00;00;02;00 - 00;00;20;04

Joanie

In today's episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and I discussed the start of the new school year and the importance of establishing structures that set teachers and students up for a successful year of teaching and learning math. We hope you all are having a great back to school season. So let's get growing!

00;00;20;07 - 00;01;29;08

Curtis / Joanie / Curtis

Well, Joni, I am very excited for today. We are recording our August episode. This is our eighth episode of season six. This is crazy. I can't believe we're still recording the Room to Grow podcast. Of course, there's always room to grow, I guess. And so I'm very right. I'm so excited for that. I'm excited for our topic today. 

 We, you actually reached out earlier talking about Latrinda’s President's message on the NCTM bulletin. 

And I'm really excited to just kind of think about back to school. A lot of folks have already started back to school.

Some folks are just now maybe getting ready for that back to school time frame. And so by the time this episode comes out, most everybody will probably be in that in that space.

But really excited for thinking about what does it take to kind of set ourselves up for success and our students up for successful learning of mathematics. And yeah, I think this will be a cool, cool conversation.

00;01;29;14 - 00;03;16;22

Joanie

Yeah. I love it's you know, we've had this conversation before Curtis that not being in the classroom anymore. There are things we miss from our teacher days. And certainly back to school was always my one of my favorite times of the year, I love the freshness of, you know, the new school year and having new students and a new schedule and establishing a new routine. So I think it's a really timely topic for our August episode, as our listeners are, you know, starting starting up the new school year, thinking about these kinds of things or getting ready to start to think about these things. And I hope that Latrinda will take our copying of this idea from her August President's Message as flattery.

That's definitely how it's intended. But yeah, let's let's kind of jump in and talk about why it's so important to really be thinking about and being careful about the beginning of the school year. And I think the first thing that I want us to think about and talk about is in that in those first few days, in that first week of school, like the interactions that we have with our new students, like we are establishing our classroom culture right from the very start.

We know how important first impressions are, and we know how, you know, students are going to come in with whatever baggage or, you know, celebrations or whatever past experiences they've

had with mathematics and bring those to our classroom. And how how we get things started is just a really important part of setting up ourselves and setting up our students for a good year of teaching and learning. So as you reflect back on your classroom days and your experience supporting educators and thinking about the beginning of the school year and that idea of classroom culture, what are, you know, what's maybe a top of mind thing for you, for educators to pay attention to as they establish classroom culture.

00;03;16;24 - 00;05;50;05

Curtis 

So one of the first things that comes to my mind is an experience that I learned from Kathleen Morrell, who was the calculus teacher that taught in my classroom. She floated in to to my classroom whenever I was on an offer planning period, and I got to watch a little bit of what she did, and I incorporated it into my algebra two class.

And one of the first things we did was we started the very first day. We started with a data collection in groups with the students. We, you know, we had a few maybe initial conversations about maybe a couple of housekeeping esque sorts of things. But immediately the first day we wanted to start off with hands on discovery sort of thing, right. Can we recognize a pattern? Can we collect some data and make some judgments about what's happening? And the thing that maybe more than anything else I learned was the importance of getting my students comfortable with talking mathematics with each other and being willing to share their own thoughts

and perspectives on the way that things went on, the way that that things the way that that they, they experienced that data collection.

And it just so you can have a context because in my head I'm seeing the whole activity.

And so what we would do is we were making, making scatterplots or collecting data on the relationship between the distance from the desk and, I mean, I turned the lights off on the first day of class with my students because I had them with a flashlight and a meter stick and they had measuring tapes.

And so they had to work in groups of like four. Right? I mean, it wasn't like this was just a hey, pair up with your best buddy. I mean, it was, hey, nobody knows anybody, and you guys are going to work in groups of four and have to talk to each other. And, and so they were collecting data between the radius of the circle, created

the area, the perimeter, all of those measurements that they could get.

then we were making scatter plots of, of each of those things just to get some relationship things going. The ideas of recognizing patterns and, and making hypotheses about the relationship between things.

00;05;50;08 - 00;10;53;00

Joanie

I love that. So I want to reflect a little bit about on how that contributed to your classroom culture and, you know, supported you in your relationships with students. Because I'm just thinking like, how much do you learn? I mean, you saw my jaw kind of drop and my eyebrows raised when you're like, oh, yeah, I put them in groups before they even know each other. But that gives you what an incredible opportunity to learn about them, right?

Right.

to observe and like, okay, who's who's going to be Miss Bossy Pants like I certainly was

Yes, yes.

