Latest / Math Therapy / How to find the "why" in math class w/ Mike Flynn

Transcript

How to find the "why" in math class w/ Mike Flynn · Math Therapy

• 0:02
  Mike Flynn: if you're a thinker, you can do math.
• 0:03
  Mike Flynn: That's all it is.
• 0:04
  Mike Flynn: You were given experiences where you weren't allowed to think, we're gonna give you experiences where you can think Every lesson I teach, I'm learning alongside the kids because I know enough of the math that I'm teaching that I can back up and listen and be present.
• 0:17
  Mike Flynn: I'm not trying to hold onto what's the thing I'm supposed to say?
• 0:19
  Mike Flynn: What's the thing I'm supposed to show?
• 0:21
  Mike Flynn: What's the slide telling me to do here?
• 0:23
  Mike Flynn: I can just be in the moment.
• 0:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hey guys.
• 0:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's me, Vanessa, AKA The Math Guru, and we are here for another week of Math Therapy.
• 0:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 0:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Have you ever been in a situation where someone asks you a question and you freeze because you don't know the answer, and then suddenly your brain is screaming, I should know this, and if I don't, does that mean I'm stupid?
• 0:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe you felt that yourself, or maybe you have a friend or colleague who struggles with that exact fear, the kind of fear that keeps them from going after the promotion or speaking up in meetings or trying something new because they're scared they won't have all the answers.
• 1:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if that sounds familiar, you're gonna love this episode.
• 1:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, I've been there.
• 1:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I used to think that if I didn't know the answer to something, I had to fake it or scramble to make something up, or I'd get really flustered trying to cover my tracks.
• 1:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I thought that not knowing meant I wasn't qualified or that I'd lose credibility.
• 1:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: But here's the truth.
• 1:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Not knowing doesn't make us weak.
• 1:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It makes us all learners, and it also can make us the best teachers.
• 1:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that's exactly what today's guest, Mike Flynn, is going to help us with.
• 1:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mike is a math educator who works with teachers.
• 1:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: All over the world, and he's here to show us how a deeper understanding of math can heal our own math trauma, and prevent us from passing it onto the next generation.
• 1:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: He'll help you reframe those"I don't know" moments into opportunities for growth, for us, but also for our students.
• 1:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So if you've ever felt uncomfortable not knowing the answer, or you know someone who holds themselves back because of that exact fear, this episode is going to give you exactly what you need.
• 2:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's get into it.
• 2:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mike, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: It has been a long time coming.
• 2:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm so excited.
• 2:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm really just having you here so I can hang out with you for an hour.
• 2:13
  Mike Flynn: Eh, good excuse.
• 2:14
  Mike Flynn: I like it.
• 2:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are the first guest, I have to say, whose birth chart I have.
• 2:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Normally I'm just willy-nilly guessing people's astrological signs.
• 2:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm not.
• 2:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm usually not, but sometimes I am.
• 2:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I actually have your birth chart in my hot little hands because you let me read it for you one time.
• 2:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you for that.
• 2:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: How was the experience?
• 2:36
  Mike Flynn: That was great.
• 2:36
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, I, it's not something I normally followed or anything, so I didn't even know what any of that meant.
• 2:41
  Mike Flynn: So I, I learned quite a bit with you and it's interesting, what things are coincidental, what things are, uh, you know what, what was really neat is that you didn't know a lot of things about my profession or the things I do, and you were naming things that were like, Ooh, that's kind of aligned to what, where we're going or what we're hoping will happen.
• 2:58
  Mike Flynn: So
• 2:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: my god.
• 2:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you, and now it's it sounds like I've brought you on the pod to validate my skills an astrologer, which I, I have not, but thank you for saying all that.
• 3:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's actually talk about what you do in that realm.
• 3:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like how did you start, you know, because there are so many instructional coaches and like admin that listen to the podcast, so many people who help other teachers help their students and help other teachers build their own relationships with math.
• 3:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: How did you get into this, and maybe just tell us like specifically what it is you do.
• 3:26
  Mike Flynn: Well, what I do is I help and my, team at our company, we help build teachers content and pedagogical knowledge and as well as.
• 3:34
  Mike Flynn: help them develop effective teaching practices and then we build lots of great resources that they can then use to support this work to really better math education for all students.
• 3:45
  Mike Flynn: Um, it's not really the path I originally chose for myself, even when I became a teacher, because I never liked math.
• 3:51
  Mike Flynn: I didn't like math as a student, I hated it as a teacher.
• 3:53
  Mike Flynn: And the thing that kind of brought me where I am now is I actually had a really good professional learning experience for myself where it wasn't just someone showing me how to use a curriculum or someone saying, here's how you teach.
• 4:06
  Mike Flynn: Instead, it actually was all focused on just relearning math, like learning math deeply.
• 4:11
  Mike Flynn: And it wasn't a, a course for someone who doesn't know the math or like needs a boost up.
• 4:16
  Mike Flynn: It was just that, the basic sense was that all of us have students only got a fraction of the depth of math that we're supposed to really understand.
• 4:25
  Mike Flynn: We, like the way I look at, it's like if you imagine there's a book of math that has all the math knowledge that ever was and will ever be is in this book, and when we were kids growing up, our teachers skimmed the chapters.
• 4:37
  Mike Flynn: Like they skimmed fractions, they skimm multiplication.
• 4:39
  Mike Flynn: So we got just the gist of it.
• 4:41
  Mike Flynn: And then when we became teachers, what we were expected to teach was a lot more of those chapters, but we didn't learn it ourselves.
• 4:47
  Mike Flynn: And so a lot of us, I, me in particular is I would just force all my lessons to be the little bit that I remembered.
• 4:55
  Mike Flynn: Like, oh, just line the numbers up and just do this.
• 4:57
  Mike Flynn: So as much as I hated math when I became a teacher, I taught math the same way that I was taught.
• 5:03
  Mike Flynn: 'cause I didn't know any better.
• 5:04
  Mike Flynn: And when I took that course, it was like getting a chance to read the chapter deeper, like to actually go through the whole thing.
• 5:12
  Mike Flynn: And I was like, I had no idea.
• 5:13
  Mike Flynn: I remember turning to someone while I was learning this saying, if I had learned math this way, it would've made it the biggest difference in my life.
• 5:20
  Mike Flynn: And so from that, I started to change my teaching practices to basically make those kinds of experiences for my students, which then transformed the way my kids learn math, the way I taught, and then I became addicted to it.
• 5:33
  Mike Flynn: So I kept going back and getting more and more of this kind of professional learning, that made me a confident teacher, made me love math.
• 5:41
  Mike Flynn: And then as I developed my skills and my comfort, I started to share what I knew with other people.
• 5:47
  Mike Flynn: And that started around 2003 and I've been doing it ever since, is is just helping teachers and leaders basically create these kinds of experiences for their staff or for their students.
• 6:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 6:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have about 10 questions, so let's just, first of all, this is sounds really cool and I'm obviously wanting an example Let me, let me say why, because you're saying this idea of saying, you know, imagine there's this book of math and it's, I mean, it'd probably be infinite.
• 6:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I can't even imagine all the math knowledge in the world, but when you're learning math at school, your teachers were skimming those chapters, right?
• 6:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: So they were just giving you like the kind of like icing layer of fractions, the icing layer of multiplication.
• 6:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Then you said that when you became a teacher, you know, let's say all of us, the collective we, when we become teachers, we're expected to do more than that.
• 6:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that correct, we're expected?
• 6:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: My first question is, why are we expected to do more than that, but those teachers who taught us we're not?
• 6:44
  Mike Flynn: I think because for a long time that, that there wasn't this need for deeper thinking in math.
• 6:51
  Mike Flynn: I mean, if you go back to like very early education, the beginnings of education, math was, it's just arithmetic.
