0:00  
Hello and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators. Your hosts are myself, Eva anhyzer dusty Jones, and Joel Amidon. Today we're talking with Lindsay Hampton, who is a fifth grade math and science teacher at Highland Elementary School. We're excited to speak with Lindsay today. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Can we start out by having you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, of course I am. This fall. And during my 13th year of teaching, I have taught in Missouri, Massachusetts, and now I teach in Columbus, Ohio. I have done fifth grade all the years, except for one year, I did third, third grade I next year, I'm going to be teaching math and science. But the last few years I've done self contained, which I always also loved a lot. But math science especially is my big passion. I am a volunteer for NASA and JPL, my solar system ambassadors, so I put on community community programs. I'm also an aspiring middle grades novelist. And I love to read right. I love playing with my dogs in the office. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Thank you for sharing. I think I want to talk a little bit today about teaching math and teaching math in connection, in your case, potentially with science or solar systems, but also in our current situations. So where are you at with what's happening right now. So like many school districts in March, my school district closed down for the rest of the year. And the nice thing about that was, we were sort of already done with most of our standards that we have to hit, because our testing starts shortly thereafter. So a lot of the work I did with them online was review, this next year is definitely going to be a lot more of a challenge because some of the things they're learning they have zero exposure to. Because of this, I'm sort of trying to wrap my head around changing around my sequence. Starting with topics that lend themselves to manipulatives that the kids can make at home. I always prefer things that kids can make. But things like unit cubes for volume isn't a super easy thing for the kids to do. I could have them cut out paper. But I don't even know if my babies have scissors or tape or anything at home. So having them make a place value chart seems like a much more doable manipulative they they can do on their own. And I found YouTube to be a great tool when teaching in this sort of quarantine, just because I can have them refer back to the videos that I have created. In order to remind themselves of how to do things, even if it was an assignment from three weeks ago, because you didn't have internet until today, they can go back and look at some of the videos that I have made. And I know a lot of people like I do not want my face out on YouTube for just anybody but they have unlisted, so I have them unlisted. So you can only watch them if you have the link that way, I don't have to worry about becoming viral for something in the background or something like that. And so that has been a huge asset during this math, teaching math and COVID-19. America. I've also found that leveraging real life current events and data that you can find in the news, infographics, kids love that and so using some of the data from that provides meaningful tasks. And then also sort of finding just a few platforms to do well, instead of doing eight different things kind of halfway. My teaching partner and I are really going to be working on finding a few she does English and social studies. And so we're going to try to really make it as easy as possible for the kids and try and find something that they can become masters at. The last thing I think I kind of do is building Byun with social media. So the kids are so ingrained in the social media. Now my kids will say if you ask them what they want to do when they get older, they'll say they want to be a YouTube star. Whereas when I was growing up, it was like oh, I want to be a basketball player or soccer star sort of like the professional athlete type thing or event or a doctor now they all want to be a YouTube star or a video game, you know, Twitch streamer, and so using those

5:00  
forums and leveraging that for education has become something that I also think builds by in last year, I created a whole alternate persona, her name is Sheboygan. And she's really bad at math. And so I make these videos and post them on my own separate Instagram account. I don't do anything, you know, I'm not privately messaging with kids, but it's just something that they can go on. Because I know a lot of teachers are nervous about social media as they should be, but something that they can go on, they can watch me look like an idiot. And it becomes really fun and funny for them to and then at the end, there's math problem. So I've sort of tried to leverage the things that they're good at and into, in order to get them to buy into this remote learning. So you said a lot of things I went off, sorry.

