Ep. 85 Zooming In on Math Teacher Moves with Jen Hawkins
Make sure to check out Jen Hawkins’ guest blog post here.
Resources mentioned in the episode:
SERP Institute work on Student Vital Actions and Supporting Teacher moves
Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl
The 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discourse
Illustrative Math - open educational resource math curriculum
Illustrative Mathematics Blog - more about IM and current math pedagogy
How to reach Jen Hawkins:
Email: hawkinsjen68@gmail.com
Transcript
Melissa Milner 0:08
Welcome to The Teacher As... Podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Welcome, Jen Hawkins, I'm very excited to have you here. Can you tell The Teacher As... listeners a little bit about you?
Jen Hawkins 0:47
Sure. Thanks, Melissa. Let's see. So I'm a retired math teacher. Since I've retired from from teaching and coaching, I've been a consultant. I currently work with Flynn education, Imagine Learning, Illustrative Mathematics, and the Math Leadership Program at Mount Holyoke College. And I work independently as well. Prior to starting all those different things. I was a math coach in elementary schools in the greater Boston area. I worked for the state on the MCAS Math test. My favorite job of all time for a number of years.
Melissa Milner 1:22
Oh, really?
Jen Hawkins 1:22
Yeah, yeah.
Melissa Milner 1:23
Oh. Okay.
Jen Hawkins 1:24
Before that, I was a middle school math teacher. And before that I was an elementary school teacher.
Melissa Milner 1:30
Clearly, you're very accomplished math teacher. And now you're teaching teachers mostly right?
Jen Hawkins 1:35
Yes.
Melissa Milner 1:36
So that's how I met you. And I was amazed at the depth of your instruction with us and how you really focused on teacher moves, and, you know, kind of making it our own. Yes, this is a program we have to do. But making it our own knowing our kids. And the teacher moves one year might be different from teacher moves the next year depends on who you have in your classroom. And so it was, it was really very helpful for me. And I've been teaching math for 30 plus years, but it was, absolutely you can always learn something new, and I learned a bunch from you. So I wanted to really focus on teacher moves for this episode in Illustrative or Illustrative Math, they have that whole thing that breaks down teacher moves. But in your opinion, what are the important teacher moves? And why are they important?
Jen Hawkins 2:27
So what you're referencing is the work of the SERP Institute that was done by Phil Darrow. And that was part of the research and learning that informed Illustrative Mathematics, development of a problem based curriculum. And what's important about teacher moves is that they build a math community where all learners are seen as as people that contribute to the learning that happens in the classroom. They promote equity, they promote engagement. And they make kids think that's what's most important about teacher moves, is we're not doing the thinking for the students. We're figuring out how to get them to think and is that a link that even if you don't have the Illustrative Math program, you could find that information for anybody. The SERP link is within Illustrative Mathematics and Illustrative Mathematics is a free program. But you can probably get the SERP link another way. I just don't happen to know what that is.
Melissa Milner 3:26
Okay. Yeah. Because I was hoping to put it on the web page.
Jen Hawkins 3:29
Yeah, we can talk about that and figure out how to post it.
Melissa Milner 3:33
Excellent. Yeah. Cuz that I found that. So that was so incredibly helpful to look at those. So do you have like a top three teacher moves?
Jen Hawkins 3:44
Sure. And like I was telling you, Melissa, when we were together, I was telling you about how I'll kind of put them like one on an index card and work on it for a day are a few days in a row to try to internalize it. And some of the ones that I'm currently thinking about a lot are, can you explain how you know your answer makes sense in this situation? And that's one that you can ask a student who needs to be challenged, because they've got an answer really fast. But maybe they need to think deeper to explain why their answer is correct. Or it could be something that you say to a learner who needs to revisit their answer, and rethink it. Because if they start to go through the process of thinking, why does it make sense and realize it doesn't make sense, then they're going to think harder, so that that's a good one for that situation. Another one I like is, can you figure out if this is always true, or is it just sometimes true?
Melissa Milner 4:43
Oh, that's a nice one.
Jen Hawkins 4:44
Yeah. And that's a good one to give a student for an extension.
Melissa Milner 4:48
Yep.
Jen Hawkins 4:49
And then a third one that I like is can you help me make sense of your thinking? Can you walk me through how you got to your answer that that kind of questioning because, again, that walkthrough could help a learner who's having some difficulty or who, you know, takes three steps in the right direction and then goes off in another direction realize as they talk it through, where they might need to change their thinking. So they all keep students thinking.
Melissa Milner 5:15
Yeah. So you mentioned equity and building a community in the classroom. How do these teacher moves do that?
Jen Hawkins 5:23
Well, those specific teacher moves might not be the ones that are actually building the equity.
Melissa Milner 5:28
Right?
Jen Hawkins 5:29
But teacher moves that, have you analyze one another's thinking, or listen to another students and be able to explain what they're saying, or or pick it up and carry it through to the end builds equity by allowing students to learn from each other and see that the learning happens from the students, the teacher isn't the possessor of the knowledge, the students, with the right guidance, have the ability to understand and move forward with their thinking if the community is strong enough to recognize all voices. You know, one thing I know that I did 400 years ago, when I started teaching was, you know, like, you know, you count on your go to kid who's always going to say it. But if you do that, how does that make other kids feel it makes them feel that they aren't part of the process. And maybe they're not good enough at thinking. And so if we can build a community where the teacher is listening for what she can get from everybody in the room, and trying to be conscious of when one voice is heard, too often. And when some voices need more attention, by skillfully bringing those forward with teacher moves, which are self reflective, you build a community where everybody gets to contribute. And even a mistake is an opportunity to learn as well. And so there's a way to bring everybody into the classroom in mathematics.
Melissa Milner 6:52
Yeah, I know, you modeled a student will answer and then you'll call on another student say, could you just explain what he just said? As simple as that?
Jen Hawkins 7:01
Right. Could you say it in your own words? Yeah. Or could you... Could you restate it? And then sometimes you use that when somebody needs help? Like if they've started to answer and they've got a great start, but then you see that students sort of flounder a little bit, you know, you want to say, Okay, can you pick somebody to pick up where you left off? Or can I pick somebody to pick up? where you left off for you. And you might decide which of those moves to do depending on the situation? And the student?
Melissa Milner 7:26
Yeah. What is your thought? I just actually interviewed a student, an eighth grade student who said, If it's who said, If I don't raise my hand, don't call on me. That was her message to teachers.
Jen Hawkins 7:39
Interesting.
Melissa Milner 7:39
So what do you do when you have students that will never raise their hand in a math class? When you're calling on them and saying, Could you repeat... you're still putting them on the spot, and they might not like that, or they might, they might fall apart? Because maybe they weren't listening? And now they can't restate it, or they didn't understand it? What are your tips for those types of students?
Jen Hawkins 8:01
You want to be able to you want to know in your classroom, who might be somebody who has some anxiety about getting a cold call. And so when you know who that student is, you might want to alert them in advance and check in with them to say, you know, I'd like to call on you during this next section. And are you going to be okay with that, so you could give them a heads up that it's going to happen. But if it's, you know, November or December, and you've spent a lot of time in September and October, building a good math community, then hopefully, hand raising is kind of gone in your classroom. And kids can give you a quiet signal, maybe a thumb up, or some other kind of symbol, that signal that you come up with to just show that they're ready to answer. But, but honestly, I try to discourage hand raising because it turns other kids minds off. And so if the signal can be quiet and low key, then then it's not something that dominates the room, the way that raised hand might.
Melissa Milner 9:04
Yes, I know, when we do the warm up. You have them do a quiet thumbs up like to their chests. So that...
Yes.
...other people aren't like, oh, they already know what I'm not even gonna try. Right.
Jen Hawkins 9:15
Right.
Melissa Milner 9:15
But during other parts of the lesson, a lot of times they're in groups anyway. So it's not that big of a deal. So it's really like the the warm up, and the cool down... the synthesis at the end where you might be calling on kids like that, right?
Jen Hawkins 9:30
Sure. Another thing another strategy you can use is you can assign roles is is an advanced, you could say for some group work, and you don't want to do this every day. But you might do it periodically and say in today's group, you know, if you get this certain color card, it means that you're going to be the spokesperson for the group. And when we come to the synthesis, I'm hoping that you're going to be able to tell me, you know, what your group was talking about and then you can be strategic about you know, do I need to give this these cards to to... girls today because I've been calling on a lot of boys lately. Do I need to give it to so and so because they haven't been able to contribute in class in a while, you know, you want to be just, you know, cognizant of who you give those roles to. And intentional.
Melissa Milner 10:13
Yeah, so it sounds like a teacher move is to keep track of who you've called on and who you haven't called on. Like, that's...
Jen Hawkins 10:18
Yes, it is to be reflective. Yeah.
Melissa Milner 10:21
Very aware of that. Yeah.
Jen Hawkins 10:23
And it's not something that you can do every day. But you might just check in with yourself, you know, once or twice a month to say, I'm going to try to do some, some reflecting after this lesson today. And notice what my patterns were, or, I'm going to get permission from the kids to record today's lesson. And then I'm going to take some notes after I listen to the recording, or I'm going to ask one of my peers, if they want to come in and observe and and and see if they notice any patterns about my teaching that I might want to examine or change.
Melissa Milner 10:55
Yeah.
Jen Hawkins 10:56
Certainly, that the peer observation can be a really good way for teachers to learn from one another.
Melissa Milner 11:02
Yeah, I was just gonna say the learning labs that we did, where the teach... the teachers were took little sections of the lesson. First, you taught the lesson in the morning. And then we took sections of the lesson and taught in the classroom, in the afternoon. Can you just tell the listeners a little bit more about the philosophy behind Learning Lab and learning those teacher moves?
Jen Hawkins 11:25
Sure. So a learning lab is an experience where teachers and the facilitator get together and they do the pre work first, the planning and the anticipating, and doing the math to understand what the lesson is going to be about and think about. What is succeeding at this lesson gonna look like? What is possible to go wrong. That's what the anticipation step is like. And then usually, the facilitator tries out the lesson in the morning, based on the guidance and the decisions that the group made in the pre planning meeting. And you know, you might try something new, like, for example, in one school, we decided to try the idea of doing the warm up standing up and doing it in the math huddle. And that was something that I had never tried before, and no one had ever seen before. And we tried it out. And it was done in middle school. And it was really cool to see it happen. So then you have a debrief afterwards, and you talk about what worked, what didn't work, and and what should we try in the afternoon. So there's like a planning part two, and then in the afternoons lesson, the same lesson again, the teachers that are part of the learning lab will take on either the whole lesson, or they'll divide it up into pieces and have two or three different teachers take on the different components of the lesson. And, again, we can reflect afterwards about what succeeded what we might do differently, and what differences we may have noticed between the lessons. We record teacher moves in the sense of record, I mean, mentally we take note of okay, what did we see the teacher do? And we think about student thinking, and discuss that in our debriefs after the lessons as well.
Melissa Milner 12:58
Yeah, I found it's so interesting, because even though I've been teaching for over 30 years, when I did that, I did the, for that afternoon lesson, I did the warm up. All I thought about was the stuff I didn't get to... the stuff I didn't say, oh, I should have done this. And then when we got back and did the the debrief, everybody was like, Oh, you did this? And you did that. And they were so positive. And I'm like, oh, like, I did do that.
Jen Hawkins 13:24
Yes.
Melissa Milner 13:25
It helped me to just remember, like, why don't you also focus on the things you're doing right?
Jen Hawkins 13:34
Right, right. We don't have to be so hard on ourselves. Too often, as teachers, we try to be perfectionists when the fact of the matter is, is that we can't be because, you know, we're human beings and every situation is difficult. Or New. And, and not everything goes as planned. And so we're succeeding, usually 90 something percent of the time, we're doing an awesome job. And it is nice to have your colleagues and peers reaffirm that for you. Because Because you do Melissa, and so do all teacher. Teachers care very much about their work.
Melissa Milner 14:05
But it was great, because I remember when I was trying to, like, just explain what I do in like an interview when I was trying to get a job, you know, here in Mass I taught in California, they came back here. And I was you know, my mom was trying to like, get me ready for the interview. She's like, so how do you teach math? And I'm like, I don't know, I just teach it like, and so getting that feedback also helped me to understand, Oh, these this is what oh, these are things I do in Oh, I like it's it. It's it was so natural to the point where I don't I can't even I couldn't even tell you in an interview for a job what I do to teach math, I just do it. But in addition, it was really great to watch you do the lesson in the morning, because I was able to glean the things that I would do when I do this, like so like four days later, I did this lesson with my kids. And I was able to kind of pull out your teacher moves that I'd never done before. I'm like, Oh, those are teachers, like I know, now I'm aware of these teacher moves, quote, unquote. And I know which ones I do now. And I know which ones I need to start incorporating. So you and you never stop learning as a teacher. And I just, I want to just thank you because that that first lesson was really great to see in the moment, what you did. So a couple times, you would stop and you'd say you'd say you'd want to talk to the teachers.
Jen Hawkins 15:41
Oh, the teacher timeout. Yeah.
Melissa Milner 15:43
So she's talking to the kids. And then she'd just say, teacher timeout, because she wanted to tell us something. So it was really, it was really that learning lab, you could do that with literacy, you could do that with a bunch of different topics. And I was absolutely valuable. Everybody, at least in the fourth grade team came back very, very positive about it. And it's already made my instruction better. So...
Jen Hawkins 16:08
Oh, that's great. And what is fun about that, is that the teacher timeout, meaning that we timeout from teaching, and we say or, you know, okay, here's what I'm thinking of right now, should I do this? Because this just happened? Or should I do that, because this just happened or who has a different idea. And it's, it's, it's showing out loud, the the thinking that we put into our jobs whenever we're there by ourselves, because as we're teaching, it comes natural to us. But we're constantly self monitoring and adjusting and changing our instruction based on what kids do. And that's why we need the summers off. It's because it's exhausting hard work. It's hard work.
Melissa Milner 16:53
It is.
Jen Hawkins 16:53
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 16:54
The other thing is time. So with, with the math program, we have, you know, you very easily can get wrapped up in the kids being excited about the warmup, and 10 minutes go by, and you're like, I got to do the rest of this lesson, because we're supposed to do a lesson a day. And I think a great teacher move was to really use that timer effectively. I don't know if that's an official teacher move.
Jen Hawkins 17:21
But it is... a it is a teacher move. It's being efficient about your time. And if you set a timer for 10 minutes, then all you know is when your time is up. But if you set the timer for six or seven minutes, then when you hear that little beep, you go, Okay, I gotta wrap the menu. And then you have the luxury of having those three or four minutes to do the synthesis of your warmup.
Melissa Milner 17:42
Well, that's a great, that's a great point.
Jen Hawkins 17:45
Yeah, and I, I am a little obsessive about the timer, and I will use it all through the lesson. You know, if you give kids six minutes to do a set of problems, you should probably stick to those six minutes. I mean, occasionally, you do have to think on your feet and say, I want to give them an extra minute, but you want it to be intentional. And not just have the time get away from you.
Melissa Milner 18:05
Yeah. Yeah, it's the structure of the lesson. It's really that timer is really kind of a big deal.
Jen Hawkins 18:14
It can, it can definitely help. Yeah.
Melissa Milner 18:16
And I, you know, I tend, I tend to like, well, what other strategies did you use? And then you get into this big long thing in the warm up, and it's yeah, it can just really derail the timing part of it. Were there any other teacher moves that you haven't mentioned yet that you want to make sure teachers are aware of?
Jen Hawkins 18:37
One of the things that is important in a strong math community is students saying more than just an answer. And I think that's where the the student vital action of students saying a second question is important. And so as often as you can try to think of things to say to the students, like, why did you think of that? Tell me what changed? What stayed the same? Why did you something something? And that that question, is it always true or sometimes true, also is connected to that? You want students to say more, because they'll think more deeply.
Melissa Milner 19:12
And everybody's hearing that thinking, and it's helping them?
Jen Hawkins 19:16
Yep. Another thing I want to mention is that there's a book I've been studying called Building Thinking Classrooms. And one thing I learned there was that there's three kinds of questions kids typically ask, and two of them are not very, they're not learning questions. Students will ask proximity questions, meaning the teacher is nearby. So they'll ask a question of the teacher because the teacher just happens to be near them. Or it's a thinking a stop thinking question. The student got to the hard part, and they want to stop thinking because it got hard and so they asked the teacher for the important stuff. And both of those things don't...you know, neither of those things help kids become independent thinkers on their own. And so we as teachers have to have good teacher moves for knowing when those questions should be answered. And when we should have a comeback that is not an answer that keeps the students thinking.
Melissa Milner 20:10
Another thing is you're speaking to, you know, students that maybe are getting stuck, or or don't have a lot of confidence with their math, I find what you said, I don't remember when it was. But you were talking about when you did the training that we don't want to just be sitting and coddling the students.
Jen Hawkins 20:30
Mmm...no.
Melissa Milner 20:30
Even the strugglers.
Jen Hawkins 20:32
And even even the young ones because if, if we're over scaffolding, if, if we're reading directions to them, if we're doing two or three examples for them first altogether, how will they confront anything new presented to them in any other manner than expecting somebody to do two examples for them?
Melissa Milner 20:51
Yeah. So how do you build? How do you build that mindset for them?
Jen Hawkins 20:55
How do you build the stamina, and that's part of building a good classroom culture at the beginning of the year and talking to kids about the growth mindset, and the importance of productive struggle, because something that I've been saying to teachers lately is, when you share what you know, you aren't learning.
Melissa Milner 21:14
Yep.
Jen Hawkins 21:15
And so you have to be pushed into that area that you don't know, the place that makes you want to ask a stop thinking question where somebody can help you. But if you do those things, then you're not letting your brain grow. And you're not challenging yourself. And I mean, at the beginning of this discussion, I mentioned to you, Melissa, about how I'd never done anything like this before, and I was really nervous. But I said, I should try it, because it's something new. And we don't get better at things by only doing what we're good at. And by only doing what we already know. And so, you know, this might not be the best podcast you've ever heard. But it is my first one. And so I'm just trying it out. And that's... I'm struggling.
Melissa Milner 22:02
No, not know not only is it excellent, with the information you're giving, but I'm already planning on asking you to do another one about student moves.
Jen Hawkins 22:11
Oh, no, now I have to do another one.
Melissa Milner 22:13
Next season next season next season. If they're up for it.
Jen Hawkins 22:16
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 22:16
I think because student moves are just as important. So if you're talking about with teachers. I did want, if that's what, are we done with teacher moves, because I did want to as another question.
Jen Hawkins 22:24
Sure, you can ask something else? That'd be great.
Melissa Milner 22:27
Yeah, um, if you're comfortable sharing, what was your math education? Like when you were young?
Jen Hawkins 22:33
Oh, my gosh.
Melissa Milner 22:34
Were you a strong math student? Did you struggle with math?
Jen Hawkins 22:36
Oh, that's... That's a great question that I could probably talk about for another half an hour because there's so many traumatic things that happened. But, you know, I was I was, you know, a student that was that was kind of bright and math. And, and, you know, teachers saw that as something that they didn't know what to do with. And so starting in about third grade, I was just sort of put into a corner with a math book, and to discern, told to just independently just figure some stuff out. And then there was a Math Learning Center that students went to, for math support, and I was sent there to go and play math games. And, and so I did that for years, third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, seventh grade. And so there were years where I didn't learn very much at all in math. And so then when I got to eighth grade, based on test scores, they said, Oh, she should be going into high school math. And so they bumped me into high school math. By then I had no skills whatsoever. No, I mean, I didn't know how to be a good student. And so then I went into high school math and did horribly. I was asking questions. When no one was asking questions, because you weren't supposed to ask questions. I'd be like, Well, why did what what is that? What are you talking about? And the the teachers were shutting me down, and I started getting terrible grades, terrible grades, because nothing, nothing made any sense to me. But when I became a teacher, I became a benevolent dictator. And I was hard and fast about the rules and about my way or the highway, and I was very strict. And there was a lot of success in my classroom for a long time, but I think there might have been a lot of anxiety and some math stress. And now that I've learned all different things about teaching, you know, after decades as a as an educator, I am a totally different teacher than I was, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, and that's really exciting to to have changed.
Melissa Milner 24:46
Yeah.
Jen Hawkins 24:47
And to Yeah, and to have grown. Yeah.
Yeah. Ditto. I had just recently a episode with Ann Elise Record, and Dr. Nicki Newton and...
And oh, about the games.
Melissa Milner 25:01
Yes. And they were talking, I think it was Annalise, who said, I remember when we used to do the Around the World with the math facts and learning wise, that's not helping the kids that don't know their math facts.
Jen Hawkins 25:16
No.
Melissa Milner 25:17
And let the stress you know, that that you put your kids through? Yeah. And I'm like, yep, did it done, they're been there done. And I know, you know, you just hope to get better. And it's so hard when you think back to some of the things you did that weren't so terrific.
Jen Hawkins 25:32
But no matter what, teachers are always doing the best that they possibly can. And, and there's nothing wrong with growing and changing as a teacher and looking back and saying, Wow, I do things in a different way. Now that I think is better. But that doesn't mean there was, you know, something that you have to feel bad about in the past, we did the best that we could, until we learned more.
Melissa Milner 25:52
Exactly.
Jen Hawkins 25:53
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 25:53
I don't want to put kids on the spot. So I love your ideas. And all the teacher moves around other ways, like letting them know ahead of time, or what I do is I walk around and I see what they're doing. And I say I love this. Can you share? Can you share this one when I when I when I asked for some? You know, and something like that, like I do that at least?
Jen Hawkins 26:14
Yep. That's great monitoring. That's great monitoring. That's part of the five practices, that's awesome. Another thing you could do is you could say to a student, I want you to tell me when this week, you're ready to speak up in math class, you tell me what day you're ready for it. But I think it's going to happen before Friday. So tell me.
Melissa Milner 26:31
The message is you're going to be speaking up, but you're gonna get to choose Yeah. Oh, I love that, too. I love that because it puts it on them.
Jen Hawkins 26:39
Yep. It let's lets them know that you have confidence in them.
Melissa Milner 26:42
Absolutely.
Jen Hawkins 26:43
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 26:44
Oh, I love that. What are you zooming in on right now with your math consulting.
Jen Hawkins 26:50
Well, it's not necessarily what I'm zooming in with my consulting as much as it's what I'm thinking a lot about for myself and about education is about how often we're not letting kids read directions on their own and think about what they mean. And how often we're giving kids examples, when we should be letting them try things on their own. So that's sort of what I think about a lot when I observe classrooms.
Melissa Milner 27:22
I am one of those people. I'm underestimating the kids.
Jen Hawkins 27:28
Have everybody read the directions on their own and say who's who's going to explain what these mean? And have the students show that a student knows what they mean? It's not us. A student knows how to do it.
Melissa Milner 27:39
Yes. I love it. I love it. So much more to improve on.
Jen Hawkins 27:44
Oh Melissa. You're so positive. It's nice to talk with you.
Melissa Milner 27:47
Oh my gosh, this is great. Thank you for for coming on and taking the time and especially since you were so nervous about it. It was amazing.
Jen Hawkins 27:54
Melissa, thanks for having me come and talk with you. It really wasn't as scary as I thought.
Melissa Milner 27:59
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.