Dan Meyer (00:04):
Hey folks, welcome to math teacher lounge. My name is Dan Meyer

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):
And I’m Bethany, Lockhart Johnson.

Dan Meyer (00:09):
And this is the teacher learning week. We’re thinking this week about how we grow as teachers. And to start with, I just wanted to ask Bethany, uh, first Bethany, how are you doing? And second <laugh>. Um, what is, what, what has been your like most favorite and least favorite, most effective least effective professional learning experience when you were a classroom teacher?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:30):
I think for me, most effective was definitely when I could use it right away. Right. Whatever we were talking about, whatever we were learning, like I got to go put it into practice. Sure. Uh, I, I remember we did something where we designed a lesson and then we went and taught it like one person taught it and the rest of the people watched. And then we kind of like got to workshop it, which that was like a one off the fact that we got to go out of our classroom and go observe somebody teaching. It was gold. It was gold. Um, so that was probably the most effective, because there was so much opportunity for reflection and least effective was something that felt like just completely unconnected to, you know, kind of either so theoretical that it wasn’t like touching on what we were navigating right there in the classroom. I don’t know. What about you? What can you think of times that, are you gonna say times you led a PD? Those were the most effective?

Dan Meyer (01:26):
Yeah. My favorite ones are my sessions, of course. But if I had to throw those out for a second, um, yeah, I, I like, I want, I want both, I want it all. I want the, um, the big ideas that take a long time to settle in that also have like small bits that can carve off and use relatively quickly to test my understanding of the ID is, yeah. I’ve had some, some PD where I’m like, this is very relevant to tomorrow. And I also don’t care. Like for instance, like how to use the CD, the, the, like the, the software, you know, on the, on my curriculum, for instance, it’s like, okay, yeah, this is just a little, little too practical. You know what I’m saying? I want some bigger ideas to chew on. Um, I would also say like, I love my favorite PD by a long was writing up thoughts about how the day went and putting that on the internet in a public place that we used to call a blog and where people would come along, cuz there was like 10 blogs and like, tell me like that’s no good.

Dan Meyer (02:16):
Like the thing that you like is not a thing you should like, here’s the thing you should like instead, or try instead, or just this weird community that sprung up, you know, when I was, uh, starting to teach relatively new teacher and uh, I feel like I grew a lot

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:28):
Go back to this idea blog. If people would call you, they’d call you on the phone. What, what

Dan Meyer (02:32):
Was they would fax me? They, it would be a fact. So

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:35):
Fax,

Dan Meyer (02:36):
I got it. Fax a comment. Yeah. Got it. So, uh, that’s, that’s Bethany and I, and we’re super excited to have people who have a bit broader of a perspective, a bit more of the land than what, what the two of us, um, think about with our own professional learning experiences.

Dan Meyer (02:52):
We’ve invited on an expert. We hope will help us understand alternate ways to do professional learning as teachers to grow as teachers besides, you know, all of us getting into the same room once every, every, uh, few months together, Elm Cosmi is a professor of mathematics education at the university of Washington, Elm studies, how strong professional communities develop in schools and how schools can be organized. So teachers learn from and what their students, this work is informed by equity oriented research on thinking, uh, on children’s mathematical thinking and classroom practice. She is co-author with Allison hints of intentional talk, which focuses on leading productive discussions in mathematics. And she edited coral counting and counting collections with Megan Frankie and Angela tau, which focuses on the importance of counting from preschool to fifth grade. Looking forward to a great chat with Elham, welcome Elham to the show.

Elham Kazemi (03:43):
Thanks for having me, my favorite topic ever to talk with you both about,

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (03:47):
I think something that I just deeply, deeply respected admire is that I feel like you are constantly sharing about how you are learning. You’re continue to learn, continue to, to try out new ideas and you do a very good job of like highlighting things that you’ve learned, whether that’s sharing it through a tweet or sharing it amongst colleagues or peers. And I, I just really appreciate that because I feel like being in the mathematics community with you, I feel like I grow by, I just like paying attention to like, Hey, she’s a learner, she’s done all these amazing things and thinks in these amazing ways and has shifted my thinking in such amazing ways. But she’s saying, Hey, I I’m still learning. So yeah. Hi, thank you. Thank you for your, I don’t know. We’re just glad to have you here.

Elham Kazemi (04:41):
Thanks. I do feel like the perpetual student, like I’ve never left school and I wonder like one day maybe I will, when I grow older, when I grow up, will I ever leave school? Maybe not.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (04:52):
<laugh>

Dan Meyer (04:53):
Great. Let’s dig in. Yeah. So please tell us you partnered with a school for some professional learning that wasn’t the sort where you would go in and offer brilliant ideas and then leave. But rather it, it seemed like it was more of a job embedded sort, the sort of thing that might have a life of its own after, you know, after the, the grant ends or the program ends. Can you describe what it was you did and what the effect was?

Elham Kazemi (05:15):
I think I wanna first say that everything that I have done and experimented with as really the result of working with fabulous people, teachers, coaches, principals, other, um, colleagues and peers in the field who are constantly trying to work on what good teaching looks like and how you learn to do it. And mostly because we care about kids and we care about what students experience in the classroom. And we want kids to love school, to have school, be a place where they’re known, they’re loved, um, that they look forward to being in every day. And I think there’s that, um, the why that, that, um, per that makes you want to learn is really about the students and being, doing things in service of them. Because when, uh, as one of my colleagues said, when children thrive, teachers thrive. So what does it mean for us to thrive?

Elham Kazemi (06:06):
If we are focused on our kids’ experiences in schools, what we did at this, this particular school and a group of schools is kind of tap into a, all that curiosity and drive that teachers have to do a good job and to use their imaginations well, and to engage the actual ideas that children have in their classroom together, not separately, not like get a great idea and be inspired by it and then go figure it out by yourself, but be inspired by ideas and then try to figure them out together. Because, um, as you both know, very talented teachers, uh, who also have been inspired to change your classroom teaching. Once you figure something out or as you’re figuring it out, there’s all kinds of intricacies. Like I remember when I first learned about three act tasks, I thought what a brilliant idea, but it’s not so simple to try to enact the brilliance of it because you can simplify it too much or you can get stuck and not really know how do you move from one act to the next, or what’s the point of the third act?