Who’s going to be in charge here. And who's going to be the one that kind of stands back and doesn't want to respond, like, doesn't

Yes.

You're going to learn so much about your students in that experience. And then the other thing you're doing, you're sending them a message about what you value, right?

Like math is interesting. And we're going to do things where you're actively involved in the learning in this classroom and what you say and what you think about matters to me and I want you to 

share that with other people. So I absolutely love that. I think that does a great a great that's a that's a great way to like, start things off in a way that sets a positive culture and a positive attitude. I know that for for my 20 years in the classroom and I had, you know, student teachers with me and the opportunity to support early career teachers as an adjunct professor and teacher education programs around Colorado.

You know, one of the things that I felt was critically important, and I'm going to go a little more into the logistical nitty gritty details than what you just described.

Sure, sure.

F or me, the beginning of the school year was my my top priority always was to learn my students names as quickly as possible. So I had a routine where, you know, of course I had, I did a seating chart and I told my students, like, I'm going to do a seating chart, because that is going to be how I helped learn your names. And then once I've learned your names, we can negotiate where you sit. But it was always my goal within the first week of school, at the end of that first week, to be able to call every student by name and then be able to do it when they weren't in their assigned seat, that was like my test.

Oh, nice.

But yeah, but what I would do, I would have like the little teeny tiny sticky notes that are like one inch by two inch.

And I would write the last, the student's last name on the sticky note, and I would put them in alphabetical order on the desks. And then I had a piece of paper that was going to be my seating chart, where I had a box for each desk that was the same size as that sticky note.

So as I greeted the students at the door, I would say, you know your last name, alphabetical order, find your seat. And the first thing I would ask them to do is write the first name they would like to be called on the sticky note

And I would go around and use that as an opportunity to take attendance, like pick up their sticky note, put it in their in their spot on the seating chart, and then have them tell me what their name was and what they wanted to called.

I love that.

So I know I was learning the pronunciation rather than me trying to guess like, oh, it says James, you must want to be Jimmy. You know, they they told me from the very beginning. So and then I would work whatever it is that they were doing during that first week, I was always holding my seating chart and just practicing, looking at their faces and saying the name and going up and down the road and doing that over and over again.

And then maybe similar to what you talked about, having your group activity,

I always started with the opportunity for them to learn each other's names as well.

Right?

Like I’m going to acknowledge you as an individual, unique person in this room and I'm going to learn your name. And, you know, once I had the names down, I wanted to learn more about you as well.

I want to know what your interests are and what do you do at school. And you know, how many siblings do you have and how do you feel about math? And like, all of that would come, but I needed to know their names first

and I wanted them to know each other's names. So similar to your purpose with your data collection activity, like set this culture that we're in this together, and I want you to care about one another's learning as much as you care about your own learning.

Like this is a classroom culture. So I had several different activities that I would do that were not math related, that were just about learning each other's names in a way that would try to be a little bit fun, and also not threatening because in a group of people that you don't know and, you know, teaching high school that can be really challenging.

But being able to reward them, learning one another's names and always use that expectation of like when they say, you know, me and my partner talked about and I'm like, oh, what was your partner's name again? You know, getting them more comfortable with. And at the beginning of the year, it was even that weird thing of like, I don't know, what's your name again? You know, they didn’t even ask each other that. Okay, see you didn’t melt and die and nobody got mad at you because you didn’t remember their name. This is okay, we’re going to figure this out. 

End of Segment 1

00;10;53;00 - 00;11;03;00

Music break

Start of Segment 2

00;11;03;00 - 00;12;31;26

Curtis

I think it makes it so important. And I, you know, we both came at it maybe a little differently. But both of those things come, come out. The kids become reliant upon learning each other's names. And they, you know, when they're when they were doing data collection and somebody needed to hold that measuring tape across the circle, and they need to figure out how are we going to even find a diameter of this circle, like all of those questions that they needed to figure out how to answer as they were doing this because I gave them minimal instructions, really, so they kind of had to think about it and communicate and talk to each other and learn each other's names and, and get involved with each other and not be scared to do something that somebody else didn't think was right and then receive, you know, hey, this is what I think we might need to do and be able to work in that space. Like we both you and I both came at this idea of establishing a, a team, if you will.

Right.

We have a classroom that is a community of students and and a teacher leader. I don't know

that we are in it together. And I think that is so, so critical because it establishes safety. It normalizes. And I know we're going to go I know we're going to go here next, or at least talk about struggle and failure and, and all of those things like it normalizes those kinds of things.

