Hey everybody and welcome to Tier One Interventions podcast, where we look
at your core classroom and we try to maximize your gifts and help you reach
every student with their math, with their writing, and with their reading skills.
But we concentrate mostly on math here at Tier One Interventions podcast.
And our math leader, miss Jonily, is ready to share some gold nuggets today.
Welcome to the podcast Jonily, and they are gold nuggets because these
last few weeks have been a whirlwind.
I'm gonna kinda take us back a little bit, and there's another community that
I teach called a Math teacher Mastermind, and I'm going to launch our session today.
I'm gonna take you back to a story I started to tell soon.
Now, this story is about the 12 song.
So I haven't even got to the 12 song yet.
But see, I had to give the background story for the 12 song.
But then during this, now I'm making a point here on about linear and
iterative teaching style, which is gonna connect back to a story that I was
telling previously about 14 years ago.
Teacher of record.
I'm now teacher of record.
I wanna tell you something about dah.
I'm gonna tell you that now.
'cause see, I never finished that story.
See, this is how my brain works now.
My brain works in a very nonlinear way,
but I believe it's increased my iq.
I also believe it has increased my productivity, my efficiency, my executive
functioning, and it's also increased my expertise in my content area.
The only way you're going to be able to scale your intelligence, your performance,
your efficiency, your productivity, the results you wanna get, I'm telling you
here right now, the only way you're gonna be able to scale that is if you start
thinking non-type A. You gotta get out of that type A. You gotta get out of it.
You can go back to it.
It's important too, but you have to start thinking in different ways, which are
very non-linear, random, don't help me.
Switch tasking type of ways.
Now, no offense to the men.
I think there's a research study.
If not, maybe this is just somebody's opinion, but the woman brain, 'cause
we always say, oh, women are so much better at multitasking than men.
I will tell you though, women are actually better at switch tasking, jumping
from one thing to another that are not connected and making it all happen.
So you really can't multitask.
That is, let me repeat that in a better way.
You can't multitask with two cognitive exercises at the same time.
A coach of Sherry and I Carrie over Brenner, brilliant man.
Shout out to Carrie over Brenner.
He would talk about this all the time.
You're really not multitasking.
That's the phrase people use.
You're actually really good at switch tasking, which means you can jump
from one thing to another and get more done more efficiently and more time.
That's switch tasking.
That's what I'm talking about with this non-linear thinking.
But Carrie ob Brenner used to have two people come up like on stage and have both
of them tell him a story at the same time.
Different stories just to prove like you can't fully listen to.
Both of those are cognitive exercises.
Those are cognitive tasks.
Now I can listen to a podcast and I can unload the dishwasher at the same time.
Carrie would use that as an example because unloading the dishwasher, if I do
it all the time, it's a non-thinking task.
Okay?
And I can do that while breathing and chewing gum.
Do you see?
Our brains and bodies are magnificent.
But I wouldn't call that multitasking because truly the brain cannot do two
cognitive functions at the same time.
But what females oftentimes are forced to do is to switch task.
Now I'm gonna say this a different way because I don't
mean to be sexist or whatever.
The male and female brain are different.
I'm not gonna get into that.
But I will say anyone who's gotten really good at switch tasking, because
I do know personally of some single fathers that are doing amazing.
And at first they were like not doing well with life and the kids and functioning.
And so anyone that can get really good at switch tasking and thinking
in this nonlinear way to strive to be more efficient, more productive,
produce more, all of that, this is the type of thinking I'm talking about.
So when I had the kids repetitively do twelves, then I jolted
them to two other questions.
And then I might have even wrote, written on the board, how do
squares and rectangles relate?
That's an even bigger jolt.
This is what we need to be doing in our math classrooms.
Like within, within 12 minutes, that all happened.
So let me go back to this story about the linear.
So after 14 years of not being teacher of record, I'm teacher of record, had
parent teacher conferences last week.
The students that are struggling most with my flavor, the students
that are struggling most with my flavor are the students and I'm gonna
say the majority of them are female
and the majority of them that are struggling with my flavor and my style
of math instruction and facilitation are the students that are really
good play the school game kids.
And
I actually said this to their parents and I said, your kiddo is so amazing.
Does everything Absolutely.
To the point that they are to do that are a gem personality.
Beautiful.
But there are a lot of math gaps and I need to be real about that.
I don't give a lot of participation points.
I don't give a lot of completion grade.
Oh, you did your homework, 10 outta 10.
Ooh, that's hard because that's saying they have a hundred
percent in math right now.
A grade to me is how much of the content they understand.
Now the grade to me is personal because if they don't understand the
content, that's on me, not the student.
So see, there's a catch 22 here.
So some students that are used to getting 97% in math might
all of a sudden be getting 83%.
And this is causing huge devastation.
But then one of the parents I met with last week, the dad said, because I thought
I, I felt that some of the families that came in were very upset with me.
They were very gracious.
But I get this a lot too, especially when I was classroom teacher a number
of years ago, very gracious to me, just had really good, curious questions.
And all it takes is just some explanation, some conversation.
And so I said everything and I said, I even said, that's on me.
And one of the dads said to me, I re I really appreciate what you're saying.
He said, because we have a har, we've had a hard time for years understanding why
she keeps getting an A in math, but she's never passed the end of year state test.
Repeat that, that's worth repeating.
I was going to, and I was forcing myself to have an awkward silence.
So here we go again.
The dad says to me, it really made me curious over the last few years,
the last years, I'm gonna say, this student is a ninth grader.
They take the state test from third grade.
Why?
She would always get, a's in math, her report card always had a's in math,
but then we would get the state math score of the test that she takes at the
end of the year and she hasn't passed.
That's a, that's a problem.
That's a problem on so many levels.
Now I've been on way too much of a soapbox right now.
So we need to transition.
I'm gonna transition with how do we fix this?
How do we fix this?
We fix it with Mastery Math method, tier one interventions, and at
the level two level, everything we do comes back to lockers.
Rectangles pizzas.
Oh my.
So here we go.
Now I'm gonna jump into the content, but before I do, let me not like speed
by any of your comments or feedback.
Let me pause for a moment.
Any thoughts, comments, feedback, or take this moment to put any
comments in school, please.
But unmute and talk if you would like to.
I think the people that have been using the school chat are offering really
valuable little tidbits of advice.
Thank you, Natalie.
Thank you Kirk.
Thank you Janet.
Thank you Kathy.
So refresh your screens and put your comments in there.
Tell us verbally what your takeaways are, and you never know when
Sherry's gonna use that material.
I 100% agree.
I have major beef with our like, current grading scale, like the
a hundred percent grading scale and participation and all that.
'cause yeah.
How do you get these kids that get A's and B's because they're
compliant, but then that doesn't reflect their knowledge of math?
And then participation looks different for everyone.
Like I have kids that participate every day.
That doesn't mean they're sharing out their thinking.
But they're participating.
They know what's going on.
So then you're bringing in your own bias and your own judgment.
And then how do you call that a great, so I'm very, I have tried very hard
to make it as mastery as possible within our 100% grading scale.
I don't do participation, I don't do fluff, I don't do
com, a lot of completion stuff.
I've made rubrics and scales for all the tests and things that are
trying to show mastery within that system, but I have major beef.
Can we also overhaul the grading scale?
Can we add that to our mission?
Please Tell us more about that, Natalie.
'cause I think I might know what you mean, but tell us.
I just, we have, I know, there's a whole debate if they don't do it, that like
we're setting kids up by not some places not allowing you to give less than 50%,
but then we also give way more chances to fail than we do to pass or show mastery.
So I'm like we're setting them up for failure to start with.
'cause they have all these chances.
Yes, I, and we can go back and forth on the giving fifties
and zeros and all that, but.
How let's just make it about the math.
Take judgment, take bias out of it.
And you either have the standard mastered or you don't.
And it's not a judgment on character, it's just communication on what I teach.
I don't teach co compliance.
That's not, I want that, but that's not what I'm grading on.
I just want to say you're, we have the standard or not.
And that, that's it.
And not being an a student versus an F student, it's just data.
So let's fix it.
Let's just overhaul the whole thing.
Beautiful ground and start over.
I I am put in a vote right now that on another day at another time, we create
a podcast episode with us on grading.
100%. I am all in.
'cause I've worked very hard the last few years on this, and I
have, that's my one of my major soapbox points is that I love it.
I love it.
Other thoughts, comments, questions, takeaways?
I also had a funny one.
It's not like singing to activate learning, but every time we're like, I ask
them something that they have to remember and I can see they're thinking real hard.
And I say, oh, we gotta dig deep in our brain pocket and dust it off.
I'll sing Celine Dion.
It's all coming back, it's all coming back to me now.
And they hate it so much and I love it so much.
And it just, they're like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, we're thinking and we're remembering and you forgot and now
you're trying really hard to remember.
And it brings me so much joy.
Anyway.
Oh, Natalie, I'm just looking at your comment.
In school, no one has ever accused me of being type.
Oh no one in, I am so I don't even know if I'm type B. I think I need a whole new
Le I'm probably like type Z at the ZWI.
You are your own type.
Natalie.
You go girl.
No, but type A. Not this girl.
Never.
No, she's not, never once.
She's not, she never been.
She never will be.
Nope.
I'm a I'm a reformed type A.
See, here's what really triggered me from going to type A to not.
Is, I always thought I was gonna be a girl mom.
I was a pretty girly girl.
I was a cheerleader, a dancer.
And I was get, I was supposed to be a girl mom.
And then, the nature of it said no, you're not going to be a girl mom, ever.
So I had two boys.
And if you want to, if you wanna be forced out of your type A
personality, just raise boys.
Just raise boys.
Kirk, I'm really sorry.
Today, this seems like a bash on the male, but I mean that in all goodness.
I'm used to it.
But here's the thing, and I tell my boys all the time, I tell my husband,
I tell my boys all the time, I said, I am who I am today because of you.
I would've never experienced you all listening and watching.
You all would've never experienced this type of Jay-Z without the boys in my life.
They have made life so much more fun.
I do not sweat the small stuff any, when you're Type A you sweat
a lot of small stuff that's bad.
It's very bad.
It, you can't you gotta if you wake up breathing in the morning
and you can get outta bed like.
Let go of some of your type A because life can be so much more beautiful
when boys teach you how to live it.
So thank you Kirk.
I agree a hundred percent.
I'm a boy mom as well, and I am type Jay-Z I love a lot of stuff you're saying I can
mirror and I've I appreciate the research that you're sharing because I've done
all this stuff, but when you bring it up, I'm like, that's why that's so effective.
And so that helps me keep being my silly self because the kids respond
to it and I have a lot of positive feedback after they go past my class.
But yeah, when you can teach boys, you can teach anybody, that's for sure.
Whew.
If your brain is buzzing after today’s session on grading, compliance
culture, and what it really means to measure understanding—good.
Leave a comment and share your biggest takeaway.
That’s exactly where growth begins.
Next week, we turn the corner into the how: I’m showing you the visual
foundations behind lockers, rectangles, and pizzas, and why these three
structures unlock every major math concept from third grade through Algebra.
And hey—if you’re loving this and want to get the full workshop where
we go step-by-step into the Mastery Math Method, you can sign up to
experience one workshop for just $47.
The link is waiting for you in the show notes."