Elham Kazemi (07:12):
Do you just like reveal the answer and that’s it. And then you move on. Um, how do you even do design the tasks to begin with all of those things, raise questions and working on them together, uh, and carving up that space and time to work on them together is sorely missing in schools. And so that’s what we were able to do with the schools that I parted and it is find the time and then design the structures so that teachers could, um, <affirmative> think about their teaching together and then also be in the classroom together with kids. So the kids see that we are also learning to be responsive to them. That’s the point. So we have to work stuff out when kids are present, which is the part that usually trips a lot of people up.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:55):
Well, that to me is I think the part that shifted my teaching and continues to is this, it is a culture shift to tell your students, to invite your students into your learning, to tell them I’m, I’m learning too. It was an invitation to, to be vulnerable in a way that I think sometimes teachers are very afraid to be vulnerable. Uh, if they don’t know what the student response is gonna be, or they don’t know, they don’t wanna seem like they don’t know the answers or they don’t know how to figure out a problem. I think that’s a real shift in the, in the culture for, for compared to maybe what we, we experienced growing up.

Dan Meyer (08:33):
I hated not knowing the answer to a math problem. I admitting I, I was uncertain with the mathematics, but to admit that I am like a, a work in aggress as a teacher, feels like an extra admission, an extra layer of humility, which is, I don’t know, it’s a really special thing that you were up to with that school. I’d love to hear like about specific structures that you worked with to help make that transition feel, you know, more natural, more welcoming, more productive.

Elham Kazemi (08:58):
So, I mean, you probably have experienced common planning time, right? This is a thing that often happens for us teachers. I think that common planning time looks a lot sometimes like, uh, what are we gonna do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Okay. What do we need? What are the materials we need? Who is gonna do that? Will you write this? And that’s what kind of common planning time, and then it’s over. And then you might see each other at lunch and say, well, how did that go? And you’ll talk a little bit about it, but common planning time and learning labs, which is sort of what the, what we call the, the PD that we designed means. Okay. So let’s take three act task. We, we write a little bit about it. We’ve seen a couple, but okay. What would it really mean to plan this particular one?

Elham Kazemi (09:42):
So common planning time is thinking like, how are we gonna launch that first act? What are we actually gonna say? What do we think the kids are gonna say? Why would we say it that way? What if they say something else? Um, and then, okay, so what does it actually sounds like to transition from act one, to act two? What might we say, what would happen with this particular task and actually getting into the details of how you imagine, like, what, what you would do when you were actually planning the specifics of a particular lesson, but leaving it loose enough that you’re not trying to make it perfect. And I think that’s the trick. So, so that you are not so invested, that goes in that particular way or that you fail. If it doesn’t go that way. Um, but that you have something you wanna learn together and trying out this three act task with a particular group of kids so that when you go into the classroom, first of all, you’ve all thought through the full R of the lesson.

Elham Kazemi (10:40):
And you’re curious enough about what’s gonna happen at particular points that you’ve left room for uncertainty and the taking of some risks. So then when you go together into a classroom and kids start to say things that you didn’t anticipate you or, or they start to do something that you’re so jazzed about, that you didn’t anticipate that you’re like, this is the thing we should pursue more. You give each other permission to do that. You’re like, whoa, wait, did you hear what so? And so said, I think we should follow that road and see where it takes us, or, huh. Okay, hold on. And that’s what we call teacher timeouts, where you actually confer briefly and you tell the kids, this is a super special day. We’ve tried to design something. We’re very curious how you are gonna react to it. So we’re gonna try it out. And along the way, we might pause to get your ideas or for us to make some decisions and steer the ship in a, in a new directions and see what happens. So we’re gonna be sitting closely to you among you. Um, and you get to be our teachers today while we teach. That’s how it’s framed.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:46):
Like, what were you seeing in professional development or in that wasn’t happening amongst teachers? Like where, where are the gaps? Because it feels like so much of your work. You’ve just looked in such nuanced ways at how teachers can continue to grow and be more reflective of their own teaching. And I’m just kind of curious where that came from or where you’re seeing the landscape.

Elham Kazemi (12:10):
Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, I, oh, everything I know about, children’s thinking to Megan Frankie and the beautiful body of work called CGI, but, um, one of the things that we noticed, there’s so many great CGI workshops, and even like all the seminars and conference presentations and amazing things that you can design to have engaging work time for teach in, in professional development, outside of their classroom, people get super jazzed, you know, they get, um, uh, they have meaningful experiences, but to contextualize that back into their classrooms with their own students is like where, where often I would see like, wait, the same group of teachers I just saw in my classroom or in either in math methods or in this PD seminar, or even myself, like noticing, like I have seen and thought about stuff a lot. But when I went to go do it with a particular group of kids, holy moly was that so hard. And I saw all kinds of new complexities that I didn’t anticipate. And if I were just left to my own devices, I might very easily say, whew, this seems a little too hard.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:21):
Right,

Elham Kazemi (13:22):
Right. And that’s the thing that I always hated. I was like, oh, if only we had, or you, or if you watched somebody do a demo lesson and you saw something that was like, kind of cool that you wish you had done afterwards. I often this happened in reflections. I wish we had, because we weren’t allowed to interrupt each other during teaching. Cuz somehow that would be rude or that would undermine the teacher’s authority. But that’s only the way we frame it. If we say actually we’re all capable people. So a question we ask ourselves during instruction doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It means actually we’re thinking together then the interruptions aren’t about undermining authority. They’re about thinking together.

Dan Meyer (14:04):
There’s a performative aspect to a lot of teaching. Like the like teaching feels like a performance and you don’t, the movie’s playing or there’s a play that’s going on. It feels like inappropriate to interrupt that in any way. Cause the performance is going and I, I love what this that’s. I love what this idea does to kind of, to redefine teaching is not a performance, but this, this co-constructed thing. Or if it’s a performance, it’s a performance, the stars, all of us, like we’re all a part of the cast and always a it’s always the dress rehearsal.

Elham Kazemi (14:30):
<laugh> it is like the dress rehearsal. Although some of my brilliant colleagues with backgrounds in drama and theater, Sarah Kavanaugh and Holly GU and Elizabeth dure, they actually were at a meeting together. And they talked about how this like breaks the fourth wall, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, which is out of theater, um, where the performer speaks to the audience, you know, I know you’re there and I have something to say to you. Yep. And I was like, well, we should, why can’t we do that in teaching? So we actually wrote a little paper, um, that’s called breaking the fourth wall as a way. That’s so cool as a metaphor for understanding and reframing what these interruptions could meet. Cuz we often get people when we about this for academic audience who say like, aren’t you using the children and what are the children gonna do while you just pause? Are they supposed to freeze? And uh, you know, while you talk about them, but it’s not really that it’s like, Hey students, we’re here because of you. So shouldn’t, we try to involve you and are decision making. To some extent, it’s not like we don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re doing things because we wanna advance your learning.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (15:40):
I mean, I still remember the first time I did a teacher time out and it, it was, I, it was breaking the four, it was this like, okay, you’re gonna see what happens, kids like, look at my, my tap dances stopped. And you’re you mean like, you know, whoa, wait a second. And I think it is about how you frame it. Right? It’s a celebration of their thinking and you, you use the term ambitious teaching and it, to me that is such a joyful way to think about it.

Elham Kazemi (16:06):
It is risky. And you would never say anything to shame any student, no. Or to shame your colleagues. Clearly it’s not a about that kind of discussion. Right. And they’re so brief. They’re like, it, it seconds. It’s not like you’re wasting time. You’re actually trying to understand what’s happening here. And I’ve just had so many instances where something goes on. Um, like we were doing a growing patterns task in a classroom and the student built the fourth term and they built stuff that did not follow the pattern. And I was so confused. I, I just didn’t understand like what was going on. And one of the kids said, well, if you, if you did follow the pattern, that’s not her words. But you know, she’s like, well, if we built it this way, that would be too obvious. Because if you just, if you saw that and you’re like, oh, that lesson failed.

Elham Kazemi (16:59):
Now we, our kids don’t understand what patterns are. We did it. Like, we gotta pause here and we gotta say, and we’re like, well, what do you mean? Can you say more about that? And basically what they said is that, um, well, first of all, they’re, they’re right. A pattern could change at any time, but it’s like, it would be more interesting if they, they knew how many cubes it would take for the fourth term that it would be nine, but they’re like, Hey, let’s rearrange that nine in some cool new ways. <laugh> cause that’s more interesting. It was like more interesting to them if, if they didn’t keep the pattern. So like, you kind of had to wrestle with that in the moment <affirmative> with them. And that’s how they can actually be partners with you in the teacher, timeout.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (17:40):
Right. That’s making it about them and their learning. It’s not about that. It’s not about your performance and like looking all shiny and, and I’ve got it all together and I know exactly how this lesson’s gonna go. It that’s so interesting.

Elham Kazemi (17:53):
And sometimes you pause and like some cuz somebody else who’s watching is noticing something about what the kids are doing. And while you’re, if you’re happen to be the person who’s upfront at the time leading, you’ve got so many things going on in your head that some times the person who’s just been sitting on the rug with the kids mm-hmm <affirmative> has noticed something. And they’re like, can I ask something right now? And that’s a great teacher timeout too. Mm. Because they’re interrupting you cuz they’re like, I think I, I wanna see what kids will say. If we ask this question next and those moments have been like amazing because someone has noticed something that another person hasn’t in the room and it’s been very helpful to illuminate how kids are processing something or what two ideas they could connect. That would be really powerful based on what we were hoping to learn that day or do with the kids that day.

Dan Meyer (18:47):
It’s like you have a bonus brain attached to you there in the room. Sounds really powerful. I wonder a couple about the student experience of this. I’m imagine if I was a student in the room and I heard the two teachers like kind of pause, take this time out and like talk about how interesting my thinking was like behind my back a little bit, like trying to strategize about something interesting. I had said, I just imagine I would, I would feel very good about like, that would be a very positive experience for me. Um, but I’m just curious, can you speak to how students reacted when they’re,

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:16):
You mean, if you had been a student in the class and you saw two teachers conferring about your work?

Dan Meyer (19:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Like I, my classmates had of thing that was like, it, it kind of like was so novel that it stymied the teachers and then they like had to pause and like talk about what are we doing? Oh, I don’t know. I can imagine that’d be like know a fun feeling. Maybe I just tell more about me than about the kids, but

Elham Kazemi (19:35):
<laugh> it points to like, how would you go about starting to do this work? Right. Because one is you do, you do have to tell kids, Hey, I’m here with so and so and so, and so, and so, and so it might be just two of you. It might be five of you. It might be more and you know how we’ve been working on X thing in class? Well, today we wanted to try this new thing and, but we’re not sure how it’s gonna go and we need, we need your feedback. Right. So here’s something that might happen. We might pause you, you, I mean, you really do directly tell the kids to do that. And then we’re gonna ask you how it felt and we’re gonna share those feelings with one another. So you do that, you do a little exit card or you,

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (20:19):
How, what felt the pause or how,

Elham Kazemi (20:22):
How, yeah. How did it feel that, how did this lesson go or how did a lesson, how did it feel when you heard, you know, ALM and Dan talk to each other, doing this lesson and they might say, Hey, it’s cool. It’s fun. Kids have definitely chimed in, in like, if we ask a question like, should we do this next or this, somebody will pipe in and say, do that, you know, do this thing. Instead. If, if you kind of pipe in to say, can I ask a question? They just turn to you and look at you and answer your question. Right. So, and we always thank them and we just like pump it up. Right? Like this is so cool because this is all about you. And usually when you say today, you’re gonna be our teachers, especially the little kids. They like get all giggly. Totally.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:02):
Right.

Elham Kazemi (21:04):
Love it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:05):
You know, you, you were sharing about this really unique situation, which I wish it wasn’t as unique where you had the whole school involved, but how did that happen? And what if you don’t have the whole school involved? What if it’s just me in my grade level, who’s like, I kind of wanna try this, but what

Elham Kazemi (21:22):
<laugh>, I think you could start with your, a peer in your school or a colleague in your school. Yeah. I mean, it’s a little seed, right. And it’s a little seed and then you could make it grow. I also believe in starting small and growing, cuz you do have to invite people into a different way of thinking about what it means to learn together. So you need to experience it, um, in order to believe it.

Dan Meyer (21:49):
Yeah. It feels like we would not want to write off any student as like, oh, they just don’t wanna learn. I think a lot of, a lot of us just like don’t buy that, that there’s other reasons why people need that. A teacher shouldn’t like shouldn’t, that’s not true of students that they have been told they can’t learn or there’s various circumstances the same. I, I suppose the same as like should be true is true of teachers. Like no teacher doesn’t want to learn more about teaching is at least a helpful Axiom to use, to approach the work of teacher growth. And so maybe they, yeah, maybe I feel like I’m the only person in my school who wants to do this, but perhaps that’s not actually true. Perhaps it’s just a matter of creating an imagination or the right kind of enticement or I don’t know what, um, but to start small and grow from there makes a lot of sense.

Elham Kazemi (22:32):
I feel now, like it would be weird and a lot harder for me to invite someone to just come in and watch me teach and sit quietly in the back when I don’t know anything about what they’re thinking and wait until afterwards to get their opinion.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:46):
Oh yes.

Elham Kazemi (22:47):
I would be much more willing to co-plan with someone so that we were both on the same page about what we were trying to do and then when you’re in the classroom with me. So that’s the other thing that’s important cuz I don’t think you can just be in the classroom together and I, you know, interrupt each other’s teachers, if you haven’t planned together, cuz you do have to have some common understanding of what are we trying to do here? Oh the

Dan Meyer (23:10):
Intent here.

Elham Kazemi (23:11):
Yeah. So I would definitely say don’t just show up in each other’s classroom and start interrupting each other. <laugh> if you don’t know what the heck is going on. Yeah.

Dan Meyer (23:21):
Yeah. I, I know that’s directed at one person on this call in particular. I hear that.

Elham Kazemi (23:25):
I know who we’re talking about, but you know, I would be way more intimidating for me if I was trying to do a three act task and Dan just came to watch me do it <laugh> and he hadn’t planned with me. He didn’t know why I selected that task. I had no opportunity to talk to him. Then it would be, Hey Dan, would you just like do this with me? Let’s think through this. Why would you do this then? What, what have you normally done? Oh, okay. Why have you done that? Right. And then to like, okay, let’s try it together. Um, and then, and then along the way, if I have questions, you’re there with me. So sometimes there is someone more experience like if right. And sometimes you’re both just like, I just don’t have that much experience with this. I’m learning this for the first time.

Elham Kazemi (24:04):
Right. And the beauty of the math ed community, whether it’s on Twitter or is that we’re kind of pretty accessible to each other. Right. So if I read something and I have a question about it, you bet I’m gonna reach out to the author <laugh> and say, I’ve been thinking about your work and this is what’s been coming up for us. Can you? So like, it definitely happened with hands down conversations. We tried it in the learning lab and we just couldn’t figure out like that. How do you intercede, like into the hands down conversation cuz the kids are supposed to have a conversation. So we had to like give Kaia and her co-author a few specific examples so they could help our thinking so that we could try it again. Right. And make it better. And I think that is, is what it means to be learning in community is that you use the resources more broadly.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:52):
That’s a beautiful reminder too. And it also helps me feel a little better about all the messages I’ve sent you. Like what does this mean? Can you help me with this?

Elham Kazemi (24:59):
<laugh> I mean, that just makes you feel alive. <laugh> I think

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (25:06):
So. I think P part of the beauty of you talking about starting small is that it does give those of us who maybe aren’t seeing that those opportunities for collaboration reflected in our school culture, it gives us kind of some hope for like, wait, don’t just like, think you can’t start. I, how do you, how do you see, how do you see it growing? Or, or do you think like if you could magically <laugh> like wave your wand and, and create some shifts around, around, uh, the culture where folks are feeling isolated or maybe don’t feel like they have the needs to do this work. What could that look like?

Elham Kazemi (25:51):
Yeah. What could that look like? So time, like we need some imagination around the use of time in schools and I have seen some really amazing opportunities where teachers get to co-teach, which means that they really have to co-plan when, um, there’s a break in a regular school session and there’s like an intercession or like a, like an elective that, um, that doesn’t, I haven’t seen it happen a lot in public schools, but I have seen it happen a lot in independent schools where they’ll have like, stop, stop the presses. It’s like a drop everything and read, but it’s like a drop everything and do an R arts week. And then all the kids in the school get shuffled. So they into multiage groupings and the teachers get to plan something special for like the week. But you could start with like a day, which would at least get you to plan something together and try to teach together and be just in each other’s spaces. And I think that might be kind of an interesting way to start where you have to like mess with the schedule somehow. Cuz the schedule is the beast in schools

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:59):
Is kind of the first step. Like we are going to create a shared activity, a shared instructional goal, a shared like where do I start?

Elham Kazemi (27:09):
What, where do you start? I mean, there’s so many good books. We all read, start with something that grabs your imagination. That you’re like, if I got to do this in my class, I’d be so jazzed. And I think my kids would love it. Why would they love it? You know, whatever it is. There’s so many good ideas that people are instantly blogging about publishing, um, slow reveal graphs. I love those two. I have like all these things. I was like, I would love to try these out, but I, I gotta do them with somebody cuz I need a sounding board about like how, what does it mean to do it well? And what does it mean to just do it at the surface level and do it a, you know, in a kind of a crappy way. And we don’t wanna do a crappy job. We wanna do a good job, but you have to start, you have to start sometimes in an awkward, crappy way. Like, you know, and get past that stage. Cause often we try a bunch of stuff, eh, and then we drop it. But like you gotta work on it to make it really

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (27:58):
Good. And if you’ve already tried it and it didn’t go so well it’s, this could be an invitation, like, you know, it doesn’t mean give up on the idea. It means like, Hey let, let’s let’s collaborate. Let’s you know, come into my class. Let’s co plan this.