• 6:57
  Mike Flynn: You're basically, you, learning to do computation,'cause all computation had to be done by hand, with a quill and a ledger or whatever it is.
• 7:05
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 7:05
  Mike Flynn: Like parchment and stuff, you know what I mean?
• 7:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: so cool.
• 7:07
  Mike Flynn: It's like Hogwarts time.
• 7:08
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 7:09
  Mike Flynn: You know, but that's, by the way, that's just such a weird thing to me that you have all that magic and you still have to write with a quill, like I I, that, you know what I mean?
• 7:16
  Mike Flynn: There's like a, just things that I just wonder, like there's, it doesn't make.
• 7:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: of the magic though, is like there are certain experiences that are like tangible.
• 7:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's almost like the magic is in these little things.
• 7:28
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, yeah,
• 7:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: it's like, it's like writing with a quill, doesn't that make you feel so powerful, as opposed to like snapping your fingers and the writing appears you're not getting the, I don't know.
• 7:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I also have never watched Harry Potter.
• 7:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that where Hogwarts is from?
• 7:41
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Mike Flynn: That's it.
• 7:42
  Mike Flynn: I'm just making random references for you.
• 7:44
  Mike Flynn: So,
• 7:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's fine.
• 7:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Go ahead.
• 7:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Back to what you
• 7:48
  Mike Flynn: but, but here's the idea is like, that's like for a long time, just being able to do fast rote.
• 7:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 7:54
  Mike Flynn: Calculations by hand.
• 7:55
  Mike Flynn: That was, that was all you needed.
• 7:57
  Mike Flynn: And what, what we're seeing today is like people need to know how to think, how to reason, how to problem solve, how to be creative.
• 8:04
  Mike Flynn: There aren't companies that are hiring people that are like, how good are you at long division?
• 8:08
  Mike Flynn: I've never had that interview question.
• 8:09
  Mike Flynn: I've never seen that interview question.
• 8:11
  Mike Flynn: Right?
• 8:11
  Mike Flynn: It's they, but they wanna know, how do you solve?
• 8:15
  Mike Flynn: how do you creatively solve these problems?
• 8:17
  Mike Flynn: I mean, I remember Google used to have, sometimes they would put out these really interesting problems, like really complex problems.
• 8:22
  Mike Flynn: And the answer to the problem was like the phone number that you would call to get a job interview.
• 8:27
  Mike Flynn: Like that's the kind of thing that where these companies are looking for people that are thoughtful, creative problem solvers.
• 8:34
  Mike Flynn: And because of that, the needs shift.
• 8:36
  Mike Flynn: And so there's a recognition that.
• 8:39
  Mike Flynn: Just skimming the surface of math and just having math just beyond getting quick answers accurately is it's not enough, and that we wanna have that deeper understanding because we also saw that at least at the elementary level, that you can teach all these rope procedures and kids can perform well on tests and things for a little while.
• 8:59
  Mike Flynn: But as soon as you get into algebra, as soon as you get into any of this higher math, well, you have to actually understand like what it means to multiply and, and you have to understand, the properties of operations, how they work.
• 9:11
  Mike Flynn: If all you have is memorized facts and procedures, that all that starts to fall apart.
• 9:15
  Mike Flynn: And so a lot of us kind of went through life with this like vague understanding of math, like just enough to like get by.
• 9:24
  Mike Flynn: But.
• 9:25
  Mike Flynn: If you talk to any, I mean, you're, this is all your work.
• 9:28
  Mike Flynn: How many adults do you talk to that talk about math, trauma, that talk about, just the, the icky feelings they have when they think about math?
• 9:35
  Mike Flynn: There are so many people that we hear that from, that are older than us, that are our age, that are younger than us, that we see that this is actually a problem.
• 9:43
  Mike Flynn: If you just are taught the way we were taught, that doesn't work.
• 9:47
  Mike Flynn: We have way too many people who are underserved with that kind of teaching.
• 9:50
  Mike Flynn: And there's a reason why math has such a bad reputation is because, you know, imagine if we taught reading the same way we teach math, where it's just, just focus on saying these words really fast and don't worry about what it means.
• 10:03
  Mike Flynn: Right?
• 10:03
  Mike Flynn: If that's how we taught reading, people would say, I hate reading.
• 10:07
  Mike Flynn: I, I, I can read, but I don't get it.
• 10:08
  Mike Flynn: I don't, I never liked reading.
• 10:10
  Mike Flynn: But with reading, we also embrace the comprehension.
• 10:13
  Mike Flynn: In fact, the comprehension's the most important thing, and the speed and accuracy help us to get to that meaning faster.
• 10:19
  Mike Flynn: But in math, we just disregarded the meaning.
• 10:21
  Mike Flynn: It's like, oh, don't worry about it, just.
• 10:22
  Mike Flynn: Just do this thing I show you and do it fast.
• 10:26
  Mike Flynn: And if you do it right, you're gonna get all the right answers.
• 10:28
  Mike Flynn: But don't worry about what it means like I was taught.
• 10:30
  Mike Flynn: Yours is not to reason why, just invert and multiply like the teacher was actually saying, don't even worry about why.
• 10:36
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 10:37
  Mike Flynn: that's,
• 10:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yours is not to reason why?
• 10:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's actually fucked.
• 10:41
  Mike Flynn: It is.
• 10:42
  Mike Flynn: But I remembered it.
• 10:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: What an insane thing to say! Oh, yeah, say, oh Yeah, you know how to, you know, how to divide fractions,
• 10:47
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 10:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you're literally told like, your job is not to think.
• 10:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, do not.
• 10:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay this is so interesting because I'm of two minds here.
• 10:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, Absolutely, like we want to have deep knowledge.
• 10:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: We wanna understand the why.
• 10:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: So your job here is to help teachers understand the why behind what they're teaching.
• 11:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that like a, a simple way to, am I correct?
• 11:10
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 11:10
  Mike Flynn: And some of the what too, yeah.
• 11:12
  Mike Flynn: But understand why it all works, it's the one of the best things we can do for teachers.
• 11:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: And also you can imagine just talking about magic and Hogwarts and the quill and everything, unlocking knowledge and meaning is magic, right?
• 11:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like when someone can see why we're actually flipping and multiplying, like actually the why behind it.
• 11:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: All of a sudden, as we know, many teachers and students remember that aha moment where you're like, holy shit, it's all coming together.
• 11:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know?
• 11:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like now I completely get it.
• 11:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I remember seriously when Deborah Peart like two years ago, I'm a high school math teacher, right?
• 11:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: I understand fractions.
• 11:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: But when she showed me why we flip and multiply, like she showed me visually, it did feel like magic.
• 11:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: It really felt like magic.
• 11:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I get that feeling.
• 11:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now, you're saying, you know, we're now in this time where we, kids need to know how to think, they don't just need to know arithmetic.
• 11:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here you are teaching these teachers or showing them that magic, the thinking, the curiosity, them getting to the deeper knowledge of why we're doing certain things.
• 12:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now they're in the classroom to teach the kids, right?
• 12:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're gonna pass this on.
• 12:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you think that the content that's in the curriculum hinders that do you think it's like, yes, cool, we wanna teach thinking everyone can agree, but then we get to certain content in the curriculum where it's like, but this isn't teaching thinking.
• 12:29
  Mike Flynn: Here's a way we can kind of look at it, all curricular resources are tools, and the tools are designed by people to achieve certain means, right?
• 12:37
  Mike Flynn: Part of it is like, I think of, uh, Tina Cardone who wrote the book Nix the Tricks.
• 12:42
  Mike Flynn: Like one of the things that, if people aren't familiar with Nix the Tricks, it was, I loved it because it was a, it was created, uh, she curated it with the collaborate of the, the greater math ed community that was at the time, blogging and on Twitter, when that was like a big thing.
• 12:57
  Mike Flynn: And what the book did is gave teachers ways to take all these things that were like magic, right?
• 13:04
  Mike Flynn: These like the tricks, and, and like foil and the butterfly method and all this and it, and it was basically, uh, instead of doing this, do this instead to build meaning.
• 13:15
  Mike Flynn: So it's like getting that, what's the underlying math that this trick is trying to get kids to do?
• 13:20
  Mike Flynn: Because the trick goes right over the thinking because it's like, how can I get a kid to remember, memorize this and do it really quickly without thinking?
• 13:28
  Mike Flynn: And, and so she and the other people who contributed to that basically found a way to help people bring in the meaning to it.
• 13:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and I now I am saying this and I'm like, I think what's happened is I've been very affected by an interview I had yesterday with two moms who I interviewed for the podcast.
• 13:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: And they were very much like, and so rightfully so, they were like, we don't understand what the point is of half this shit our kids are learning.
• 13:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what is the point of this?
• 13:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why do they need this?
• 13:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Our kids are frustrated, we're frustrated.
• 13:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was like, you know what, like, you're right.
• 13:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I don't even know what to tell you.
• 14:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I, I don't, I don't know, like a lot of it is like, I don't know why they're learning it.
• 14:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: But you're kind of like, yeah, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I hear you being like that aside, since I don't have, I don't have control over that, that aside, there is an opportunity in everything they're learning to teach a thinking skill.
• 14:17
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, that, that, that comes right down to it.
• 14:19
  Mike Flynn: And I think part of it is like, if you as an educator, like once you start to go down that path for yourself to understand the math better, it's, like, I'm gonna use another metaphor.
• 14:29
  Mike Flynn: 'cause I just constantly think in analogies and metaphors, but like, when I wrote my book Beyond Answers, the very first chapter is called Lost in Boston because, um, I live in Western Mass, but it's, uh, Boston, if anyone's familiar with it.
• 14:41
  Mike Flynn: Like cities are hard to drive in anyway, but many cities are a grid.
• 14:44
  Mike Flynn: Boston is the most, it's just, I, I, one time I got lost, I went to a gas station, showed them the directions I had, and the guy laughed.
• 14:51
  Mike Flynn: He's like, you're never gonna find it.
• 14:52
  Mike Flynn: 'cause those two roads don't even exist anymore.
• 14:54
  Mike Flynn: Like, that's like the level of craziness that.
• 14:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: hands, like a physical map?
• 14:59
  Mike Flynn: It was a MapQuest, like I'm dating myself too.
• 15:01
  Mike Flynn: It's like, like this is like pre GPS, like this.
• 15:04
  Mike Flynn: Is that?
• 15:04
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 15:05
  Mike Flynn: All you young folks, this is before we actually had to print out directions.
• 15:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: They had maps on paper, guys.
• 15:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 15:10
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 15:11
  Mike Flynn: Charts and stuff.
• 15:12
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 15:12
  Mike Flynn: It's uh.
• 15:14
  Mike Flynn: I was, I was like, Magellan, basically.
• 15:15
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 15:16
  Mike Flynn: But here's the thing is I had to go to Boston quite a bit for meetings and I would leave an hour earlier than I should to give myself getting lost time.
• 15:24
  Mike Flynn: It was really frustrating because when you would get these printed out directions, you also can't read while you're driving, right.
• 15:30
  Mike Flynn: You, technically, and so I would try to memorize these directions, right?
• 15:34
  Mike Flynn: So I knew like everywhere to, Boston, I kind of had, but once I got got into Boston, I would just memorized, okay, take it right on here, get off at this exit, dah, dah, dah, whatever.
• 15:42
  Mike Flynn: Then I, the whole time, even though I had those directions memorized, I was panicking because if the way Boston worked, there was too much traffic.
• 15:49
  Mike Flynn: There was a detour.
• 15:50
  Mike Flynn: Anything that got me off of what the predictable path that I memorized was, I had no idea where I was.
• 15:57
  Mike Flynn: Even when I was following the directions, I didn't know where in Boston I was.
• 16:01
  Mike Flynn: I just knew, like I knew the, yeah.
• 16:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right! This is me every day in my life.
• 16:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, dude, wow.
• 16:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I could not relate more to this.
• 16:10
  Mike Flynn: And this is what math feels like for most people when they're just taught these memorized procedures.
• 16:15
  Mike Flynn: 'cause there's no thinking reason, including when we become teachers.
• 16:18
  Mike Flynn: So I taught math like the MapQuest way.
• 16:21
  Mike Flynn: I just would show and explain and tell and stuff.
• 16:23
  Mike Flynn: But when you have a chance, and this is what happened to me in Boston,'cause my brother, he used to have a, his own limo company and stuff is a whole other story.
• 16:30
  Mike Flynn: But, uh, he would want me to drive for him sometimes.
• 16:32
  Mike Flynn: And as a teacher, I need to get any money I could, so all, all these side hustles.
• 16:37
  Mike Flynn: But I would always say I'm never taking anyone to Logan Airport, the Boston Airport.
• 16:41
  Mike Flynn: And that's like one of his best, like all these people wanted trips to Boston.
• 16:44
  Mike Flynn: And I refused to do it'cause I didn't know how to navigate it.
• 16:47
  Mike Flynn: And he actually took me, he said, we'll figure it out together.
• 16:51
  Mike Flynn: So he knew Boston, like the back of his hand.
• 16:53
  Mike Flynn: So he would have me drive, we would look at a map first just to kinda get the layout, know all the main arteries and landmarks and stuff.
• 16:59
  Mike Flynn: And then he said, so we wanna get to the science museum, how are you gonna do it?
• 17:04
  Mike Flynn: So I would sort of chart it out and then we just put that away and then I'd have to like navigate looking at the lay of the land and stuff.
• 17:09
  Mike Flynn: And then he would never help me.
• 17:11
  Mike Flynn: So even when he knew I was about to make a wrong turn, he'd let me make the wrong turn and then he would say, so now whatcha gonna do?
• 17:18
  Mike Flynn: And I, as frustrating as that was,
• 17:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: it's like Thinking Classrooms in a car.
• 17:22
  Mike Flynn: That's what it was.
• 17:23
  Mike Flynn: And he, Scott's not he's, he's a EMT and all that, he is not a teacher, but he was the best teacher, because he let me struggle productively, right?
• 17:32
  Mike Flynn: I, it wasn't where I just gave up and stuff when I was getting frustrated, he would come in, but he made me own most of the stuff.
• 17:38
  Mike Flynn: I had to constantly think.
• 17:40
  Mike Flynn: I couldn't just ask, I couldn't just follow the directions.
• 17:42
  Mike Flynn: And in just a few hours, Boston made sense to me.
• 17:46
  Mike Flynn: And, I can navigate the city really easily.
• 17:49
  Mike Flynn: I'll still like, I'll put in the GPS directions and things now, but there are times where I'm looking at where GPS wants me to go.
• 17:54
  Mike Flynn: I'm like, I'm not doing that, like it's so much faster to go around this way.
• 17:57
  Mike Flynn: So that's what we're trying to do with in math is, when we as teachers engage in professional learning, it's the equivalent of driving around, just kind of mucking around Boston and getting the lay of that land.
• 18:08
  Mike Flynn: And once you have that understanding, then you could look at the curriculum or curricular resource or anything and you can decide how important is this thing?
• 18:17
  Mike Flynn: Or if you look at how it's written, if it says, oh, teach this, like teach the butterfly method or something, you could say, Hmm, I, I see what they want me to do here, I'm gonna actually teach it this other way because my kids are gonna understand it better and they're gonna remember it better
• 18:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or like that's gonna connect to this thing I'm gonna teach in two weeks,'cause I know where I'm going.
• 18:37
  Mike Flynn: Exactly.
• 18:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is a wild metaphor.
• 18:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: First of all, you could not have picked a metaphor that relates more to me because I always say I have horrible spatial awareness, and now I say this with growth mindset as in like, I've not ever tried to get better.
• 18:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've not done what your brother did, for example.
• 18:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I'm just like fuck it, you know what, I don't need to work on this skill right now, like I just put on my GPS.
• 18:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like where I'm sitting right now, I have driven to this place, it's two hours away from my home.
• 18:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have driven here maybe a hundred times.
• 19:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I could not get here without my GPS.
• 19:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: I turn on my GPS and I blindly follow it.
• 19:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have no clue how to get here.
• 19:07
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 19:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: No clue where it is in relation.
• 19:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you know, we're in a band here and every time we're planning a tour, David's like, what the fuck are you talking?
• 19:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, could we get from dah, dah, dah to blah, blah, blah?
• 19:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: And he's like, have you looked at the map?
• 19:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, no.
• 19:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what?
• 19:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why would you think?
• 19:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I'm like, I don't know.
• 19:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: It just like, and it's really making me think of like, my poor attitude of being like, well, I can just use the GPS, so
• 19:30
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 19:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can just use the GPS, just like teachers
• 19:33
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: can theoretically just, follow the book like you could.
• 19:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what I'm missing out on here is, first of all, if the GPS ever broke down, I'd actually be fucked.
• 19:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I would have no clue what to do.
• 19:46
  Mike Flynn: Would you though?
• 19:47
  Mike Flynn: Would you?
• 19:47
  Mike Flynn: Let me, so you would feel fucked, right?
• 19:50
  Mike Flynn: But you would not be fucked.
• 19:52
  Mike Flynn: And there, let me clarify.
• 19:53
  Mike Flynn: let's say it did break down.
• 19:54
  Mike Flynn: Let's say the, all the satellites went down.
• 19:56
  Mike Flynn: There is no more GPS right now and you have to go home from this place.
• 20:00
  Mike Flynn: What are you gonna do?
• 20:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay Well, so actually this did happen to me, and so I did, you're right, I, this happened to me.
• 20:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: A few months ago where my phone died on halfway on my way here.
• 20:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was like, shit.
• 20:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the first thing I did is I went to a gas station, so I asked for help.
• 20:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I went to the gas station and I was like, I need to go, you know, this way.
• 20:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I did that and then I was kind of like, okay, hold on a a second.
• 20:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Some things are looking familiar.
• 20:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what I mean?
• 20:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, some, I was looking for like, but that was a bit tricky because it was like, I'm in farm country and all the farms looked familiar because they all, you know, like I hadn't been paying attention to the signposts I could have been paying attention to The other thing is too,'cause I mean the gas station guy gave me a plan, went towards it, but it was a different one than I was used to with my GPS.
• 20:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I was still going in the right direction, but I wasn't going in the direction I was used to.
• 20:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the usual signs weren't there.
• 20:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Anyways, then I charged my phone at the next gas stations, but okay.
• 20:56
  Mike Flynn: But imagine this though.
• 20:57
  Mike Flynn: What if, what if this, you are in that scenario again, but you, you, you just get on a computer or something, right?
• 21:03
  Mike Flynn: Or you could basically look up the direction.
• 21:06
  Mike Flynn: Let's say you were planning ahead, right?
• 21:08
  Mike Flynn: Or that you found a way where you could actually.
• 21:11
  Mike Flynn: get a map.
• 21:11
  Mike Flynn: I mean, you can go to a gas station.
• 21:12
  Mike Flynn: I'm sure they still have maps or something, right?
• 21:15
  Mike Flynn: That like, I don't know when's the last time.
• 21:16
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 21:17
  Mike Flynn: But let's say you do that, right?
• 21:19
  Mike Flynn: You could go through and like look at the map, kind of map out the path, look at where the roads are.
• 21:25
  Mike Flynn: Now we could say like, if you have the choice of GPS or navigating planning out your route with a map, which one takes more work?
• 21:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Planning out the route.
• 21:35
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 21:35
  Mike Flynn: Which one results in more learning?
• 21:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Planning out the route.
• 21:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 21:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've learned
• 21:40
  Mike Flynn: That's the crux.
• 21:41
  Mike Flynn: That's the crux, yep.
• 21:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, and that's I guess why I'm like, this is such a good analogy.
• 21:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'Cause it's like A, you'd be okay, I guess you wouldn't be fucked if the whole thing broke down, but I have to, basically, I've not learned a single thing in years.
• 21:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 21:53
  Mike Flynn: yeah.
• 21:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: I could plan out the route and then maybe also if I planned out the route, I'd be like, oh my God, there's all these cute places to stop along the way.
• 21:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And oh, if there's traffic, or if I wanted to visit this person or if I wanted to get a coffee or groceries, I could take this other thing.
• 22:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, oh, like there's so much more.
• 22:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, I get it.
• 22:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know.
• 22:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I'm like, I wanna be like Mike, that's it.
• 22:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: The way home next week I'm gonna, maybe I'll, maybe I'll plan out my route home.
• 22:17
  Mike Flynn: Here's, here's the way you kind of think about it.
• 22:19
  Mike Flynn: So when I talk like I love Building Thinking Classrooms, I know you, you do as well.
• 22:22
  Mike Flynn: And one of the things that when we, we talk, when Peter talks about like kids not thinking, like sometimes people like hear that and think that he's thinking like down on kids, that kids can't think of stuff.
• 22:33
  Mike Flynn: And that's not actually at all what he's saying.
• 22:35
  Mike Flynn: But it's almost like what's happening here is like, you can navigate with a map.
• 22:39
  Mike Flynn: You could plan out routes and things.
• 22:41
  Mike Flynn: You could take the time to get to know all the different areas so that you could really, like, understand where you are at any given point in time and know all the different detours, but you choose not to because you have other things that can get you where you need to go that doesn't require you to think as much, and right now you don't have that need.
• 22:59
  Mike Flynn: Which is fine.
• 22:59
  Mike Flynn: Right?
• 23:00
  Mike Flynn: We as humans have to choose how much mental energy we wanna put in anything.
• 23:04
  Mike Flynn: Now, when we as teachers or when students are given procedures and formulas and all these things to memorize and stuff, it's basically teachers giving kids GPS directions for all the math that they're learning.
• 23:16
  Mike Flynn: And it's really easy, they become dependent on it.
• 23:19
  Mike Flynn: And the difference between you and students here is that you don't have a, a great need for you to really understand an area.
• 23:27
  Mike Flynn: Like you're not an Uber driver, you're not working, you're not an EMT or something that you need to know how to get around things.
• 23:32
  Mike Flynn: So it's not essential, but it is essential for our students to learn the math deeply and to think for it.
• 23:37
  Mike Flynn: And so what we're having to do is, is basically get students to, almost get detoxed from the reliance on the GPS and to see the value in it.
• 23:47
  Mike Flynn: But I'll tell you right now, as someone who also didn't really like mucking around in Boston, once I started to do it, I realized how empowering it was where I could see those connections.
• 23:58
  Mike Flynn: So it can help you also as you start to, break free from things that reduce the amount of thinking you had to do.
• 24:05
  Mike Flynn: You'll find that it can be really powerful, whether it's directions or it's math, being able to think and reason and make sense, and you realize, I own this idea now, like it can't be taken from me.
• 24:18
  Mike Flynn: It's powerful.
• 24:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and the other thing I'm thinking is, there is so many reasons why, think justifiably kids don't like math or math class.
• 24:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's boring, some of the content seems irrelevant, like, you know what I mean?
• 24:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we're literally just taught to copy things down.
• 24:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, so I think if anything too, it at least alleviates a lot of that, is to be like, okay, we get it.
• 24:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like some of this content might seem irrelevant and you know, you don't wanna just sit there and be like, uh, you know, doing data entry, basically like copying things into formulas and spitting them out.
• 24:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: At least this I think adds to like the, a bit of the motivation or inspiration of what, like what you can get out of math class, even if content itself seems irrelevant and boring, you can, exactly, feel empowered.
• 25:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can a moment of feeling like basically like a detective or you're solving like a, who done it.
• 25:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: But the other thing is like, we're talking about kids, but really like, I wanna dial it back for a second.
• 25:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're talking about teaching teachers how to think this way, right?
• 25:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I kind of wanna peel back and ask you, or you mentioned earlier on in the interview that a lot of teachers have carry their own math trauma.
• 25:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you kind of alluded to the fact that it was because potentially they were taught in this way that was very rote.
• 25:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you expand on, on that?
• 25:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because I argue this all the time, right?
• 25:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: I say, you know, the way we teach math in this way of like mimicking can lead to math trauma.
• 25:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm curious why you think so and what you've seen.
• 25:40
  Mike Flynn: Part of it is, it just is that vague understanding, kind of like with directions, right?
• 25:45
  Mike Flynn: If I, can follow directions, I can get to where I'm supposed to go, but it doesn't mean that I know anything about that area.
• 25:52
  Mike Flynn: And so, anytime I've memorized directions, I never had confidence in my ability to get where I'm going,'cause any little thing could throw me off.
• 26:00
  Mike Flynn: And that's what it feels like in math when, when everything is mimicking and memorization, is that I have enough to get answers, but I don't have enough to feel confident in my math ability, and if we don't use things enough, we eventually lose it.
• 26:15
  Mike Flynn: So I may memorize something for a while and I'm okay in that class.
• 26:19
  Mike Flynn: I might pass that test or something, but a couple years after, I'm not gonna remember these things.
• 26:25
  Mike Flynn: And so there's a lot in math that I have a vague notion of, oh, I remember doing that, or I remember going there, but I don't actually, I can't call that up.
• 26:33
  Mike Flynn: And so, so much of our math learning when we're taught that way is fragile.
• 26:38
  Mike Flynn: It's like a very fragile foundation.
• 26:40
  Mike Flynn: And because of that, it can be unsettling because we just don't have that level of confidence.
• 26:45
  Mike Flynn: So I think that unsettled feeling is what a lot of people carry with them.
• 26:50
  Mike Flynn: Now, if you take on top of that, you have any intense teachers, that are hammering things down, or you're like the grades or there's that high pressure, you gotta get up on the board and you gotta perform this computation in front of the whole class and you're gonna be publicly wrong.
• 27:04
  Mike Flynn: You add all of that other stuff on top of it, and that's where the anxiety comes in.
• 27:08
  Mike Flynn: That's where the shame comes in, those things.
• 27:11
  Mike Flynn: And I experienced all of that.
• 27:13
  Mike Flynn: Because one thing about me is that, I've learned later as a, as I got older that I have, A-D-H-D.
• 27:18
  Mike Flynn: I, you look at any of my report cards, so you could see writing was all over it, there, like clearly, like talks too much, too active, out of his seat, in the principle all the time, office all the time, all of that.
• 27:29
  Mike Flynn: But, one, for those that aren't familiar with ADHD, it's not that I can't pay attention, like I can't shut my brain off.
• 27:36
  Mike Flynn: I pay attention to everything.
• 27:37
  Mike Flynn: And so what would happen in math situations, even like fact fluency tests, is that I would be look like everything on whatever was on the page, I'm taking all that in.
• 27:47
  Mike Flynn: I'm also taking the sound of the teacher walking up and down the rows with her high heels clicking, like that noise.
• 27:53
  Mike Flynn: And the pencil noises, I'm listening to the pencil noises.
• 27:55
  Mike Flynn: All of that's happening.
• 27:56
  Mike Flynn: Before I've even started the first problem.
• 27:58
  Mike Flynn: And I'm just trying to quiet all that down just to get that.
• 28:01
  Mike Flynn: So by the time I start to get into it, the time's up and I couldn't get my stuff finished.
• 28:06
  Mike Flynn: And then she, this, I'm thinking one particular teacher had the wall of fame where you had your names.
• 28:12
  Mike Flynn: It's a wall of shame, right?
• 28:13
  Mike Flynn: So everyone's like all at the sevens tables eights tables of stuff.
• 28:16
  Mike Flynn: I'm still back on threes because like, I'm just stuck there and for me it's like that shame the embarrassment of like everyone seeing how far behind I am, and it made me feel like inadequate.
• 28:29
  Mike Flynn: But the thing is, is one the timer and stuff, when, when, if I just had those, I could do them all fine.
• 28:34
  Mike Flynn: It wasn't that I didn't know it.
• 28:36
  Mike Flynn: But when you get that, all that information overload and then when you start to panic, your working memory gets blocked.
• 28:42
  Mike Flynn: You can't access facts that you know, and so I would freeze and, and then it just becomes this exacerbated thing.
• 28:48
  Mike Flynn: Now that's third grade.
• 28:49
  Mike Flynn: Then imagine fourth grade, fifth grade, and before you know it, I've accumulated enough embarrassment that I just, even being in a math classroom, you could just feel that like tension.
• 29:00
  Mike Flynn: And I, I hated it and I, a lot of people carry that with them.
• 29:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: How and why did you become a math teacher?
• 29:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: How did you end up at this school?
• 29:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like where was the, where's the
• 29:12
  Mike Flynn: Oh, just a Oh, second grade teacher.
• 29:13
  Mike Flynn: So I, I was, um, I.
• 29:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: so you weren't, you were like, I'm gonna become a teacher,
• 29:18
  Mike Flynn: gonna become a teacher.
• 29:19
  Mike Flynn: And so, and I wasn't math, it was, well it was generalist, right?
• 29:22
  Mike Flynn: So I just became a teacher and math was one of the many subjects I had to teach.
• 29:27
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 29:27
  Mike Flynn: So it was low priority for me.
• 29:29
  Mike Flynn: So, so anyway, I was more ELA and uh, science and stuff.
• 29:33
  Mike Flynn: And there was this position open at our school to be a coordinator for literacy.
• 29:37
  Mike Flynn: Like I got to, there's this huge grant and stuff, and I was all about it.
• 29:41
  Mike Flynn: Fairly young.
• 29:41
  Mike Flynn: I think I was like 24, 25, something like that at the time.
• 29:45
  Mike Flynn: And I wanted to be the literacy coordinator.
• 29:47
  Mike Flynn: I wanted to do this and I didn't get it.
• 29:50
  Mike Flynn: I was told that I was too young to be taken seriously, and it devastated me, right?
• 29:56
  Mike Flynn: And, and I was so bummed and my colleague Anne-Marie came by and she said, Hey, now that you're not doing that, there's this field test for the new version of the investigations curriculum and they need field test teachers and uh, you do some professional learning and stuff and all that.
• 30:12
  Mike Flynn: And I'm like, hard pass.
• 30:13
  Mike Flynn: Like, no, that's the last thing I want.
• 30:16
  Mike Flynn: Really, you're coming at me with math.
• 30:17
  Mike Flynn: Like, but she said there's like a$2,500 stipend to do it.
• 30:22
  Mike Flynn: And yeah, I'm a brand new teacher broke, and like, I'm like, yeah, I'm in, I'm in.
• 30:27
  Mike Flynn: I, say no more.
• 30:28
  Mike Flynn: And I agreed to it, not realizing that part of agreeing to be, field test teachers, you had to commit to, monthly or weekly professional learning with the authors of the program and stuff, which I, again, I was so far removed from this.
• 30:41
  Mike Flynn: I had no idea the big names that were involved in the creation of this.
• 30:45
  Mike Flynn: It's sort of all these influential people.
• 30:47
  Mike Flynn: So I ended up.
• 30:49
  Mike Flynn: saying yes, and I had to agree to use this curriculum and teach it the way it was intended, which meant I had to, I couldn't just fake it.
• 30:55
  Mike Flynn: I had to like read the materials and things.
• 30:57
  Mike Flynn: I had to have ongoing professional learning with people like Anne-Marie and her colleagues and things.
• 31:02
  Mike Flynn: And this is where I started to relearn math and to start seeing like, this is how I should have been taught.
• 31:08
  Mike Flynn: If I was taught math this way, it would've made the biggest difference in my life.
• 31:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you remember like one thing you learned, like one moment, that one thing you learned that caused you to be like.
• 31:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my god.
• 31:18
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, I, so I had no idea what everyone, we were in this session and we had to do things with a arrays, and I, I thought it was a raise, like getting a raise.
• 31:26
  Mike Flynn: What's a raise?
• 31:27
  Mike Flynn: Like, I didn't even realize it was R-A-A-R-Y, like I had no idea what they're talking about.
• 31:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: array, so this is probably gonna blow my mind, so intimidated by the word even.
• 31:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, I don't know.
• 31:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know what
• 31:36
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 31:37
  Mike Flynn: yeah, like rows and columns and things like, and so we were.
• 31:40
  Mike Flynn: So once I got some confidence to ask like, what are our, what are raises?
• 31:45
  Mike Flynn: Or something like that.
• 31:45
  Mike Flynn: Like, oh, you mean array?
• 31:47
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 31:48
  Mike Flynn: And so my colleagues, we were working on this math problem and we started to sketch out and I could see basically the distributive property.
• 31:56
  Mike Flynn: like, how it made sense.
• 31:57
  Mike Flynn: Like none of it made sense to me, and then it all made sense to me.
• 32:01
  Mike Flynn: And it was like, and that was just one thing.
• 32:03
  Mike Flynn: And the more I uncovered, it was like I couldn't stop going down that rabbit hole because it's like, what else don't I know?
• 32:09
  Mike Flynn: What else don't I know?
• 32:10
  Mike Flynn: And that was it.
• 32:12
  Mike Flynn: Game over.
• 32:12
  Mike Flynn: It just blew my mind.
• 32:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: So this is actually so cool because you are literally like the least likely candidate, right?
• 32:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: So this is like, good evidence to be like you were the least likely candidate.
• 32:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: You hated math.
• 32:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: You had a horrible experience with math.
• 32:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: You didn't want anything to do with math.
• 32:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were literally just in it for the money.
• 32:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were bribed and you came out a changed man.
• 32:33
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 32:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: And to show what a difference that meant and look at you now,
• 32:37
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 32:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: You, you were so taken by it that you were like, I must do this.
• 32:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: I must show other teachers what's happening here.
• 32:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because there, I mean, we know there are so many teachers that carry their own math trauma, and in fact, these wonderful teachers often become teachers because they have math trauma and they wanna, they wanna have a, they wanna give a more positive math experience to students.
• 32:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: And there are so many ways to do that.
• 32:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: And one of them is through us gaining deeper understanding of the math we're teaching,
• 33:02
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 33:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like that is just a way to do it.
• 33:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you're here providing that, which is so incredible.
• 33:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: And it's, I, you know, it's funny, like we were talking about the math trauma and you were kind of explaining why being taught in sort of a very procedural right way might lead to having math trauma.
• 33:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I always, when I talk about math trauma, I'm always like, look, it's basically a negative experience with math that lasts with you long after the experience is gone.
• 33:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And a negative experience could be exactly what you described, that feeling that you're just slightly on edge all the time'cause you don't quite have it.
• 33:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, you're like, I've got it in this scenario, in that scenario.
• 33:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I mean, I don't know if I have it, if I'm timed, I don't know if I have it if they changed the words, like I don't know that I really understand it.
• 33:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, so that feeling of just being on edge for so long and feeling not confident, you know, like that lack of confidence carrying that with you throughout your math experience, that is just such an icky, heavy feeling.
• 33:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I hear this from so many teachers, and I'm sure you do too, since you work with them of being like, probably a lot of the reason people want to take your professional development is that they're like, they don't wanna feel like that, right?
• 34:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: They wanna feel like, like we want to encourage kids to ask any question they have and to think whatever way they want.
• 34:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if we don't feel confident, that's actually really threatening to us because I'm like, well, if you ask any question you want and you do this math in a way that I don't understand, now I'm on the hook.
• 34:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 34:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like this is, I think, such a great way to be like, look we wanna encourage kids to make mistakes and teachers to make mistakes too.
• 34:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's not about perfection, it's about progress, it's about process, this and that.
• 34:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: But in order to, I think, really facilitate a student's learning process, like we have to not only be open-minded, but like have a level of openness to understanding that we don't fully understand.
• 34:40
  Mike Flynn: That's so profound because it's, but it, right, it, it comes down to that understanding.
• 34:45
  Mike Flynn: It's that meaning piece, right?
• 34:47
  Mike Flynn: That when we understand it, it's much easier for us to back up a bit and allow the students to also come to their own understanding.
• 34:54
  Mike Flynn: Because if, if we don't, if we don't understand it and we're afraid to open up and get all their ideas and flexible strategies and these things that if we're, if we don't have that comfort, then we just force kids into the way we think about it.
• 35:06
  Mike Flynn: And so and, and then there's, we're not giving them a chance to understand because there's just, here's the way I'm gonna show you how to do it.
• 35:13
  Mike Flynn: I'm not getting a chance to expand my understanding because I'm not learning with the students.
• 35:17
  Mike Flynn: One of the things that often surprises people is that a lot of what I learned about early elementary math, I learned from my seven and eight year olds, my second graders, when I first started teaching, because once I listened to them and I could see how they were approaching it, I could understand the way kids' minds worked around these math ideas.
• 35:34
  Mike Flynn: And now, like the work I do now is I teach preschool through high school, so I get to see that all the time at every different grade level, everything we do is around building understanding.
• 35:42
  Mike Flynn: So I get to listen to students and hear how they build these strong connections.
• 35:48
  Mike Flynn: And when you just, when you're at a spot where you understand the math enough, where you can back up a bit, then everybody learns, you and the students at the same time.
• 35:57
  Mike Flynn: You create this mutual learning space.
• 35:59
  Mike Flynn: And I, it's, it's nonstop.
• 36:01
  Mike Flynn: I still, every lesson I teach, I'm learning alongside the kids because I, I know enough of the math that I'm teaching that I can back up and listen and be present.
• 36:11
  Mike Flynn: I'm not trying to hold onto what's the thing I'm supposed to say?
• 36:13
  Mike Flynn: What's the thing I'm supposed to show?
• 36:15
  Mike Flynn: What's the slide telling me to do here?
• 36:17
  Mike Flynn: I can just be in the moment.
• 36:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and I think this is an important message, it's okay to be constantly learning.
• 36:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: I always am like if I am done learning, like if I am ever in a position where I am teaching and I'm like, there's nothing left for me to learn, like I know every possible answer a student's gonna give.
• 36:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know every scenario this question like, no thank you, like I'm done.
• 36:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's time to move on to something else.
• 36:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what, what, what is it?
• 36:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's some really profound quote, lifelong teachers are lifelong learners, or something?
• 36:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is it?
• 36:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Something like that.
• 36:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 36:48
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 36:49
  Mike Flynn: And that, something like that, so, sounds good.
• 36:51
  Mike Flynn: Sounds like a thing.
• 36:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sounds like a thing.
• 36:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like the, the endless learning and you're modeling to your students what learning is, you're modelling what knowledge is.
• 36:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Knowledge isn't, I know everything.
• 37:02
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 37:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Knowledge is being open to knowing more than you know right now.
• 37:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I just came up with that.
• 37:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I liked that.
• 37:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I thought that
• 37:09
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 37:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: David, shut up.
• 37:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 37:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Alright.
• 37:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: He's really rolling his eyes.
• 37:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I thought that was good.
• 37:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Um, What would you say to a teacher though that's like, yeah, it sounds fascinating, but like, there's no way I have time for that.
• 37:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, it's just gonna take so much more time.
• 37:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's easier to just teach what I'm supposed to be teaching.
• 37:25
  Mike Flynn: Two things.
• 37:26
  Mike Flynn: One is that, first of all, like when if we teach the way we, we were taught if in that we're just like, I don't have time to go and learn this and that I'm just gonna show them.
• 37:37
  Mike Flynn: I'm gonna ask that teacher, how often do you have to reteach content?
• 37:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm
• 37:42
  Mike Flynn: Because it's like, that's one of the things,'cause the time factor always comes up.
• 37:46
  Mike Flynn: It's a real thing.
• 37:46
  Mike Flynn: I don't want to invalidate that.
• 37:48
  Mike Flynn: Right.
• 37:48
  Mike Flynn: And I think about any time teachers are like, yeah, I, I constantly have to like reteach this thing.
• 37:54
  Mike Flynn: I have to keep going back and like they don't get it.
• 37:56
  Mike Flynn: And I'm doing afterschool tutoring, I'm doing all of these things because my kids aren't getting it long term, right?
• 38:03
  Mike Flynn: They, they learn it for the test, but then they forget it.
• 38:06
  Mike Flynn: And you realize like if you just take a little bit of time first for yourself and then to spend a little bit of time with your students to develop that understanding deeply, you're not going to have to reteach it.
• 38:18
  Mike Flynn: So it's a, you give a little bit to get a bigger return on that investment.
• 38:22
  Mike Flynn: And it's scary at first.
• 38:23
  Mike Flynn: So I just tell teachers, start small, pick one thing.
• 38:26
  Mike Flynn: Because that's the other thing, it could be overwhelming, is like when you have to make a big, like, I gotta change everything.
• 38:31
  Mike Flynn: No, you don't.
• 38:32
  Mike Flynn: It's like, how about you just change your warmup routine?
• 38:34
  Mike Flynn: Like instead of just doing a do now, maybe do something that's got students talking and reasoning for the first five minutes.
• 38:39
  Mike Flynn: Like, don't worry about your do now.
• 38:41
  Mike Flynn: Right now.
• 38:41
  Mike Flynn: Just try that.
• 38:42
  Mike Flynn: That's a nice light lift.
• 38:43
  Mike Flynn: And you can see over time how that changes students.
• 38:46
  Mike Flynn: Or maybe try it for a, an upcoming unit or for a three lessons.
• 38:51
  Mike Flynn: Three lessons.
• 38:52
  Mike Flynn: What if you were to, allow students to think about it flexibly versus this one way?
• 38:58
  Mike Flynn: What happens?
• 38:59
  Mike Flynn: Then as you try that, the thing that I found,'cause I make it sound like, oh, I had this one professional learning experience and I was a changed teacher.
• 39:06
  Mike Flynn: I fell off the wagon a lot.
• 39:08
  Mike Flynn: So I would, like, it took me three to five years to fully be confident and like not ramming the algorithm down kids' throats.
• 39:16
  Mike Flynn: Because every, like the first time I started to make that shift, I would sneak it in just'cause I'm like, I was doing the field test so I wasn't allowed to, but I would still sneak it in, hope they're not listening, just because it's like the third grade teachers would come at me aft, like the next year if the kids weren't ready.
• 39:31
  Mike Flynn: And so after a couple years I got confident enough.
• 39:35
  Mike Flynn: But what I'd like to let people know is that it's a, it's a journey, don't feel like you need perfection.
• 39:41
  Mike Flynn: Try things out.
• 39:42
  Mike Flynn: And the more I found when I would do that meaningful work, anytime I slid back and just try to show them something, I could just feel all the air come outta the room.
• 39:51
  Mike Flynn: Like it just felt different.
• 39:53
  Mike Flynn: And I could tell, I could just see mimicking.
• 39:55
  Mike Flynn: I didn't have a name for it at the time, but I could just tell that's what was happening.
• 39:59
  Mike Flynn: And by like the second or third year of doing that, I'm like, oh, this is such fake teaching that I was doing that I, I just abandoned it and realized like.
• 40:08
  Mike Flynn: Teaching for sensemaking is the only way that we can really do this if we want kids to understand what we're teaching.
• 40:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay let's, let's give everyone a challenge right now though.
• 40:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause I like this.
• 40:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: I like this idea of what should we all try to do.
• 40:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I like what you almost said of like, try to teach a lesson while allowing kids to have flexible thinking.
• 40:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's what you said,
• 40:26
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: What does that mean?
• 40:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, let's do a little, like, let's all try this this week.
• 40:30
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 40:30
  Mike Flynn: I'm gonna call out Robert Kaplinsky right now and Open Middle, you can go to open middle.com.
• 40:35
  Mike Flynn: Like Robert's got a whole like system there of, of challenging tasks that have these open middles.
• 40:40
  Mike Flynn: But you can also think of open middle, broadly, as defined as a problem or a task that has the same initial setup for everybody.
• 40:48
  Mike Flynn: And it has some kind of conclusion, either a single answer or a set of answers or something.
• 40:53
  Mike Flynn: The middle, how students approach it is wide open, they can approach it any way they want.
• 40:58
  Mike Flynn: So a challenge would be to look at one task that you could give to your students that doesn't require them, if the curricular resource or something says, give them this problem and have them use a table and graph to get the answer, cross that out.
• 41:10
  Mike Flynn: Don't have that.
• 41:12
  Mike Flynn: Give them the problem.
• 41:13
  Mike Flynn: Give them the problem without any specific rules for solving it.
• 41:18
  Mike Flynn: Say solve it in a way that makes sense to you, and solve it maybe two different ways.
• 41:22
  Mike Flynn: And then, give them time and space to work through it and look at all the different creative solutions that come up.
• 41:28
  Mike Flynn: Now, before you do that, uh, I'm gonna call out.
• 41:30
  Mike Flynn: One other thing is the five practices with Peg Smith and Mary Kay Stein.
• 41:34
  Mike Flynn: If you're not familiar with that, look up five practices.
• 41:36
  Mike Flynn: But one thing they tell you to do if you want to teach in this way is to do the math ahead of time yourself and anticipate what are the things that are likely to come up from your students if you were to do this.
• 41:48
  Mike Flynn: What kinds of strategies are most likely to come up and which of those do you really wanna highlight in the conversation when you pull all the ideas together?
• 41:55
  Mike Flynn: But if you do that, just give this open middle approach.
• 41:58
  Mike Flynn: And it could be just one problem and that you can go back to whatever your lesson is, but just see what happens with this shift when you flip it.
• 42:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, I love this.
• 42:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're all gonna do this this week.
• 42:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then guess what?
• 42:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because there's some weird shit, new feature on our podcast, you can text us and let us know what happens.
• 42:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Link to the text is in the description of this episode.
• 42:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can also email me or just send me a DM on Instagram.
• 42:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Me and Mike wanna know what happens when you try this, this week, that's your challenge.
• 42:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I wanna take all of your courses.
• 42:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Where can people take these?
• 42:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Where do, where do I send everyone to when they're like I want to learn math in this way, I'm a teacher and I would like to get a deeper knowledge of what I'm teaching because you have this for K to 12, right?
• 42:41
  Mike Flynn: We do.
• 42:41
  Mike Flynn: So we have courses for all strands of mathematics, K through eight.
• 42:46
  Mike Flynn: We're building the secondary ones now.
• 42:47
  Mike Flynn: The first one will be available in January of 26.
• 42:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Get in on the ground floor.
• 42:52
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, yeah, we're excited.
• 42:54
  Mike Flynn: We're building it for geometry, algebra, pre-calc, all these things.
• 42:57
  Mike Flynn: So keep an eye out for that.
• 42:58
  Mike Flynn: But you go to flynneducation.com and you'll see lots of free resources for teachers.
• 43:02
  Mike Flynn: You'll see our courses.
• 43:04
  Mike Flynn: We also have a membership where we have a it's, uh, the Friends of Flynn Education, and it's a, basically collaborative of educators, then we offer tons and tons of professional learning, every month.
• 43:14
  Mike Flynn: In fact, Vanessa, you're gonna be our featured guest for our voices from the field coming yeah.
• 43:20
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 43:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: It is, just so you guys know, Friends of Flynn is giving Sesame Street meets Cheers.
• 43:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like if you understand that reference, you know, like, I get,
• 43:30
  Mike Flynn: That's deep
• 43:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know.
• 43:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: I really get that vibe though.
• 43:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, it's like, it really, I think it's gonna become something.
• 43:36
  Mike Flynn: Yeah, we're, we're pretty excited about it.
• 43:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sick.
• 43:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Final two questions I ask everyone.
• 43:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Number one, if there's one thing you could change about way the way math is taught in schools, like you're allowed to change one thing, what would it be?
• 43:48
  Mike Flynn: Uh, the time constraints.
• 43:50
  Mike Flynn: Time constraints, get rid of all time constraints so that teachers are not, uh, bound on this 42 minute block or 47 minute block, and that allowing people to really spend the time to teach it well.
• 44:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, how would you do that though?
• 44:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: You just have math all day long, like as long as you want?
• 44:05
  Mike Flynn: No, no, no.
• 44:06
  Mike Flynn: Just that you, we open up the, we get rid of this, the block scheduling kind of things.
• 44:10
  Mike Flynn: There's a lot of ways things are done.
• 44:11
  Mike Flynn: So the idea, so, 10 seconds, I didn't know you needed the how to actually achieve making this happen.
• 44:17
  Mike Flynn: I thought you just wave.
• 44:18
  Mike Flynn: I thought magic wand, it's Hogwarts, right?
• 44:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I didn't.
• 44:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I just got curious suddenly I was like, but how?
• 44:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: But
• 44:23
  Mike Flynn: I can say that.
• 44:23
  Mike Flynn: I will say this.
• 44:24
  Mike Flynn: So this is another thing people might not know about me.
• 44:26
  Mike Flynn: I did, I was an elected school board member for eight years, and so I have worked on that side of things.
• 44:32
  Mike Flynn: It's is possible.
• 44:34
  Mike Flynn: The thing with a lot of these, the structures, the schedules and all these things are, they become institutionalized and it feels impossible to change'cause this is the way it's always been, and if we do this well, then this will happen.
• 44:47
  Mike Flynn: All you have to do is dedicate time and say, we are going to figure this out, and you can do that.
• 44:52
  Mike Flynn: So that's the, there's many school districts that have figured out ways to build in 70, 90 minute math blocks and things.
• 44:59
  Mike Flynn: And anytime, I work in schools all around the world, any places where I go, where math is taught for 60 to 90 minutes, I see a significant difference in those students than in places where math is taught for 40 to 45 minutes, et cetera.
• 45:11
  Mike Flynn: Um, you need more time on it, and,
• 45:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: was way more than 10 seconds.
• 45:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: That was my fault.
• 45:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Of course.
• 45:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Also, your response is very like giving Tim Ferris like it is possible.
• 45:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we can do these things.
• 45:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: You gotta think outside of the schedule, outside of the box.
• 45:25
  Mike Flynn: Yeah.
• 45:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Next question.
• 45:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: If someone listened to this and they were like, that's so awesome.
• 45:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 45:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I guess I could think about math more deeply, whatever the thing is though, like I just can't because I'm not a math person.
• 45:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: What would you say?
• 45:37
  Mike Flynn: I would say let's, dispel this idea of a math person and just that you're a thinker and that, you just were never given enough time to think about the math and you weren't given the right kinds of experiences to think about the math.
• 45:48
  Mike Flynn: And I can give you that to you and like, let's do some math together and give you a chance to think and realize that all you have to do is like, if you're a thinker, you can do math.
• 45:59
  Mike Flynn: That's all it is.
• 46:00
  Mike Flynn: You were given experiences where you weren't allowed to think, we're gonna give you experiences where you can think and that'll change everything for you.
• 46:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is so nice.
• 46:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: That was such a nice answer.
• 46:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I felt reassured.
• 46:12
  Mike Flynn: I felt a little anxiety.
• 46:13
  Mike Flynn: I was like, oh, that pressure, I gotta perform.
• 46:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, I am being, I'm doing all doing all the wrong things.
• 46:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, time constraints, go.
• 46:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're public, you're being recorded.
• 46:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, don't do any of this in a math classroom.
• 46:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 46:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: It has been such a treat.
• 46:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: you're so inspiring.
• 46:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're so warm, you're so welcoming.
• 46:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: What you're doing is so cool,
• 46:29
  Mike Flynn: I appreciate that.
• 46:30
  Mike Flynn: Thank you so much, Vanessa.
• 46:31
  Mike Flynn: Thanks for having me on the show.
• 46:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay guys.
• 46:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, how good was that?
• 46:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mike just gave us the reminder that knowing isn't weakness, it's actually where the learning begins, and that is strength.
• 46:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: And when we as teachers give ourselves permission to not have all the answers, we model curiosity instead of fear, and that can change everything.
• 46:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here's your Math Therapy challenge for this week.
• 46:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: The next time a student or anyone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, I want you to pause before you panic.
• 47:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Instead of faking it or shutting down, try saying"I don't know yet.
• 47:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's figure it out." Or the next time a student solves a problem in a way that you didn't think, to lean into that moment and say, wait, can you explain your thinking?
• 47:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because when you do that, you turn kids from mimics who just copy your steps into empowered learners who own their knowledge.
• 47:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And the best part is they get to teach you something.
• 47:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that one shift makes them feel confident, capable, and important, and you get to grow right alongside them.
• 47:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: So it's a win-win.
• 47:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you liked this episode, don't keep it to yourself, okay?
• 47:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Send it to a friend, a colleague, or that person in your life who holds themselves back because they're scared of not knowing enough.
• 47:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: This conversation could change their life.
• 47:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: It could be exactly what they need to hear.
• 47:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: And remember, I want to hear from you, and now you can text the podcast.
• 47:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: So if something in this episode inspired you, you can text us by going to the link that's right in your podcast app.
• 48:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can also DM me on Instagram@themathguru.
• 48:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca.
• 48:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I wanna hear your feedback and your reactions.
• 48:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: And remember, Math Therapy is now a weekly podcast, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a single episode.
• 48:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia.
• 48:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's produced and edited by David Kochberg, and our theme music is by our band Goodnight Sunrise.
• 48:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy, please share this podcast and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use.
• 48:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Those things actually make such a difference because they help Math Therapy reach more people.
• 48:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm as determined to change the culture surrounding math as you are, and I need your help, so spread the word.
• 48:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Until next time, peace, love, and pi.
• 48:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: we have to not only be open-minded, but like have a level of openness to understanding that we don't under, you know what I mean?
• 48:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: That we don't fully understand, I think.
• 48:58
  Mike Flynn: a hundred percent.
• 48:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I
• 49:00
  Mike Flynn: You're making noises.
• 49:01
  Mike Flynn: It's not, of course.
• 49:03
  Mike Flynn: No, that's so profound.