A lifelong educator will prove that coaching isn’t limited to sports when she brings her considerable math skills to bear in Sto-Rox School District this fall. I know firsthand, because she used those skills to help me understand what she’s doing.
Dr. Holly Pope, of Allegheny Intermediate Unit, a math expert bringing her skills to Sto-Rox this fall.
This will be a break from the usual format for these types of stories. I’m Dan Rinkus, Communications Specialist for Sto-Rox School District. The first-person format - and an audio clip later in this story - will help put you in my shoes as I explain who Dr. Holly Pope is, and what she’s doing for students.
Dr. Pope is Coordinator for School Improvement and Comprehensive Support at Allegheny Intermediate Unit. She’ll be working with Primary Center staff and students on mathematics.
I sat down recently to speak to Dr. Pope, and I asked her how she’ll use her expertise - she has a Ph.D. in math education - in this role.
“This gives me a chance to actually think about learning and teaching math with teachers and some students while also supporting the school improvement process,” she told me.
Dr. Pope came to Sto-Rox in January, as the Primary Center dealt with being in CSI - or Comprehensive Support and Improvement. That means there are several areas - like math - that need to be addressed with additional support.
“My main role is to support the school in coming up with a school improvement plan,” she explained. “We just recently finished it up a couple weeks ago. Part of that is to do some analysis to see what are some issues that are going on that we can pinpoint that would help us close gaps.”
The Primary Center is one of six schools in Allegheny County where Dr. Pope is working to identify goals and steps everyone can take to improve math instruction. That means students won’t be the only people in school who will get an education.
“There’s a part of the day every day that is set aside for professional learning,” said Dr. Pope. “I’ll also go into their classrooms to support them, and help them enact some of the things we talk about during that learning time.”
She added, “It’s like a cross between doing workshops with the teachers and doing coaching with them, too.”
Dr. Pope and administrators have told me, as I researched this story, they know this will not be a quick fix. The school improvement plan is drafted for the entire year. Dr. Pope said it will take two-to-three years for changes that truly take effect, after which the Primary Center could move out of CSI.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people have that belief that elementary math is just that - elementary - it’s basic,” she said. “A lot of it is about mathematical thinking, not just about memorizing and being able to do procedures like long division. It’s more about understanding why you’re doing the steps of the long division.”
Being able to communicate the thinking behind those steps is the key to unlocking students’ potential.
“It’s all about getting the students to start thinking about math in different ways, and how flexible it is,” she said.
***
At this point, the interviewee asks her interviewer a question.
“Would an example help?”
Listen to the audio of this exchange here.
Dan Rinkus, Communications Specialist (and decidedly not a math expert).
“I’m going to give you a math problem. I want you to tell me what 18 times 5 is.”
I repeat the problem out loud, and after what seems like an eternity, I reply, “90?” I checked the recording. It took me less than two seconds. Two nerve-wrecking seconds.
“Yes, now did you do that?” she asked, and you can hear in her tone of voice - she’s shifting into another gear - her teaching gear.
“I visualized in my head, the number 18, five below it, the multiplication symbol, a line under all of that,” I replied. I start to laugh, mainly because I haven’t been put on the spot in this way since I was in college, or probably even younger than that. It’s intimidating in the moment.
I continued, “I then started multiplying numbers from the top of the bottom, individually, and - because I’ve learned this so long ago (I went into Kindergarten in 1991, graduated high school in 2004) - adding all the figures up and then coming up with 90.”
“So I am assuming that you learned that procedure a long time ago, and you learned that when you have a two-digit by a one-digit number (problem), that’s what you do,” she replied. “You do the carrying, and all that stuff.”
“Right,” I agree, hoping she approves of her interviewer’s math skills.
“So, you know, you could pull out your calculator, pull out your phone, have an answer in like five seconds…”
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ I wondered to myself.
“So,” she continued, “when we learned math back then, being able to do those calculations quickly, was important. Right now we don’t need that because we have computers, we have phones, we have things that can do those quick calculations. It’s more important to be able to understand why you are lining those up, and why you are multiplying the zero times the five, or the eight times the five and carry it over. Why are we doing that?”
The lesson now over, she gets the point of this philosophy for today’s student.
“What we hope for kids to be able to do, is to understand that there might be some people who the procedure like you did it, but, there are other ways to solve that problem. Some people would say, 18 times five, they would do ‘18 times ten gives you 180, and then divide that in half.’”
“Ah,” is all I can muster, as I try to retain a reporter’s composure. On the inside? My mind is blown! I hadn’t even thought of answering the problem in that way. Apparently, the math lessons I learned decades ago are solidly cast in my brain, like a traffic light in concrete.
“Or they might do 20 times five, which gives you 100, and then you have to take off that extra, which would be an extra ten, which gives you 90,” she explained.
It was yet another way to solve the problem that had never crossed my mind. But as she explains the concept, it makes more sense.
“So each way you get to the same answer,” she said. “But the flexibility in thinking is what’s important.”
I couldn’t agree more.
***
Dr. Pope apologized for putting me on the spot, but she didn’t have to. This whole exercise is about understanding - understanding how to do math, and why you’re doing it. And this is not just a role for students or teachers.
“I think the role of parents is going to be important in this process, too,” she told me. “Not just changing what teachers think is important in math, and what kids can do in math, but parents getting (to understand) that.
She added that in the future, there may be more support coming from the Primary Center to help parents support their children as they learn math.
“Parents might think solving the problem might take too long, too much paper,” she said, “but that is making the thinking visible. So it’s going to be a lot of hands-on, maybe drawings, maybe using buttons…or toys to help kids make sense of the math.”
When you’re visualizing math problems with toys or visualizing them in your mind, I can tell you - after my own pop-quiz - the lessons you learn at a young age are critical, and will stick with you well after you’ve left the classroom.