Elham Kazemi (28:10):
So I would challenge people to think about the schedule. <laugh> try to do something just a little bit different. You know, like when we do learning labs, people are like, well, how do you do that? And there’s no money for it. Actually. We just use our money in a slightly different way to make or that everybody four people get a sub, which I know right now, sub shortages is crazy, crazy, but then combine your classes or do something different. Yeah. You know, um, involve people differently somehow in your, in your school environment to get that time,

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:43):
Really see this as a priority. This is a, this is there’s is intense value in this time to collaborate. Yeah.

Elham Kazemi (28:51):
Yeah. There’s so many side benefits for, I think for kids and teachers when you’re able to do this.

Dan Meyer (28:58):
Yeah. You’ve heard of folks. Uh, usually our, our math teacher challenge, our lounge challenge has been, uh, pedagogical in nature or a new CU. And uh, this is a different kind of one. This is, uh, go, go be a Rabel Razr go Rouse rabble at your, uh, front office and figure out the right way to get some funding or some time or shuffle a master schedule in such a way that you have collaboration, time to plan to co-teach to interrupt one another and uh, let us know how it goes. We are super excited and super interested in all of that. Thank you, uh, Elham for being with us here today and sharing all of your wisdom about how teachers grow.

Elham Kazemi (29:36):
Thanks for reminding me. You too loved

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:38):
It. We’re never done learning. We’re never done learning. Nope.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:44):
Aha. Thank you so much for joining us in the lounge. I think all of us have sat through effective and ineffective professional learning sessions and just helping us to envision of how this can truly help PD can truly transform our classrooms. It is it’s exciting. It’s exciting. And I think we’ve all learned a lot from our conversation. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And don’t forget, you can connect with us in the lounge on Facebook at math teacher lounge or on Twitter at MTL show. Let’s keep this conversation going. Keep it going. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Everybody. <silence>.

Dan Meyer (00:03)

Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge, folks. My name is Dan Meyer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:07):

And I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.

Dan Meyer (00:09):

We’re so excited to be here with you folks and with our guest today, tackling big questions about mathematics. I wanna ask Bethany first though: Bethany, it’s been kind of a challenging couple of years for those of us in education, near education, just in life in general, of course. But I woke up this morning and the sun was out; the weather was perfect and crisp here in Oakland; and I found myself feeling optimistic, a sense of hopefulness. And I was wondering to myself, “What is Bethany feeling hopeful about in math education right now?” What’s got you juiced up a little bit?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:40):

I gotta say, that optimism, Dan, look at that! I can actually feel the sunshine just pouring through the microphone! So I thank you for asking. What am I feeling optimistic about in math education? Hmm. OK, this is gonna sound a little bit cop-out-y, but I have been so completely jazzed about not only our podcast, but the conversations that I’ve been seeing circulating in other math podcasts that are out there around curriculum, around new books coming out. It just feels like despite overwhelm, despite exhaustion, that most teachers really do love learning. And so there’s like that kernel. And so I just feel like there’s books on my shelf I wanna read; there’s podcasts in the queue I wanna listen to; and summertime is the best, best time to do it.

Dan Meyer (01:39):

People still feel hungry out there for learning. They know the importance of the craft and its impact on students. And, yeah, people are tired, but also it is so cool to see people still jazzed about learning more about how to teach students more effectively. Me, I’m excited right now, I have a very specific excitement right now, which is that today we announced that Desmos, where I work, and Amplify, our sponsor, are no longer gonna be two separate things. That we are joining together. That I, and all these people who have done so much work over the last 10 years developing digital math technology, we’re gonna go and work inside of Amplify as a division called Desmos Classroom. And we’re so excited that…what we cracked, I think, at Desmos, is a way of thinking about how teachers and their tools—computers, for instance—interact with students in math. And I love what we did there. But we never really cracked the question of, “How do you support entire school systems in taking up these ideas and tools?” And Amplify has really done that. So I’m super-excited to partner up there. That’s what I’m optimistic about and happy about.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:40):

Congratulations! That’s a huge transition, and I’m just so excited about the amazing work that both Amplify and Desmos do. But then, the idea of Desmos being in more classrooms? Those tools being available for more students? With the reach? I mean, I’m just excited! It’s a big day, Dan.

Dan Meyer (03:00):

Thank you. Yes, exciting day. And I’m excited about also about our guest we’re bringing on today. How’s that for a segue? I’ll be excited to hear what our guest is excited about in math education. I just wanna say that what our guest, Lani Horn, Professor Lani Horn, has exposed us to is this idea of an asset orientation and its importance. And I do think I’m not over-exaggerating or overstating to say that the idea of an asset orientation towards students and their thinking has been possibly the most transformative idea for me in the last five years of being an educator. And adopting it has led to my favorite lessons, my favorite teaching experiences, my favorite relationships with students. I say all that—you know, I don’t wanna gas things up too much; is that too high of a bar here to have expectations? But it really has been tremendous! And Lani Horn gave a talk several years ago called “An Asset Orientation Is Everything,” which really changed the game up for me. And Bethany watched it as well. So that’s why I’m so excited to have on the person who gave that talk. And who’s done so much research around what an asset orientation offers students and teachers. So we’re bringing on today Lani Horn, who is a professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College, who centers her research on ways to make authentic mathematics, ambitious math teaching, accessible to students and teachers, particularly those who have been historically marginalized by our educational system. I think Lani has just a beating heart for students, yes, but also really respects the work of teaching in ways I think are so needed and sometimes uncommon in the world of math-education research. So Lani, thank you so much for coming on and joining us in the Lounge.

Lani Horn (04:41):

Thanks for having me.

Dan Meyer (04:44):

We would love to know what you are excited about and optimistic about right now in the world of mathematics education. What’s got you a little bit gassed up?

Lani Horn (04:52):

Up, gassed up? Hmm. Let me reframe it, ’cause I don’t know if I’m gassed up, but I’m cautiously hopeful that maybe that in the wake of the interrupted learning that’s been sort of widespread during the pandemic that maybe we’ll get some traction around more strategies for teaching in heterogeneous classrooms. Which I think every classroom is, to varying extents: a heterogeneous classroom. And I was talking with a colleague the other day about this idea of hmm, maybe modeling would be a really cool thing to focus teachers on. Doing some more mathematical modeling across the grade levels. Because it just seems like there’s a lot of opportunities for kids to kind of catch up on ideas and understandings that they may not have fully grasped because of interrupted learning, interrupted schooling. But also with room to engage in a lot of ideas. So we were playing with that and I was like, “Gosh, that’d be pretty cool if people took that on more broadly.” ‘Cause I don’t think that there’s been enough conversations about meaningful differentiation in that kind of way, like at the level of curriculum. So I would love to see an upsurge in interest in that kind of stuff, ’cause that’s a big place where I have a lot of passion, so I’m ready! I’m ready for people to ask questions about that. And actually it’s really very, very, very closely related to the topic today of having an asset orientation towards students.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (06:34):

First of all, I’m so excited to have you on Math Teacher Lounge, have you in the Lounge, and get to talk to you, because when Dan sent me this talk, my first thing was, “Oh, I think I know what asset orientation is and looks like.” You know, you kind of hypothesize about what you think it’s going to be. And then you started talking and I’m like, “Wait, wait, why am I just hearing this now?” So I thought I knew what it was, but really I felt like there was so much to unpack. And I would just love for you to share with our listeners, in case they are like, “Oh, asset orientation, I know what that is. I’ve got it. My students have got it.” What is it? And why does it matter so much to our teachers?

Lani Horn (07:19):

The most obvious point is that asset is the opposite of deficit, right? And we know that deficit thinking is very harmful to students. That there’s a real teacher-expectation bias that that kids pick up on, that we communicate indirectly to students and that impacts their learning and their ability to meet our academic expectations and, other expectations in classrooms. So an asset orientation is looking for students’ strengths and trying to work from those strengths as a basis for your teaching.

Dan Meyer (07:54):

So that’s a really fantastic starting spot there. And I think what’s initially surprising to me about the research you cited in your talk, that is built around an asset orientation, is how…I think if you come at learning from a—I guess in research, they call a cognitivist frame, where learning happens when teachers say the right things that make a transfer from the teacher’s brain to the student’s brain. A lot of what you’re describing is very counterintuitive, I think. The asset orientation describes a teacher’s kind of subtle disposition. It’s not what, like what they’re saying exactly. It’s what they communicate in the subtext and the body language, that all emanates from some perspective on students and the idea that that filters down somehow and students pick up on that—like a smell in the air—and that determines a lot of their learning, I think is one part of your talk and the research that I thought was really surprising. How close is that to like how this actually works? And can you add to that description or pivot it a little bit?

Lani Horn (08:54):

Expansion of the sort of cognitive framing of teacher and student interaction…part of what’s really hard about developing and maintaining an asset orientation is that schools are organized in ways that rank and sort children. And so when we are just using the everyday language of schooling, sometimes we’re injecting these preconceived deficit notions of students into our talk and into how we’re thinking about, interpreting, looking at students. So not only is this interruption a sort of a cognitive lens on teacher-student interaction, but it’s really looking at how the social environment is setting teacher-student interaction to take on certain kinds of framings.

Dan Meyer (09:44):

This is what I mean about Lani having such a generous frame towards teachers and the work of teaching. I wonder, though, if you could help us make concrete how an asset and deficit orientation might play out in a hypothetical classroom interaction.

Lani Horn (10:00):

Sure. A really commonplace example is a teacher has a group of students. It’s October or November. So there’s already been a few assessments. And that gives the teacher an idea who the strong students are and who the struggling students are. And they’re having a classroom conversation. And someone who hasn’t performed well, a kid who hasn’t performed well on those assessments—the teacher poses a question. A kid who hasn’t performed well on the assessments is called on. And they sort of hesitate in formulating their response. And the teacher with that lens of “this is a struggling student” then may have to make a decision: “Do I persist? Do I support this kid? Do I help them formulate an answer? Do I try to draw out their thinking anyway? Or do I move on to a kid who is academically performed better in my class?” And I would say that a lot of teachers in that situation would very understandably say, “OK, I get it. You’re not a strong math student. You’re not confident in my class. I’m gonna move on because I need to get through this lesson to somebody who I know is gonna provide me with a correct answer.” And they do it also out of, sometimes, a sense of care, of not wanting to put that student on the spot. However, part of what is another unintended result of making that choice is instead of trying out that student’s thinking, listen to their sort of, maybe, hesitant answer, and trying to find the kernel in it that maybe could be supported and amplified, that kid then loses an opportunity to have their idea be a part of the whole class’s mathematical conversation. Completely common, completely understandable kind of interaction that I see all the time.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:52):

That feels so huge. And that I can actually picture that happening.

Lani Horn (11:56):

Of course. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all done it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:58):

We’ve all seen it and done it. And I think it’s so key that you mention often it’s from a place of care. Of “I want that student to—look, I called on you; you’re a part of the conversation; you’re a part of our community.” But with it, I brought all of that other information that I think I have about that kiddo. Right? And how I think they’re struggling or navigating the question. And “Here, I’ll help by…” You know? But what I immediately thought of is how much the other students also pick up on that, right?

Lani Horn (12:36):

Of course.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (12:36):

I remember this time, this student in my class, a student who had struggled on some of the work we were doing, she came up and she shared her work. And then another student kind of like, it was almost like a strange little pat on the back, like, “Look at that! You did it!” And like really said it in a tone of…like, you’re 5, where did that come from?? How had I set up that student to be—I really had to step back and say, “What role have I played in making this student seem like she wasn’t capable of what she had just solved?” It was such a learning moment for me. Because I don’t think teachers do it maliciously, you know, or even consciously.

Lani Horn (13:33):

Absolutely.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (13:34):

And it was so huge.

Lani Horn (13:36):

Thanks for sharing that, Bethany, wow.

Dan Meyer (13:38):

Even in your description, Lani, you mentioned how the need to keep the class moving to fit, again, a policy that teachers didn’t impose, that we have 45 minutes and way too many standards to cover in that many days…I wanna ask you about growth mindset. It feels like every last teacher on earth has finally got the memo about growth mindset. We all know it’s the good mindset and that the bad one is fixed mindset. And we have the posters. The posters have been distributed. <laugh> A nationwide mobilization.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:07):

I automatically pictured the posters.

Lani Horn (14:09):

<laugh> Of course.

Dan Meyer (14:11):

We’ve got the posters up, people! So we’re good! And now here comes asset orientation, which has some of the similar kinds of happy feelings, good vibes, about teaching and students and learning. So I was just wondering if you could help us kind of differentiate those two kinds of concepts.

Lani Horn (14:28):

I think that an asset orientation is something you’re never done cultivating. I think it’s an ongoing stance that you have to constantly reset and reexamine. And it is recognizing the links to the social categories that students inhabit, the identities that they bring with them, the bodies that they live in, the different abilities and disabilities. And it’s actually a place where, when you really engage this work in a meaningful way, I think it has the potential to make you kind of a better human being. Because you have to constantly say, “Gosh, why did I do that? What is it that my expectation was? Why am I having such a hard time with this particular student, finding something that they’re smart at, something that they’re really good at?” ‘Cause that’s the question. That’s the asset orientation question. You look at your students and you say, “What is it that they are smart about? How are they smart? I understand that school values this; I understand that my assessments value this; but what are they smart at? And how could I bring that into the meaningful work of my classroom?” Which is a very hard question sometimes.

Dan Meyer (16:03):

Yeah. Oh, so many thoughts here. Like one, I just feel like it’s such a value for teachers, for anyone, to have a big, clear, unanswerable-in-your-lifetime question to motivate your work in teaching. If you don’t have that, then the job is too small, basically. So I love that it’s a question that offers ways to dig in every single day. Every interaction is an opportunity, and it will never be answered. That’s wonderful. I love how I just feel like there’s…sometimes we have conversations with Lounge guests, Bethany, where it really gets out of the realm of the school. And it starts to creep on in to the personal life. It starts to creep on in to the spiritual life. And I find, with this sort of idea—the value of a human being—I feel when I have an asset orientation towards my key relationship in my life—my best friends, my spouse, all these things—that that’s an indication to me of a really big and valuable idea. And the question of the difference between growth mindset and asset orientation, I wonder if it’s relevant here that a growth mindset is a concept that was studied and originated by an education psychologist, Carol Dweck, and you are someone who operates with a social-cultural frame that considers more than the student’s mind in the unit of a student, but like what is going on and what are Bethany’s students perceiving in that moment you described, Bethany, that was you and a student, but everyone kind of feels what’s going on. I wonder if that’s a useful differentiator here. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Lani Horn (17:30):

Yes. I do think that the anthropological perspective that I take—where I really look at the cultural sources of these perspectives and these expectations and narratives, I would say, about who can learn math—are really, really important. And they’re part of what sometimes becomes invisible in the classroom. Though those are a really, really important part of the ongoing work of developing an asset orientation. And of course, I come to it from my own personal experience. I was an undergraduate math major. And sometimes by the time I got to my senior seminars, I was the only woman in the room. And you know, I felt that. I felt the stigma of low expectations. I felt the missed opportunities to dig deeper because people were trying to protect me from being wrong and embarrassing myself. And so on. So it’s personal. And of course we see this applying to other social categories as well. We know that the bias is not just against women in math, but people of color, against people with different kinds of abilities, and so on. So I think that that’s why it’s sort of this ongoing personal work. And I think, too, that we will inevitably in the course of committing ourselves to this find students who challenge us, especially in our society right now, the way things are so fractured. You know, what if you have a student in your classroom who holds political views that you find really odious? How do you find a way to engage that student in a way that respects what they do have to offer to your class, while also making sure that the class is a safe place for everybody? I mean, those are really, really complex dynamics to manage. And, you know, I can talk a lot about that too.

Dan Meyer (19:30):

What a job; what a job. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:33):

I was really struck, too, because I feel, like Dan said, we’ve gotten the posters. And not to undermine the power of growth mindset—I think it has impacted many, many students and communities—but it sometimes stops there. The conversation stops there. Well, you know, we have a chant we do every day. We have the poster on the wall. My students have a growth mindset. And I think what I really appreciated in your talk, and as I’ve learned about your work, is the invitation to teachers to be vulnerable and to really look at… I do feel like even sharing that story, you put a certain amount of vulnerability of, like, have I failed in some way? But I care about my students. I’m committed to cultivating a safe space. So I guess something I’m really curious about is: what do you think needs to happen or needs to be possible for teachers to further cultivate an asset orientation? Because even the ability to pause and to be reflective, sometimes it doesn’t seem possible. So I think it’s beyond just the teacher, but in the school, the district…what are some things you feel?

Lani Horn (20:49):

Are you letting me be the queen of designing schools? ‘Cause that’s a job I’ve always wanted! <laugh> OK. So if I were the queen of designing schools, teachers would have fewer student contacts.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:04):

Say more.

Lani Horn (21:05):

When I taught high school, I had sometimes…I think the most I got was 180 student contacts a day.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:12):

Wow.

Lani Horn (21:13):

So when you’re looking at 180 kids a day, that is just sort of a capacity issue. How am I supposed to really look meaningfully at each of those individual people and find what’s valuable and strong and smart about each of them? I think that in the U.S., teachers have more instructional time than any other developed country. We need more planning time. Because that’s an opportunity to consult with colleagues. Sometimes when we encounter students where we do have that personal struggle of, “Oh, gosh, I am really having a hard time connecting with you and seeing your strengths,” wouldn’t it be great to be able to go to their last year’s teacher or their English teacher or some other teacher and say, “Can you tell me about your experiences with this student? Because I’m really wanting to connect and I’m having trouble.” And wouldn’t that be wonderful if we had resources to do that? The other thing I would do is I would get rid of a lot of the meaningless accountability, which I have found has only amplified sort of the sorting, and sort of put a technocratic veneer over kids’ deficit thinking about their own selves. Kids get a printout saying that they’re “below basic” and you say, “Hey, that was a really good idea!” And they don’t believe you ’cause they have this printout that puts them in a different category, so there’s no way they could be good at math. So I think we’ve really done a lot of harm in the annual testing of kids in that way. Especially with the individual reporting. And often the metrics we’re using to do that are not designed to be disaggregated to the individual level. So we have a lot of measurement problems. I’m kind of going back to your question before, Dan, about what’s the difference between growth mindset and an asset orientation. I think that sometimes—I don’t think this is the way Carol Dweck intended it, but I think sometimes—and I’ve seen her rebut the way it’s been used in schools—but I think sometimes the way that growth mindset has been used in schools kind of brings it back to an individual problem: “We don’t have unequal funding in our school system! We don’t have systemic racism! We don’t have childhood poverty and malnourishment! It’s just about having the right mindset!” And we know that all of those other things have a huge impact on who engages in school and who’s able to get access to schooling and the formal learning that goes on there. And so there’s a little bit of an erasure that happens in the way that growth mindset has been taken up, and putting the onus back on students and teachers as opposed to going, “Wow, we’re in this system where the cards are stacked a certain way, and I have to somehow navigate that as a teacher and figure out how to hold you up in a system that is trying to push you down.” Which is a really different kind of job than to put a poster on my wall and do a chant in the morning.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (24:39):

And I’m wondering, if you were looking at how you would hope that asset orientation gets brought into the classroom…it’s not another poster, right? What do you think would really help make some meaningful change around the way we think about that and teachers and systems take that on?

Lani Horn (24:59):

So I think that the important thing is helping teachers develop a vocabulary for recognizing students’ mathematical strengths in particular. Recognizing a strength is not, “Wow, you did really neat work!” or “You have really nice handwriting!” Those are not authentically mathematical strengths, right? So I try to think about—ah, for color theorem, “How cool! What a great way to be systematic!” You know, that being systematic, developing a good representation, asking a good question, asking the next “what if,” all of these are profoundly mathematical ways of thinking. And there’s more—I’m just giving you a few examples—that are not always recognized in classrooms that are built around quick and accurate calculation. Right? When that is the most valued form of smartness, kids who can do all these other great things, like, “Wow, that that is such a clear way of explaining the connection between that graph and that equation! I love it. That helps me see what’s happening every time that variable increases.” You know? I love when kids do that! That’s not quick and accurate calculation, right? One of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen sometimes is teachers doing a really good job of pumping kids up and helping them feel mathematical and seeing their mathematical strengths in the everyday lessons…but then they get a standard assessment and are told they’re a C student. How do you support the messaging you’re doing in your teaching and in your interactions so that it aligns with assessment? And this is where the sorting mechanism of school kind of inhibits some of the ways that we really should be valuing kids in a way that would support their ongoing learning and their own particular flourishing.

Dan Meyer (26:59):

I love how you describe this whole process as a career-long trajectory, how one does not ever finish creating an asset orientation in oneself. I’m wondering if there is some way for teachers who are listening to start to experience, to enter into that kind of feedback loop, that experience, of what an asset orientation offers them and their students. Do you have some way for us to start digging in here? A challenge, if you will?

Lani Horn (27:24):

Yeah, sure. This is a process I learned from teachers I’ve worked with, so I did not make this up. It’s called a roster check. It’s where you take a roster of one of your classes, and you go through student by student and see if you can specifically name a way that that student is mathematically smart. And it’s a private exercise if you want it to be. And just sort of go through. And then for the students who you really struggle to name how they’re smart, step back and see if there’s some kind of a pattern. And when I’ve done this in PD, as an exercise, I’ve had teachers have some real light-bulb moments where they go, “Oh my gosh, I really don’t know the quiet girls in my classroom,” or “I really don’t know the multilingual learners in my classroom.” So they can sort of start to see a bias in who they’re interacting with and who’s been able to engage in ways that uncover what their unconscious bias might be. And sometimes it’s not unconscious bias. Sometimes it’s not necessarily a category like that. It’s just the kids who are more outspoken, the kids who are high achieving. It doesn’t have to necessarily be linked to an obvious social category. However, I do think that then what you can do with that list of kids who you don’t have a name for their strengths, is you can kind of take a couple of them a week and make that your project to really observe them a little more intentionally and a little more closely. Try mixing things up. Have a chat with them. Say, “Hey, so what do you like to do? What are the things that you like to do in the world? What are your hobbies?” So maybe you can start to get some insight that way. You can talk to other teachers. Most kids have something that they’re passionate about, something that animates them and wakes them up in the morning, and knowing that and finding ways to meaningfully tie that to their mathematical learning can be extremely powerful.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:35):

Lani. I love that idea, taking that time to reflect and allow yourself to be vulnerable as you take a look at your biases and how that’s impacting your classroom space. I have learned so much from our conversation. I know we’re just scratching the surface of the work that you do. So if folks want to learn more, want to continue engaging in these ideas, where can they find you, or where can they find more about your work?

Lani Horn (29:58):

I’m pretty active on Twitter. My handle is @ilana_horn. No “e” on that. And I’ve written a couple of books for teachers. One is called Motivated. Another is called Strength in Numbers. People can check those out.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:17):

I love it. For our listeners, we are thrilled to share this conversation with you, and we wanna hear how you take up this challenge: What do you uncover? What do you notice? What are you learning about an asset orientation? And you can share that by finding us on Twitter at @MTLshow, or you can also continue the conversation with us in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge. We’re so excited to keep learning with you. And thanks for listening.

Lani Horn (30:42):

Bye! Thanks for having me.

Dan Meyer (30:44):

Bye, folks. Thank you.