Small Steps, Big Changes: Eight Essential Practices for Transforming Schools Through Mathematics
by Chris Confer & Marco Ramirez
(Stenhouse Publishers, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Michelle Schwartze

Chris Confer and Marco Ramirez are searching for an answer to the question, “What does it take for the majority of the students in any school to be successful in mathematics?” That is a question many educators are finding themselves asking in 2012, especially with the increasing stress of high stakes testing. Confer and Ramirez take their question one important step further by asking: “What would it take to sustain that success?”

Small Steps, Big Changes seeks to help others benefit from the answers Confer and Ramirez have discovered as they’ve worked with their own school and others across the United States. It outlines eight essential ideas that they believe can guide schools to continuing success in mathematics learning and achievement.

Each essential idea has its own chapter, where the authors explain how that idea can be utilized to create positive change. At the end of each explanation, the authors provide three stories reflecting upon that essential idea. In each instance, the stories are told from the viewpoints of a principal, a coach, and a teacher.

Each school is unique

This book was very thorough in its descriptions, and I appreciated the variety of examples. Most of all, though, I was glad that the authors made it clear throughout the book that each school is unique and that what worked for one school may not work the same way for another.

Each school needs to find its own questions to fit its particular needs. It’s important that schools not just try to implement a specific example from the book, end up failing, and give up. Teachers and school leaders need to work together to define their unique circumstances and customize the ideas they find in Small Steps to fit their needs.

Essential ideas that resonated

One essential idea that I found helpful is the 80/20 rule. This rule says that educators need to put 80% of their attention on what matters most and spend no more than 20% of their time on things that are necessary but may not have long-term effects on the school. All of us who are teachers know how hard is to manage time because of all the different responsibilities placed upon us. This rule of thumb reminded me that I need to focus on the most important teaching tasks — the ones that will have bigger effects on my students — instead of spending so much time on tasks that do not benefit the school or students.

Another essential idea that resonated with me was intentionality. This chapter focused on how to create a culture of “can” in the classroom and specifically states, “A culture of ‘can’ is not created by teachers and principals alone; it comes about when students themselves discover that they can be successful.” (2012, p.134).

Teachers and principals can help students to feel successful by keeping high standards in the classroom and creating high-quality lessons. This is something that, as a teacher, I was happy to be reminded of, and it really got me questioning whether my lessons were helping to create a “can” culture.

Key elements of transformation

A key story in the book describes a multi-year effort led by Ramirez (principal) and Confer (instructional coach) to improve math instruction at a Tucson, AZ elementary school. The publisher’s description of the book summarizes what happened this way:

A few years into the change process, Pueblo Gardens — a school with 96 percent of its students at the poverty level and a high percentage of English language learners — had 94 percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards in third-grade mathematics. Over time, other grades achieved similarly high scores. And once the test scores rose, they were sustained at high levels.

While I thought this book was very well written and had great examples of how to increase mathematical learning in a school, it was clear that a committed principal and a math coach were essential elements in achieving whole-school transformation at Pueblo Gardens. At my school there is no math coach, so I was unsure if this model would work well. The regular support of a math coach had a big part in helping teachers with the changes. I was also not sure how schools would be able to undertake this change if the principal was not on board.

It is always nice to hear a success story in education and this was clearly one example of that. I felt as though the eight essential practices were clearly defined and supported throughout this text. For a school searching for more success in mathematics, this is a definite read!

Michelle Schwartze is a middle school mathematics teacher. She has been teaching in the middle grades for the past 11 years in Peoria, Illinois. Michelle is currently taking classes towards a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with the hope of working in higher education.

Learning to Love Math: Teaching Strategies That Change Student Attitudes and Get Results
by Judy Willis, MD
(ASCD, 2010 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Cossondra George

I’ve always believed being good in math is more about attitude than aptitude, so the idea of this book appealed me. I hoped to gain ideas that would help me help my students learn to love math as much as I do. I was not disappointed.

From the last paragraph in the introduction: You and your students will even find an answer to the common question, “Why do we have to learn this?” The answer: “Because it makes our brains grow and we become smarter!”  — to the Appendix B: Brain Owner’s Manual — this book is chock full of useful, practical ideas for teachers to apply in their classrooms.

Many of Judy Willis’ ideas are familiar: connect math to real world application, encourage students to set their own learning goals, and find unique ways to motivate your students. For these been there/done that ideas, Willis offers her own takes on how to achieve these often seemingly unattainable goals. I love her idea of color coding ideas with green, yellow and red to show increased importance. I’ve always found giving students color to highlight notes to be valuable, but this color scheme would be a fantastic way to help students prioritize notes in any subject.

Willis brings a background in neurology to her classroom practice which influences how she teaches students to learn. She advocates actually teaching students how their brains work and how they connect new knowledge, and using that information to help them learn to learn more effectively. She suggests using “syn-naps” or brain breaks as one way to take new knowledge from simply being temporary learning to being stored as more permanently available meaning.

Many of her ideas reinforce what effective teachers already do – calling on multiple students before acknowledging whether an answer is correct, finding ways to make even a wrong answer useful in some way, and avoiding boredom by differentiating instruction to meet the needs of a variety of learners and abilities. But again, with each of these ideas, Willis manages to infuse her suggestions with unique twists to encourage the reader to reach beyond their own comfort zone to apply these in the classroom.

Map Readers and Explorers

Willis suggests students are grouped into two types of learners: Map Readers and Explorers. I love this notion! How less intimidating than ‘visual’ or ‘auditory’ or ‘kinesthetic’ learners – categories I never seemed to manage to pigeonhole even myself into appropriately. But being a map reader — someone who likes to pour over instructions, be directed specifically, and is logical and orderly — makes sense to me. As does the other extreme  – being an explorer who uses the imagination, does things first then reads instructions later, and responds well to choices. I can see the differences in those personality types and how students who fit those categories would learn differently and need different exposure to new information.

I also love that Willis advocates the use of small wipe boards! I’ve always loved using erasable slates with students, for the same reasons she suggests: all students are engaged with their own “device,” and the small whiteboards promote quick  and easy feedback for all students.

Overall, I was impressed with this book. It gave me much to think about. I saw things I do well,  and other things where I thought, “DUH! I should have drawn that same conclusion.” There were other good ideas I had never considered.

Willis hits a home run when it comes to helping teachers get students excited about math. And maybe even learning to love it.

Cossondra George is a middle/high school special education and math teacher. She enjoys writing about her teaching experiences and has had several articles featured in Education Week’s Teacher including Making Math Meaningful for All.  George engages students using technology and has been active in helping other teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. She also blogs about her teaching days at Middle School, Day by Day from a Teacher’s Point of View.