00;12;32;22 - 00;12;48;12

Joanie

That’s right, right. Yeah. Let's. So let's go there because I think like the whole point of why is it important to be intentional about establishing a classroom culture is because we know deep learning of mathematics is is going to involve struggle. Every student can and should experience struggle as they're learning. And that can be just like a a positive thing, or it can be a negative thing. And I think the default, if we're not paying attention to establishing that classroom culture, we're going to default to our human nature which is to protect ourselves and to not have vulnerability and…right. And then all of the things I think about teachers that I worked with, or classrooms that I observed in or coached in, where there's this culture of kids don't want to engage.

And I always feel like it's not that I'd hear teachers say, oh, that kid just doesn't care. And I'm like, is it that they don't care? Or is it that they don't want to be wrong. They don’t feel comfortable. They don't feel safe, right. So that idea of of creating a culture that allows for productive struggle, we know how important learning is when you struggle productively like and how satisfying and how engaging it is when you can struggle.

But struggle doesn't happen if there's not that safety

00;13;57;10 - 00;14;08;05

Curtis

By nature, we isolate right by nature we isolate whenever we see that struggle thing happening. And I think the experiences in those first several weeks, first month help establish whether it's safe to do that or whether we need to isolate, right. As a student. And I say we as a student feels that they might need to isolate because it's not safe to, to admit struggle or admit failure.

00;14;26;28 - 00;16;15;12

Joanie

Exactly. And I think I want to I want to talk a little bit about how there can sometimes be a disconnect around that. Right. Like, I've told this story on the podcast before, but it's been a while. So I'm going to tell again,

That's okay.

like when we think about what we say we believe as educators and then how that actually plays out in our classroom. So this idea of normalizing productive struggle, like I love the sound of that, like, yes, I want students to know that there's an expectation that they struggle and that it's okay to struggle. And struggle is a part of learning, and I want them to be struggling productively and not feeling a frustration level of struggle that causes them to shut down.

But I can I can say those words to my students. I can say struggle is normal and it's okay to be wrong, and I expect you to make mistakes, but then I can have behaviors or things that I say in response to their mistakes or their struggle that don't align with that. Right? So it's not just that I say that's what I believe and that I want that to be my classroom culture but I have to be able to back that with what do I say and what do I do and how to how to my actions as a teacher and my words as a teacher also send that message to students

Right?

That it’s ok to make a mistake here and it's okay to to struggle. So I would love your reflection on that.

Like, does that resonate with you and are there ways that you could see either that disconnect where that breaks down or things that a teacher can do to affirm when they say struggle is important and I expect mistakes, like, what are the things that would align with that in terms of their words and behavior?

00;16;15;14 - 00;19;50;28

Curtis

So I think yeah, it's, it's a big topic to say things like, yeah, we're going to we're going to, productively struggle in our classroom and failure is going to be okay. Failure is an option, right? You've got that poster on your wall or something. And people can even celebrate. Yeah. It's okay. Like, it's it's good and and it's okay to, to positively respond. Right. Well okay. That wasn't okay. So let's think about what were you thinking. Like think about the two ways that you can, can respond when a student gives a and we'll just go very practical with a number answer or something. Right. We're asking for the slope on some line or something in a student maybe gives you the reciprocal for some reason they've gotten, the opposite of what you were looking for. And so there's two ways, right? Or even three. There's probably thousands of ways that you could respond to this. But, you know, one is like, no, I mean, okay, so and then you got to kind of think, okay, slow myself down for a second. I'm even doing I'm having a hard time even like trying to act this out here.

Like I'm wanting to just slow myself down and ask the question, okay, so what were you thinking? Where did that come from? How did that respond? Can you you know, let's talk about what it is that you did say there. Let's talk about what what that would look like.

And then we can kind of go forward and, and say, okay, so now where does that tie to this.

Right. How do we get how do we get back to this other. So I think you can, by the way, that you just verbally respond. There's also by the way you physically respond, I know that I'm I'm kind of a big, I do a lot of motion. I got a lot. I got a loud voice, I get excited, I'm I'm dynamic in the way that I speak.

Maybe is the way that I would say that. Right. Like so. Lots of loud, lots of quiet and motion in between.

And so I have to be careful in the way that I respond to students when they do things, when they give responses that I expect and notice I said the responses that I expect, not necessarily correct responses, but ones I'm hoping to hear right when they respond in ways that I'm hoping to hear I have to be careful about not being overly affirming. 

I like that.

Let that sink in for a second. Like, we all want to be affirmed and we all want to be celebrated when we do things well, and we should be at the same time. What that can have is a negative or negative impact on the student who's maybe not confident that they're going to say what would generate that response.

So my kind of enthusiasm needs to be the same. Some way to make my enthusiasm be the same, regardless of whether the response is correct or incorrect numerically or mathematically. But can I get at can I celebrate a concept that they thought of? Can I celebrate a oh, can you tell me more about what you're thinking? I'm not sure that's where we're at, but help me out. Like, I think there's something cool you're talking about. I think there's something interesting in what you said, you know, trying to think about how do I manage my own positive nature such that I don't create a culture of only the confidant students being willing to respond?

00;19;51;06 - 00;21;46;12

Joanie

Yeah. And I would just add the unintentional of that. Right.

That’s your default. If it isn’t something you're paying attention to, you can unintentionally be doing something that's damaging to a population of the students in your room. And I think that that intentionality is just such an important key. And the other part of what I want to maybe add on to a little bit to what you said is anticipation, right? Like if you have thought out ahead of time in creating your lesson plan, like what? And this got triggered when you said the response I expected, like

Right.

response. So the more as a teacher, I'm prepared for the different responses I might receive, plan what my response is going to be. So like there were times and I know we've talked about this, I think this might even be what you were alluding to just now.Like you want to kind of lead them down the path to a misconception and

can have the conversation about, oh, like, let's talk about why you thought that. Let's talk about how you got there, and then let's talk about how, you know, what's what's the mathematics behind that actually leads a different direction. It allows you to showcase a certain aspect of the math in a way that you can't if the error doesn't come up, if that makes It. Intentionally you know, I used to say when I was working with teachers like the it's like this old Zen proverb, the obstacle is the path. Students avoid every obstacle in learning their math by telling them exactly how to solve each kind of problem male encounter step by step like no, sometimes you want to run them right into the obstacle because you can have better and deeper mathematical conversation and create better and deeper understanding.

End of Segment 2

00;21;46;15 - 00;36;56;00

Music break

Start of Segment 3

00;21;57;06 - 00;23;41;14

Curtis

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, yeah

So because I, I was in my head playing, playing the the replay of my enthusiasm even of and because I heard it when you were talking and how can we talk about what you you were thinking about this because this is the like this is the thing. My well, I'm so excited you said this misconception, right? Like, that's the thing we're communicating and and and I want to I want to call out like the the potential problem there or the potential challenge there is. I know that I can hear it in my own students voices saying, yeah, but I don't want to be called out in a positive way for making a mistake like that doesn't feel right to me.

And so there's my enthusiasm yet again. Even if it's enthusiasm positive speak, even if it's in like,

encouraging the fact that it's okay you made this mistake or that I was planning on you having this misconception. They don't want to be the fall guy. Sometimes. They don't want to be the fall guy for that. And so

is there a way and I don't know, there's a right answer to this, but is there a way to establish and like explain and help them understand our intent behind that level of enthusiasm for mistakes?

I don't know how we get them past that. So I'm asking you if you have a thought on how do we help that enthusiasm for struggling productively when it doesn't feel good, like, how do we do that?

00;23;41;16 - 00;23;46;23

Joanie

Yeah. Well I think that's a that's kind of a complex question. And I think it is about this classroom culture too, right. So I just kind of want to share a couple of the strategies that I used in my classroom around this that I thought were effective. And this ties into another point that I want to make about the classroom culture and the way we create the structures that allow for comfort or less discomfort, maybe and mistake making.

So really quickly, I just want to say like, nobody wants to be wrong, nobody wants to not understand.

Right, right.

And as, as just as important as it is for us as teachers to plan to the point where we can anticipate mistakes and 

errors and plan our response for them. I think also empowering students to know what to do when they don't know is another part of creating that culture, right?

Like not, hey, I'm going to play. I'm going to do a gotcha moment where I lead you down the primrose path and catch you in a common misconception, like, that's that fall guy feeling that's like, oh, wait, you're, you're putting me in an uncomfortable position at my expense. And we all know that in the student’s position, we wouldn't want to feel our teacher doing that.

That feels tricky. So I think having like being really intentional about teaching students what to do when they don't know, when they feel stuck, when they are encountering a problem and having some structures around that. And

know, a poster that you put up on your wall, like feeling stuck. Try these five things before you raise your hand to ask for help. It could be like, write down what does sound recognizable.

Try and draw a picture. Like we've we've all seen these strategies, and I think having their peers to talk to is a really important thing about that. But, you know, one of the things that when I was when I was describing that before of like trying to lead them to a misconception so that we could have a great class conversation about it.

I would do that anonymously. Right. So it could be an exit ticket the day before, like write this down. And that way I'm able to surface a student example without putting the student on the spot. So I'm calling on you and you're giving the wrong answer. And then I'm getting all excited because you gave the wrong answer.

Instead, I'm gathering wrong answers and then showcasing one. And you can even you can even falsely do that. You could even plant the wrong answers you want to have arise. Right. And I think about the ways to do one of the things… I always I used to love doing error correction assessments. Like I always thought, that's a great way to know if you really understand something like, can you spot the mistake and when I would do those, I always would say, Silly Sammy solved this problem this way, find Sammy's mistake and blah blah blah. And so silly Sammy became a thing that we would say in the classroom. And I remember a student, I don't know that everybody would do this or that. I did anything to intentionally set it up. But I remember a student making a mistake and me like going, okay, wait, let's talk about this for a minute. That's that's not correct. Because blah blah, blah. Like, let's uncover the math. And then the student said, well, Funderburk, that wasn't me. That was actually Silly Sammy's response. And so like, having this third thing to point to that was like, you it’s part of our culture, everybody in the class knew what Silly Sammy was and it kind of could it was a way to defuse that I even wonder, like what you were saying, if you caught a kid in the moment to kind of take them off the hook of like, oh, I think silly Sammy was sitting on your shoulder when you wrote that down.

You know what I mean, so again, thinking about just that intentionality and then being able to remove the the specificity of the person from the mistake, like the mistake is like what we want to focus on is on the mathematics, not on the mistake, if that makes sense.

00;27;53;13 - 00;28;20;07

Curtis

Totally makes sense. It totally makes sense. And I think it takes the pressure off of the performance of the student. Right. Like the student doesn't no longer feels like they are the performer to be judged right there. They're now like a participant. And I think I like that. That helps me think about the ways that I could adjust or adapt my own thinking and teaching in that space.

00;28;20;26 - 00;29;13;17

Joanie

Remember when we had Xandra on and her instructional nudges and she talked about that kind of right totally wrong protocol? So as we think about those things where if I know I'm teaching a lesson that's going to intentionally surface some really common misconceptions, or, you know, maybe my goal today is to engage a student that doesn't normally participate, and I want to bring them out, and I want to help build their confidence and their understanding that they bring a valuable voice to the classroom.

You know, using one of those protocols that kind of takes off the the pressure and the vulnerability of sharing what I think is right. How about you share an answer you know is wrong and let’s talk about it.

You know? Like you can still surface that conversation and address that expectation of struggle and incorrectness being a path for learning.

00;29;13;20 - 00;31;56;11

Curtis

I like that idea of the potential of generate a generate an answer or generate a method that you know will not solve the problem. Right, you know, will not get us to the place. And let's talk about why that won't get us there.

I think that's a great way to kind of take the pressure off of a student, because they can generate something.

And then we can have a real conversation about about what that was. Right. And the way that they generated that. So there's also this other thing that happens in culture in our classrooms. And I think, you know, we've been talking about this idea of struggling productively, and we've talked about normalizing that. But I think there's also something that's maybe related to that. And but but still separate. And that is the idea that students bring with them everywhere that they go and identity. And when they walk in the door of our math classrooms, they bring in and out entity as well. Right? They bring in and you mentioned it even early on about I want to learn everything about you. I want to learn about, you know, your tennis and the the things that you play and your interests and all of those things, but also your math experiences. And I think, you know, we the kids have had math experiences, some of them good, some of them poor, some of them really poor, some of them really good, and everything in between and, and not necessarily only one. They've probably all had some spectrum of, of that happen throughout their mathematical careers as they walk in our doors, especially thinking about this from a secondary level.

Right. But even in the early elementary ages, the students have had math experience at home. You know, they learned to count at home typically. Right? So they've had math experience early on. And so really, I think there's another question for us to think about. And that is, as we as we establish classroom culture, what are the things we can do? What are the ways that we can help foster positive mathematical identities right forward looking mathematical identity within our classrooms? And so I guess maybe that's the question I'll toss to you, which is, you know, what are some of the things that both you did in your own classroom

maybe positively impacted those students mathematical identities and then thinking about things as you did professional learning and you were working at the district level, thinking about some of the things that maybe you asked folks in their their own classrooms, or you helped folks think about with them going back to their classrooms to help this.

00;31;56;15 - 00;35;48;23

Joanie

Yeah I love that. And I think paying attention just like being aware that identity impacts learning I think that is the first key. And I love that we're talking about this now. I actually was having a text exchange earlier today with a teacher friend of mine who's in that boat of not not getting not back in school yet, but getting ready to get back into school on the East Coast, where they start a little bit later, typically, and thinking about like the little surveys or tell me your math story or some of those things that are common to back school season, right?

That's today's episode. And thinking about like, how can we be intentional about that? So it doesn't just turn into like, just tell me how much you hate math on a piece of paper or like, try to say you like, say the thing you think I want to hear because we don't really know each other that well.

Can you lie to me about your math experience?

I don't want to I don't want to come across like I'm contradicting what I said at the beginning about getting to know my students. But I think not thinking about math identity as fixed. I might, I might have a kid walk in to my room like, okay, I hated my math teacher last year and I had a horrible experience and it was all I could do to get through, you know, feeling unsuccessful for a whole entire year. And now I'm walking into math class again.

And I don't want those experience. Right. And that doesn't mean, like, they might share something in their math story on that first day of school that ties to a negative experience that they had over the summer that they had last year. Well, that doesn't mean like that's what they're going to end this year with. So thinking about that through the lens of like, how do I get information that helps me interact with and, and engage my students in ways that actually contribute to their learning?

So I love the idea of having them give us their math story early in the school year so they can talk about the things I would I would frame it or I have when I've done this in my own classroom, frame it as what positive experiences have you had learning math and what negative experiences you had learning math and how can,

Obviously, I taught high school students like how? How can your past experiences help me know how to teach you in a way that's more effective? And I would have students tell me things like, don't ever call a me cold like that. I just shut down and I would be so embarrassed. And it's not that I don't know, it's just that I feel put on the spot and I would know, like, okay, I would be walking around and looking at that students work and like, hey, you have a really interesting approach to this problem. Would you mind if I call on you to share about it? Right. Just simple, easy thing because that student communicated that with me. So, I and then the other part of it is like, don't just ask once at the beginning of the year, right? How we think periodically about doing check ins with our students? And there's some great protocols. I'll put a link to this in the in the show notes. There's some great protocols in the Productive Struggle book. I know we had Kevin Dykeman on several years ago now, but there are some cool things about like put emojis up on the screen and have them pick an emoji for how they felt about today’s lesson

There are so many different ways we can do that. Kind of how are you thinking about yourself in this moment? So checking in on identities and recognizing that identities morph and can change and maybe I'm having a bad day. So today I don't feel good about stuff. But ask me again next week and I'll feel better about it.

So kind of having that be something that we're always attending to, I think is important.

00;35;48;25 - 00;37;54;08

Curtis

Yeah, I think it is too. And I was just thinking about I was reflecting on what would my level of comfort be. And I, I can see this definitely changing. Right. You said don't do this just once at the beginning of the school year. And I would I would say that I absolutely because, I'm if you're if this is the first time I'm walking into your classroom, I've never had you as a teacher before. I've never had that opportunity. And so I'm walking in as a junior into your classroom, and I don't know you and I have zero reason to be as open and honest as don't call on me cold because it freaks me out. I'm not going to be that honest with you because I don't know you that well. And so I probably and I would guess that if you give that kind of survey at the beginning of the school year, your students answers are going to be very short and to the point, with the exception of a few.

Right? Well, there's always a confident student or two that will give me the real truth, but for the most part, I imagine it changes. By the time I've had a month to work with you. And I think, you know, it's valuable to do at the beginning of the school year. But then once they learn to trust me, I think that's worth it to go back and revisit that and then maybe even revisit it again later in the school year and just check in.

And I love that advice from Kevin around the idea of the emojis. And how am I feeling today? How am I feeling about this response? How am I feeling about this topic, this lesson? I think that's really, really good. But I think there's also just, you know, the opportunity to how am I? Where is my identity? Where's my identity today with regard to to mathematics in general? Right. How confident am I feeling now versus later? I mean, I know we talked about it a few weeks ago when we were talking about talking with Vanessa, you know, and I've it's it's amazing to have students come in with one identity and leave with a different one because we've been able to impact them and to help develop and grow them.

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Joanie

Yeah I would love to say the goal for the school year is to have them leave with a better identity than they started with around math, for sure.

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Joanie Outro

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!