5:57  
Okay, so I'm counting on dusty and Joel to also follow up. So I'm going to just start with this last bit. Can you give us kind of an image of what one of these videos might look like what the math problem might be, in what so if that is my favorite Sheboygan bit, I just had to cheat. You know, Gen Z names Brooklyn, Memphis, Sheboygan is who I was. So I played basketball, and which I'm awful at. And so it was them watching me make shot after shot that I obviously did not make, you know, I'd roll the ball across the ground, and then all of a sudden, you'd see a ball going in, and swishing. And I'd be shouting out, you know, make it rain or buckets, and just really making myself look super stupid. But then at the end, I'd say, okay, in 15 minutes, I made 324 shots, something that was clearly not correct, but still, they thought it was, you know, funny. And my friend Blair, and then it was a picture of my dog with like a basketball headband on, only made five, six as many shots as I do, and ran in my other dog only made two thirds as many shots as Blair. So how many shots did they make, I really want to rub it in their faces. And then, you know, I can do shout outs to them. One was me like, cutting up a kit cat and eating a lot of it and ending up with chocolate all over my face. And they had to figure out if I had enough left to make a whole kit kat bar not, you really got to be comfortable with looking dumb, I guess. But they like to do it. So and you know, Instagram is cool for them. So so you post that video, and then are de responding on Instagram or how so that's what I really want to get into next year. Because I don't want to have the kids sort of like posting their stuff on Instagram, that was a way for them to buy in. And then they would respond on Google Classroom. But I'm gonna, my partner and I are looking at next year into a way for kids to sort of share their thinking on that. And so over the next month, we sort of waited until we figured out what was actually going on rather than coming up with four different plans. But now that our our district has sort of a reopening plan, we can get more specific, but we're going to look into like flipgrid and seesaw and find out which one we want to use for the kids to be able to then share their thinking in a similar format, but in a more secure in a more secure way. Okay, I'm opening up the floor dusty. And Joel because we have a lot to follow up on before we move to the next question. Was this a weigh in? Yeah, hearing all the things that you're interested in? Lindsey, it just seemed like maybe was this a way for your like creativity and your desire to like make characters or create characters was a way like to tap into that into and also to see like, how can I leverage the interest of my students with? I mean, I don't know. It feels like there's part of this is like a way for you to like, get that creativity in other means. Yeah, I think so. I think that's part of it. I love doing read alouds with my kids and doing the voices and they get really into it when they do that. And I love they love Tick Tock which honestly, some of the cute puppy videos on there, I can completely see why. And so I feel like rather than fighting against the wave of technology and social media that this generation of kids have, have never not had really, rather than fighting against it. using it as a way to engage them has been big in my classroom in my last class was particularly hard to engage. And so I think it was funny for them. funny for me, it made it enjoyable.

10:00  
And as I'm doing these real world math tasks, after a while, it becomes sort of redundant for them not redundant, too repetitive to where they forget how, how real world it might be. So making a video that makes them laugh. And I think that puts it back into something that they see is like valuable because that's what they want to do a lot of them with their lives is make people laugh on videos. And so that's sort of the new NBA player thing for them is that they want to be Tick Tock stars, so why not use it when also to like, a lot of times, we're just communicating via, you know, with each other, like the email or via like, one like means in versus like, I almost see it, you know, I've three kids, and they're all you know, doing things, they love the youtubers and things like that. But it's like, why would I only communicate using text, right? Or just or just, you know, something written down versus like, if I have the means to very easily create something visual, and like, you know, or multimedia? Like, why wouldn't I do that? It seems like, it's how I do it. It's how I communicate. So why would we, you know, basically just go in one lane for it. And we can go in multiple lanes. Yeah. And that variety is just as important for them as it would be for us, I think if somebody gave me a paper with the same font on it every day, that that would get a little bit old after about one week, and how many weeks of school do we have to do so I just try to keep it get something different to break it up for myself and for them. Lindsay, I was wondering about the manipulatives, that you were talking about this idea of, you know, if we were in class, the students would be using whatever. And I thought it was really a good idea to think about these unit cubes. For example, if you were going to make your own unit cubes with paper, and I was I was thinking that would be frustrating, you know, they centimeter cubes or inch cubes, it doesn't matter. That would be really frustrating. But you mentioned the place value chart, something they could make at home, do you have another example or two of something that either that you've thought about, like please value charts, I've thought about hundreds charts, even I've thought about multiplication charts, I've thought about sort of like fraction bars where you know, you draw out one and then you below it, you know what a half would be and then what a third would be and I yeah, the beauty of YouTube is that I could create a video of myself doing that one time, and then link it on every single assignment where you need it that way, if kids are needing it, all they have to do is click watch me make it and then you know after a few times, they'll be able to recreate it on their own without having to watch me. And that's been something that honestly might be a little better than teach, even though teaching in person is 