Dusty Jones: 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 Thanheiser, me, Dusty Jones, and Joel Amidon. 

Dusty Jones: Today we're talking with Dr. Carrie S. Cutler, who's a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston. We're talking to Carrie because of her award winning teaching, and because we're interested in hearing how her experiences of being a mother of eight children has informed her work in the teaching of math teachers. 

Dusty Jones: Welcome Carrie, would you take a moment to introduce yourself?

Carrie Cutler: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and as you stated in the introduction, I am a mom first and I have eight kids, seven of them are boys, which always makes it really interesting when we talk about probability in my classes because there's, you know, theoretical probability that 50% chance of getting a girl each time. Then there's, you know, experimental probability. So not eight boys, so

Carrie Cutler: I love my children and I love the perspective that being a parent brings on teaching and I always feel like telling my students, you know, when you're a parent. It makes you a better teacher, when you're a teacher, it makes you better parents and it just makes you kind of whole in your perspective from both sides of the table, and hopefully you don't have each other across the table. Hopefully you're on the same side of the table, sharing your beliefs about this child and your support for this child. So I'm excited to be here. 

Dusty Jones: Great. So how did you start in your career of teaching math teachers?

Carrie Cutler: Well as you can guess my path may be somewhat different compared, unusual, compared to my colleagues in math education or higher ed in general. I think I started like most of us as a public school teacher. I graduated from Utah State University and I taught first grade, and fourth grade. And when my husband was in his second year of law school at Brigham Young University, I became pregnant with our son Will and my husband and I decided together. This was the perfect time to quit working full time. To go back to school full time for my masters and for us to live on love and student loans. So I wrapped up my last day of third grade summer math enrichment camp and our son was born. Two days later. And that was a great time in our lives just young and carefree and poor and stupid. And it was bliss.

Carrie Cutler: And that summer I took a math methods seminar for my masters from Dr Eula Ewing Monroe. She was this brilliant tough Kentucky educator who came as a Baptist to Brigham Young, which, as you know, as a private school for Latter Day Saints, and she changed my life. She asked me to write an article with her from the paper I wrote for her class, she became my advisor for my thesis and she invited me to be here TA. So that was a watershed moment that semester. Her mother became ill a few semesters later and she had to go back to Kentucky, and I had to step up and teach the class. Age 24, barely older than the undergrads, only three years of teaching experience and bam. It was so hard, but so right for me and it lit the fire for teaching teachers and I haven't looked back since. So after my husband graduated, we moved to Texas and I started my doctorate at the University of Houston and I was a mother of two and I thought I was so busy, but four years later (laughs) the week I defended my dissertation. I found out I was pregnant with our fifth child. Oh my gosh, I was so glad to be done.

Carrie Cutler: And we've gone on to have three more kids after that and in November, my oldest son Will and his wife are having a baby and I'm going to be a Mimi, or a Gigi, I don't know yet, but I'm going to be a grandma.

Dusty Jones: Congratulations. 

Carrie Cutler: Oh, it's a whole new chapter. It's very exciting. To be a mom is my first priority, and I think it's amazing that I've been able to design my career around this other wonderful responsibility at the same time. So I worked as an adjunct for a long time, when my babies were little, mostly teaching at night, so they could be with their dad at night me during the day. And then I made a, maybe a little mistake when our eighth baby was born, five years ago I said aloud the words "I think I will take a break from teaching and just sit and rock this baby." And of course we should never tempt fate that way. Very soon after that my university offered me a full time position that I couldn't refuse. And so now that little boy is starting kindergarten and I'm a clinical assistant professor and my pathway has been curvy as can be. But it's perfect for me and my little family and we've made it work.

Dusty Jones: Great. And I just want to point out that you won in 2020 an award. From was it from your college or department or university? Can you tell us about that teaching award?

Carrie Cutler: In 2019 I won the department Award for Teaching Excellence and then in 2020 I won the university-wide award for a clinical professors for Teaching Excellence and it was very humbling and very gratifying and something I never would have expected, but a neat experience.

Dusty Jones: So, since your path has been curvy and twisty, I don't know that anyone would follow in the exact same steps--that that's another probability type question, possibly-- but what would you have liked to know when you started? Let's say started teaching at pre-service teachers at any point in years time. What was something you would have liked to known?


Carrie Cutler: Well, because I was so young when I started teaching college I felt I had to be somehow aloof or distant from my students, I was almost afraid that my undergrads would find out that I was just a punk kid, you know. (Laughter) But I've come to realize that that we're all kind of punk kids and we all need to connect with our students. And that's the best part of our work, we need them as much as they need us. Now I practically force my students to friend me on Facebook and Instagram. I want to stay in touch with them after they graduate. We share our struggles and our triumphs and they are what keeps me going. When I see them finding success in their teaching and in their lives. I know that my effort was all worth it.

Carrie Cutler: And another thing I wish I had appreciated. When I started my university career was not to compare myself to others. I am a clinical professor, meaning I teach four or five classes each semester, I am not a tenure track professor with released time for research and grant writing. I love the work my colleagues do in publishing and research, but it's not my emphasis. I'm a worker bee. When I got get caught up in making those comparisons, I have to remind myself that I write articles for practitioners, I translate the research into on the ground teaching techniques and I do lots of professional development that a lot of my tenure track colleagues don't have time for it because they're busy. So when we compare ourselves to others. We devalue our own work and we feel like we don't measure up and that's not productive.


Eva Thanheiser: That's an amazing piece of advice right there.

Joel Amidon: Yes.

Carrie Cutler: It's so important isn't it. I think you can get kind of wrapped up in that. And I think our society as a whole has a tendency to compare and social media doesn't help with that. But we don't know everybody's story. And we don't know everybody's other outside responsibilities, and we have to appreciate the contribution that everybody's making to our program.

Joel Amidon: I got some advice like that from Jeff Wanko at STaR--the Service, Teaching, and Research group--and he he brought a perspective on shaping your career to be like how you would want it to be and not necessarily... so I was graduate from Wisconsin with my doctorate, and like there was kind of a path of, like, big grants and solo authored top tier journals that's that's success, and that's the bar you have to reach. And it just didn't seem like that was in the cards for me. Coming to Mississippi that's been like being able to
not do that comparison game like you're talking about Carrie and thinking about what kind of career makes sense for the gifts I've been given. Right. How can I best serve and given the gifts I've been given within my role? And finding that sweet spot has been just life giving, and knowing again also to like what you said before, knowing your priorities. And thinking about what's important to me, both, you know, throughout my entire life. It's also what's my priorities professionally to as well and not playing that comparison game that's that's that's beautiful, beautiful advice. I'm so glad you shared that.

Carrie Cutler: You and I think that helps us enjoy the journey that much more just enjoy the place where we're at and enjoy what we're doing now and not always be wishing we were doing something else or being someone else.

Dusty Jones: So Carrie, I want to ask you about a couple of things. And I am having trouble kind of untangling these two questions. So I'll ask them together because I think I think they do work together. So how has being a parent informed your teaching of math teachers? That's the first part. And then, can you tell us some about your book, which I love the title. So I'm going to say it out loud: Math Positive Mindsets: Growing a Child's Mind without Losing Yours. So can you address both of those questions I couldn't untangle in my mind?

Carrie Cutler: Sure. Well, I'm glad you like the title Dusty because it was a lot of work for me and my undergraduates to come up with. We, we worked on it for a whole semester. We really wanted it to catch the spirit of, you know, positivity, but also validating parents' and some teachers' feelings of frustration because truly some adults how genuine mathematics anxiety. It's a real thing and just saying, "Oh, no, no, math is easy" just doesn't help the conversation. So I wanted to write a book that could be read by my friends. My friends that I saw in the grocery store that when I told him I was teaching math were just "oh!" panicked about it. "Oh, I never understood fractions" or "How can a letter be a number?" you know.
All that it just it bubbles up so quickly. So I wanted to write something that was really accessible that parents could read and boy, it's needed so much right now, isn't it, and this time of every parent a teacher?

Dusty Jones: Sure. 

Carrie Cutler: And that teachers could read because, as you all know, when you teach teachers how to teach math, you have to start with where they're at. And some of them have that anxiety as well. And some of them will say things like, well, when I was in second grade my teacher told me I was really a better writer than I was at math. This is 20 years ago and it's still kind of turning around for them. So the book is is probably about 50/50. 50% for teachers with teaching tips and reminders about things they learned when they got their degree, but they didn't have hooks to hang them on yet. Now that they have some hooks and some experience, they can be reminded of these things and apply them maybe a little better in their classrooms. And then 50% is like funny stories about me trying to help my kids with their math homework, or me struggling as a parent myself with all these little boys with short attention spans and horrible fine motor skills and lack of interest in things occasionally. And so I hope that the book is just accessible and warm and welcoming and non-threatening. And the image on the front is of a little family and they're kind of in a yoga pose. And that just kind of signifies that it's, there's a little feeling of Zen in the book and a little thing like a funny and and humor and wisdom and hopefully it'll be helpful to people.

