In this episode, Kristen Smith, author of Cultivating Math Confidence and a secondary math teacher in Washington State, digs into the distance between a student's math skills and their belief that they can do math at all. She and Larissa examine what district leaders miss when they hand a teacher a curriculum and ask for fidelity, why a popular approach to personalized math practice may be undercutting the very thinking it was meant to build, and how something as small as saying a term out loud shapes what a student can do with it. Essential listening for curriculum and MTSS leaders planning secondary math PD.

Resources:

Cultivating Math Confidence: Teaching Strategies to Boost Proficiency in Grades 6–12 by Kristen Smith — publisher or Amazon page

Kristen Smith's Substack, mentioned in the close

Illustrative Mathematics — the curriculum she uses and critiques

Implementing MTSS in Secondary Schools

Addressing the Top Four Challenges in Secondary Math Intervention

Math Intervention Strategies for MTSS

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Takeaways:

• Math confidence is built through repeated experiences of earned success.
• Students who cannot say a math term out loud struggle to use it.
• Curriculum fidelity assumes prior-grade mastery that most students do not have.
• Probe for prerequisite skills in the lesson launch, before the curriculum task.
• Reteach a missing sixth-grade skill on the spot, then continue the lesson.
• Write your own spiraled review questions when the curriculum omits them.
• Call on every student to use math vocabulary rather than letting them opt in.
• Empower teachers to add access points instead of demanding strict fidelity.

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