1000 times better than teaching remotely, especially with my age kids. Yeah, but that's one thing that's been better because it is truly self paced, they can pause whenever they want for as long as they want, until they get caught up with where I am. And so for those kids who get frustrated with it, taking five minutes who could have had it done in one, they get to do that, and then move on. And then for the kids who need a little extra time, they can pause and look exactly what is on my paper for five minutes if they wanted to. If they didn't like they don't like your video, they might say Hey, can I create a better video that you can replace us with? And obviously you got content creators out there. Yeah. And that's what they want to do. Like that's what they're doing. So I think that it is going to, like I keep saying this, but it's all about buying right now. I wanted to follow up on the infographics too, that you mentioned, and wondering if you could give us a visual there, and maybe something that relates to the current situation that you think about using in this upcoming school year. So in the past I've had is this is sort of like a math science crossover. But I've had my kids graph ocean levels. I think that climate change is a sort of a unexpectedly hot button topic right now that there's debate around it. And because there's debate around it, I don't just want them to hear what my opinion is on it, I want them to be able to formulate their own opinion. So I would use like the rising I would use data from rising ocean levels, have them plot their own, make their own graph of ocean levels, and look at different infographics that that show that and then be able to sort of make their own judgment about whether or not climate change is real. That same thing could be used for the hot button topic that is now

15:00  
COVID. And so I haven't started planning out specific lessons yet, but I plan to sort of use like the Franklin County, Ohio data of week by week, the cases. And I think it would be something, they're my age, they're eager to learn about things that are going on around them. So if I can help them to be more knowledgeable on it, they generally are really responsive. And so that's something that I'm planning on doing as we begin the year and we sort of start to get things moving. I did want to ask, and you could just say you hadn't thought about it, because you just said that. But I was wondering if you had thought about what your opening math task would be for the school year. Not specifically. But I do plan on just modeling whatever platform I think flipgrid type thing, modeling, whatever that is for twice as long as I would normally model completing mass math tasks. So using the first couple weeks for that, so you talked a little bit about like your babies and your kids. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more background on where you're located and who your children are. And also what your school's current plans for reopening are. Yeah, I teach at Highland Elementary in Columbus, Ohio, the neighborhood that I teach in is called the hilltop, it is a neighborhood that has been shown to have a lot of crime and drug issues. showtimes, the trade was actually had a big part in there. And the opioid epidemic has really affected a lot of the families in the neighborhoods of the area where I teach we safelite in the past has always bought us about $10,000 worth of school supplies, because our students can afford on their own. Many of them don't have internet access, don't have computers. And now the district is handing out computers for borrowing. So that's also something great to help them stay connected. But in especially at this time, when you have students who are at home, who might not have food might not have heat probably don't have air conditioning, internet, furniture, keeping in mind that mathematics, although very important, none of their schoolwork is the most important thing for them right now. Because it really is about survival. And so trying to engage them while they're trying to survive is a challenge. As anyone who may be who doesn't have their basic needs met might find it hard to concentrate on anything other than survival. So if internet is an issue, how are you thinking about dealing with that, like even if a student has a computer, but they cannot get online, our district is starting to hand out hotspots. The problem is if there are disengaged parents, it's hard to get them to go to the places and sign out the hot spots. In addition spectrum is offering free internet during this. But if your family has a bill that has been sent to and is currently in collections, they will not offer you the free internet, which with my population of kids that I teach, the first thing they're going to let go is internet and cable. And so that might be more prevalent than you may think them having those past two bills during the spring, all the libraries are closed, and those are starting to reopen. So I'm hoping that that's also a safe place for them to go and use internet. But I guess we're just going to have to take that first. And that's another reason why YouTube is so great because if a kid hasn't gotten internet for the first month of school, they can always go back and look at the videos that I've created without me having to re explain everything. 30 different times as different kids get internet access. So is your school reopening plan to be remote for the beginning of the school year done. So we just found out yesterday that until October 27. Our schools are completely remote. That's the first quarter after that they're going to reevaluate and possibly go into hybrid learning for kindergarten through eighth grade, but it just depends

20:00  
