The New Three "Rs" of High School Mathematics

Kristi Martin and Jenny Novak, lead writers of High School Mathematics: Reimagined, Revitalized, and Relevant, join Kevin Dykema and Latrenda Knighten on this episode of Adding It All Up to discuss the new book and how reimagining and revitalizing are essential in making mathematics more relevant for students.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Kevin Dykema, AD, Latrenda Knighten, Jenny Novak

00:09

Music. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics welcomes you to adding it all up, a podcast created by and for mathematics educators and teachers join us each month as we explore current topics, insights and emerging trends, with thought leaders in the Math Community and now the hosts of adding it all up, NCTM President Kevin dykma and NCTM President Elect latrenda Knighton,

Latrenda Knighten  00:39

Hi. Welcome to Adding it all up. Today's episode is focused on nctms highly anticipated new book, high school mathematics, reimagined, revitalized and relevant. Out today. This publication focuses on creating a vision of high school mathematics that includes the essential content and equitable teaching practices to provide each and every student with experiences to learn, use and apply mathematics. Before we introduce today's guest, Kevin, can you talk about why high school mathematics reimagined is needed, and its connection to catalyzing change in high school mathematics

Kevin Dykema  01:26

absolutely Latrenda. So I think catalyzing change in high school mathematics did a great job, and it began to have lots of conversations within districts, but we recognized we need to keep as a mathematics education community. We need to keep the momentum moving, and we need to continue to have these conversations about, what can we do to better meet the student experiences and the student needs at that high school level. So we formed this writing team to talk about what's next steps and what can we do. I think in this document, we really take it from the student experience and recognize that for many students, they leave high school mathematics saying, I'm so glad that I'm getting more math the rest of my life. I can't do math. I'm not good at math, and we want to be able to change that. We recognize that for so many of our high school mathematics educators, they feel this need to cover so much content, because there's so much content in there, and so much of it gets assessed, and we need to help prioritize what are the most important areas to focus some of our energies. I think we're also recognizing technology is emerging, and it has emerged, and it's gotten to the point where so much of what we're historically done in high school mathematics can be replaced by technology. So we do think about what should those experiences look like? So I'm very excited for this document. I'm very excited to see the conversations that will continue to happen in the schools, the districts, the states, the provinces that are already having these conversations, that we can continue to push these conversations forward. So let's introduce our two speakers today. We're so excited that we have Christy Martin and Jenny Novak with us. They were both on the writing team. So Christy, why don't you just tell us who you are and what you do and where you're from?

03:12

Sure. Kevin, I am a high school mathematics teacher in Washington State. I'm Jenny Novak.

Jenny Novak  03:18

I live in Columbia, Maryland, and my day job, I am the Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment in Howard County Public Schools. I've also served as first vice president for ncsm leadership and mathematics education. Thanks again, Jenny

Kevin Dykema  03:32

and Chrissy for joining us today, and thanks for being on that writing team. Can you tell us a little bit more about who was on the writing team? What was that writing process like who was involved with with crafting this document?

03:44

Well, the writing team was such a diverse group of people. When the group came together, it was amazing to see we had high school teachers. There were math coaches. We had people that work in the district office. We had state supervisors and Educational Consultants. It was amazing to see the wealth of experiences all in one room to collaborate on the work, and

Kevin Dykema  04:10

I think that really helped to contribute with all those different perspectives on there and all the different lenses that everybody brought to that writing process. So Jenny, can you talk a little bit about what was the writing process like? Did it go up for feedback, or was it just the group and the group's document is the final document?

Jenny Novak  04:28

Yeah, we did it in one draft, and it was good to go, no, just kidding, no, that would have been amazing. I don't even know how many drafts we had at this point. And Christie's laughing because she knows this was her life for almost two years. We came together originally in Reston as a group, and we were trying to figure out what this project is, and somehow, at the end of it, a book came out of it. But it was many, many stages. I mean, there were times that the group came together collectively. There was times we broke into smaller groups, into writing parts of the sections, and then coming back together, not only for internal feedback, but this one through multiple. Rounds of external feedback as well, where we went to some experts in the field and said, Hey, we want your eyes on this. We want you to give us your honest feedback, which they did. And then we came back to the drawing board and said, Okay, what are we hearing from the field that we're not thinking about? And then how can you make this particular book more relevant and meaningful to what is happening in the field. And so it was a very detailed process, but I think we all learned, not just as writers, but I think that the end product is something that was a true collaboration across multiple organizations and leaders in mathematics education. And so we're, you know, I'm excited. I know Christy's excited about it, too, the entire writing team, and so we're just happy to be at this point.

Latrenda Knighten  05:43

Thank you so much for sharing your writing process and for our listeners, letting them know that you have some ups, you have some downs, you have some stumbles, so that everyone knows that this is a work of love, and it's really something that it sounds like everyone was passionate about. So the title of this new book that is going to take over the mathematics community with a storm right is high school mathematics reimagined, revitalized and relevant? Why do we need to reimagine high school mathematics?

Jenny Novak  06:17

So I think Kevin said it pretty early on in his introduction when we talked about the why behind creating this book, NCTM has had a number of major publications in the last decade, starting with principles to action and then catalyzing change. And we see some progress being made forward, but we also hear from the field and from different districts and schools that there's still a lot of work to be done. And so as we looked at this particular book and we thought about, what is the reimagining that's needed, the first pieces, the words that started to come up over and over again in our conversations were these ideas of relevance being useful for students and engagement. And so how do we support student curiosity? How do we help students grow with their math identities, and what does that look like in the high school course structure? What is the most relevant content, and is that the same as what we might have considered even 10 years ago? And so these were things that we were, as a writing team, really grappling with and then also getting feedback on. So you'll see this really be the bedrock of what's happening in this book, along with this idea of what does pathways look like in high school, and how can we reimagine what that course sequence might look like as we start to think about what students truly need as they leave the high school doors and go into career fields as well.

Latrenda Knighten  07:38

Could you elaborate on what you mean by pathways, some of our audience members may have one viewpoint. Could you give us an example from high school we imagine of what we talk about when we talk about pathways? So

07:52

our conversations around pathways, we did extensive research into what other states were doing and what opportunities were for students that would support their post secondary pursuits, so ensuring that there were multiple opportunities for students to gain the mathematical foundations that would support them, whether they were going out into the workforce or going into a college or going into a military service, so our students are no longer just going to college, and so we really wanted to broaden what opportunities exist for our high school students so that they will be successful. So that's kind of what we are conversations about pathways. And we had extensive conversations about pathways in the beginning of our workshop. Yeah,

Jenny Novak  08:44

and to add on that, it's really clearly defined in the book that when we talk about pathways, we are not talking about tracks and tracking. So when we're talking about what Pathways students have, we want to increase opportunities for students. We want to make sure that when they leave the high school doors, they have a wealth of mathematical experiences that are rich and demanding. And we're not saying, Okay, if this is the path, if this is the career fair that you're interested in, then you should only be taking this type of math. We want to make sure that access is more open than it ever has been before. The other piece that is really emphasized when we talk about pathways is the role that statistics, data, science and modeling really play in what math coursework looks like in high school. And so you're going to see a lot in the book that's emphasizing those three ideas and how that might be carried out across a four year sequence. And

Kevin Dykema  09:39

these pathways are exciting for me to think about better meeting the interests of our students and better serving them and better preparing them for electricity. As you pointed out, they're not all going to four year institutions. They're going to lots of other things. So how can we prepare our students best for the career and college ready? I know that another part of this reimagining the content, part of it is the path. Ways, but part of it is how things are structured that right now, so often students see Algebra, Geometry, Algebra Two, and they sort of see some stuff, and they sort of flush it off and going on to the next set of stuff. So I know that there's this notion of cross cutting concepts Jenny or Christy. Can we just tell us a little bit about how do those cross cutting concepts come in play here.

Jenny Novak  10:22

This is actually probably one of the things I'm most excited about the book we were when we really started to talk about content. And what is it that we want to see, regardless of what the course is, we landed on these five areas of the focal points, and so you'll see these themes throughout. And the recommendation is really to try to make sure, regardless of what you title a course, that these big ideas are really embedded in with the content. And so you'll see these strands of patterns and generalization, variability and change, functional and structural thinking, comparison and equivalence, and then predictability. And so these concepts are things that you can see a through line throughout a student's four year experience. And I think that that's something that's a little bit more exciting and new in terms of the content for this book.

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Kevin Dykema  11:36

forward to the conversations that are going to happen around this cross cutting concept. But more importantly, I'm looking forward to seeing the impact that it's going to have on students, that students will start to see more connections between those different topics. And I know that was one of the goals of the writing team. As you put that together, it'll be good for the field to help our students see those connections between different topics, so they don't see mathematics as semi isolated topics. Another one of those Rs. We focus over here on the reimagined another one of the RS is relevant. And why do we need to have more relevance in high school mathematics? What is that going to look like for the students? Can give us a couple examples of when you talk about relevance, what's happening with in that area. So

12:18

Kevin, going back to what you said in the introduction. We don't want our students to continue to leave high school thinking. Oh, thank goodness I got my math requirement out of the way. We want students that want to pursue mathematics or even see usefulness in learning mathematics, and so we are proposing more mathematical and statistical modeling in the book. And when we talk about modeling, it goes past the idea of just using a word problem. Many word problems that are in curriculum or the ones that we use aren't necessarily authentic to students lived experiences, and they're not messy. Sometimes they just have one answer or one way of getting to that answer. And so we are calling for educators and curriculum developers to really include mathematical and statistical modeling, which would require students to really analyze a problem and make different models and think about all of the different factors that could change the output or the answer that they get. So really, it comes into more problem solving and making it useful for students, rather than just this procedural answer getting. As you mentioned, technology can do that for us. So why not help students recognize that mathematics does have a pretty big part in our lives and can support us in solving those problems.

Latrenda Knighten  13:51

Thank you so much for sharing that I am getting excited listening to not just about the process that you guys went through, but just listening to the elements that are going to be in this publication, because we are talking about the students, but I imagine that teachers are going to feel a lot of excitement about having the opportunity to have this publication in their hands as they work to make mathematics more meaningful for their students. So I want to think about the third R in this title. So we've got the new 3r for mathematics, if not for all of education. The title also includes revitalize. What are we going to do, or what does this publication propose to do to revitalize the student experience? You spoke about that. Could you elaborate on that and tell what are some other things that readers can look forward to to help revitalize mathematics for students, especially our high school students.

14:52

So this is another area I'm super excited about this part, because it really built on the idea in catalyzing change. Change on students identity and their agency, and I feel very strongly about that when it comes to math education. And so with revitalizing high school mathematics, our goal is to highlight the importance of students understanding of mathematics and their ability to utilize and their belief in being able to learn and use mathematics. So that's really important, and so we discuss mathematical and statistical processes. Some are familiar, but we have a couple of new ones that are super exciting, like Tinker productively. That word Tinker is very interesting and fun, to allow students the opportunity to grapple and explore and have fun and really experience some of the joys of that we all get from mathematics.

Jenny Novak  15:49

I just think building on that too, this revitalization, is almost kind of the culminating piece of the three R's. And so with that, there are some examples in the book about community and social context to use that builds the modeling and builds the statistical reasoning. And so there's really this opportunity for students to engage with what is happening in their community, what's happening out in the social arena, and think about, how can they be agents of change too. So there's an opportunity to connect the mathematics to real situations, which is going to prepare them for their life experiences and their careers as well. So

Kevin Dykema  16:28

I'm very appreciative of the group's efforts and thinking about revitalizing, reimagining and making mathematics relevant. And I'm most excited because it's becoming very evident that the students were at the center of everything, and it was coming back to what can we do to help our students, Kristi know, as you said, really develop that positive identity and see themselves as capable of learning math through all that. So I'm excited to see the reaction that the field is going to have, and, more importantly, the reaction that our students are going to have in a few years as we start to implement some of these recommendations. Do you have any suggestions? I know the writing team you did the writing of that, and it was a ton of stuff and lots of drafts and lots of sleepless nights analyzing that. But have you any suggestions for how can different people use this book to really affect some change in their local settings.

Jenny Novak  17:21

Yeah, Kevin, as you said, our writing team thought very deeply about this particular question, because we all felt really strongly that we wanted a publication that would not only be user friendly, but could actually affect change. And so this book really allows for entry points for a wide variety of readers. And so you could read this side by side, teachers, teacher leaders, your school administrator, central office leaders, the superintendent for your district, state or provincial leaders, policymakers, could sit side by side and read this. And so there's lots of opportunities. Christy, you know, do you want to share some of the school base? And then I can talk wider scale as well? Yeah,

18:01

sure. So for educators and educator teams that are going to read this and work towards some of these charges, I think it's really important for them, in a way, that they can start having conversations on what content can we start deemphasizing in our courses? I also think that the call for more modeling is definitely an area where there's going to be opportunities for collaboration and thinking about, what are the best problems, and really, what are modeling problems, and how can we integrate them authentically into our classrooms? And then as far as the reflection goes with the processes and ensuring that students are engaged in those processes and they can use them if they go into each other's classrooms and really start collaborating. So I think that this is a great book for collaboration, but also that opportunity isn't available in small schools, that this also provides educators with a really great foundation to make these changes as well.

Jenny Novak  19:05

So that's a little bit at the micro level, like what's happening at the classroom. But then you can take a step back with this book too, and think about it from a district level or even a state level. So when you're thinking about leaders in those types of roles, there's really opportunity to take this and then to engage different interested parties, right? So you could do book studies, you could do opportunities for training and professional learning, to get individuals involved in creating a new shared vision of what high school mathematics might be, and then what truly is the content necessary to prepare students for their future careers as well. And so there's opportunities that you can engage create that vision, assess your current state. So we have some tools that are built in there as well for you to have pause and reflection, opportunities, either individually or as a group discussion and then starting to think about what are your. Term and long term goals to start to go from this idea of theory of what we would like to have and vision to really affecting change and seeing that vision become a reality as

Latrenda Knighten  20:10

well. Christy and Jenny, thank you so much for sharing your vision, talking about the processes you went through working with the team on this book, one of the things I've enjoyed listening to is the different components that will be highlighted, the pathways, the modeling, the work on data science and statistics, and really thinking about what we talk about when we talk about those three R's. So as we get ready to release this book and actually have this publication available for everyone. Who would you suggest should run out and grab a copy of high school, reimagine, revitalize and relevant. And why should they make sure they have a copy of this book available?

Jenny Novak  20:58

Is it okay to say everyone? Yes, I think so. I really feel that. Well, I mean, we talked about this book is very user friendly regardless of your role, right? So you could sit side by side with PTA members or family and community members and read this together, and it's something that I think everyone who reads it is going to be able to make connections to their math experiences in high school, and then also creating that shared vision of what a common state might be. So I don't think there's anyone that would not be able to access this book and understand it. It's very user friendly, and it does help to create conversations among individuals who are reading it together. So holidays are coming up, you might want to just make some stocking stuffers and just pass it out. I think that that would be super handy, but I genuinely mean it. I think that this is something that a wide audience is going to appreciate.

Kevin Dykema  21:51

My mom and dad are listening today. They know what they're getting. They're stocking and I'm sure that they would love a book about mathematics education, yes, but Thanks Christine Martin and Jenny Novak for joining us today and having a great discussion on the book that was just released, high school mathematics, reimagined, revitalized and relevant, but more importantly, thanks for your passion on the writing team and thanks to all the other members of the writing team. I encourage all of our listeners to go out and buy it and start to have those conversations within your district. Check out the extra resources that are in NCTM website to help support that work. Check out the book studies, the case studies, the correlations that are on there. There's lots of good stuff, and we'll continue to add things on there to help all of our listeners, help all of our community, best think about what can we do to revitalize, reimagine high school mathematics, to make it more relevant for our students. We look forward to connecting with you again next month, on our next episode of adding it all up. You

23:00

music. Thank you for listening to this episode of adding it all up, featuring Christy Martin and Jenny Novak at NCTM, we strive to bring you the biggest topics happening in mathematics. Join us next month for another exciting discussion. See

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