Room to Grow - a Math Podcast

This episode of Room to Grow brings together our 2025 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from Principles to Actions, an NCTM publication. After discussing each of the eight practices in isolation over the last several months, this month tackles the ideas and challenges in actually making substantive change to classroom practice. 

Our hosts share ideas for engaging with others in deeper professional learning, coaching, and ...

This episode of Room to Grow wraps up Joanie and Curtis’ season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions. The final practice in the series is “Support productive struggle in learning mathematics.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics consistently provides students, individually and collectively, with opportunities and supports to engage in productive struggle as they g...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding.”  This is defined as follows:

 Effective teaching of mathematics builds fluency with procedures on a foundation of conceptual understanding so that students, over tim...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Pose Purposeful Questions.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics uses purposeful questions to assess and advance students’ reasoning and sense making about important mathematical ideas and relation...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating its 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Establish Mathematics Goals to Focus Learning.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics establishes clear goals for the mathematics that students are learning, situates goals within learning progressio...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Elicit and Use Evidence of Student Thinking.” 

In Principles to Actions, NCTM describes this teaching practice in this way:

Effective teaching of mathematics uses evidence of student thinking to assess progress toward mathe...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Use and connect mathematical representations.” Our hosts describe the five representations outlined in Principles to Actions, which include visual, symbolic, verbal, contextual, and physical descriptions of mathematics, b...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Implement Tasks that Promote Reasoning and Problem Solving.” Our hosts being by expounding on the difference between selecting a task and implementing it, and that selecting a good task does not guarantee good implementat...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis begin a season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Facilitating Meaningful Mathematics Discourse.” Our hosts first identify what they mean by discourse and why it is important: that students are able to communicate their mathematical thinking in ways that others can clearly un...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis reflect on their personal and professional experiences of 2024 and what they learned. Reflect – conferences, books, podcast guests. Thinking differently about teaching and learning math. Hope you’ll take the time to reflect and capture your own learning.

Curtis and Joanie reference these episodes of Room to Grow which aired in 2024:

·       Teaching and Learning Math: Students’ Persp...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis speak with leaders of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) about their recent publication, High School Mathematics Reimagined, Revitalized and Relevant.  Latrenda Knighten, NCTM President and Kevin Dykema, NCTM Past-President share a great overview of how rethinking how and what we teach in high school math can be improved so that more students leave high school p...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis speak with Mike Steele and Joleigh Honey, authors of the recently released book transform your math class using asset-based teaching for grades 6-12. The book and the conversation explore what is meant by “asset-based,” and why shifting to more asset-based approaches supports a broader range of learners. 

Mike and Joleigh unpack ideas around asset-based language, including, the lan...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue their conversations with middle and high school students to gain their perspectives on learning math. Our hosts interviewed six students from grades 7-12 in three different sessions. Because all of these conversations were rich with great comments, this is the second of two episodes of Room to Grow devoted to these students’ perspectives; if you haven’t already listened to...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis have conversations with middle and high school students to gain their perspectives on learning math. They interviewed six students from grades 7-12 in three different sessions. Because all of these conversations were rich with great comments, the next two episodes of Room to Grow will be devoted to these students’ perspectives. 

Part 1 focuses on what the students said their teache...

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue their conversation from the Wisconsin Math Council’s annual conference. 

Wisconsin mathematics education leaders Mary Mooney and Lisa Hennessey share additional thoughts on the remaining pillars of their conference theme, A  C.A.L.L. to Action, embracing the roles of Community, Advocacy, Leadership, and Learning. Additionally, we hear some questions from the sessi...

In this episode of Room to Grow, we join our hosts at the Wisconsin Math Council’s annual conference. Wisconsin mathematics education leaders Mary Mooney and Lisa Hennessey join Curtis and Joanie for a discussion focused on the conference theme, A  C.A.L.L. to Action, embracing the roles of Community, Advocacy, Leadership, and Learning. 

Due to the extended nature of this great conversation, this month’s episode features C...

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts discuss ways to support student sense-making in teaching and learning mathematics. Building out on the ideas shared in Episode 3 of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie dive more deeply into what it means for students to “make sense of mathematics.”

They discuss what it looks and sounds like when students are making sense, as opposed to just repeating back learned ideas, and consider ...

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts look for the balance between instruction that is teacher-driven, traditional lecture-style, and inquiry-based, discovery-style lessons. They recognize the value of both types of teaching, understanding that there is a time in learning for both exploration and for direct and explicit teaching. 

The conversation offers explanation of what conditions may require different teaching st...

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts share conversation with Rebecka Peterson, the 2023 National Teacher of the Year (NTOY). Rebecka is a high school math teacher at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on leave for the 2023-24 school year to fulfill her NTOY responsibilities. She views the NTOY not as an award, but rather a job, that of spokesperson and ambassador for the teaching profession.

In this conversation, we learn a...