In most math classes in , students aren鈥檛 taking notes from the board. They鈥檙e not listening to a teacher lecture.
Instead, small groups in middle and high school classrooms discuss and debate: What鈥檚 this problem asking? What鈥檚 one approach we could try? Sometimes, students get things wrong or hit a dead end鈥攖hen they come back and try again. Teachers say that the classrooms hum with energy.
鈥淲e have really tried to get away from drill and kill,鈥� said Laurel Dilley, a math and computer science teacher at Pocahontas County High School.
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鈥淲e rarely do that in any math classroom anymore, and Joanna has been the push for that.鈥�
Joanna is Joanna Burt-Kinderman, the district鈥檚 math instructional coach. She鈥檚 introduced a that calls on teachers to identify challenges in their classrooms, collaborate on solutions, and iterate.
Burt-Kinderman, 41, who grew up in Pocahontas County and attended its rural schools, is driven by the idea that teaching math should empower students and teachers alike.
- Model Coaching on Good Teaching: Teachers need a safe space and respectful community to explore ideas that won鈥檛 all be 鈥渞ight.鈥� Give them challenging problems to grapple with collectively and a license to learn through mistakes.
- Give Students and Teachers Ownership: Students need incentive and support to become agents of their own learning, and so do teachers. Teachers should define the problems that need solving in their classrooms, then work together to test and revise their improvement strategies.
- Use a Strength-Based Approach: In the journey of improvement, pay at least as much attention to strengths as failures. Name, celebrate, elevate, and double down on the best of student and teacher practice.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e trying to come in and say, 鈥業 have a better way to teach than you do,鈥� you鈥檙e totally going to fail,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e have to be led by the teachers. We have to be able to really trust that they know their troubles.鈥�
That strategy has changed the way math teachers work with students in Pocahontas County. In math classes, students wrestle with tough problems together and persist in reasoning them through. Middle and high school math test scores have risen from around the average for the state to among the top in West Virginia. And in a district that has struggled to retain math teachers in the past, teachers now say they feel professional ownership of their subject.
Letting Teachers Lead
The jump in math scores over the past decade is a feat for the small, rural county, the state鈥檚 least densely populated. The community, surrounded by national forest land, is home to one of the world鈥檚 largest radio telescopes at the nearby astronomy research center, the Green Bank Observatory. The children of scientists from the center attend the same schools as employees of the ski resort in the nearby Allegheny Mountains and timber-industry workers. In Pocahontas County, where the majority of the district鈥檚 1,025 students receive free or reduced-price lunch, the public schools are an equalizer, said Burt-Kinderman鈥攁nd a major employer, as well.
A decade ago, Burt-Kinderman had recently moved back to the county with her family, after teaching math in Georgia and Virginia and living abroad for several years. She was working as a media specialist and teaching one algebra course at a middle school. But Burt-Kinderman had been developing an idea鈥攁bout a more teacher-centered, job-embedded type of professional development. It might change the way teachers learned, and in turn, the way they taught.
She pitched it to Terrence Beam鈥攖hen director of federal programs, now the superintendent.
Beam admits he was a little skeptical of dialing up coaching feedback at first. High school teachers see themselves as authorities in their subjects. Most have content expertise. 鈥淭rying [to get] them to look at doing things a little bit differently is sometimes not easy,鈥� he said.
But Burt-Kinderman didn鈥檛 want to prescribe solutions. When she got the go-ahead to start the work with the 9th grade math faculty, the goal was to figure out what was bothering teachers and working with them to fix it, one-on-one and in professional-development meetings. She asked for initial funding from Beam鈥攏ot for materials but to pay the teachers for their time spent out of school, in professional learning.
Burt-Kinderman homed in on the math concepts that teachers said just 鈥渨eren鈥檛 sticking鈥� with students. Together, she and teachers dove deep into those lessons. What about them was working? What wasn鈥檛? Burt-Kinderman came into classrooms to model new instructional approaches or observe and offer feedback while teachers tested them out.
It wasn鈥檛 all smooth sailing. Veteran teacher Teresa Rhea said using new strategies could be overwhelming and frustrating. But Rhea said it鈥檚 been worth it. 鈥淚 would never go back to teaching like I did before.鈥�
Burt-Kinderman wanted teachers to see her鈥攁nd their colleagues鈥攁s thought partners, she said. The coaching program has since expanded throughout the middle and high school, and now Burt-Kinderman has started working with elementary teachers as well. At the high school, the culture shift is clear.
鈥淚n other schools, maybe I鈥檇 be embarrassed to go admit that I didn鈥檛 know exactly how to do [something]. 鈥� But I don鈥檛 feel like that here,鈥� said Dilley, the math and computer science teacher. 鈥淚 feel like [my colleagues would] be like, 鈥極h, that鈥檚 really interesting, let鈥檚 talk about it.鈥� And [Burt-Kinderman] has fostered that. I don鈥檛 think we would be like that with each other if it wasn鈥檛 for her bringing us together as a family, as a department.鈥�
Teachers in West Virginia kicked off last year鈥檚 wave of protests, going on strike for higher pay and better school conditions. Teacher recruitment and retention remain major challenges. In 9th grade math, about a third of teachers across the state aren鈥檛 certified to teach the subject. Ticking off the barriers to getting and keeping certified math teachers, Beam noted Pocahontas County鈥檚 remote location and sparse population.
鈥淏ut we鈥檝e been able to maintain fully certified math teachers in our county, which is very unusual for West Virginia,鈥� he said. 鈥淛oanna鈥檚 leadership has helped do that.鈥�
Burt-Kinderman emphasized, though, that a supportive professional environment isn鈥檛 a cure-all. She had some teachers who felt torn about attending after-school PD, because it meant a loss in income. Most teachers in the county work a second job, she said.
鈥淭hey really wanted to do this work, but it鈥檚 tough when you can go to the ski resort and wait tables and make more money,鈥� she said.
Burt-Kinderman took part in the strikes, traveling with her two daughters鈥攖hen ages 8 and 10鈥攖o the state capital. Teacher turnover is directly linked to the pay raises that educators were fighting for, she said.
鈥淲hen your own compensation package is so low, and then your benefits package starts to get scraped away, and then you have all of the normal problems of teaching and learning in a state with huge opioid problems, huge poverty problems鈥攜ou really can wear people out,鈥� she said. 鈥淭ime after time, I鈥檝e seen really great folks leave the profession.鈥�
Burt-Kinderman valued growing up in Pocahontas County, an economically diverse area, where children from comfortably middle-class families and children who had grown up in poverty went to the same public schools. Her mother was a teacher who started a leadership program for local girls, and her father founded and ran community radio stations.
When she left for college and arrived at Haverford, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, she experienced some culture shock. 鈥淭he only folks that I met who knew about the place where I grew up had come on Habitat [for Humanity] trips,鈥� Burt-Kinderman said.
In an intro to calculus course at Haverford, she started to understand how different her K-12 math education had been from many of her peers鈥�. But the class, taught by 鈥渏ust a truly incredible teacher,鈥� ignited a love of math she never had as a high school student. At Haverford, she also read the book that would inspire her to become a math teacher鈥�Radical Equations, civil rights leader Bob Moses鈥� work on raising math literacy in poor communities.
鈥楾alking Culture鈥�
She started thinking about a strong math foundation as a matter of justice and equity, a doorway to civic participation. 鈥淚f your math literacy isn鈥檛 strong enough, you can鈥檛 poke holes in analysts鈥� arguments about the economy. You can鈥檛 look at data presentations and realize that someone could be manipulating you,鈥� said Burt-Kinderman.
Those skills鈥斺�渞eading something critically, listening to something critically, finding a better way 鈥� those are the kinds of skills that inherently we want to be focusing on in math class,鈥� she said.
How do teachers change the goal of math class from answer-getting to reasoning? It started with overhauling the curriculum.
We have to be led by the teachers. We have to be able to really trust that they know their troubles.
When Burt-Kinderman started as a math coach, the state was moving from a subject-based progression鈥攖he traditional Algebra 1, geometry, Algebra 2鈥攖o an integrated-math sequence that wove together topics each year. Pocahontas County had to follow suit.
But the district didn鈥檛 buy textbooks or use any one resource wholesale. Instead, it chose to build a curriculum, with Burt-Kinderman and the teachers working together.
Burt-Kinderman would dole out responsibilities to the teachers鈥攆or example, finding tasks that would teach statistics standards. Teachers searched for options, relying on materials from free sources like the , , and . They reconvened with the materials they鈥檇 found, tested them out together, and debriefed. The process worked because it was democratic, said Burt-Kinderman鈥攖eachers had a professional say.
In classrooms, she and the teachers have also developed tools that encourage students to ask questions and persevere through difficult problems. They鈥檝e put in place grading structures that assess students鈥� persistence and thought process, rather than a correct answer.
Discussion, or math talk, is now central to lessons in Pocahontas County. Teachers say it鈥檚 engaging for the students. 鈥淢y hour goes by so fast,鈥� said Nebraska Scotchie, a middle school math teacher.
But there鈥檚 another reason why Burt-Kinderman wants to build math classes on sense-making and conversation.
鈥淎ppalachia鈥檚 a real talking culture. We鈥檙e oral history, we鈥檙e porch-sitters鈥攕till,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 think a lot of the stories told about Appalachia really paint our culture as weakness.鈥�
Centering math talk as a pathway to academic success, she said, is 鈥渁 rewriting, in our minds, of our culture as a strength.鈥�
Learning From the Trenches
Now, she鈥檚 expanding her work outward. Burt-Kinderman has encouraged her teachers to attend regional and national math conferences, to share the strategies that have worked so well in Pocahontas County. Watching her staff bring expertise to those spaces, understanding that 鈥渟uccess here is something that can translate,鈥� is really rewarding, she said.
She鈥檚 working on two grant projects through the National Science Foundation: one to involve more rural, first-generation students in STEM, the other to develop a .
Matthew Campbell, an assistant professor of math education at West Virginia University who is working with Burt-Kinderman on the master-teacher grant, said that she is an ideal person to be leading this work.
She鈥檚 built relationships not just with teachers across the state but also K-12 officials and people in higher education. But she believes in learning from what teachers are doing in the trenches, Campbell said. She thinks about building this network in the same way she envisions classroom practice鈥攔aising up best practices and working together toward improvement elsewhere.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot to learn from and build from, in terms of what鈥檚 going on here,鈥� said Campbell. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a matter of some directive coming in to save West Virginia.鈥�
