Ep 70 - Mark Alcorn on goals, agency, and meaningful mathematics
In this episode, Mark Alcorn (educator, coach, and founder of the Sum of It All podcast) invites us to rethink something deceptively simple: goals in math classrooms. Rather than treating goals as compliance-driven statements or posted objectives, Mark challenges us to see them as powerful drivers of student thinking, engagement, and agency.
Mark explores how, even when we don’t name goals explicitly, they still exist and shape classroom experiences. He unpacks common barriers (“bad warm-up bands”) that keep goals from being meaningful, including performance-focused language, overly broad…
The skinny
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