It’s been a busy summer doing work we love: supporting teachers and school leaders to engage in high-quality mathematics and equity-driven instruction. Coherent Math had the pleasure of facilitating learning in more than 15 professional learning engagements of 1-2 days each in North Carolina and Colorado. The main takeaway for us is that teachers and leaders love seeing a fully modeled lesson. Here is what our participants shared with us as their big ideas from the sessions:
- Developing and facilitating student discourse are critical for both equitable instructional practice and increasing student engagement. When students are doing the thinking and talking, they are the ones making sense of the mathematics.
- Curriculum that embeds instructional routines to support student discourse helps teachers facilitate the routines and provides “mini-professional learning moments” while planning for lessons. A strong instructional routine facilitates student thinking and conversation, and embedding the routine in the curriculum itself allows teachers to make intentional, meaningful, and informed instructional decisions.
- Problem-based learning creates a student-centered learning environment. Students are given opportunities to generate their own ideas to solve problems, which engages students to do the thinking.
- Increasing student voice enhances the mathematics community in the classroom and supports students to see themselves as mathematicians. Reflections, surveys, and mini one-on-one conferences provide opportunities for teachers to connect with students and hear directly from them.
- Working together makes all the difference. Being able to discuss mathematics and instructional practices with other teachers provides that clarity and support to take a chance on something new, clarify understandings, and align on expectations.
- This all takes time. Dedicating time for planning and internalizing lessons can be the difference-maker in facilitating a problem-based, student-centered program. There are so many pulls on teachers’ time, but we heard from teachers how important they feel it is to preserve planning time to ensure they are ready to guide learning and support their students.
We’re thrilled that many of our partner districts continue engaging in support with us over the school year. We feel honored to continue the work started this summer. As we head into “back to school” season and visit our partner districts, we’re excited to see where this learning goes!