Welcome back to Teachers in America, where we celebrate teachers and their lasting impact on students' learning journeys and lives.
Today we are joined by Melody Jacklin, a middle school math intervention teacher from the Wayne-Westland Community School District in Michigan. In this episode, Melody will share strategies on creating relevant and meaningful math lessons, incorporating STEM challenges in math instruction, and getting students comfortable with productive struggle.
A full transcript of the episode appears below; it has been edited for clarity.
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Noelle Morris: Welcome to Teachers in America, a podcast from HMH where we connect with educators across the country to bring you teaching tips and inspiration. I’m your host Noelle Morris and this season I’ll be chatting with new and old teacher friends to learn how to ignite students’ interest.
Today we’re talking about helping students develop a positive math identity with our guest Melody Jacklin, a middle school math intervention teacher from Wayne-Westland Community Schools in Michigan.
Melody is currently on her 11th year of teaching and for seven of those years she has had the joy of teaching math. She also serves as the middle school math content leader for her district. And in 2023, she was a recipient of HMH’s 180 Awards.
In today’s episode, we’ll dive into creating meaningful and relevant math lessons, getting students comfortable with making mistakes, and engaging students in STEM projects, like a 3D printing bubble wand challenge.
Noelle Morris: Well, hey Melody, so great to have you on our podcast, Teachers in America. In today’s episode, I want to talk about building math confidence. But before we can even go to that conversation, we need to tell everybody who you are. So, will you, in 30 seconds or less, introduce yourself to thousands of listeners.
Melody Jacklin: Sure. So, my name is Melody. I teach a seventh and eighth grade math intervention class in Michigan. What I do is I take students who are not the strongest math learners, and I help them build math skills and turn them into math rock stars.
Noelle: Awesome. Everything that ends in being a rock star is fascinating in my book.
Melody: Yes.
Noelle: So, when we think about building math confidence, and we start with where we want to go to, tell us about the foundation that you set in your classroom to really build from there.
Melody: Sure. So, what I do with my students is I start right off the bat with talking about how everyone has their strengths and has their weaknesses in math. We tend to think about math as being like, "people are math-minded," or "I don’t have a math brain." We hear adults all the time that talk about not being good at math.
It tends to be more socially acceptable than not being good at other things. I know my students are coming to me with that mindset of, "I’m not a math person." I wish there was a way to kind of change what the class is or how students are scheduled in it. But they come to me knowing that maybe they had low test scores or they’re not performing at grade level. I really have the stigma that I have to break with my kids very early on, right from the beginning. The way that I do that is I talk a lot about understanding that everybody has their strengths. And I always tell them, "Some of you might be rock stars with multiplication but are terrified of division. Some of you might be rock stars at decimals, but a fraction scares the heck out of you and you want to run in the other direction. Everybody is going to have their strengths and everybody is going to have their weaknesses." We start there, and I always get kids that will say, "Oh, I’m not good at anything in math." And I say, "Well, I bet you there’s problems that if I put them in front of you right now, you would be able to answer those questions successfully." And we’ll do a couple really simple ones. You know, one plus two or five plus five and then they’ll go, "Yeah, yeah, I know that." And I say, "So you can do math." There’s just certain skills that maybe you’re not so great at. I really work hard at the beginning to talk about my job is to find your strengths. And help you use those strengths to build the skills that aren’t strengths for you. I find that that helps a lot.
Noelle: Yeah, recognizing within any area, any discipline, we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Do you mind giving some advice? And I say this because just the other day I know that I said, "Math isn’t really my strength. I’m a literacy person." And part of it, Melody, was because I’m leading. I’m doing something and I’m supposed to always be able to quickly problem solve right then. In math, I do have to take a step back and really look at it, understand it, and a lot of it I can’t necessarily do in my head. I’m a teacher, right? I come from that place and I know that I have said that or I just said it in my current work. What’s your advice to get that out of yourself as a teacher to not accidentally say that? To not say, I’m not a “math person,” “I’m not gifted in math.” Tell us what your advice would be, just to sort of nip it in the bud as fast as you can.
Melody: I think reminding yourself that everybody is learning. Where nobody is really perfect at anything. Nobody’s an expert at anything. So, you might not necessarily be a math person, but to remind yourself that it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to be a growing math learner, instead of, "I’m not a math person." Well, you might not be good at math right now, but you can learn to be good at math. I think just reminding yourself if you’re feeling that urge to say, "I’m not a math person," remind yourself I’m a math learner instead of I’m not a math person. I think that can really help shift the mindset. Instead of shutting it down and saying, "I can’t do math," to say, "Well, I can’t do math yet."
Noelle: Right. Plus, if you’re in a math class, you don’t want to hear your teachers say, "I’m not a math person." It’s like, "Oh, I’m in the wrong place!"
Melody: Yes, but sometimes, the way that teaching is right now, sometimes we have teachers that are really strong in certain subjects and maybe not so strong at other subjects, and they’re doing the best they can. But I think that conversation has to be with both students and staff. Because there are so many adults that don’t consider themselves math people. I think it’s just as important with adults as it is for kids to remind everybody that maybe you’re not a math person yet. But you can be. You can get there; you can be a math person. Maybe that’s the advice. Maybe the advice is instead of saying, "I’m not a math person," add the word "yet" to the end of that sentence.
Noelle: That’s great philosophy, and great advice just in general. Add “yet” to it and immediately that should boost your confidence.
What do you think your students’ biggest challenges are? At the beginning of the year, and what have you seen shift? What’s a new challenge middle of the year going towards the end of year?
Melody: I think the biggest challenge that I have seen is, I get my students in seventh and eighth grade, so they have had six or seven, eight years of previous math learning experience. We actually just talked about this in the training I was at today. Our kids are so conditioned to get the right answer in math. With math, there’s a problem, there’s a right answer, and the speed with which you can get the right answer is, a lot of times, promoted as the most important thing. You need to get the right answer. You need to get it quickly. These are the steps to follow to get the right answer.
What we find is when students get to middle school, they are afraid to take chances and take risks and make mistakes. If they don’t know the right answer right away, they don’t want to try because they don’t want to look silly from not knowing the answer. They don’t want to make a mistake. Middle schoolers have lots going on socially, and being judged is a very high concern for our middle school students. One of the things that has been a real challenge for me is helping students understand that it’s okay to make mistakes in math. I tell my students that there’s an entire branch of math that is error analysis.
We use the Math 180 workbooks, and there are exit tickets in the Math 180 workbooks that are, “Here’s a student’s work: find their mistake and explain how they could correct it.” I really try to tell my students, remind them that this is part of math. It’s so much a part of math that we actually have a whole branch of math questions and math work that is analyzing these errors. You’re going to make mistakes. It’s going to happen. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you’re all going to be perfect all the time. And I tell them, "I’m not going to be perfect all the time. I know I’m here to teach you math. I’m going to make mistakes too. It’s okay. It’s part of it." That has really been my biggest challenge is learning how to break students of that fear of making a mistake or getting something wrong.
Another way that I have, besides explaining to them that that is part of math, another way that I have learned how to break that or started to learn to break that is we actually do wrong answers only questions in my class. I’ll do number talks as my Do Nows a lot of the time, and I give my students once a week, we do a wrong answers only question. I’ll put something simple that most of them should know the answer to, like 100 plus 200. And the idea is, you have to give me a wrong answer, but you have to be able to explain the mistake that was made to get that wrong answer. I’ll get students that tell me, "It’s 20,000," and I’ll say, "Well, what did they do?" They’ll say, "Oh, they multiplied it instead of added." Excellent. Or if we flip it and make it 10 plus 5, they’ll tell me the answer is 5. And I’ll say, "how did they get that answer?" And they say, "Well, they subtracted instead of added." Really forcing kids to make mistakes intentionally makes them then more comfortable with making them accidentally. I find that through that process, and I just started doing that last year, I find that since doing those types of questions regularly in my class, my kids are less afraid to make mistakes when they don’t know the answer.
Noelle: Do you think that helps them? This is a two-part question. One, does it help them understand how sometimes [making] a mistake is because you’re moving so fast? You’re making an error with the operation or the process: what you do first and next. And the second part of that question is, how is that helping have that conversation around productive struggle and understanding the value of effort plus being comfortable making mistakes?
Melody: Great question. One of the things that we’ll talk about when we talk about these errors and things like this is a kid will say, especially with division questions, I’ll give them a simple division question, like 10 divided by 5. And a lot of kids will say, "Oh, well they would’ve gotten the answer of 15 because they added." And we’ll talk about it, "Well, yeah, if you just looked at it quickly, a division symbol can absolutely look like a plus sign if you just glance at it really quickly." So with something just that simple, we talk about you really have to look at the question. You really have to pay attention and look at the details. Because if you’re just speeding through, you might easily make that mistake because you’re not paying attention. You’re just trying to get it done quickly. But if you slow yourself down and really look at the details, you might not make that mistake again or in the first place. I use those little tricks to remind them it’s really important to slow down.
I’m also very intentional with, when we do our number talks, I don’t give them the answer right away. I put the problem on the board. I give them time to think through their answer, and then we collect their answers. And then I have them explain their strategy for getting their answers. I only tell them the right answer at the very end. Once we’ve had all their discussions and I’ve heard all their thoughts, then I tell them the answer. And what it does is it reinforces the process. My students are taking time to think about what their strategy is and what their process is. What’s really interesting is I’ll have kids that just want to be the first one to answer.
Noelle: Yeah.
Melody: And then they’ll put their answer on the board, and I know it’s a wrong answer, but I don’t tell them. I don’t show in any way that it’s a wrong answer. I just put it on the board and I’ll get other students that will give their answers. And that first student, you can see them just looking at the board going, "Wait a minute." And then they’ll tell me, "Wait, I’m changing my answer. I think it’s that." And then I’ll ask them, I don’t erase their answer—I cross it out and write their new one–then I’ll come back to them and say, "This was your original answer. Can you tell me what you did to get that answer and why did you change it?" And nine times out of ten, it’s, “I did it too fast and wasn’t thinking about it." So, it’s another reminder to slow down. I think the best thing we can do for our students is reminding them, especially with math, that the process is more important than the answer. It’s always the journey is more important than the destination. We really have to focus our students on understanding that the process, and taking the time to learn the process, will eventually help them get to that answer. It’s okay if it’s not fast.
Noelle: In that second part too, about the productive struggle. Now they’re working by themselves, or they’re at home, or it’s state testing time. What have you put in place in the classroom or in your delivery from "I do" to "you do" have you put in a place for the student to self-regulate, to self-talk, to persevere through, to keep going? Even though when you think you’ve hit the wall, but yet you still know that you have to keep giving more?
Melody: With my students, I do weekly STEM activities. We do STEM or hands-on math. And a lot of times they are just like STEM challenges. Really simple, like tower building, simple, simple challenges. But what I found is that that productive struggle, those problem-solving skills, a lot of my students are coming to me without those skills, and I knew that they needed them. So, I was trying to figure out how to teach them. What I do with these activities is I give them a challenge and then I say, this is it. These are your parameters. Go. And it’s really interesting because the students will start to. . .
I have a favorite story. It was a paper table challenge. And I forget the website that I got this from, but it’s out there. It’s called the Paper Table Challenge. And the idea is you give students, I think it’s eight sheets of newspaper, and a piece of cardboard, and tape. They have to build a table, and that table has to support weight. We use dictionaries. They have to use the cardboard for the tabletop. They can’t use it for the table legs. You tell them this, and they’re looking at their materials. They’re flat materials and they don’t know how to do it. The very first time I gave this activity, I had a student that after two minutes of trying, suddenly went, "This is impossible." She just kind of looked like she was going to give up. I walked over and said, "Well, can you tell me what you’ve tried so far?" So she said, "Well, we tried this and we tried this." I gave her a little hint, nothing that gave an answer away, but I gave her a hint and she kind of looked at me and I said, "I want you to think about that hint for a minute, and see what you can do with that." She said, "Okay." So, I walked away and I came back a few minutes later and she was trying something else. And by the end of class, they had built the strongest table. Her group had built the strongest table. I think they got 10 dictionaries, a binder, and a laptop on top of their table without collapsing. And I said to her, I said, "Do you remember 20 minutes ago when you told me this was impossible and now you won? What happened?" And she said, "Well, you told me to think about what I did already. So, I started to think about what I did that didn’t work, and then I got an idea from thinking about what didn’t work, that gave me an idea of what maybe could work." I’ve used that with my students since then to remind them that mistakes lead us to success. Failure leads to success. I always remind them, if you’re feeling like you can’t do something, take a breath, look at what you’ve tried already, and see if that gives you any ideas to move forward.
Noelle: It’s so important in the real world too, because in today’s work force, so much is testing and trying and looking. You want to not let that, "it can’t be done" to get in your way. Even if you are observing. Not jump in right away and think that the person is done. Usually what I find from that style of learner is they’re not going to let that frustration not let them finish, because there is an intrinsic motivation of, "I will not, not turn something in. I will not figure this out." But that outburst is needed. In their style, that outburst is needed, to get it out of the way. Potentially a teacher will give, like you did, a lifeline or just a little bit of a nudge. But there’s others who would work that out around them, or a friend in the classroom would see.
How are you thinking about STEM, not just from that perspective of what you’ve noticed it being a benefit to your productive struggle and problem solving, but actually building it into your lessons? Not every lesson might have a STEM activity. So, are you naturally just going through a lesson and finding opportunities? How did you learn to do that?
Melody: A little bit of both. The beauty of the class that I teach is that it’s really flexible and I don’t have . . . we use the Math 180 program, but we have some kind of flexibility within that as well. I started trying to find activities that were curriculum-driven. And then when I really took a step back and thought about it, my thought was, "Well, the goal here is to teach problem-solving skills." So, if I can tie it to curriculum, beautiful. But it doesn’t always have to be curriculum-driven. It can just be a break from the curriculum if it needs to be, understanding that problem solving and perseverance are still math skills. They’re actually part of the mathematical practice standards. Those are still math skills, even if it’s not curriculum skills. One of my favorite ones, we’re actually going to do it this week. It’s our very first one. We do a pattern block challenge. I pull out the little pattern block shapes, and I give them challenges that they have to build a vehicle, or build a castle, or build an animal, or we’ll start to throw in math vocabulary and I’ll tell them, make me something that’s symmetrical.
And we talk about what does symmetrical mean? I’ll show them examples of is this symmetrical? Is this symmetrical? And we have a nice little conversation about it. And 20 minutes into this project, my kids will go, "How is this math?" And I’ll say, "Do you know what geometry is?" And they’ll say, "Yeah, geometry is like shapes." And I said, "What are you working with?" And I go, "Shapes! There you go. There’s your math!"
Noelle: Right.
Melody: It kind of helps. My class is supposed to be building foundational skills for my students. Well, in eighth grade they’re working on transformations and rotations and dilations of shapes. So, for them to be able to transform shapes, they need to understand what the shape is and what it looks like and how to work with it and what it looks like if you turn it sideways. Those kinds of activities, while they seem simple and fun, are really teaching them some of those visual geometry skills. Where I can, I try to tie it in.
We do my favorite activity and the kids’ favorite activity. I’ve pretty much pigeonholed myself into a place where I have to do it every single semester. We do a cookie dough activity and it is a fractions lesson. So, we’ll do a lot of work with decimals and then we’ll talk about fractions, and we do converting decimals to fractions. And then right in the middle of that, we do this fractions activity. We talk about dividing fractions and multiplying fractions. So, we do this cookie dough activity where I give them a recipe and I have three different options of just regular, safety, edible cookie dough. Three different options. I pull out math manipulatives and we do a whole day where we work on halving and doubling the recipe.
So, it’s practice with whole number division and multiplication, and fraction multiplication and division. It happens to just fit right into our curriculum, because we do a lot of work with multiplying and dividing fractions. So we do that, and then the following week I bring in all of the ingredients and they make their half recipe in class. We actually make the physical cookie dough. They love it, but it ends up being a fractions activity that is probably one of the most real-world activities I could give them. We talk a lot about how many of you have used a recipe? How many of you cook at home or have families that cook at home? A lot of them will ask me, "Well why do I even need to half a recipe?" And I say, "For example, I live at home with just me and my husband. If a recipe says it serves eight, there’s two of us. I don’t need to make enough food for eight people when there’s only two of us. So, I can cut that recipe in half and make it make sense for us." Or I’ll tell them, if you’re having a party and you need to make more, you need to learn how to double it. And it’s really fascinating how many of them will come back to me later and say, oh, I did this at home.
Noelle: Yeah.
Melody: I made this at home. It ends up being this really lovely, real-world connection to the curriculum that we’re working on. I think it helps them contextualize that fraction division/multiplication piece, when they can actually see it with measuring cups.
Noelle: When you think about waste, budget, saving, the cost saving. These are things that I wish I would’ve been better at listening to. They weren’t necessarily when I was in high school, I can’t remember them being part of math. When I was in middle school or high school, it was in life skills. But I remember going, "I probably should have paid more attention to what’s the ounces, what’s the cost? Is this a better price versus this and all of that. Looking at ingredients." What a great real-world moment, right? I would say you are going to be known as the "Cookie Dough Teacher." You want to get Ms. Jacklin, and if she does not do the cookie dough, you need to ask her, "What is wrong with her? Why she is not doing it?"
Melody: It is the question I get asked the minute kids walk in my door every single semester. Because if they don’t have me, their friends had me. And we’re walking around with their cookie dough on Cookie Dough Day last time. We have so much fun with it. We said it looks like a cooking show when we walk in. I put tablecloths out and they all have their little cooking mixing stations and we love it. But yes, I think I will forever be known as the, "Cookie Dough Teacher." Which I’m okay with!
Noelle: How cool is that? Now, my producer gave me some notes, and all I see is 3D printing. Do you have a 3D printer?
Melody: Yes, I was just going to lead into that because it’s another perfect curriculum connection that we have found. Our science department actually has a couple. We have a construction tech department, where, like a wood shop class, that she has a 3D printer. And then one of our science teachers applied for a grant and got 3D printer. So, I am fortunate enough in my building to have a 3D printer that is not just in my building, but we have an office that connects my classroom to the science teacher that got this grant. So, the 3D printer just sits between our rooms. I do have access to a 3D printer. Another curriculum connection activity that we did was I actually used the 3D printer and Tinkercad to have kids design projects that they then 3D print. It ends up being the perfect connection because the program that we’re doing in our curriculum is we’re doing the decimals and integers curriculum. The measurements on Tinkercad are given in decimals. You can set them to do decimals.
We will talk about measuring in decimals and recognizing decimal lengths. It helps with placement on a number line because if I tell them that their maximum height for, we did bubble wands this semester, so I had students design a bubble wand.
Noelle: Actual bubble wands? So cool!
Melody: Yes, actual bubble wands. I had them design, I had gotten that activity idea from an ed tech conference that I went to, and somebody said they did it, and I went, “That’s brilliant. That sounds great.” We talked about what are the features of a bubble wand? What should it look like? We talked about it has to have a handle so that you can dip it in the bubble solution. It has to have holes for the bubble solution to sit in. We talked about is a bubble wand that’s an inch and a half thick going to produce good bubbles or does it need to be much, much thinner? We had a lot of conversation around what that should look like. So, then I gave them parameters and I said, your maximum height has to be. . . I think I said 120 millimeters was what the height had to be. So, then it becomes kind of a decimals on a number line activity for them, because if their height is 119.5, they have to understand that that’s less than 120. Or if they’re looking at a height that’s 135.3, you’re probably a little too high. It’s a little too tall. It really helps them contextualize that understanding of where decimals fit in line with whole numbers.
In the past I’ve had them do things where they have to kind of add pieces together. If I have students that put their handle down, and their handle is a certain length, and then they add their actual wand piece to it, and they have to understand that those two measurements are going to combine for their total height. It helps them add and subtract decimals as well, because they’re having to put those pieces together and those measurements together within their constraints. It ends up being a really nice curriculum connection too.
Noelle: Cool! Super cool!
Melody: I did print all of their bubble wands. They did their designs. I printed them all, and they loved it. Because our 3D printer is on a cart, I actually pulled it into my classroom and my kids at the beginning of class before the bell rang during passing time, they would all come in and they would just stand in front of the 3D printer and watch it print until class started. They just loved getting to see that process. I printed them all. We made bubble solution. We took them all outside for 20 minutes and let them just be kids and play with bubbles. It was great.
Noelle: Do you mind me asking, within your materials and your budget, is that type of material expensive, or how are you planning out how many activities you can do on a 3D printer?
Melody: That was part of what led us to the decision to do the bubble wands this semester. The very first project we did, we did it around Memorial Day, and we had them design mini scaled-down parade floats and we did it as like a Memorial Day parade. We had them design parade floats. I’m sorry, I say we, our building instructional coach and I worked together for our STEM activities every week. We had them design parade floats and then we printed them and it was really cute. We got the little scooters from gym. We connected them all and we put their parade floats on a little scooter, and we did a mini parade around the school. But it used a ton of filament, because the floats were relatively large. So, we tried to scale back and in order to preserve filament, tried to think of something that was maybe a little bit smaller. The rolls of filament, depending on what brand, they range from $30 to $50 a roll and I can print the bubble wands. I did 60 bubble wands and I think I went through a roll and a half filament. If you do a small project, it’s not terrible. We thankfully in our district have access to a lot of grant opportunities. I actually had applied for a grant for materials for our STEM activities and was awarded a grant that I used to buy several rolls of filament for the year. But I try to be conscious of how much filament I have and try to plan small projects around that. Even within a small project, the kids are just happy to get something that is printed. If a teacher wants to try a 3D printing project but doesn’t have the actual 3D printer, you can still have students design projects on Tinkercad’s completely free program. Kids can still design, even if they can’t do the print. It’s just more fun for them to have the print.
Noelle: What careers are your students talking about? And have you heard [any students] from the beginning of the year [say], "I’m not a math person, I don’t have a math mind," to now they are thinking about or seeing potential in a career where. . . everything uses math, but you know that there will be a need for that math discipline.
Melody: We actually, hilariously enough, and I haven’t gotten the results yet because we’re still in the process of doing it. . . our students are district wide. Our middle school students are doing a career exploration activity with our math kit, with our math students. We’re having them explore careers that use math, and then later in the year we’re going to have them pick their careers that they would like and research how math is used in those careers. We actually are working on that district-wide right now. But for my students, I see a lot of students who want to be athletes. They want to be YouTubers. We live in this age where there’s so many possibilities of careers for our students. I have a lot of kids that want to be marine biologists, which is pleasantly surprising. I also, when I was a child, wanted to be a marine biologist, so it makes me really happy every time they talk about it. Every time we talk about careers, I try to ask them, "Well, how do you think math would be used in that career?" When we did cookie dough, they go, "I forget that cooking uses math." Oh yeah, all the time. A big one that we talk about is finances. I’ve had students in the past that say, "Oh, I’m going to be a football player. I don’t need to learn math." And I said, "Then who’s going to handle your finances? Because you’re going to be making a lot of money and you’re going to want to make sure that you’re handling that money appropriately." I had a student one year that said, "I’m just going to pay someone to do it." And I said, "And you’re going to trust them not to take a bunch of your money? Don’t you think you should probably know a little bit so that you know if they’re messing with your money too much?" And he said, "Oh yeah, I guess so."
But I try, anytime a student talks about, "I’m going to do this, I don’t need math," I’m really quick to point out to them, either to point out where they’re going to use it or say, "Well, hang on a second. Think about it, where do you think you’re going to use math?" And I actually had an activity that I did with them last year at one of my bulletin boards. I cut out a bunch of shapes, and I had them think about careers that they thought used math regularly. And then I knew they were all going to write down accountant and math teacher. So I turned it into an exit ticket and I said, "Here’s the thing, if you turn your little shape in with a career on it, you’re going to get one out of two points, but you’ll get your full two out of two points if you can come up with something that no one else in the class has written down today." And I’ll tell them, "Everyone’s going to write math teacher, so don’t even think about it. Don’t even write it. We know." I’ll tell them, "Everybody’s going to put banker or accountant, don’t write it down. You want your two points." So, then they start to get really creative with it. I had some kids that looked at me and said, “What about interior designer? Is that going to use math?” And I said, "Well, what do you need to know to be an interior designer? What do they do on a daily basis? They figure out how much paint and they put furniture in a room." And I said, "Don’t you need to know the size of the room to be able to fit furniture in it?" And they said, "Well, yeah." I said, "Don’t you need to know the size of the furniture so that you know if it’s going to fit in the room?" And they said, "Yeah."
So, we kind of started to have these conversations about, yes, you’re absolutely right. You will use that math in that career more than you think you will. I think, especially with my middle schoolers, we’re just starting to talk to them about what careers they want, planning their high school path toward the career that they want. I think just having those open, honest conversations with students and allowing them to think about, pushing them to think about, how is that going to be used. My favorite story I have about math in the real world is I had a student once we were learning fractions, and I had a student who looked at me and said, "I don’t need to know how to use fractions. My brother works at a fast food restaurant or he works at McDonald’s. He says he doesn’t use fractions ever." And without missing a beat, I looked at him and I said, "Do you know what a Quarter Pounder is?" And he said, "Well, yeah, it’s a burger on the McDonald’s menu." And I said, "And do you know what a quarter means mathematically?" And he said, "Well, no." And I said, "A quarter is one fourth." And I wrote it on the board and I said, "Does this look like the menu item you see?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "So there’s fractions right on the McDonald’s menu, honey." And he kind of looked at me with these big eyes and went, "Oh my God, I didn’t even realize."
Noelle: Right?
Melody: So, it’s just finding those opportunities to point out to students, you are going to use this. Here’s how. But also taking the opportunity to not just tell them, but let them discover that for themselves.
Noelle: So, as we wrap up, Melody, this has been just fascinating talking with you and learning from you. You teach Math 180, which is one of our programs at HMH. It is intervention. It is how to redirect how students think about math, think about themselves in math learning, and accelerate. And what I know is that you were a recipient of one of our 180 Educators of the Year award.
Melody: Yes.
Noelle: So, first of all, who nominated you? What was the experience when you learned? How did your students react? What do you think about your teaching differently now than before you got that award?
Melody: I will tell you, I don’t actually know who nominated me. Apparently, I had been nominated by multiple people and I think my principal might have been one of them. She told me about it, and I said, I didn’t even know that was an award that you could win. I don’t know how that came about. And she kind of gave me a look, when I said I didn’t know. So, I think she might’ve been one of them. The students were really excited. It was kind of, it was just a really fun, big day, because my ELA counterpart also won the Read 180 award last year as well. It was a really exciting day for us because everybody came in and there were balloons and celebration and the kids really thought it was exciting. When I found out about it, I looked at them all and I said, "I don’t know if I really deserve this. We’re still learning Math 180." It was our first year with it, and I said, " I still don’t necessarily feel like an expert here. I feel like I’m still figuring this out." My kid said, "Yeah, but you’re doing your best to make it work for us. You’re really trying to make it work." When I was in meetings with HMH lots last year and talked to the Math 180 team a lot, and we were constantly improving and doing a lot of that work. My students were just so sweet about it, and they were like, "Well, yeah, you absolutely deserve it. You’re doing a great job with it." It was very, very sweet.
And I guess, going into this year, having won that award, I think going into this year I have a lot more confidence with this program. I kind of felt like I had jumped right in and was doing what I could with it and trying to figure out how to fit it into my schedule, and what pieces to use and what pieces not to use, and how to schedule. We only have 56 minutes for class, so trying to figure out within a class period, how do we get that timing just right. I did a lot of playing around with it and I felt like maybe I’m kind of getting somewhere. I think I’m maybe getting the hang of this. And then winning that award really just kind of boosted my confidence to know that, "Yeah, maybe I am onto something. Maybe I am figuring this out more than I think I am."
Noelle: You totally are, and I commend you for the authenticity of saying, "I don’t know if I deserve it." And that’s part of the reason for that award, right? To reward that you are deserving.
Melody: Thank you.
Noelle: It is jumping in. It is seeing the opportunity. It is knowing who your learners are and loving everything about working with intervention. But one of the things I love from this episode, Melody, and talking with you, is that you have seen yourself in the curriculum and possibilities of where the curriculum can be extended or where, "we’re working on this concept, but that activity is not in here, so I’m going to add it in." That is phenomenal teaching any day regardless of any program. And so, I commend you for that.
Just want to share and ask you as we wrap up. Thinking about teachers who are in their midyear of their first year, or those future teachers, why math? Why should I consider teaching math?
Melody: That is a great question. And, full transparency, when I was in school, I actually did not want to teach math. My major is language arts. That was all I wanted to teach. I had a college academic advisor that said, "Well you’re only three classes away from a math minor. You should think about it." And I said, "Thank you for the advice, but no thank you. I don’t want to teach math. Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life doing math. No, thank you." And he said, "Well, I really want you to think about it because I think it would be good for you." So, eventually I obviously did it, and then I avoided math jobs like the plague. I didn’t want to apply for anything. I was like, "Yes, I have this degree, but I don’t want to teach math." And finally, I had an experience where I was doing a long-term subbing position in an eighth-grade math class, and I just kind of went for it and embraced it. And I realized within a week and a half that, "Oh, this is where I should have been my whole life." I always tell my students the story too. And I say, "So this is me telling you that sometimes the universe just kind of pushes you where you’re meant to be. Listen to the universe when it tries to push you in a certain direction."
Part of what I learned, what I fell in love with teaching math, was that math is more than just problem/solution. We talk about math as problems. They’re math problems. Every other discipline has questions and math has problems. It’s really focused on problem solving. I was at a math leaders training today actually, and somebody said something about they view math like art, where in math, you can be creative. And actually, the most creative people are the ones that come up with the best solutions for things. And I think just reminding myself that math is problem solving and there’s room to be creative and there’s room to have fun with it. And then instilling that fun in students and helping them understand that math isn’t some scary thing that they should hide from or say they’re not good at. Math can be fun, and it can be creative, and it can be interesting. I’ve just had a lot of fun finding creative ways to make those connections for them and to help them see the fun in it. But I also think, as a teacher, math has been one of the most rewarding subjects that I could teach. Because kids come to me struggling and because they come to me with this mindset of, "I can’t do math." And to watch them break that throughout the semester and to watch them find their confidence and come out of that, I think is one of the most rewarding things about being a math teacher.
Noelle: Well, thank you. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you to the coach or the professor who was like, "You should do this," and just thank you for being a guest on Teachers in America.
Melody: Thank you.
Noelle: I know many teachers out there, even if they don’t teach math, are going to take lots of great ideas away from this.
Melody: Thank you. And thank you for having me. This has been a blast. Thank you!
Noelle: If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the Teachers in America podcast, please email us at shaped@hmhco.com. Be the first to hear new episodes of Teachers in America by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoy today's show, please rate, review, and share it with your network. You can find the transcript of this episode on our Shaped blog by visiting hmhco.com/shaped. The link is in the show notes. Teachers in America is produced by HMH. Until next time, your friend, Noelle.
The Teachers in America podcast is a production of HMH. Executive producers are Christine Condon and Tim Lee. Editorial direction is by Christine Condon. It is creatively directed, and audio engineered by Tim Lee. Our producer and editor is Jennifer Corujo. Production designers are Mio Frye and Thomas Velazquez. Shaped blog post editors for the podcast are Christine Condon, Jennifer Corujo, and Alicia Ivory.
Thanks again for listening!
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