I had the honor of presenting at both the NCSM and NCTM national conferences in Chicago last week. (If you've just signed up after meeting me there, welcome!) I'll share here a brief summary of each talk I gave, as well as some resources I shared.
At NCSM, my presentation was called "Do More with Less: Unlocking the Power of Focus in Mathematics," which is based on an ongoing theme in all of my work: that the biggest gains come when we are able to focus more energy on a smaller set of tasks, ideas, or standards. I shared three ways of applying "the power of focus" to math leadership:
ensuring a focus on priority content in each grade or course, for example by using SAP's Focus documents or Priority Instructional Content to extend or add flex days to the most important units
ensuring a focus on a single, clear takeaway in each lesson
using a principle of lesson study to focus multiple coaching sessions on a single lesson, using this reflective coaching cycle as an example.
Here also is the slide deck for the presentation.
At NCTM, I gave a talk called "Building Pedagogical Content Knowledge through Reflective Coaching in Middle School," where I shared about ways that coaching, with an intentional focus on understanding the content of each lesson, anticipating misconceptions, and focusing on sequencing student work, can build educator content knowledge in the context of intellectual preparation.
I spent a good chunk of time examining Deborah Ball's work on mathematical knowledge for teaching, referencing this wonderful article: Content Knowledge for Teaching What Makes it Special?
I then shared a bit more about my coaching work, referencing the coaching cycle document linked above, and the ways that it can build pedagogical content knowledge in context.
Here also is the slide deck for this presentation.
Let me know if you have any questions or reactions, or see connections to your own work!
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