Dusty Jones: So can you share one of those funny stories.

Carrie Cutler: From from my children.

Dusty Jones: Yeah, sure.

Carrie Cutler: Copious children. Well, one of my children is a particularly out of the rectangular prism thinker. And he's my 17 year old now and he's absolutely lovely, but when he was a young boy he really was quite a little turkey. And sitting down to do a homework with him was, was a real challenge. And I remember one time I told him I'm going to do everything they say not to do in parenting books. So I'm going to bribe you to do this math worksheet you have to do. And I put a little cup of chocolate chips by his paper and I walked away. And I said, when, when you get done with the line you can eat chocolate chip and I left. And when I came back, he had not used the chocolate chip for a snack. He had written out the word DONE exclamation point with the chocolate chips. And I thought, you know, kids are hilarious, they're funny, they're fun. They're interested about now. They don't need a worksheet to learn math, they need interesting things to do and, I don't know, he taught me a good lesson that day about encouragement in math and what does it look like, do we have to bribe kids to do math? Of course we don't. Do we have to keep math light and playful and fun? Yes, we do. So he taught me that lesson that day.


Dusty Jones: So can you give us a glimpse into your teaching schedule for the for this coming semester, like what classes are you teaching and and given the current setting that we're in. You and I are both in Texas and the pandemic still here right now. So, what, what is the modality look like and what what are the topics?

Carrie Cutler: Well at the University of Houston, our students have a a full year of student teaching experience. They are in elementary school classrooms for a full year. And during that time, they are also taking their methods classes on campus. So our dean wisely decided that we would not have any classes on campus. This semester because all of the germs from the hundreds of beautiful little children would be coming to campus and that probably wouldn't be a great idea. So we're completely remote I'll be teaching five sections of math methods. Four sections of the math one class which is the first semester and one section of math two. And the really cool thing about our program also is that I get to have my students for a whole year. So we get to know each other really well.

Joel Amidon: Nice.

Carrie Cutler: And I am excited about that. So I haven't met these this math one class get but I can't wait to meet them. I've already emailed with them and where they be mailed back with a lot of great questions and helped me find errors in my Blackboard and links that have gone bad, since I last used them. And I appreciate that. And I always say, oh, thank you so much. I am so glad that you caught that. And I'll fix it right now. I want them to feel like, you know, we're all in this together. I'm learning as they are for sure. Yeah, and it's not the ideal way that I like to teach. I'm super hands on and I push around a cart that gets me made fun of in my building full of math manipulatives. And so teaching without that has been will be a little bit of a different experience. But I hope that it will still be as rich for the students.

Dusty Jones: Yeah, we have several manipulative cart people around where I'm at, but I don't make fun of them because I know that's that's a good thing to do.

Carrie Cutler: You know what I've noticed? The language arts people always say, "Ooh, what's that, what do you do with that?" They're not afraid to ask. 

Dusty Jones: I have three kids and I think I'm busy. You've got, you know, more than twice as many as me. How do you, how do you get things done? I'm talking like in general, but maybe specifically like, do you have specific routines or things that you use to help manage your day and do your best as a teacher and as a parent?

Carrie Cutler: Well, I am super driven. I mean, I think I might be a bit of a workaholic. I don't like to sit still. I don't like to not be working so I have to have some self discipline in that area with all of my kids have her home right now I just have six at home now and having a routine is really important. My children went back to school last Wednesday and we are just starting to get into a routine. I have a spreadsheet that has the daily Zoom meeting links for every kid and it's by the child in one spreadsheet and by the hour in another spreadsheet. So I can quickly see where everybody needs to be. And setting up the spaces has been really good. So, but everybody has their own space. There's no sharing of any technology in our house right now, which I know is a great blessing and a huge equity issue in education right now, but we aren't sharing any devices, everybody's responsible for their own device to make sure it's charged and they keep it where it needs to be. And they're ready to go, and having that routine has been helpful. Now I will start teaching my courses on Monday. So I have not yet figured out exactly how that's going to work. But lucky for me. I'm married to the absolute perfect partner. And he can almost read my mind about what I need and how to keep balance in our home and he and I have worked out this kind of 
yin and yang relationship for 25 years and that really helps. He sees when I'm stressed and he turns into super dad and he takes the kids all day on a Saturday, so I can really focus on my writing or grading or whatever. And I used to go into my office so I wouldn't snack all day. But now, of course, I'm home. So he takes the boys to the pool or riding bikes are exploding exploring the backwoods of Texas. And I found that I really need uninterrupted time to really knock down my to do list and little bits of time aren't as productive for me so he knows that and he makes that large block of time possible by carving it out. And you know what he always tells me that he loves it. He tells me he loves that time with the boys. He doesn't give me a guilt trip. So it's a great system, probably not really that equitable but it works for me.

Dusty Jones: So where do you find some resources. I know, I know you make some of your own and we you know we we kind of build up our own repertoires as we as we go through there. But where do you go when you're looking for stuff online. What's some of your first stops?

Carrie Cutler: Well, I have had to become a bit of more of an expert on this because last fall I wrote a proposal for a grant to do open education resources for my classes along with a few of my colleagues, so we have really had to now really ramp it up and it was perfect timing. And I love finding new resources online and I do it all the time. And last year fortuitously with the pandemic limiting access to face to face PD and resources that were more traditional, I just somehow initiated a new assignment for my undergraduate elementary methods classes and I call it the personal professional development plan. I told my students that even though we have two semesters of methods together, it's not nearly enough time to learn all they need to know or could know about teaching math. It's like I'm giving them a highlights reel when they they really need the full game because it's so good. They need to watch it all so they simply had to keep learning. So we gave this assignment and the assignment is to find something like 10 people to follow on social media, who are mathematics influencers, five blogs to follow and sign up for, they have to watch a webinar and listen to a podcast, and they have to join NCTM and sign up for my MyNCTM. And they work on it all semester and they get comfortable with PD that fits their needs and it came at a great time and now I'm the beneficiary of reading through all of their assignments and finding even more resources that I didn't direct them to, that I didn't know about and they're so savvy about online. I find they're teaching me how to find those resources.

Joel Amidon: I love that. That is, I mean, I don't know. You know, there's enough syllabus staring that happens right now. You know you thinking like trying to create the perfect syllabus or perfect arrangement of readings and you have to remind yourself that hey, they're not going to be done after this class, you know that you have to give them, just exactly what you're doing here, a path to pursue after this class to continue to develop because again we're always we're continuing to learn as well. And so, you know, having that that's i just i love that assignment I that's, I want to institute that with my own students just because just you're instilling that practice of what are you learning what are you learning how can you continue to learn what are these avenues that are out there. What are some good places to go find stuff because eventually they're going to need to go find stuff. And if you're already giving them outlets to look for it. That's that are you know vetted quality outlets like that's that's perfect, that's perfect. I love it.

Carrie Cutler: It's worked out really well. And I've been impressed with the variety of resources that they've chosen some of them have chosen, you know, traditional things like again see Tim website and they read articles and that's great. But some of them don't enjoy reading as much as they like watching a video or a webinar. So helping them to see that there are many right ways to receive professional development is one of my goals.

Dusty Jones: So Carrie, what do you do for fun.

Carrie Cutler: Well, I bet you can imagine that my family fun is the bulk of my fun. My fun revolves around my family. Everything is lively and a big deal when 11 people are doing it together. (Laughter) I have found ways to include them in my work and my passion for math and that makes it fun. So this spring when coven hit. I started a YouTube channel with my youngest sons. And we have made over 60 videos of simple math lessons parents and teachers could do with items around the house and we had a blast making those short videos and the boys got to see a bit about what I love about my work and they often ask if we can do some of their favorite, their greatest hits, math activities together. But I also like to sneak away with my husband to go to rock concerts, back when they used to be such a thing. And we've been married for 25 years it's good to keep the love alive with 80s hair metal and alternative rock right? 

Joel Amidon: Awesome. 

Carrie Cutler: It's goofy. I know, but it's our escape and our fun time together. So to keep balance. I try to spend time with them, but I take Sundays completely off work. I don't even answer emails and that keeps me from letting work intrude on family or fun time. The balance is it's a real challenge for everybody. But I think when you give yourself a chance to just breathe and take stock of your, of your work. And if your other responsibilities and you have grace with yourself. Forgive yourself when you are erring on one side or the other. You can get it all back in the flow.

Dusty Jones: So we'll put your YouTube channel in the show notes. Can you tell us what the your YouTube channel name is? 

Carrie Cutler: It's Carrie Cutler.

Dusty Jones: All right. 

Carrie Cutler: My boys tried to get me to come up with something really clever, but there's every math pun that's ever been made has been made, we have had to start no math puns rule at our house. 

Dusty Jones: (laughs) Okay. So I'm gonna let Eva and Joel ask a final question here.

Eva Thanheiser: So, maybe less a question and more a comment. But as I was listening to you talk, there's a few things I took from that. One is that I would also like to stay in touch with my students more and I haven't really figured out how to do that yet, especially since I get them very, very early when they're doing their prerequisite courses and it's kind of fun to see what happens. I know that several math educators use Twitter in a way to kind of stay in touch, without students having to really make friends. And I've been trying to figure out how to do that and you've motivated me to like go and try to figure out a better way of potentially incorporating Twitter into my classes and then using it to stay in touch with my students.

Carrie Cutler: I think that sounds great, Eva, and this semester I'm going to try to use Twitter even more during my classes, since we're virtual. I'm kind of piloting in my second semester math methods class where I'm going to ask the students to tweet during class. And I'm going to ask them to tweet during our synchronous classes and also when they're doing their asynchronous work to try to build community and will always use the same hashtag math positive mindsets, because that will help us find our tweets more easily and I'm really excited about it. I got the idea from Lori Ladson-Billings and listening to her talk webinar recently and I think it could be a great way for them also to connect with other mathematics educators who are positive and who are good role models for them.

Eva Thanheiser: So you all might get a tweet from me that says, hey, come over to this hashtag and talk to my students.

Carrie Cutler: Oh my gosh. Wouldn't that be fun.

Joel Amidon: Carrie, I guess my question is, like, given all the, all the things that you have done over the past you know since the spring semester or thinking about this upcoming semester. What's the one thing that you would pull out being like, you know what, this is something that is like a game changer for me. Is it one of the assignments that you already mentioned, is there anything that you've done with the Twitter, the social media or anything that maybe didn't get mentioned that you would say, hey, this is something that I'm doing that's been pretty influential to my teaching.

Carrie Cutler: Well, that is a great question. I don't know if there's any one kind of assignment that stands out or any one you know lecture that stands out, but something that I have come to really appreciate about my work is that the University of Houston is very diverse it's a Hispanic and an Asian serving institution and my classes are around 60% first generation college students. And I love those students. They are so eager to learn, they're hungry for success and to lift their families. And when I applied for that university wide Teaching Award. I had to gather letters of recommendation from former and current students. And when I received those letters back. I was really struck on humbled by their kind words and how they were applying what they'd learned in my classes and that connection was so important. Let me just tell you what one, one of my students said I cut and pasted it so I could read it to you guys. I thought you'd like it. She said, "At a time when it is more important than ever for young women to see a powerful woman having a personal and professional life, I was blessed to have the honor of being a student of Dr. Cutler's. unknown to her. She is an inspiration to many of her female students, myself included. I truly feel that this balance of work and family, which she generously shares with us, helps her to more deeply connect with our students. She nurtured us with encouragement when we didn't even know we needed it, and gave us grace when the load was heavy." That I think is just so meaningful. Every semester I have my math two students write a letter to a former teacher to tell them I'm going to be a teacher. And part of its because of you. We don't tell teachers, thank you enough. Especially if we work with little children, little children don't ever think to say thank you. So for us to reach out to a former teacher in gratitude and to let them know that they had an impact on us and our future is to me, really important. That's one of my favorite assignments and I don't grade it without taking off my mascara first. I always cry.

Dusty Jones: That comment would probably keep me going for a decade, I think, like if I saw something like that.

Carrie Cutler: Have it printed out and it is stuck to my computer at work.

Joel Amidon: Beautiful.

Dusty Jones: Well, thank you so much. Carrie, for joining us. I'm going to make sure that people can look in the show notes and see links to your YouTube channel your website and also your book, Math Positive Mindsets: How to Grow a Child's Mind without Losing Yours. I just wanted to say that title again. I really like it.

Carrie Cutler: Thank you so much. I had a great time talking with you all. Hope you have a math positive year.

Dusty Jones: Thanks. And thanks again for listening to the Teaching Math Teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope that you're able to implement something you just heard and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators.