Let's Talk about the Math Standards that the Board of Education just Passed

On Monday, I attended the last hearing for the Health Standards and Math Standards. The Board of Education passed both unanimously. I was actually disappointed on both counts, as the opponents of the Health Standards had some great arguments on the need to add information about caregiving as well as human trafficking to the health standards. Obviously, I was disappointed with their vote in favor of the new math standards. Especially since Crystal McMachen testified about an issue with vertical alignment in 6th through 8th grade. Some of the board members were concerned about what she pointed out. They expect the SD Department of Education to go through and fix the issue. I hope the Board of Education follows up on it.

One thing that I haven't brought up about my dislike of the new standards is the lack of emphasis on data analysis and probability. The timing of this recent article from TIME magazine seems appropriate. In fact, if you read the article, it indicates that we should focus more on data and financial literacy and statistical reasoning. It says we shouldn't focus on rote math--but our new standards seem to do more of that. In fact, the article states:

        Our schools could teach the math that matters, that shapes what we watch, read, and believe. Math underlies consequential financial and healthcare decisions that all Americans make. Math can help civil society flourish, or our ignorance about math could tear us apart. The right math can engage, empower, and elevate students. We could equip our populace with the math skills to navigate life-defining challenges. 

I will say this--I think that our current standards could be improved, and I have some ideas on how to go about doing that. However, I would not have done what the Dept of Education did. I would have started with what we have and worked from there--that isn't what happened. They completely rewrote everything and then asked the review committee to make revisions. Teachers should have been involved in the writing process, rather than just revising what they were given.

We are not the only state that is rewriting its math standards. North Carolina recently redid theirs. Their proposed standards are also being met with criticism because they are actually emphasizing more data science and placing less emphasis on geometry. I will give North Carolina credit for creating some progression documents throughout the process. Our Dept of Education still needs to make a crosswalk with the old standards, and then they will need to create the unpacked standards. This will be a lot of work so I hope that they are ready for that.

The SD Dept of Education keeps bringing up a $3.7 million grant to help with the transition to the new standards. However, this grant that the Dept of Education received is an SPDG grant, which is funded by the U.S. Dept of Education, and is to "assist State educational agencies (SEAs) in reforming and improving their systems for personnel preparation and professional development in early intervention, educational, and transition services to improve results for children with disabilities." In fact, the SD Dept of Education has already funded 8 schools in SD with this grant money. Each school will receive about $125,000, so that is $1 million of the $3.7 million. I also found a contract to Measurement Incorporated in Albany, New York, who will provide the evaluation of the grant. The contract allocates over $206,000 to evaluation of the project. It will be interesting to see what the Dept of Education does with the remaining $2.5 million over 5 years.

All in all, I am disappointed that there was unanimous approval by the Board of Education, but I did everything that I could possibly do. I worked hard to provide accurate data and information to the Board. And I would do it again because it was the right thing to do. If our math scores go down when they were holding steady, I think it will be because now there is a misalignment with our state assessment, the Smarter Balanced Assessment for grades 3 through 8, and the Math ACT for 11th graders.

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 7

In Steven Yoder’s article in the Hechinger Report, Dr. Monte Meyerink, Assistant Professor at Northern State University, indicated that simplifying standards is a trend and we won’t know the effects for 15 to 20 years. The proposed SD high school standards are largely based on those from Arkansas. Arkansas actually simplified its standards in 2023. So, how are they doing with their simplified standards?

To give you some historical perspective, in 2010, Arkansas adopted the Common Core Math Standards, just like most other states. They started using these during the 2011-2012 school year. When national assessments came out, there were two assessments used for Common Core, the Smarter Balanced Assessment (which we still use in SD) and the PARCC assessment, which Arkansas adopted. Arkansas decided to leave the PARCC group in 2015, and started using the ACT Aspire assessment instead. Shortly after that, they modified their standards and called them the Arkansas Math Standards, but they were largely the Common Core. These “new” standards were fully implemented in the 2017 – 2018 school year. Finally, in 2023, Arkansas decided to “simplify” their standards and move away from the Common Core. Their simplified standards match the Common Core about 37.4%, according to the Edgate Standards Comparison site. They began full implementation of the new standards during the 2023-2024 school year. At that same time, they changed to a different state assessment, partially because the ACT Aspire was being discontinued. Their new assessment, Arkansas Teaching, Learning, and Assessment System (ATLAS)

While the ACT Aspire served as more of a measurement of college and career readiness, the ATLAS assessment measures how well the students perform on their grade-level standards. Those are definitely two different ways to view things. The ATLAS seems to be more similar to the Smarter Balanced Assessment that South Dakota uses, as it focuses on grade-level standards, and it has proficiency levels: Limited, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. The Smarter Balanced proficiency levels are Below Standard, Near Standard, Met Standard, and Exceeded Standard. In both assessments, states would like students at Levels 3 and 4, indicating that students have at least met their grade-level standards.

