Watch the video or read the transcript below:

Video series prior videos
#1: Why you shouldn’t teach math through a textbook
#2: How to Teach Elementary Math Without a Textbook
#3: Creating School Change When Others Don’t Want To
#4: Components of Number Sense in PreK-2
#5: Components of Number Sense in 3rd-5th
#6: Teaching Math through Story Problems
#7: Math Practice: Building Math Fluency through Games

Build Math Minds Facebook Group

Well, if you can’t tell in this series, I’m really trying to push people pretty far out of their comfort zone when teaching mathematics. Many of you are up for that challenge and you’re wanting to make this change, but you’re worried because the rest of the staff and people that you work with aren’t ready for that, or I’ve also heard from many of you that are tied to a strict pacing guide for your curriculum. 

Do you want to stay at the school?

This is only something that you can answer, but it’s not something that I can tell you not to do. It is your own personal situation, but this is such an important piece because it’s going to be tough work to get people to make these changes, and is it worth it to you? Or would you be better off to go find a school that is more aligned with your philosophy? 

So you have to reflect internally a bit about that to decide if where I’m at right now, where I want to continue to be and do I want to start making that change within this school. 

Now there are definitely ways in this video that I could give you about how to sneakily change your instruction without anybody knowing it, right? We are famous in education for nodding our heads in meetings and then going in our classroom, closing the door and doing what we want.  But I think it’s time that we stopped doing that. 

First off, it’s not helpful because we feel like we’re out on our own island but it’s also because we aren’t showcasing the things that we are doing that are making such an impact. 

When we close our door, others aren’t seeing those changes and realizing what’s happening in your classroom and why your students are having such great change. We need to be open, honest, and sharing what is happening.  If you don’t feel like you can do that at the school you are at, then if you decide to leave, I really want to encourage you to have a conversation with the administration about why you’re leaving. 

It is time that people know that if we aren’t taking our students thinking as the first priority, then it’s a big issue. We can’t just rely upon a textbook to teach our children, and if that’s your philosophy and you want to do something different, you need to let your school district know why you’re leaving.  Why are they losing all of these great teachers?? They need to know that information.

Learn More, Do Better

There are so many of us who don’t even realize what we’re doing is wrong. I think back to the way that I taught.  I was doing the best I could at the time, with the knowledge I had. I thought I was being a great teacher. I look back now and think, oh my goodness!!! But I didn’t do any better until I learned differently. So I want to encourage you to help others at your district learn better, so that they can do better. 

So how do we do that? One of my favorite ways is through book studies. Now, there are lots of books out there that you can grab to do a book study with.  However, I want to encourage you to ask your staff, your colleagues, “what is one of the biggest problems you’re seeing with our students and their mathematical thinking, their mathematical proficiency?” and start with that. Find a book that will address that. If we do these things top down, nobody has the ownership, so it needs to be more grass roots. What are the teachers concerned with and then we find books to help build their understanding of a better way to approach that with our students. 

Lots of school districts have professional learning communities, but if you don’t have one, there are lots of places online that you can do that. Twitter has been one of my favorite spots to be able to learn from other people. If you don’t do Twitter, there’s also Facebook. I run the Build Math Minds Facebook group. We have over 40,000 educators.  It keeps growing very fast and it’s a great place to be asking questions and learning from each other. 

We’re all about building our students thinking, not just creating calculators in that group, so it’s a great place as well. So find a place online to build that community and have that community support if you don’t have it at your school. 

Now, another easy way to do it is through sharing things that you find online. Whether it’s blog posts, whether it’s videos, podcasts, this video series, right? When you see something that really speaks to you, share it out, maybe even creating a watch party. There’s lots of people who will do stuff after school where you’ll have drinks and food, whatever kind of drinks and food you want to have after school, and do a little viewing party to watch videos together and have those discussions. 

Whatever works for your situation, I want you to find some way to start building the knowledge and understanding of the teachers that you work with so that they can make a change because often, it’s just due to not knowing better. I know that’s where I started, I didn’t know any better and then once I did know better, I tried to do better with my instruction.

Learn more about being a leader

It’s a fine line that we have to walk when we’re trying to help others create a change in their teaching. We don’t want to insult them, but we also don’t want to stand by when we see that things could be done better. So the only way to really do that, I have found is learning about leadership. How can you get others to do something that they may not want to do? 

So in order to do that, I started listening to lots of podcasts about leadership and business. I know it seems weird, business.  But if you are a business owner, you have to be a good leader.  

That was one of the pieces that helped me a ton, was listening to business-type podcasts, reading business-type books, leadership-type books. Inside the guide that I mentioned earlier about how to teach math without a textbook, I linked to some of my favorites inside of that guide.  Because you’ve got to start with helping yourself become a better leader, so that others will want to follow what you are doing, what you’re recommending. Those podcasts and books were some of the most helpful in me learning to not just be a teacher, but to be more of a leader. 

That’s one of the things that we really want to get to is once we have built our understanding, one of the next pieces is don’t keep it to yourself.   You have to be out there advocating for this change and leading the way at your school. 

So whether that’s at the school you are at right now or you decide that you want to go to a different school that has more of the same philosophy, being able to share your ideas and impact change is one of the best things ever, because you’re not just making a change in your classroom, you’re making a change in all those other classrooms at your school. 

It’s time we stop just shutting the door and doing what we want in our own classroom, and we start advocating and sharing about the things that we are doing that’s making a difference. 

Alright, I hope that this video has helped you build your mind not necessarily your math mind, but your mind about how to impact change in your school so that we can start building the minds of all the other students, not just your students, how are we going to impact the change so that ALL the students at your school get to have that same opportunity that students in your classroom get? Alright, have a great day.

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