Voices

A Trainer’s Voice: Reaching a Deeper Understanding of Math By Claire Gates

Despite her soft southern drawl, Claire Gates commands attention in the classroom. As she gently prods and challenges her “students”—K–2 teachers or elementary and middle school principals at professional development institutes—Gates radiates the authority that comes from 30-plus years as a secondary school mathematics instructor and technical assistance coach. From her days teaching algebra and statistics in Denton, Texas, to her present job as a math and science advisor at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Gates has learned a central truth: You can’t teach mathematics effectively by just being a “teller of information.” You need to be cognizant of what your students already know and ask the right questions to lead them to a deep understanding of mathematical principles. Between trainings in Portland and Polson, Gates chatted with Northwest Education Editor Rhonda Barton about how she tries to “open teachers’ eyes to believing that children can do math.”

Even young children come to school knowing a lot more math than we give them credit for. Granted, some of the information they come with may be a misconception—but the teacher needs to know what the student knows before he can proceed. That means there’s a lot more getting kids to explain their thinking, having them write, asking them to share their strategies. If you don’t know what a student is thinking, then you don’t know where to go with him. Just seeing a wrong answer doesn’t tell you that much—or seeing a right answer, for that matter!

When teachers or administrators are considering professional development, they have to ask themselves, “Is this just an activity I’ll use once or is this something that will really change my practice?” It has to make the teacher reflect on his or her practice.

I would say that they should also look at whether the professional development promotes collaboration. When you’re trying to change, it’s hard to do by yourself. And, you have to think about the big picture: Professional development has to be something that’s sustained, that will make a difference over time.

Professional development should always increase teachers’ understanding of some mathematical concept and of how students learn. There’s been more research in recent years about how students learn mathematics. We try to use that so people really understand that children learn by connecting the new material with something they know. If they can’t make connections, it’s not very meaningful learning. Teachers have to build those bridges.

Teachers who get new, standards-based mathematics curricula and aren’t trained in the new philosophy have a hard time changing their practice. They’re no longer telling the student what to do, they don’t see pages with 25 practice problems, and they may only work a couple of problems a day. Teachers may think that’s not enough and still feel like they have to drill, drill, drill.

It’s a total shift in how students learn. Some teachers will say, “My kids can’t learn this way: That’s OK for ‘smart’ kids or kids who have a lot of support at home.” Teachers have a hard time believing their students can do that.

If teachers don’t receive support all year, they’ll revert back to their old way of teaching. They pull out their old worksheets. They might use one or two things from the new curricula, but they don’t feel comfortable enough to do it.

That’s where good professional development comes in. It’s not just a one-shot summer thing: You have to continually monitor and help teachers through this process of change. The principal needs to be a real instructional leader, understand what the instruction looks like, and support teachers with training and regular time to work together.

The best professional development is when we have a two- to three-day workshop and then we’re able to meet with the teachers throughout the year in small grade-level teams. We go into the classrooms, observe a lesson, and talk about what the children are doing.

That’s the main thing, I guess: to open teachers’ eyes to believing that children can do math. If a teacher is cognizant of what students understand and can provide the right opportunities, ask the right questions—then they can teach the math so students really understand it.