One of the most common frustrations I hear from middle and high school math teachers is that students can’t do basic math. It’s...

To understand what a math gatebreaker is we must first understand what math gatekeeping is. When I first became a math teacher, I didn’t kno

I have seen first hand the power of setting high expectations of grade level content with students and I will never go back. I have seen the power of saying to a group of students who have been historically unsuccessful in mathematics, “I believe you can do grade level math so I’m going to teach you grade level math,” and I will never go back to teaching solely remedial content. I have truly been where you are, in a classroom full of students who have failed math for multiple

If you’re a 6-12th grade math teacher feeling like the disengagement, laziness, complacency, and apathy is just too much to bear… you’re in the right place. First, you are doing an amazing job. I just know it. Don’t beat yourself up or feel like you have to find a new career path. You can overcome this. Next, let's talk about the importance of motivating disengaged students in math, why so many students are struggling with math, and then discover some tips to boost motivation

Math fact fluency. It’s a heated debate in the math education world. On one hand, many are in favor of timed math fact fluency tests and...

Maybe you’ve been asked to teach a middle school math intervention or RTI class or an intervention math class for high school. Maybe you’re teaching a regular math class, but so many of your students have so many gaps in their math skills that you’re not able to get through the amount of content that you need to. Maybe you’ve been given resources or maybe you’ve been given the freedom to find your own (a blessing and a curse). I’ve been right where you are and this blog post

Math has long been the most failed subject in middle school and high school. According to Ron Schachter's work, Solving Our Algebra Problem: Getting All Students through Algebra I to Improve Graduation Rates,* math is the reason cited by over 80% of high school dropouts that they gave up on school. And the pandemic has made math equity issues far more robust in the US and beyond. LAUSD, one of the largest school districts in the country, has “lost 20 years of math progress du

I think most of us remember learning about the Pygmalion Effect in our teacher education classes. Here’s a refresher in case you need it… Rosenthal and Jacobson originally described the Pygmalion Effect as the following: “When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985) In terms of teaching students who are multiple grade levels behind, I take this to mean: When we pass

Let’s talk about how to structure your math intervention period. Most schools give teachers free rein over structuring this class, which sounds amazing, but is actually more challenging in practice than it sounds. In this post I’ll be tackling two challenges with structuring math intervention: What do I teach in math intervention? How do I fill the time period for the intervention class? You might also find this previous blog post helpful about different types of interventio

DISCLAIMER: I have not been offered nor have I received any compensation for this post or the recommendations I share. None of the links...

It’s natural to wonder, “is this experience going to be worth my time and money?” Especially math professional development. You might be...

It’s natural to wonder, “is this workshop going to be worth my time and money?” Especially math professional development. You might be...

Graphing calculator or no graphing calculator, that is the question (these days)! The teachers I support in my client work are constantly...

I’ve taught math at three different high schools. I’ve attended some amazing professional development for math teachers, and I’ve also...

What is “I do, we do, you do” Commonly referred to as “I do, we do, you do” the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model is an instructional model where teachers deliver lessons in intentionally structured chunks. In their book, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, Authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey define gradual release of responsibility as an, “instructional framework [that] is based on the belief that teachers can intentionally increase students' ownership

There was never a year that I didn’t need to do some culture resetting and community building at the start of second semester. Our...

I’ve been a high school math intervention teacher at 3 different schools. I’ve been told to teach below grade level, at grade level, and...