Preview of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to the  Preview of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit

When I set out to plan this summit, I had one goal in mind: help educators move from memorization to thinking.

But somewhere in the middle of all those conversations, the real story showed up.

It’s not just about moving TO thinking. It’s about stopping the pendulum from swinging back and forth – from memorization to thinking and back again – over and over. We drilled and drowned kids in fact charts, it didn’t work, so we swung to “let kids explore and build their thinking.” And now that’s gone a little too far too. When something goes too far, people get mad, and the fix everyone reaches for is “let’s just go back to the way it was.” That’s not the answer either.

So this summit isn’t about picking a side. It’s about finding the middle – building BOTH conceptual and procedural fluency – and that’s exactly what these three days are about: THINK, SHARE, and CONNECT.

Here’s a taste of what’s waiting for you inside, day by day.

Day 1: THINK

Before kids can think about math, they have to feel safe enough to try. That’s where Juliana Tapper’s session hit hardest for me.

She walked me through a study where researchers hooked kids ages 7–9 up to fMRIs and showed them arithmetic problems. In kids with math anxiety, one part of the brain lit up every time: the amygdala – the fight-or-flight center. That bathroom request during math block? The defiance? It might not be attitude. It might be a kid’s brain deciding it isn’t safe.

And it’s not just fight or flight. There’s the FREEZE response and then Juliana introduced me to a fourth response most of us miss entirely: fawn. The student who’s first in the door every morning asking “how was your weekend?” might not be a kid who loves connecting. She might be a kid trying to survive math class the only way she knows how.

Also on Day 1, Kaneka Turner – writer on the Illustrative Mathematics team and a former classroom teacher – dug into the pacing pressure so many teachers feel: “the curriculum guide is just that – a guide. It’s scripted, sure.” But Kaneka’s reminder was simple: if you watch her teach, she doesn’t say it the way the script says it. She puts HER flavor on it. And she encourages every teacher she coaches to do the same.

Day 1 speakers: Juliana Tapper, Kaneka Turner, Kristen Acosta, Zak Champagne, Ryan Dent, Brittany Hege, Mona Iehl, Becky Lord, Kim Rimbey, Sarah Schaefer, and Vanessa Vakharia.

Day 2: SHARE

I went into my Day 2 conversations assuming “sharing” was mostly a tool FOR TEACHERS, a way to hear how kids are thinking. Two conversations changed my mind.

Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz, co-authors of Intentional Talk (now Intentional Talk and Listening in its second edition), pointed out something they revised between editions: the first edition leaned heavily on number-talk examples that didn’t give kids much to personally connect to. The shift in the second edition is about listening to CONNECT – not just teacher to student, but student to student. What propels a kid to be curious about a classmate’s thinking is the chance to ask questions that draw real connections between people, not just procedures.

Then Mike Flynn got me thinking about something I wasn’t expecting. Kids have been told to “show your work” for so long that most of them think it’s just extra steps – proof they didn’t cheat. Mike’s reframe: instead of “show your work,” ask kids to build an ARGUMENT – a claim, a reason, and evidence. That shift changes the purpose entirely. Kids aren’t doing it to make the teacher’s job easier anymore. They’re standing behind their own thinking. And that ownership brings something I hadn’t fully named before: pride.

Day 2 speakers: Elham Kazemi, Allison Hintz, Mike Flynn, Kristen Acosta, Ryan Dougherty, Jim Ewing, Brittany Hege, Mona Iehl, Dr. Nick Newton, Anne Elise, Dr. Raj Shah, and Juliana Tapper.

Day 3: CONNECT

Day 3 is all about connecting and to me “connect” mainly meant connecting kids to mathematical concepts. But there’s a bigger purpose than just that: connecting kids to each other, and to themselves as capable mathematicians.

Deborah Peart-Crayton reframed a phrase I’ve – and probably you’ve – said a thousand times: word problems. Deborah’s version: not word problems, WORLD problems. Bringing real scenarios into the math classroom so kids become problem solvers in their actual lives, not just on a worksheet page.

And Tammy McMorrow delivered what might be the most important idea of the whole summit. When classrooms shifted toward “let kids share their thinking,” a lot of us – me included – stopped there. But thinking that’s just floating around the room, untethered, doesn’t turn into learning. Tammy’s uses BTC’s (Building Thinking Classroom) Consolidation time to do that – the third of the lesson where scattered student thinking gets tied together into something kids can actually use. Skip it, and the sharing was just noise. That’s the whole reason Day 3 exists.

Day 3 speakers: Deborah Peart-Crayton, Tammy McMorrow, Kristen Acosta, Andre Daughty, Kevin Dykema, Pam Harris, Brittany Hege, Mona Iehl, Steve Wyborney, and Juliana Tapper.

This Is Just a Preview

Every one of these conversations goes deeper than a highlight reel can capture. If you want the full THINK, SHARE, and CONNECT experience – all 20+ speakers, all three days – grab your Lifetime Access Pass now before the price goes up.  You can also attend for free, but you only have 24 hours to watch each day’s sessions.

[REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT →] https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/