terms, but as. Right, right with air quotes here. But I found myself loving both. And I realized that it was because I had the autonomy and I had the trust of my administration to teach the students in front of me and the more I taught these courses, I realized, like both of these courses, in a way, the students got to choose to be in them, right? They said like, this is the right course for me. And so I again, I got to teach like the kids in front of me. And I felt like instead of producing solvers of X, I was actually getting to foster mathematical thinkers.

00;28;32;28 - 00;29;03;26

Rebecca

And again, these were two very different courses. And so to me, it was not the content, right? It was about the fact that our students got choice in these courses and and said like, this is the content that is correct for me in this year, and then we'll move forward from there as opposed to the students I got in Algebra two were basically said like, you're here, you have to be here.

00;29;03;26 - 00;29;53;24

Joanie and Rebecca

You know, you have to be here and you have to pass the test. Yes, Right. So as I reflected on this experience, I was just feel very strongly that particularly our high school students need more options in terms of math courses. They need courses that are relevant to their dreams and their passions. They need they need choice. You know, when it comes to to math class.

And what I find another reason I feel really strongly about this is because I think it's a teacher retention issue as well, because I did not enjoy teaching a course where students just were told like, you have to be here and you have to pay, you know, like I had one foot out the door, I was ready to leave.

00;29;53;26 - 00;30;20;06

Rebecca

But then when I got to teach these courses that again, were very different. Right? And it's not just about like teaching. I wasn't it wasn't just about like, I want to teach derivatives and integrals, right? It was that I got to teach kids content that felt right for them, you know, in that year. And I felt like I could give them applicable knowledge in intermediate algebra.

00;30;20;06 - 00;30;34;00

Rebecca

We got to talk about like interest rates and taxes, and it just felt right, you know what I mean? Whereas in algebra two, it was this is what you will teach and they will pass this test for us.

00;30;34;00 - 00;30;34;00

Curtis

 I get so excited, especially when I hear the words applicable, applicable mathematics. And I was thinking about your intermediate algebra students and one that's pretty cool that they got to choose that they weren't scheduled into it.

00;30;49;19 - 00;31;10;12

Curtis, Joanie and Rebecca

I think that's an important piece of the puzzle because I think if I was scheduled by like some test score, right, Like, here's here's the math you have to take because you did this on the test, it may be recommended, but they're not sure. And that's I think that's so huge because if it is forced, then that creates a whole different atmosphere.

00;31;10;14 - 00;32;21;16

Curtis

And I think, yeah, right, right. It's back to the algebra two course only you're you're not pushing them to quite the state thing. You're pushing them to something in preparation for the state thing and and that's still there some you know guaranteed whatever where they were choosing to come into this. I think that's super important. The other piece of that puzzle and what got me so excited and why I ended up accidentally cutting you off, there was the application piece of this that to me is so important, thinking about and seeing the mathematics that I'm learning as applicable to something that goes beyond, Hey, I'm just trying to learn how to learn or I'm just trying to write or I'm just trying to learn how to do this thing because there's some exam at the end of the at the end of the course that I have to be able to do learn X procedure the exam, because why exam is what matters at the end of this. Yeah. And so I, I'm just curious and this may or may not be applicable to the rest of the conversation, but are there some I'd like I'm curious about some of the cool things you did in that intermediate algebra course that made it something you were so passionate about?

00;32;21;16 - 00;32;31;01

Curtis

Because I could hear the passion and I'm like, Yes, you got to teach those. But now I want to know what what it was that you got to teach in those courses that made it so cool because of the autonomy you had. 

00;32;32;01 - 00;33;07;10

Rebecca

Yeah. So it was it came down to like, my administration really trusted me and really pushed me to build the course that I thought was was right for these students. So but that said, I did have some like parameters. And one thing was that this was still when we had when math was tested for graduation and some of my students had not passed the algebra one, what's called EO I end of instruction test. So they have this opportunity to build a portfolio for instead of passing this algebra one assessment.

00;33;07;12 - 00;33;31;24

Rebecca

So I got to help them with this portfolio. And we really it was just a lot of fun because I felt like these students got to build this body of work in math, which I'd been like, I don't we don't even really do that in calculus, to be honest. And so they went out and and, and really did like their own kind of study.

00;33;31;24 - 00;33;56;09

Rebecca

And so it was the task was to build like linear regressions based on real world data and then find intersections of their linear regressions. I might be able to interpret that. Well, what I, what I loved and this was so this was a little bit a few years ago we were it was pre-pandemic, so we weren't 1 to 1 yet, but I could take that.

00;33;56;09 - 00;34;22;25

Rebecca

I took them to the computer lab and I got to teach them, you know, Excel and how to do how to make these regressions and what the regressions mean. And I just think like, you know, my husband's a CPA and use of some of these skills that he didn't learn until like upper level undergraduate courses, you know, And here they are like learning really tangible skills.

00;34;22;25 - 00;35;35;20

Rebecca

And I mean, that's like the beauty of it, of this profession. You can be like, I got to do that. But I mean, like we as teachers, like our work, it's it's really hard work. And like in the same breath, it's it's quite quantifiable, you know, in a lot of ways to be like the students learned this skill at least partially because of of our course you know so that was a really fun thing I did, you know, we we did not a lot but a couple of days on just like sales tax, you know and it's amazing how little I think we sometimes even adults think about sales tax and just like calculating what tax is going to cost on. I don't remember what iPhone had just come out, but like the iPhone, you know, ten or whatever, and they were just like, my gosh, this is the extra I have to pay. Okay. Right. But just kind of helping giving them like other tools to do like sort of quick mental calculations as well, because I think that's huge and and really lacking in our in our high school courses.

00;35;35;20 - 00;35;44;22

Rebecca

So anyway, I could go on, but it was I felt really proud of teaching that course. And I can't say that of all the courses I've taught. 

00;35;44;22 - 00;35;53;22

Music break

00;35;53;22 - 00;36;42;27

Joanie

I want to circle back just a little bit and touch on this idea of assessment because I think about, you know, the educators that I work with and even my own experience as a teacher like assessment for for our listeners, they're they're all going to relate to that teaching a course where there's accountability and in a lot of cases, very high stakes accountability for the kids or for the school or for themselves as teachers. And and that's, you know, love him or hate him. Assessments are a part of the of the education system. So finding I think there's this is a whole different podcast episode conversation about finding how do we manage assessments in a way that they don't take away. The joy of teaching and learning is that's a challenge. It really is.

00;36;42;27 - 00;37;27;07

Joanie

And I think that, you know, I believe really we've gone through in our country, we've gone through a a pendulum swing where assessments are maybe a little more important than they need to be. And I know at least I get to you know, I get to be part of some policy conversations with my work and I'm hearing a recognition of like, well, wait, what are we actually doing here with these assessments and how can we actually make them better so that they serve the purpose of helping teachers, help students learn instead of feeling the handcuff constraint of I must execute solvers of X by the end of this course.

00;37;27;07 - 00;38;01;18

Joanie and Rebecca

So I think that's really important at their best. Like the assessment should be like a part of our students and our teachers learning. Right, Exactly. And yeah yeah, I agree. I think oftentimes they they feel like handcuffs. Yeah. And so that's again, that's a bigger problem than we're going to solve in the next 5 minutes. But the other thing that I would love to circle back to, maybe as we wrap up here, Rebecca, is your connection to the ideas of teacher pathways of math pathways rather, how that connects to teacher retention issues.

00;38;01;18 - 00;38;08;16

Joanie

So you kind of drop that as I think I see this connection, but I wonder if you could kind of go back and flesh that out for us a little bit.

00;38;08;16 - 00;38;47;19

Rebecca, Joanie and Curtis

Yeah, I you know, I'll give you an example. I when my good friends is is teaching algebra three this year for the first time, which is another course that our students can choose to take typically as a fourth year math course after Algebra two. And she was in the same boat where she had she had been teaching algebra to a just. And yeah, I'm not bashing on algebra two. I want to say I think that's just the way I love teaching algebra to underscore. I just want to put that out there. That was a fun course that I had some Algebra two challenges like yours. So I, I can see both sides of the coin.

00;38;47;19 - 00;39;13;21

Rebecca

Yes. And I, you know, first, for when I teach calculus, I know students have a really strong background in algebra two, but I just don't I just don't know that the course is for every single student. Right. And so so anyway, let me come back to that. But so so she's teaching algebra three this year and she's like, I just love it.

00;39;13;27 - 00;39;34;25

Rebecca

And I said, you know what? I'm going to playing devil's advocate, right? I know what I think. I said, You think it's different? Like it's it's the kids basically you had last year, but they're a year older. And she said, yeah, they are a year older. You know, maybe they're a little bit mature. But I think the big difference is they're choosing to be here, right?

00;39;34;26 - 00;40;04;27

Rebecca

Like they want to be in this course. She's like, It is night and day and she's like, I have no behavior issues, quote unquote, no behavior issues. The kids come in, we work together like it. It's what every teacher want. We do. We want to like, come in, teach and experience math with our students. And and she said she she attributed it to like the kids opt in to that course.

00;40;04;27 - 00;40;28;23

Rebecca

They choose to be there. And and so like I believe this is really important for our students. I do I think it's just as important for our teachers because I could just see the difference. And my friend was she was passionate about teaching this class, you know, and wanted to be there and excited to teach some new content for her as well that she hadn't taught before.

00;40;28;23 - 00;40;53;11

Rebecca

Right. And so I think giving students when you give students autonomy, you automatically like give teachers some autonomy as well. And because I do think that sometimes we talk about them as like these binary. So I think they're actually very connected. And, you know, I say a lot like I feel like my English, I just read it. Like the English.

00;40;53;11 - 00;41;15;03

Rebecca

Yeah. Like they get in a lot of ways because when a student comes to them and they're like, I just don't really like reading. I have never, never heard an English teacher not respond with, honey, we just haven't found the right book yet, you know? And like when a student says, I just don't really like math. Yeah, dude,

00;41;15;04 - 00;41;40;23

Rebecca

Yes. We just hadn't found the right problem yet, you know? And in English, we find it totally acceptable to know that, like, some kids are going to love Shakespeare and some are not. So we're going to love graphic novels and some are not. So we're going to love poetry and some are not. And yet, in math in America, we have sort of put all our eggs in the geometry and algebra basket and just say, like, all of you will so help me God.

00;41;40;23 - 00;42;09;26

Rebecca

Like maybe not love it, but you will take geometry and algebra, right? But what if what if we have these, like, students who would just blossom in statistics or data analysis or, I mean, you know, so much like cryptography, There's so many different branches of mathematics. You know what I one of my favorites is number theory. And I didn't get to take that until college, like upper level math courses and that.

00;42;09;26 - 00;42;34;21

Rebecca

Right. A lot of that is completely accessible to high school student like, I mean, middle school students. There's some beautiful mathematics out there that the vast majority of students never even get the option to take. Right? And so I will I strongly believe that we have got to create more options in math for our students because they deserve it.

00;42;34;24 - 00;42;58;06

Rebecca

They deserve to find a problem that is right for them and that they're excited about. But our teacher 100% also deserve to be teaching courses that they're excited about, that the kids are opting into, that they're excited about. And and I mean, I just think this could total change the culture of math departments, high school, particularly high school math departments in our country.

00;42;58;13 - 00;43;17;10

Rebecca

If we just allowed for more choice. And I know that is not a small ask, I know that that means teachers are going to have to learn how to teach courses, not just that they haven't taught before, but maybe haven't even taken before. Right. But and so I recognize there will be growing pains and I recognize that there's a lot of systems involved here.