On the numbers, in order for us to go back, the superintendent along with the Department of Health in Franklin County has said that they would need to see four consecutive weeks of declining covid cases, which is not happening right now. It doesn't look like it would happen anytime soon. So they're going to be reevaluating that as they go. But I'm happy now that I at least have an idea of how we're starting the year because before I was sort of putting my head in the sand, I'm very type A in it. It's hard for me not to plan but I didn't want to have to plan for a future that wasn't going to happen. So beyond that, our union is negotiating the specifics. And we hope to find out in the next few weeks, our exact expectations for our virtual learning. So it seems like this is V in Oregon also found out yesterday, a similar reasoning that some schools are most schools are not allowed to go back in class until we have declining rates. So and this affects all schools in Oregon, I think. So I think we all find ourselves more or less in this situation, which is why I think it's so useful to be talking to people who are preparing for teaching. So given your I mean, your kind of approach to planning like, Okay, so now you've got this, this plan, were also to there. So there's a level of unknown into the future, right? So I'm gonna do some things up until October, and then we don't know, know what's gonna happen after that. So again, how do you how do you set up? What are some your initial thoughts and setting up your classroom? So you're, you know, doing two separate, I'm assuming you probably don't want to do two separate things that there's going to be some continuity between so what are your what's your thinking with? Where are you at with regards to things like how you're going to set up your classroom. So so far I'm at, we're gonna run most of it through Google classrooms, just because the students are already familiar with Google Classroom, Google Docs, Google Slides, all that past that my partner and I are looking for, at least probably one more platform to start with, I don't want to throw 15 things at them from the beginning, they get YouTube, that's easy enough to click on a video and watch it. So we want to find one more platform that will allow the students to share their thinking for a more more realistic classroom feel. And so what we want to do is something like flipgrid, where it's almost like a tick tock or a snapchat where they have 60 seconds to film themselves and film their explanation. And then they can respond to each other. I think that my first tasks of the year, will be them watching me do that, for at least the first few days, is them coming up with an answer and then watching me model my answer. And so the first two weeks, I think are just going to be us getting used to modeling how to share our thinking virtually. And from there, I think I'll just take a look at what my kids need. It's different, but the same as every other year. And that sometimes you have to wait until you see how they're doing to decide what more what less you're going to do. But Google Classroom has been a great main platform for us. And so we just want to branch out a little bit so the kids don't get overwhelmed. Yeah. Make sense? Lindsay, if you were advising somebody who was getting ready to start their first year of teaching right now, first of all, that's an incredible accomplishment. I think we can right now. But if you're gonna make give some advice to those people, or maybe some people who are a couple of years away from their first year of teaching, given your experiences of getting things to where they are right now, in COVID-19. us, what advice would you give somebody like that? My first advice is, if at all possible, I would start looking at the free trainings and everything with Google suites because google classroom is free. And if you're allowed to use that if there's not something else that your district wants you to use, if you're sort of left to your own devices, that's what I would recommend to do because they have so much great PD out there to teach you how to do it that you can just start looking at self paced. Other than that, and this is the same advice I give myself all the time. I don't fancy myself an expert. Find a teacher who you can use as a model. I still do that. I still ask to go and observe other teachers to try and refine my practice.

25:00  
I still Dr. Teddy Chao. from Ohio State, I had him come in and teach, I had him watch me teach. And so finding those people who are close to you in your district, who are experts, so many teachers have their masters have years and years and years of experience there know how is invaluable? And I find that 90% of teachers, if asked are more than willing to give of themselves to help you with anything you need. Great. That's a good question dusty, this, like, what advice would you give? And I think that's, that's a really good piece of advice. I'm wondering if you're new to a school, how you might go about connecting with other teachers or finding these role model teachers, I think if you refer to Teddy, I'm assuming that you probably took a class from him. That's no, actually he teaches in my school. So his pre service teachers came into my classrooms once a week, and did some work with my kids. And so he teaches a class from Highland Elementary, and we work together in that capacity. That sounds like an awesome opportunity. Just right there. Yeah, yes, it was great. And I would say to be if you don't know how to find them, I think that like, every single school district I've ever taught in, and I've been in three different states. Even if you're not a first year teacher, if you're new to the district, you have some sort of mentorship program, and there's someone there that is assigned with mentoring you. So even if they're not a math expert, or a whatever expert, ask them if they know someone who you might be able to contact, that's what they're there for. And usually they have great contacts. If you don't have that ask your administrator say, Hey, I know you guys started at the end of last year, is there someone who you found to be excellent at this that you think I should talk to, and between your administrator and any mentor you might have, I'm sure that they'll be able to point you in the direction of someone who has classically been willing to help and who is excellent at what they do. And even to you thinking about the the circumstances that people are being asked to, you know, construct their classrooms around and or construct the can construct their teaching around, like, this is outstanding. I can't like this is not the normal, like teacher prep, and the fact that even if someone, you know, even even you're you're trying to figure out, Okay, what is this going to look like? That you don't have to have all the answers just to make sure that everyone is especially these new teachers have just someone to bounce ideas off of, and even to, you know, just to think things out together. It's just, rather than thinking like, I got to figure this out myself, like, No, no, no, we got to do this together. Like, there's never been an opportunity to do that more than now. And I think that, and I mentioned this earlier, but to all new teachers, please do not try to do every single thing that every other person is doing. Because you're never going to be able to be great at it. Find a few things that you think suit your teaching style. And you know, do the mandatory things, but also one or two other things that suit your teaching style and become great at that. And then add if you need to add the next year, this isn't normal, you have to give yourself some flexibility. But you know, even if you have a mentor, don't feel like every single thing they're giving to you, you have to do. They're trying to give you lots of resources, because that's what's helped them in their career, but I guarantee they don't use all those at the same time. So a great question to ask might be, hey, if I'm starting out if there are three things that you think I should start with, what are those three things and get your head around that and then once you feel like you're able to keep your head above water, then maybe add something else, your first year, second year 13th year of teaching, feels like you're just treading water, and that's okay. You just have to keep in mind that no one expects you to do everything. You just have to find the things that you can do well for your kids. That is amazing. So I was trying as you were talking, I was trying to think back to our conversation. If we had to summarize what would be the three things you would tell somebody find a mentor, definitely number one. My second thing if there is any, at all possible way to find some data on your kids to help you whether it's surveys about what they like whether it's performances, use that to guide your instruction, and get an idea of what you

30:00  
You actually need to focus on because you cannot focus on everything. And then the third one is find some way to create buy in, in this virtual environment. And I guess the last one is show this is number four, but show grace to yourself and to your students, this is a really hard time to be teaching and learning. Okay, so closing up, I think usually we ask, and you already mentioned a few resources, but I just want to ask one more time, like, where do you go on the interwebs, for resource, these are the usuals. But especially if you are a new teacher, Howard County Public Schools has been a godsend to me. And last year, they closed it down for a little bit, and I just thought I had a heart attack. And then they brought it back up. So my prayers were answered. But Howard County Public Schools has some great tests that you can use, even if you don't use those exact ones, it sort of gives you a basis for those real world math tasks. I feel like the ones I do are the normal illustrated math, Eureka math or application problems can be great or even have some. And it's all free online. Some other problems in there that can help with differentiation. Three act tasks, especially when you're virtual, so much of it is video. And then colleagues. Another thing, I was actually reading this book very recently, and I thought about this podcast, when I was reading it, you always have your kids who label themselves as like, I'm not a math kid, I'm a reading kid, you know, I'm not really good at math, I'm good at reading. And so finding those voices of characters that can help the students get into math is really important. So a book that I read recently, it's a novel, it's called the donut fix. It's middle grades like fourth through sixth grade, it's by Jessie janowitz. So it's about this kid named Tristan and his family moves from New York City to the small town and he hates it, they find out he can't start school for two months, he and his sister. So his parents make them come up with a project, the project he decides is that he finds out this new tiny town has these famous doughnuts that are no longer being made. And so his project is to bring them back. In order to get the recipe he has to create a business plan. And in this book, there are chapters about him having to call suppliers and getting prices and multiplying the number of the amount per recipe by the number of doughnuts he wants to make. And there's this whole long business plan. That is such real life math right in there for you. And so when I read that, I thought about my reading kids, that would be a great way to engage them. And then also sort of my like your high flying kids, the kids who get done with anything you give them in about 10 minutes. So engaging them in this book, and then asking them to find out the answers to this business plan, and then maybe even create their own I feel like is a great way to create that buy in with kids who maybe normally don't buy in to math things. And Google's wonderful. So you can find these novels, these picture books, everywhere that can help you along your way. I love that even this notion of reading the book, and then figuring out what your own project would be. That sounds really cool. And it'll keep kids busy for a long time, especially the ones who get done super easy. It's like Alright, well go on the computer and do your project. And, you know, you got at least a couple weeks out of that. So okay, so I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was amazing. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Before we wrap up? I don't think so. I just we are all in. I mean, this is the most like cliche. We're all in this together. But we really are. You're not the only one. freaking out there are millions of teachers out there freaking out with you. So ask your colleagues look around and really try and lean on each other and support each other. And I'm just going to put this right here on the recording, because I was thinking it would be really cool to follow up with you in November or December. Yeah, great. Kind of just do another recording to see. So how did it actually go? So we may contact you. There will probably be a lot of stories of failure. So I'm sure and successes. Yes. But the failures teach you a lot too. That's true. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening to the teaching math.

35:00  
Teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast. We hope that you're able to implement something that you just heard and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators.