SPEAKER_03 0:00

Standards are actually not the language of the classroom. Tasks are the language of the classroom.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Room to Grow. I'm Curtis Brown.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And I'm Joni Fenderberg. We work together at Texas Instruments, and we're glad you're here. We're looking forward to continually improving our practice, and we understand that you are too. We hope that you'll find this podcast as a room for you to grow along with us as we wrestle with and explore ideas about teaching math even better. In today's episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and I learn more about the Math Milestones project from John Staley and Sandra Leitman. The math milestones are a collection of tasks arranged on a single page for each grade level. These tasks get at the most important math concepts of the grade level and are a helpful resource for educators to use with students and in professional learning settings. There are a lot of aspects to learn about here, so let's get growing.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Well, Joni, I'm really excited for today. We have an awesome opportunity to interview a couple of our really good friends. You have some great connections with both John and Sandra. And I have just met Sandra. I've talked with John quite a bit, but I am really excited to have both of them here with us on the podcast talking about this new project that they've got going on. So, Joni?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yeah, I am I am very excited. Sandra and John are two of my favorite people in the whole world. So it's really fun to have you guys joining us today. And we're anxious for our listeners to hear and learn more about the project that you are working on called Math Milestone. So let's start with introductions really quickly so people can kind of orient who you are, what you do, maybe where you live. Sandra, let's start with you and then we'll go to John.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Um, so great to join you both here today, Kurt and Joni, and always good to be in John's company. My name is Sandra Lightman. I work as director of strategic partnerships at Student Achievement Partners and have uh been doing this work of of supporting folks and understanding what the expectations are for math K-12 for some time now, student achievement partners. About 13 years, if if we had to put a number to it. And have been working, you know, since the beginning with a team that has been working on math milestones. I live right outside of Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

John? Hi, and I'm John Staley. I live in Baltimore County, Maryland. I'm and work with the Baltimore County Public School System at the time. A math teacher, math educator for 35 plus years, been teaching in middle school, teaching in a high school, and then doing some organizational work. So past president of NCSM, the Math Education Leadership Organization, and past chair of the U.S. National Commission on Math Instruction, had a chance to serve on Student Achievements Board and at that time be a part of the team that developed math milestones. So excited to be here with Joni and Kurt and just to be a part of this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Well, we're excited too. Let's just jump right in and maybe you two can give our listeners a little bit of an orientation about what the Math Milestones Project is, what are they all about? How are they intended to be used?

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Great. So I can start. Student Achievement Partners was instrumental from the beginning in the design and support for common core standards in math and in literacy from the beginning. And it's no secret that we always reflect back, but one of the things that we have reflected on is like, did we get far enough in math instruction and math achievement per students as we intended when those standards were rolled out? And I don't need to like spend too much of a pause time to say, no, the answer is definitely not. And so we took some time to think about like, well, why not? And we quickly came to the understanding that it wasn't because the standards were wrong or that the idea of doing standards were wrong, but it has a lot to do with it in our view about what do teachers need to know and understand in order to best support students in the expectations uh that we hope for them all in math education. And math milestones came from this idea of what do teachers need to know and be able to do in order to support students. And so the first thing that we thought is that all the work that we've done with the standards, standards are actually not the language of the classroom. Tasks are the language of the classroom. And so what we have done with a really great team that includes John, that includes Jason Zimba, Harold Astorius, Phil Darrow, other members of the Student Achievement Partners team, including June Lee, is to take the math that's expected of students in each grade from K through eight and translate those expectations into a set of tasks. And what is like amazingly powerful both in messaging and in presentation is that these tasks are presented for each grade K through eight on one piece of paper. So that you could literally sit down on a table, one piece of paper, and it shows you usually in a range of about 14 tasks per grade, that boy, if you want to know what students should be able to do at the end of second grade, here's the second grade grade. It's not a one-to-one correspondence with the standards, but by framing that expectations of students, and we'll talk later, I'm sure, and teachers, into that parameter of a one page, it it can create a really strong agenda that can move not only math learning forward, but math professional learning and math teaching forward.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

