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. The hosts are Eva fan hyzer dusty Jones and me. I'm Joel Amidon. Today we are talking with ourselves about what is this thing called the teaching math teaching podcast and and what's the thought process behind it? So but first question I asked is, who are we? 0:26 So my name's Eva Anheuser. I'm at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. I defended my dissertation in 2005. So I've been doing this for quite a while. And a math teacher educator in their math departments at my university. I'm dusty Jones. 0:45 I'm a professor of mathematics education, also in a math department at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. And I've been here for 13 years. 0:55 And I am Joel Amidon, and I am a professor in the University of Mississippi in the department of teacher education, so not a math department. And I've been at the university since 2011. 1:08 Okay, so why this podcast? How is it different from other podcasts? 1:13 I'll start with air. So dusty was transitioning into what is the role 1:18 Vice President for communications and outreach with? 1:23 Right, so and then I am the drum roll Associate Vice President of Marketing at AMT, and it was the first person in that role. And in trying to figure out what that role is, and maybe not doing the best job at it. dusty was transitioning in and I had a bunch of ideas, and I just started unloading on him. And it might have even started at the conference. And when we saw each other in the bathroom, it's just yeah. And we said, Hey, we need to have a talk eventually. And so we had a conversation. I believe you were in Germany at the time 1:54 I was. That's right. Yeah. 1:55 So we had a WhatsApp call. And we just had this meeting, and kind of getting in some momentum from the conference and trying to tap into that. And just, we had this brainstorming session, one of them was thinking about possibly a podcast something to to give people that might not attend the meeting. And I know dusty, you took better notes than I did at the meet. I don't know if you had anything to add about. Yeah, 2:17 we were looking at reaching out having How could a mte reach the people who don't go to the conference? We know there's lots of people involved in mathematics, Teacher Education. And so how can we get that word of how can we go beyond word of mouth to reach other people? And so we just started thinking about some different ideas that we bounced off. And one of them was, why don't we have a podcast something like? So you just became a math coach? What do you do now? Or you just started teaching a methods class or you were a secondary math person? And now you're assigned to teach math for elementary teachers? What steps should you take? And? Yeah, 2:57 yeah, well, and that was the thing, too, is that AMT, if you look at its mission statement, this is one thing I did do is that the Associate Vice President role was looking at all the different people that are in the kind of the mission statement of AMT, but as you heard of the three of us, we're all at INSEAD, you know, all at universities. And it's more than that. And so how do we reach more of the who could be in the membership of AMT? Who is in the membership VMT? How could provide more value? And so I think that led to this podcast and possibly an email to Eva. 3:28 Yeah. So I just was thinking, as you were talking that this really fits with AMT, strategic priority of broadening participation, to move beyond people who do research or are in departments that have lots of colleagues. And as you guys said, reach the people who are potentially the only math teacher educator who don't have funding to go to conferences. And, but also people who potentially have not yet come to the conference or couldn't. So yeah, that's what I heard from you guys said, Okay. So I think that I remember dusty approaching me and saying, Hey, we have this idea. And we presented it to the board, and everybody liked it. So here we are. So what kinds of questions are we asking on this podcast? And why? 4:19 I think from my perspective, we want some questions that are going to get at that base wisdom that all these different roles and that people can hold in being a math teacher educator, even down to maybe even a supervising teacher for a student from a university, right? That's learning to become a math teacher with how do we get the wisdom on how to do those positions? Well, without developing lifelong relationships, which is what some of us have, if you don't have those, what can we offer through this podcast to get access to that wisdom that's been stored up within some of our peers and colleagues that we know about? 4:54 Yeah. So we're going to talk to people that hold these different roles and ask them similar questions. So one question, can I ask you guys? Yeah, one question is What advice would you give someone starting out in this role? Eva, what do you think? 5:09 So I was thinking about my role as a math teacher educator with a focus, elementary pre service teachers. And as I said, I'm in a math department. So I usually get the students that really want to be teachers, but are not in teacher education programs yet. And my research really centers around what do they know? How do they learn? What do they care about those kinds of questions. And I'm very passionate both about teaching these courses and researching. And so one of the best pieces of advice that I would give is research something that you're passionate about, and make it doable. And in my case, it's doable, because I'm combining both my research and my teaching into one thing that I really care about, Joe, what would you say 5:58 that made me Just think about one of my motivations from within grad school was reading one of Rico gutts Dean's pieces about researching his own teaching. And that's, that's what I wanted to do. Or Meghan Lampard, her teaching the problems and the problems of teaching that book. And that's, that's I want to do, I want to have a classroom. And that was my lab and everything. And that was kind of my vision going forward. But then when I got my job here at the University of Mississippi, as a professor of Secondary Education, that wasn't really in the cards, right. And even looking at what my role was, I wasn't really even the math Ed person for secondary because I taught high school mathematics. And so there already was somebody that was doing secondary mathematics and your department was that person was enough to do the supervision and teach the methods classes. And so things I did at the university, Wisconsin were not really needed. And so I was trying to find my way as a math educator. And then it became obvious our elementary program was huge. And there was all these elementary math methods, classes who we had had all these instructors, and some of them were adjuncts. And sometimes they were searching for folks to teach those classes. And I'm like, wait, I'm teaching these kind of gen ed class, I have expertise from the University of Wisconsin, one of the best method, places that I'm just going to be biased there. Let me throw my hat into this ring. This is what's available, and I might not have all the training. And I think it's, you should have that experience too, in elementary classrooms. But here's the opportunity, I'm going to dive in, I'm going to try something new, and get in this. And yes, so what I did is I use what I had available to me, I had my children, right, and they were in classrooms, and I would jump into those classrooms and volunteer and, and get as much expertise, try to learn as much as I can from the elementary teachers that my children had, and jumped into elementary math methods. And it was it changed everything. So I went from this person that wanted my own classroom as allowed to being someone who wanted to support and care for and shine a light on the expertise of the teachers and trying to help them as much as possible to be successful. And so that was just a willingness to try new things and to basically take what was available rather than what I tried to force what I want. That's what kind of was the the best advice I would give is like, look at what's available. Look at where you can go look what maybe you're being led to. 8:17 Yeah, thanks. I think for me, I would advise someone coming in to find out sort of like what you said, Eva, what's something they're really passionate about? But also what's something that I guess it is a part of being passionate about it but something that you know, you're really good at and lean into that and not try to be good at everything. I mean, in terms of mathematics, education, we have professional development, we have teacher education, we have people who are really experts in policy, and how is that formed? People who develop curriculum, people who know a lot about how students think and develop those student learning trajectories. And early in my career, I was trying to be the best at all of those things. And it was making me miserable. Yeah. And then when I leaned into just being a math teacher educator, for me, that was my thing. So of course, I hope everyone listening is that's their thing, too. That would be my advice. Yeah. Just find out what you're really good at and brings you that joy. 9:14 Thanks for sharing. So what do we hope that people take from listening to this podcast? 9:21 I guess. So we have the conference amts conference coming up. And I just think about all the value I get from conversations that I have with other math teacher educators. And I just hope that people see this as a place to go to basically listen in on those conversations and getting the value the gold nuggets from those conversations. That's what I that's why I hope people take from this. 9:45 Yeah, and I also hope that they're able to find those things useful to them, at whatever time they're able to carve out to listen to a 20 or 30 minute conversation and not having to set something on the schedule. That is inconvenient to them, but that they can work it into their schedule. Thanks for listening to this short introduction to the teaching math teaching podcast. Stay tuned to individual episodes featuring each of the podcast hosts in the near future. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope you're able to implement something that you just heard and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators.