As you start off the school year, I want you to keep in mind what is really important as we’re trying to teach mathematics to our students.

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The Math Really Isn’t Important

Now, the first thing that I want you to take away from this is that the math really isn’t important. We are in an era where it is being pushed on us that we have to get this content done, kids have to have this and they have to have this. And I know that for some of you it is very real and it is very tied to your performance, to your pay, and to a lot of things. Even to your self-worth a lot of times from your school district.

That’s why I want to start off this video saying, it’s not important. I want teachers to start realizing that. I know that we know it in our heart of hearts, but we’ve got to be standing up and saying what’s really important and that is that it’s not about the mathematics. It is about ensuring that our kids become thinkers and lovers of whatever content we’re teaching, but especially mathematics.

We have such a huge divide between people who like math, some may even say they love it, and then you get people who hate it. You don’t get a whole lot of people that are like, “Meh, it’s okay.” It’s either they like it and they love it or they hate it. And we want kids to really love mathematics. We want them to love learning. And that’s the piece that I want you to instill in your students this year through mathematics is that learning can be fun, mathematics can be fun. All too often, kids get the message that mathematics is about doing worksheets, it’s about completing 50 problems.

Just last night, we were sitting at the dining room table with our fifth-grade son and he was trying to finish the work that he didn’t get done at school. So they didn’t actually assign homework, he just didn’t get done in the class time. It was multi-digit multiplication and my son is very slow. He is very messy with his work and his thinking but I’ll be it, gosh darn it, that kid has a special way of looking at the problem. Like, he was going through it and solving the problem and my husband’s sitting there like “what in the world is he doing?” It was totally backward from the way that we learned it, but it was his thinking and he could get it done.

He would get to the answer and I didn’t check all of his work, I didn’t check to see if he’s right because I wanted to encourage his thinking. Now yes ideally, I want him to get the right answer and he’ll get there, he’ll become more fluid and more fluent with his multiplication as he works forward. But if me as a parent, and if the teacher, had been like “Why didn’t you get this done in the time? You’ve got to do it this way. You gotta do it faster!” He would’ve shut down and he wouldn’t like doing math.

So, I appreciate that mathematics is more than just getting to an answer quickly. My value system around mathematics is that I don’t care if you’re messy and I don’t care if it takes you time. You’ll eventually get better at those things. What I want to help instill is creativity, thinking processes that show perseverance, these pieces are harder to directly teach. You have to build that into the environment, and then we can focus in on making it little bit tidier, a little neater. We can then focus on how can we perfect your way of thinking about it to make it so it doesn’t take you 15 minutes to solve one problem. Yes, it’s a little hard to watch sometimes but he has a cool way of doing it and I don’t want to stifle that because his thinking process is awesome.

I really want to encourage you to make the very first thing to be focusing on throughout the year something you value when it comes to learning in general.

If you value creativity and thinking and perseverance and a growth mindset, then you better be instilling that in your mathematics time as well. We can’t be saying we encourage a growth mindset and then give them a worksheet of 50 problems and say that it needs to get done in the next 20 minutes. Right? We have to look to see how our textbook is helping to promote those values that we hold dear.

I want to give you permission to stop before you get too deep into the school year and decide what are your values when it comes to teaching mathematics? Because you get lots of pressure on all the things that you have to get done throughout the year and I want you to be able to think back and keep your focus in mind. So, whether your focus is on building creativity, if you really want to focus on a growth mindset, or if you want to encourage perseverance…whatever your big goal is think about it beyond the math content.

Yes, we’ve gotta teach them fractions, we’ve gotta teach them addition, multiplication all of that content. But the number one thing that we should be focusing on is the values that come through the mathematics we’re teaching and that’s gonna help you drive the way that you teach the content.

The Math Concepts You Teach Are Important

The second thing that you should be focusing on is that the math concepts that you teach are important. I want to help reiterate that because I know that you’re feeling the pressure of all of the things that you have to teach throughout the year. But again, it’s about focus. There is only so much that you could do if you are tied to a textbook. You know the pressure of trying to get through that textbook throughout the year, right? There is no way you can get it all done in the time you have with those kiddos this year.

Even if you’re trying to just go with the standards. You’re looking at the standards, but you know you’ve got kids who are down here and some kids who are up here. And so trying to teach those standards in a way that helps all of your kids get there takes a lot more time than what they think it really does. So no matter how you’re trying to teach, there’s always gonna be that feeling of I don’t have time to get this done. You didn’t get to this content, You didn’t do this with the students.

So, before your year starts or even if it has started, you’ve gotta make that focus of what are the big pieces that your kids need to have by the end of this year and be okay with it if that’s all that you get to.

Ideally, that won’t be all you get to but I want to tell you to give yourself some grace. You can’t do it all.

You cannot teach all of those math content standards in a way that reaches all of your kiddos. If they were all at the same level, everybody came into the third grade on a third-grade level and starting the third grade all awesome then maybe it’s doable. But the reality is, you’ve got kids everywhere and you’ve got to be able to say, “okay what are the big things that these kids need?”

I want to take a look at this example right here that shows two third-grade standards. Because not all standards are created equal thus you should not spend the same amount of time on them. And your textbook shouldn’t either.

This first one talks about using multiplication and division to solve word problems, in different situations, seeing them as groups, arrays, measurement quantities, all of this fun stuff, okay. Well, it’s a huge big thing in third-grade. Multiplication and division and fractions are like the heart of third-grade, yet that’s one standard.

Then there’s also one standard in third grade about measuring and estimating liquid volumes and masses of objects. Now let’s be honest.

One of those standards is way more important than the other.

Okay, yes I want my kids to have both of those understandings. But if I’ve got to choose, I am choosing the first one. That is way more important that kids can solve real-world problems around multiplication and division.

I understand estimating and measuring stuff, and here’s the thing, I don’t want you to not teach them. If you guys got to attend my virtual math summit session that I did, one of the things that I mentioned was trying to infuse the pieces that we don’t always get to into mini-lessons throughout the year.

What often happens is that your teaching with a textbook and you’re going through the textbook and then you realize, we’re not gonna get to everything that’s in this textbook. Typically the last two chapters are things you never cover. Well guess what, they always leave geometry, measurement stuff to the end of the textbook and if every teacher is never getting to the end, our students are never getting measurement and geometry stuff. So yes it’s important, I don’t want to say just don’t do it, but you don’t need a full unit on it. Being able to measure and estimate liquids, you could do that five minutes every day throughout the school year, right. It doesn’t have to be every day, it wouldn’t take every day. But you know what I mean, take one day a week and bring something in where kids have to estimate.

What I’m asking you to think about is that old story with the big rocks and then filling the sand. If you try to fill in with the sand first and then put the big rocks in, you can’t fit the big rocks. But if you put the big rocks in first you can. So in your mind, be thinking about what are the big things I need to focus on this year and then you sprinkle in, you layer in the sand. You dump the sand in later and it will fill in the spots that you have. Think about what are the minor things that we need to teach this year. Not that they’re not important, but they’re not as important as the others so I’m calling them minor things. Have those big ones in mind and then find ways to sprinkle in the minor stuff to fill in the holes.

If you need a refresher on those big ideas I did a video all about the content emphases. I hope that this has gotten you some ideas for this school year and has helped to build your math mind so that you can help build the math minds of the kiddos in your classroom.

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