Infinite Insights

Today is January 1, 2018. When this blog post and podcast episode is published many of us will still be sleeping off the fun we had last night for New Year’s Eve. Maggie and I have been loving recording our episodes of Infinite Insights and we wanted to keep the momentum going during our Winter […]

So you got an new fangled smart phone for Christmas? It’s time you subscribe to some podcasts. Start with this episode Maggie and I published back in September, 2017. In this episode we talk about Universal Design for Learning. Here’s the link to the original blog post that went with this episode… Infinite Insights Episode […]

Does using a textbook necessarily mean you are a bad or lazy teacher? NO! Let’s rethink that age-old myth that to be a good teacher one must create or curate everything. It’s time to replace the “Good Teacher Doctrine” with a mindset that views the teacher and curriculum in a partnership. “It’s time to rethink […]

We’re breaking from our normal two-week cycle because Maggie works in Santa Rosa right in the middle of those big fires[1] you likely heard about. We had taken a bit of a break from recording while Maggie’s family packed and readied themselves for an evacuation that could have happened at any moment. After having been […]

Imagine your dream class. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel to be in such a class? I’m sure we would all have a long list of characteristics of this dream class. Certainly one thing sure to be on our list is MOTIVATED STUDENTS. We all want them. […]

It is hard to imagine that in this day and age – with all the new brain research, neuroscience, sophisticated studies at hand – that we still have to convince people that math anxiety is a real thing. This reminds me of a true medical story: In 1980 an Australian doctor[1] discovered that (and proved […]

In this post, we will venture into the world of number talks. We aren’t necessarily focusing on just one article or resource today but we are pulling from several places. We are going to be pulling ideas from Sherry Parrish’s book Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies and some ideas from […]

As TK-12 math coaches one of the most common questions we are asked is, “What am I supposed to do with my students who are struggling? How do I differentiate for them?” Unfortunately, the answer is always pretty unsatisfying to the teacher: Avoid needing to differentiate in the first place. Now what does that mean? […]

We’ve been taught to start every school year with getting to know you activities and boring lists of Class Rules (Thou shall nots…) but is is possible to do that using your content? Is is that we are saying to our student inadvertently “Math is so boring that we’re better off building culture before […]

Introduction to Infinite Insights You’re a math teacher. You know the deal. You know that they are always coming out with new articles and new research telling us new ways to teach…new ways to think about math education. The problem is…when do you have time to read the article or the research…think about how it […]