I love that. I love that. And and just to be clear, that one page is one one-sided page. We're not talking about both sides of a single sheet of a font of size eight, you know, teeny time. No, they really fit and it looks really nice.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah, and it's really powerful to see it that because the standards themselves, there's so much there. And sometimes it's hard for educators to parse it down and feel, you know, it's been a long time critique of math educators that there's too much to cover. So I think one page, 14 tasks is just such a it's a great visual and it's a great way to really get a laser focus on what's important.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I think part of what we have to remember is that when you look at standards, quite often what people do is one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. Yeah. The interconnectedness of standards and we're interdependent on each other is a key part to play itself out. So when you think about 14 tasks and you might be asking yourself, hey, is that all the math I need for my grade? And that's one standard, two standards, three. No, each task itself that sits on there might be connected to one or two standards. Sometimes it's it's um not only the the content standards, but the process. So the math practices are part of the work that's needed. So it's this intersection of everything, and and really, as Sondra mentioned, it's about what's the math problem that I would put in front of my student? What's the task that I want my students to work on that really gets at the heart of what the intent of the standards are when you think about each of the tasks that show up on the grid.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Love that. Love that. I love that interconnectedness of the standards. And that takes me right back to what Sandra said. Like the standards are not the language of the classroom. Tasks are the language of the classroom. And the standards are not the full picture of math because you can't within the text of the standards be able to express those connections in the way that a task can show how standards are connected and related. I know y'all have started to roll these out. They've had some use with teacher groups, with student groups. Would love to hear what you have learned already in terms of the implications on student learning and even the implications on teacher learning. I know there's Sandra, you mentioned more than once, like these aren't just for students. These are really for teachers too.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Yes, it's been great. All of us who are in this work of professional learning and math education, there's uh few things more rewarding than watching kids get excited about diving into a math task. For sure. It is one of the pleasures of life, if I can take a risk of sounding a bit nerdy about that. Another, perhaps as exciting from my perspective, observation that we've made in classrooms is what do professional learning communities look like? What do conversations look like when folks are engaging around talking about a task that is important to the grade, important to representing grade level understanding? And I've spent a lot of time over the last 13 years watching people discuss standards, and they don't talk about things like what strategies are kids going to use, what assets do they bring to this task, how am I gonna think about routines and the things that I could do, even by the way, to create a classroom culture that supports them engaging in this task, to recognize the language demands that are required of this task. So the nature of the conversation when teachers are talking about a math task as it relates to supporting students are much more impactful, much more action forward. And as the Math Milestones team knows, like my like constant drumbeat about this is very critical to supporting teachers and making good decisions in planning instruction, in planning response to instruction, and all of those things. I'm gonna pause there because I could probably spend two hours just talking about that for John if I had more to say.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Just a little bit of passion there, Sandra. Just a little.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

And so let's let's add on to that. So when you think about a team coming together for a grade level team, part of the conversation is sometimes always around, I won't say sometimes should always include what's the prior learning students need. How do I know what they did on a previous grade level? So when you think about looking at a one page as a grade level team, let's pick sixth grade. If you think about what students might have experienced or the types of tasks they should have done in prior grades, grade five, maybe grade four. And I would go down to three in many stuff, especially going down two to three grade levels now because of still working with students after the pandemic. And so just thinking about it now for me as a teacher to be able to look at three pages and see grade five, grade four, grade three, yeah, and see how something with fractions, for example, might have developed in grade three, went into grade four, now shows up in grade five. And in grade six, when I'm going into my ratio and proportional reasoning, I can look at the vertical nature of how content is growing across tasks. So when you think about professional learning, you think about the enhancements of what you can do with your teams or do as a team, or even if I'm a solo teacher and I don't have a team I'm working with, we need to get you connected with somebody virtually, but that's a whole nother conversation. I would offer to you that there's space and time for you to be able to look at tasks. And when you think about 12 to 14 for previous grades, I can do that. Right. That's a that's a a heavy lift for a lot of people to go dive into if they struggle with that. Because you just only have but so much time.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah, and I just I I'm loving uh thinking about this and thinking about how you use it with teachers and and planning and thinking about how I can as a teacher look back to three grade levels, right? And you mentioned something that really caught my ear thinking about the pandemic and still thinking about where students are afterwards, post that time period, and being able to plan and think vertically myself and as a team in my unique grade level. And then even maybe if I'm in middle school, being able to actually look across our grades, right, across the school and make that conversation as a whole department something that's really, really important.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Yeah, I just want to add like the strength of that and how that connects to so many other things that we know are important for student learning and for teacher professional development and teachers' ability to support students in the moment. And I love the idea of being able to like look at the math milestones page from the grade before and say, okay, let me put these tasks in front of students to see where their strengths are so I know what I have to build on to get them to the grade level task that they're intended to be able to do. And also for educators that I and I love, John, how you even said, like, yes, look a grade back, a two grades back, but also look ahead because there is this idea of like, I know I often experience this with the teachers that I worked with. Like you see this language in your standards and you think about that whole math concept and like, oh my gosh, I have to do all of this, where it's really building across grade levels. So the tasks will help you see, like, okay, this is sort of like what is important at this grade level, and I know where it's going. So I know how to set kids up to be ready for what's going to happen at the next grade level.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yeah. One of the things that my colleagues would probably be shocked at I haven't already elevated into this conversation is that not only are there these 14 tasks per grade, but for each one of the tasks, we spent a lot of energy and time to develop a supporting document, which we refer to as the teacher notes. I would offer like that is probably even more powerful than the grid itself, in that thinking about this is very much connected to professional learning. We spent a lot of time thinking about gosh, what would we want teachers to know in engaging and understanding this task? And so there are sections of that teacher notes that not only talk about like what is the math? Like forever we've been talking about, oh, we just need to like bolster teacher content knowledge. That's another ocean, as wide as can be, when we say, oh, grow your teacher content knowledge. What does it look like? For what purpose? How deep, how wide, all of those things. So the teacher notes help with that. But they also talk about the connections that John was making, like literally tell you this task is related to these proceedings and these subsequent tasks, but it also gives ideas about how to extend students' thinking, how to support the language demands of those tasks. So it is like a professional learning agenda at the task-by-task level that I hope anybody who's listening to this, anybody who talks to people who are engaging in the math milestones tasks, don't skip over that stuff. Like for those of us that would spend a lot of time and energy in developing it, it's really easy and appealing. And I know all of us who love math so much want to just get to the tasks. Like, do the study of what's behind that task so that they can be as powerful as possible, not only for teacher support, but also for student learning.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

I love it. I love it. So before we leave the sheet of tasks, the collection on each grade level. So there was something as we were reading and kind of preparing for this podcast and looking through your site and the resources, there were some mentions made about parents and being able to drive this home with the parents. And I was just as we were thinking about this this morning, kind of having a light bulb moment. And I don't know why it took so long to get to this light bulb moment, but I'm gonna take these and go home with both of my boys. I've got a parent hat on today. I've got my parent hat on today. I've got a sixth grader and a second grader, and I'm thinking very much about okay, I now know what we're gonna be doing at home. Not tackling these in all at once, but it gives me as a parent a picture, right, of what's going on or what I should expect to be going on, not only in my grade level that my kid is in, but also what happened last year that maybe I can go back and work with them on, right? And then looking ahead, like as a parent, I can also have that thought. Now, I'm a parent who's an educator, so maybe uh that influences how I'm thinking. But I I love that as a resource. Can you guys talk a little bit about what your thinking was with that as well?

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you like the original motivation that led to the design of math milestones was an organization that works to support parents in understanding like how do I have conversations with my kids' teacher, with my kids' school? How do I know if my school is doing a good job in supporting my kids with grade level expectations? And an early approach to that question or challenge was like, see what math tasks your kids are working on and how it's doing. So actually, a parent audience in some way of thinking was like the original design thought for the math milestones tasks. There's no question, no matter what you're talking about in education, certainly we know this coming out of the pandemic, you know, the importance of the parent support or out-of-the-school support, I shouldn't just put that on parents, but community support out of school is critical to good learning. And if we think teachers shouldn't be engaging in the policy language of standards, for darn sure parents aren't going to be engaging in that. But this idea of like taking a look at tasks, understanding what that looks like. But I will say, like, the bite-sized nature of these tasks, also a parent who is an educator, like we often think about like the relationship that kids have with math. But there's there's an interesting thing, like as a parent to say, hey, let's talk about this. How might you do this? Like be conversational about how kids think about math, how they think about their thinking about math. Tasks give teacher parents even a good agenda. They could, you know, look something up somewhere online or whatever they see. But if you know, hey, I have a second grader at home, here's a menu of things you could like be talking to your kids around. And there's something like really powerful from a kid perspective in knowing that they have the opportunity to show their understanding in this set of tasks, that they can like own their learning and be really proud of what they're able to like engage in in conversations. I'm sure later on we'll talk about like when and how and where do would I use these as a teacher and as a parent, but it's just like a nice way to invite students to demonstrate their thinking.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

And if you already have like a grade-specific agenda for that conversation, that's awesome. We we were joking in our conversation previously, and we've joked about this for a while at Mass Milestone. Like, we could see some of these tasks being on the back of uh happy meal boxes or on Girl Scout cookies, just because it would just be so great if everybody just knows, like, yeah, these are the expectations. Like, all kids should be able to do these and maybe even enjoy doing them and show like different ways that they have like run their own math knowledge and confidence.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

And you mentioned something there, and John, you may have a follow-up here, but I wanted to step in here and just you said something that I really I love. You mentioned a casual approach. It gives me a casual approach, and everything as you were describing kind of how a parent might do this. I'm thinking about like on the trip to the grocery store and on the drive to school in the morning or on the drive to the baseball game over dinner. Sorry, I'm a nerd. I do this with my kids already. But it it provides parents in the community a place for being able to do that casually and they don't have to come up with it on their own.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

It does having been in the room with a group of educators working through some of these tasks together, I can say the the conversations that they spark and the level of thinking that they create and engage folks in is really different than other tasks that I've seen before. And I'm sure that in your venues of sharing these tasks, you've heard teachers say, yeah, this is great, but I already have a full curriculum. I already have trouble getting through everything that I'm supposed to teach and getting my kids ready for the state test. So how do you recommend people like actually fit this into the broader picture of everything they have to do within everyday teaching in the classroom?

unknown 20:59

Phew.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

That's Johnny, that's that's a key question and a key point that we continue to keep at the forefront of our work and our conversation, even with the professional learning that was designed around the milestones. Helping teachers and teams of teachers understand that a deep dive into the 12 to 14 problems help helps you wrap your brains around the content that you need to teach on your grade level. Not that we wanted the math milestones tasks to replace tasks that you had, especially if you're teaching in a system where they've got a tight implementation going and everything along those lines, but what this allows you to do as a professional to help grow and develop. One of the things Sandra mentioned was the teacher notes. And so when you think about that, getting deeper with your content. But a part of it is this piece that's called anticipating and responding to student thinking about the task. Just thinking about how you might with a math model. Think about solution paths and the types of questions you would be looking for or you want to elevate, language and the types of questions you would push in on, and then also how to build and develop students' identity, agency, and sense of belonging. When you learn and and for example, use these 12 or 14 tasks in a in a professional learning setting. Maybe you have an opportunity to use them with students in different settings. But when you learn about these three key pieces, solution paths. Well, when I'm planning in my curriculum and I'm using my tasks, I'm thinking about solution paths for the tasks they're going to be using. I'm thinking about language, I'm thinking about identity, agency, and belonging. So the transferable skill set of engaging with the math milestones tasks is something we want to make sure you can easily pick up and flip into your curriculum. So if I engaged in a monthly PD or a couple weeks of PD with math milestones, I wouldn't be like, oh, how does that relate to my curriculum? Any of these tasks you can probably see in sitting in one of your units. And you might say, in this unit here, I would use this task. Oh, okay. Let me look at the task that I have in my curriculum and let me think about it through solution paths, through the language, through identity, agency, and belonging, and keep pushing that. What's the math concepts? I got that. Oh, I had a nice write-up, a little scenario use of the manipulative, use of the tools, use of representation. When they talked about the task, oh that helped with my thinking implementing my curriculum also. So yeah, that's a challenge. And but the goal was not to say, take these tasks and replace your curriculum, because that 12 tasks do not require the curriculum. But these 12 to 14 tasks help you think about, hey, when I'm teaching this unit and we're pushing in on this concept, let me push in deep here. Let me keep bringing this back. Let me think about how this is connected to the prior knowledge that led into it and where it's going. And so the math milestones help you even have that laser-like focus as you go through your curriculum and your teaching, however many units it is that you have to teach.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Yeah, and just like we've said that these tasks are not a curriculum. Also important to note, they are not an assessment either, right? And so when I think about that very real challenge, Joni, that you posed about like, hey, teachers are already like up to their eyeballs hearing about, particularly if it's a new adoption, but even if it's not a new adoption, like fidelity to curriculum, what does it look like? What are people? I think connecting the learning part of this, as John was saying, to what you learn by engaging in these tasks is important. There is like an incredible opportunity that these tasks offer, many, one of which is like, how do you know as a teacher whether or not the learning stuck? Like, okay, great. I did this whole unit on unit fractions and the kids got it, and all the homework was great, and the end-of-unit assessment was great. And then you go on to the next thing. And if you dare ask something about unit fractions in the next unit, like who knows if they keep it or not. And as I often talk about this, the only time that students often have a chance to show their understanding in a format that is not generated by the curriculum is on their state summit test. And it's like, oh, did you remember that thing? This doesn't look exactly like it did in the curriculum. It doesn't have all the headers, and it didn't happen at the same time and space that that curriculum unit happened and how much of it transfers over. So one of many uses of math milestones tasks could even be like, hey, try out a task, maybe from a prior grade, if you're starting out a unit to see what's stuck from last year, or from that existing unit to use formatively to say, like, did kids still hold on to that concept? And what we've seen in classrooms happen that is so darn powerful, is that when you don't, and I'm not pretending math milestones is the only time that this happens, but when you don't overly scaffold with like apply this strategy that we've been practicing and practicing and practicing and scaffolding and scaffolding and scaffolding to solve this problem, and you just give kids what looks like an unfamiliar math situation task, and they feel a sense of ownership in like, I think I know how to solve this. I think I have learned, I remember this thing we did, I remember what we did last year, I remember maybe what we did last month. I think I have the tools to solve it. And I'll just say, like, one of the other relevant experiences that we've had in classrooms using this is with intervention teachers and in intervention settings, where boy, you want to talk about an area where we really need to like focus and narrow what is the math that's super important in an intervention setting. Like, wow, how much time do we spend intervening on things that don't matter in a grade of grade level expectations? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Yeah, more leverage moving forward. That's great. I and that's so connected, but the comments that you both just made in the last few minutes are so well connected, right? Like this is it, it's educative material in that it doesn't, it's not just about the teacher using these tasks to get at these math concepts at this grade level. It's actually more about how should teachers always be thinking about the tasks they're engaging students in and what do they need to focus on elevating? How are they considering the language demands? How are they considering how students use representations and just that skill of anticipating student responses? And people who listen to the podcast and Curtis and probably Sandra and John, you both know planning is my big thing. To be an effective teacher, you have to plan. You have to come in with a plan. And I think if you only have time for a little bit, anticipate what students are gonna do and how you're gonna respond. How are you gonna ask a question that redirects a student? Because when you haven't done that, then you default to here, let me show you, you know, pull the pencil out of their hand and get them to an answer quickly. So I love that supporting good teaching practice and being able to take the supporting materials from the math milestones tasks and apply them well beyond those tasks. This is great if we've gotten such a good broad picture of what these look like. Where would you recommend for somebody who doesn't have the chance to come to a conference session or whose school isn't doing this with somebody from the project to learn about these? How would you recommend that an educator get started if this is something that's interesting to them?

SPEAKER_03 28:51

Yeah, I mean, I I think like the the tasks themselves are and the teacher notes that support them, as well as student handout representations of each of the tasks are available open source on Student Achievement Partners website. We also have recorded two webinars that are available for viewing that support this as well. And I've been around this work enough that I think I know like a typical, although there's no such thing as a typical profile of a math teacher. And I can just imagine how engaging and satisfying it would be for a group of teachers to just start by saying, hey, let's sit around a table and together solve this math problem. Don't even worry about the stresses of when I'm gonna find time in my weekly lesson plans to do that. Like, let's just think about what it looks like and sounds like for kids to engage in this task. What are several ways? What will we learn about students? One of the things that we think about a lot in the use of these tasks is what do these tasks reveal that students know? If not, what do these tasks reveal that students don't know?

SPEAKER_04 29:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

And how that perspective, engaging around a task. So that's a really powerful way to start the conversation, I think.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

I think another part to think about for teachers, and this could be you could be your first year teacher, you could be a pre-service teacher, is when you look at the teacher notes, there's a a writing a part in the teacher notes that talks about the math concept. So when you read through that part, so I'm thinking myself as a teacher, how do I grow my teacher knowledge? Maybe I'm teaching the same grade, a different grade. If I just take the 12th to 14th half and just read through the teacher notes, the math concept of it that right there is another tool to help you say, hmm, and this is what the path of this grade level is all about. Here's how the representations show up across the grade. Here's why the representations are important in that grade. And if I'm looking a grade above and a grade below, I can see the vertical connection. And especially I can say the grade below piece because a big part of our work is to activate part of knowledge. And so that idea of oh, what do I tend to come in with? When I go back and read some of the features from the previous grade, I can use them as I help bring student thinking, I can elevate student thinking and build them there. Oh, they don't know the effect. Most of it is unfinished learning. Most of it is more time with the learning. To continue the building and development of it. It's not about it, but a lot of times it takes more opportunities with it. And you can build those opportunities and education grade levels. So, you've out there by yourself, your pre-service teacher, you're thinking how can I use this math milestone? Um, you've used resources out there before where you've studied in your in your method courses. Um you study powerful resources like the Van der Waal book theory that has been out there is one where if you take the teacher notes and sort of read through this, I think it's almost like stepping into that. That's not gonna teach you the instructional strategies right there, right? But it's gonna get deep in the math for you and help you think about and also give some questions to you for just doing that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

I love it, I love it. So I I'm I'm I'm really excited about this this resource and the project and the things that you guys are up to thinking about how I'm gonna be able to go home now and implement some of this with my boys to get into it, get ready. Here we go. So I'm also excited, and we had some conversation in our planning conversation around what you guys are thinking and doing to get ready for what's next in the project. And so I think some of our listeners would really enjoy hearing about that. And so I just give you the opportunity to kind of forecast and tell us what's coming.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

Yeah, I mean there's so much. One of the things that was challenging when we first started designing this, obviously, the first thing that we wanted to land was tasks and then the notes that supported the task. And it's like, oh, who's our audience? What's the use case? I can't tell you, it's been months, and that's because there is no shortage of those things. And so we wanted to be really careful about what's the greatest need right now, where's the opportunity, and that kind of thing. And so one of the things, and and John touched on this a bit, and as did I, and I think joining a comment that you made about like how do we talk about using math milestones in an asset frame. And those of us who have been in and around the math professional learning agenda for a while, you know, this isn't a new concept, right? Like an asset-based approach, building students' math identities, all of those things. And we've engaged in a group of educator, co-designers with us to like talk about how might you use this to support use of your curriculum and so on. And we did talk about the importance of building an asset frame for teaching mathematics, no matter what you're using. And that part of that is boys, sometimes it's really hard for teachers if they don't have a confidence in their own math and so on, to understand and execute on the planning that you were talking about, Joni, and how to think about student responses and what you would do next. And so, one of the things that we are currently uh engaging with some partners to get feedback on and plan to fully build out in the year ahead is what we're calling math milestones asset maps. And so for each one of these tasks to articulate for teachers so they don't have to imagine, they have a foundation to spring from to say, hey, here's a task. Here's lots of different ways that students might respond to this, and that that asset map includes not only examples of student work, but advancing questions for teachers to use. And so we've played around with this in a few classrooms, and it's just like amazing the teachers responding, like, oh, I saw the thing that was on that asset map. And I knew what to do. And it didn't seem like, oh, let me reteach the whole lesson again because they didn't get the answer, I thought of engaging the solution pathway. So this is another example of feeding into the importance and power of supporting teacher decision making that I think the math milestones brings together, like this idea of content, this idea of student engagement with tasks in a really powerful way. But because they are open source, the tasks themselves, to be honest, as it has been very much in keeping with student achievement partners in our approach to things, we hope lots of folks pick them up and try lots of different things with them, like almost on a regular basis. And we haven't done a huge blast about this. So thank you to TI for giving us this platform to start this conversation broadly. But like on a regular basis, teachers have shared with me like directly of their own will. Like, hey, I just did this thing in my classroom, here's how it went. Or we had a teacher that we talked to a couple weeks ago. I just use these tasks in a summer school setting because I didn't know how to focus my time. So we're super excited to think about the many things that are going to happen with math masters and tasks, but I will say, not just with us, but we'd be really excited to hear from folks that dabble in them and find their own sense of relevance. But specifically the asset maps is something that we're super excited to roll out uh in the months ahead.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Now, I I was just gonna add, as Sandra mentioned, uh people dabbling with them and using them. I had a a professor about a year ago, we were doing some work together and just share with me how in his methods course the math milestones were so powerful people because they for elementary methods they only have them but for such a short time period, maybe it's one method course, maybe it's not. And just the use of it in their method course allowed them really to go deep into the mathematics across multiple grade levels with the teachers. So even thinking about how uses of mathematics go beyond or part of what we had, because we had probably about 20 future iterations of things to do with it, but we had to bring it down and Sandra helped us. Um and we had another colleague that was on the team list that helped us continue to say, but what do we need to do to this year one?

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Right. You don't eat the elephant all at once.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

That's awesome. So we have math milestones for K8 right now. Any uh thoughts about high school on the way? It's a different animal, high school.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

I get that. So so two things always happen at student achievement partners, and I'm sure not only at us, whenever we do something exciting like this. It's like, well, what about high school? And is there such a thing as milestones tasks for English language arts? So we won't even talk about English language arts. Like that's you know, not this conversation, not this audience, not this group, and so that's fine. High school, though, super exciting, super interesting. And so we have been engaging in a project with XQ around badging in high school, and so that's like in development, and I'm not quite sure like where that's all gonna go. And we have thought about is there a math milestones equivalent for high school? If you think about all the complications of curriculum at the high school, yeah, and what a set of tasks might do to advance, again, some definitions of like what does it mean to engage in these things at a breadth and a depth and what your teachers need to know. So we are currently at student achievement partners, like articulating a specific high school math strategy that not only can bring up the learning of representing expectations through tasks, through learning experiences, but that also could influence what the KA tasks end up looking like and how you make them more of a rich experience, thinking about the students in the classroom as they engage in these tasks and so on. So I do think this is maybe year plus out that you'll see some products and ideas that we do certainly recognize a lot of the same needs that exist in that motivated the K8 to influence some version of a high school product. And I was waiting for an opening to like say a statement that I should have said at the beginning, and this might be the place to do that, which is I just want to name that these math milestone tasks and and all the the resources that accompany them to date wasn't just like, hey, what do we want to work on next? But working with a group of incredible, incredible math leaders who have been committed to improving math education in this country for sure for longer than I worked at Student Achievement Partners, as their professional commitment and that these tasks and this initiative, I'll just say, represent an idea of a solution to very real challenges. Not because we have to convince people that math is important, not because we have to convince them that we want kids to do better, but what we had the opportunity to do and what this current product represents is like such incredible thinking about what's worked really well, how far we've come, but what we still need to execute against to make this idea of every kid loving and engaging in math closer to reality than where we are today. And so I just want to say like this is a design solution. This is designed in such a way that it is responsive to what we haven't had in the past.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

I don't know if I can think of a better way to close out the podcast than that right there. So you took the window at the appropriate and perfect time uh to to make that statement.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

Wait, does that mean we have to stop talking?

SPEAKER_00 40:50

I mean that doesn't mean we have to stop talking, but I absolutely I absolutely just I mean that was like mic drop uh right there on really just getting at the the heart of everything that you guys have been up to, what this project jumped off from, and the Hall of Fame group of folks that worked on it and are working on it. So I'm I'm really, really uh excited about this project. I know Joni and I have a lot more to go home and look at on this.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

And who knows, maybe one of our listeners will start a campaign to get these tasks on the back of cereal boxes and on Happy Meals and Girls Cow Cookies.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I mean, I'd sign a petition for that for sure.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Yeah, for sure. Well, we can't thank you both enough for your time and not just for our conversation today, but for all of the work and effort that you have put in with this project and across your careers, my little fangirl moment here. I just think you both have made such a difference for educators and we're grateful for that. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Thank you for the opportunity. The work to change the narrative continues. So a lot of work to do. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

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.