Ep 72. Addressing “New Math” with Middle School Parents

Johanna Kuiper 0:00
“This isn’t how I did math when I was in school. Why does it have to be so complicated?” Every time a parent or grownup has this complaint, I have to take a big, deep breath. In today’s episode, we’re going to be addressing how to talk to parents about quote unquote, new math. Let’s get started. Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast. I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive, no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers. And that’s why I’m here, bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset. And that’s what you can count on. Hello, hello. Welcome to a brand new episode.

Johanna Kuiper 0:55
So this topic is something that someone asked me to do a podcast episode back in March. But for some reason, I just felt unqualified to talk about it. So it took me so long to work up the nerve to kind of dive into this topic, even though it’s something that I deal with every year when it comes to parents, especially with my quote, unquote, non traditional style of teaching, using a lot of building thinking classrooms and outside of the box thinking in my teaching practices. So today, I’m taking that leap. And I’m going to be sharing with you how I talk to you, parents and grownups about the new math and the teaching practices that I use. Most of the time, when I get questions. It’s at a parent teacher conference, and open house or in an email. And when it’s an email, I have more freedom to kind of think about the question and then respond. But when it’s a parent teacher conference, or an open house, you don’t have ample time to think about it and then respond. So I wanted to give you some key points, you can hit on with parents and grownups. To give you some background, there’s been a lot of research about how a parents or family’s view on math can negatively or positively impact students in their motivation to do math. And actually, there was a study published in 2022, kind of saying that of parents negative effect, particularly in the math context, predicted a child’s motivation and achievement over time. And one of the suggestions that they had was having interventions aimed at increasing parents feelings of efficacy and supporting their children’s math learning. And that kind of helped optimize children’s math, motivation and achievement, because their parents were also getting that boost of growth mindset, or that intervention as well. So the points that I’m going to be sharing are more so to help parents and grownups feel prepared when talking about math with their students, rather than a gotcha, because it is a mindset issue. It comes from a place of like anxiousness of not feeling competent enough to help. And we want to help fix that and help shift that mindset because it’s going to impact our students. And we want to make sure that we are helping our students in every way possible. Alright. So in a scenario, I’m at a parent teacher conference, or an open house, and a parent or grown up shares, this feeling with me, of math is different. Like, I don’t know how I’m supposed to help my kid, if I can’t even understand the math, my response is going to be in the form of a question. I usually ask something along the lines of, oh, what’s your hesitation about new math, or using whatever the vernacular is that they use to describe the situation? And then I kind of let them explain how they’re feeling. And I go from there. But usually it comes down to it’s different and more complicated, and it’s not the most efficient way to learn math. So kind of the point. The first point I drive in is everything evolves over time, when new research and information is discovered. So like technology, phones, computers, AI, cars, and medicine have all changed as new research and stuff has come out. And it’s the same in the math classroom. As research has come out about how we can better teach math in our classroom. We shifted from rote memorization and procedural learning to a more conceptual and problem solving oriented approach. And then you can kind of discuss the benefits of those things. Because the top skills that employers are looking for our critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, communication skills, and the math classroom when we were kids. It is not something that can prepare us for the modern workforce, that world that we are now seeing and that our students are going to be living in soon. So we want to make sure that we are preparing them in every aspect. And that means it’s shifting the way that we are teaching math to our students. And if you use building new classrooms, modern classroom stuff, or any other more new age, style of classroom practices, this is where you can insert that as well. So for me, the ones that I use on a regular basis are random groups, vertical surfaces, and math tasks or discovery for introducing new concepts. And I can share based on the five skills that employers are looking for working in teams is going to help with that teamwork collaboration and those communication skills. Working on math tasks together at a vertical surface is going to help with critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication, etc. So everything that I’m doing is based in helping students build those skills for their future. And talking about those things typically kind of settles parents and grownups of like, oh, okay, like, I understand that, but it’s not helping me help my kid. This is where I like to have a resource available to parents that like a piece of paper, I can hand them or a PDF, I can attach to an email of math tips and strategies to help and support your student in math class. And it just has like strategies, prompting questions, or resources that you can use to help you help them. And I will attach that as a freebie bonus to this episode. So if you would like that list that you can give parents of strategies, prompting questions and just overall resources that they can use, you can find the link down in the description or on the show notes on my website. And you can download that, print it out and share it with your families. And another thing that I like to remind or share with parents is, I will have our notes up on our canvas page. So that way, you can go back and refer to them, and use them to help your student. And if you listened to Episode 70, you might be like, but you don’t do formal notes in your classroom. And that is correct. But I make my own notes to put on the website for students who are absent, who weren’t there for the discovery activity, and to help parents and grownups be able to help their own kids, because my students take their own version of notes with example problems, things to remember, but not necessarily any procedural stuff. And I want to make sure that’s available for students who need that extra consolidation of learning who are absent and for grownups to help their kids. And a really cool thing that my curriculum, the curriculum that we use at our school has is like family section at the beginning of each lesson. And a lesson takes like three to five days. And I send that home with my kids. So that little packet is something that has notes, it has example problems, it has something that they can work on together. And that will be available to them. And I also have the digital one on Canvas. So whether you get the printed one, or you use the one from Canvas, you have access to additional practice problems, additional help, and something that you can work on together. And I think that is so cool that a curriculum sought to implement that, and have it in a variety of languages to accommodate all of my students. And maybe if that resource isn’t available to you, maybe you make something like that, instead of posting notes that you make on Canvas, create the notes page with example problems and something that parents can work on with their kids. I think that would be a really cool resource to kind of help integrate parent involvement back into the classroom, because I feel like a lot of times at the middle school level, at least in my experience, I don’t always have super great parent involvement. And this could be one way that I support my parents and my grown ups of my kids in integrating them back into the math classroom. Because going back to that research that I shared at the beginning, when they have when we have interventions aimed at increasing parents feelings of efficacy, that’s when we can see our students really having that math motivation and achievement in a positive way. And so I want to support that and that’s one way that I intervene or have an intervention for my parents. So to give you the highlights the summary When parents and grownups ask about new math or it being too complicated that they can’t help their kid, talk about how everything evolves, including math research and how we can best help our students. The top five skills that employers are looking for the critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration and communication skills, and then have resources available to them, whether it’s a handout that you give them right now, or just a reassurance that you post the notes or videos online, you have resources available to them to help their kid. And I think that’ll help kind of alleviate that anxiety piece of, I just want to help my kid and I can’t. And I think that would be very helpful to have addressed those things and have resources available to them. So if you have questions about that, feel free to reach out. I know today’s a shorter episode, but you’re having a parent teacher conference or an open house, you don’t have a lot of time to sit down and chat. So those are my quick tips on how to help talk to parents about your quote unquote, new math. And with that,

Johanna Kuiper 11:12
Oh calc-u-later Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to Miss Kuiper’s classroom.com and click on podcast

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