00;43;17;10 - 00;43;42;27

Rebecca

Right. Like we have to get local districts and departments of Ed and higher Ed all working together. Like I understand this is not a like we can change this in a year. I'm not trying to be Pollyanna about that. I am saying that we have to endure and have to fight through the growing pains because our kids and our teachers deserve better.

00;43;42;29 - 00;44;24;03

Curtis

So you're saying we can't just publish this podcast episode and, and call it done? We're just done. Is that what you're saying? Right. No. Listen, so now you said something in there that struck a chord with me. And while many things that struck a chord with me, but one in particular that I really appreciated and I don't know if we have time to to go into it further, but when you were describing the the English teacher, the ELA teacher talking to a student and saying, honey, we just haven't found the right book for you yet, and then you correlated that to the math thing.

00;44;24;03 - 00;44;51;29

Curtis

I, I think I really appreciated that you said we haven't found the right problem for you yet, that you didn't say we haven't found the right math for you yet. Right. And and I'm just calling that out in particular because it's the problem. Yeah. That makes it applicable. It's the thing that's of interest, right. That's the piece of the puzzle that we seem to be missing an awful lot on.

00;44;52;02 - 00;45;16;11

Curtis

And I will say, you know, for the naysayers, when we start talking about, you know, data analysis or some of these modeling tasks or some of these other pieces, you also brought up another piece of the puzzle, which is there's a ton a ton of mathematics that we don't teach that is completely accessible with the mathematics that they have had.

00;45;16;13 - 00;45;39;23

Curtis

And, you know, I mean, this focus on on high school mathematics is is important, right? Because trying to do this earlier on when we're really trying to establish establish a number. Yeah. And the number of sense and number systems, those are things that we just that we turn on a house Right. And that's, that's the grammar. And this is a non-negotiable.

00;45;39;28 - 00;46;30;02

Curtis

Exactly. Yes, exactly. That's the grammar. That's the sentences, that's the sentence structure. That's the commas and apostrophes and the spelling that I that I struggle with. Those are the things that we then have to have in order to access the access, the mathematics. But then there becomes these great conversations. I had a conversation today with with one of my really good friends. I'll even call him out, Tom Reardon and, and we were talking about this great problem that he had presented this week to some students and asking about a minimizing some distance between two things. And he had a whole functional solution to this kind of prepared and explored and and these things and he presented this problem to students and a no kidding.

00;46;30;09 - 00;47;18;28

Curtis

Three separate students came up with three very unique geometry oriented solutions to this. And my mind went to a completely different geometry oriented solution to this. But the fact of the matter, it was just so cool to see that what he had thought of as a very functional algebraic sort of put it on a coordinate grid, make a graph and find a minimum sort of space, ended up with this really cool set of solutions that he hadn't hadn't thought of yet when he plopped it in front of students and they started doing this thing on their own and exploring ideas of that nature And they were interested right, in many different ways of finding a solution. 

00;47;18;28 - 00;47;50;10

Rebecca

And I love that he celebrated all this as well. You know, I say that a lot like math is not about finding the right answer. You know, it's about celebrating all the different ways we can solve a problem. And we need or we have hard problems to solve in this world, and we need diversity of thought. We need to bring all kinds of thinkers to the table. And we can get in this habit of thinking that there is only one way to solve a problem because that's dangerous.

00;47;50;18 - 00;48;04;16

Joanie

Yeah. And that that applies to your whole point about math pathways. There's not just one set of math courses that prepare all of our students to be able to find their unique contribution to the world.

00;48;04;16 - 00;48;25;05

Joanie

So yeah. Awesome. Well, Rebecca, we could probably go another hour in conversation with you, but it has been such a pleasure to be able to unpack some of your thinking and have you share your amazing ideas and perspective with our audience. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's been a joy. 

00;48;25;05 - 00;48;50;06

Joanie

Well, that's it for this time.Be sure to check the show notes for the resources we mentioned and others you might want to explore. We would love to hear your feedback and your suggestions for future topics. And if you're enjoying learning with us, consider leaving a review to help others find us and share the podcast with a fellow math educator. See you next time.