I did some digging and looked at the state assessment scores for Arkansas for grades 3 through 8. In this post, I am only going to look at grades 4, 6, and 8. The graph below indicates the percentage of Arkansas students in each grade who are at Levels 3 or 4 in mathematics. 

The big change between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 years was the change in the state assessments. So, it is hard to make these comparisons because the assessment changed to a completely different test. Again, the new test was created by educators in Arkansas, and those educators worked on the assessment as well as the cut scores. So, for the last two years, those students have been evaluated on how well they understand the “simplified” math standards. The same data is below in table form.

Looking at the data more closely, you also notice a large drop in proficiency levels between 2018-2019 and 2020-2021—the year of COVID-19 data is missing because the tests were not administered that year. But the drop the following year is likely due to a loss of content knowledge during COVID-19. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on student learning throughout the country. The good news for Arkansas is that the proficiency levels for these three grades all increased during the 2024-2025 school year. 

Since SD gives the Smarter Balanced Assessment, which is similar to the ATLAS in the sense that it measures their knowledge of the standards, let’s look at a comparison between states for these same two years. SD has standards more than 80% similar to the Common Core and Arkansas’ “simplified” standards are about 37% similar to the Common Core.

The table below compares the two states. You can see that the percentage of students at or above proficiency is about the same for Grade 6, but for Grades 4 and 8, SD has outperformed Arkansas in the past two years. Keep in mind these are different assessments but both are designed to measure students understanding of the math standards at their grade level.

Our Department of Education & Governor Rhoden wants us to “simplify” the standards so they look more like Arkansas’s. In fact, the proposed high school standards for Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II are very similar to those from Arkansas. I don’t think “simplifying the standards” is a good move for students in South Dakota! Our students and teachers deserve better. 

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 6

Did you watch the GOP Primary Debate on Keloland last Tuesday? When they got to the topic of Education, our current governor, Larry Rhoden, mentioned ways that the state was improving K - 12 education, including the Science of Reading. Then he went on to say, "We have gotten rid of Common Core, we have written new math standards so our parents can be involved and engaged in their kids’ education. We have went from Common Core to Common Sense, and that’s a few of the things we have done in South Dakota. The one thing we won’t do is what other states have done as far as lowering the bar when their test scores are not what they should be.”

Wait--he was talking about the proposed math standards as if they have already been approved. The Board of Education has one more hearing scheduled for May 4 in Rapid City at the DoubleTree by Hilton at 10 AM Mountain Time. Does the Board of Education know that Governor Rhoden is speaking as if the proposed math standards will be passed? At the February 23rd hearing in Pierre, President of the Board, Steve Perkins, made it very clear that the Board is not just a rubber stamp. I hope the governor understands that there is one more hearing and the Board will vote at that hearing.

In other news, the SD Dept of Education has updated the proposed standards and included a set of Precalculus Standards instead of the 4th-year standards in the current set. One thing I noticed from the latest version is that there is still an error in one of the Grade 5 standards.

5.G.14 Understand the 𝑥-coordinate in an ordered pair is the horizontal movement and the 𝑦-coordinate in an order pair is the vertical movement. 

In the last edition of the public comments, on page 6, Melanie Jacobson points out that 5.G.14 has an error when she says, "This standard has a typo.  In both instances, the standard needs to refer to 'an ordered pair' instead of 'the order pair.' The correct terminology is 'ordered pair.' " Jacobson's comment occurred before the November meeting and while they fixed the first instance of "ordered pair" and the "an" before the second one, they never fixed the second instance of "ordered pair." Then, another educator, Ann Noyes, made the comment on page 21 about the same standard when she said, "In the proposed standard 5.G.14, the last part of the standard should read “and the y-coordinate in an ordered pair…”

Yet, the text copied above is from the more recent draft of the proposed standards. The Dept of Education has asked for specific comments, but then when they are given very specific comments, they aren't fixing them. The other part about this specific standard that I don't like is that it refers to the x-coordinate as "horizontal movement" and the y-coordinate as "vertical movement." The coordinates are a location in the Cartesian plane, where the x-coordinate represents the location in relation to the y-axis (the line x = 0), and the y-coordinate represents the location in relation to the x-axis (the line y = 0).

I noticed the issue with this standard in January and saw the public comment from Melanie Jacobson. Then, when I saw another comment about the standard from Ann Noyes, I figured that it would get fixed. However, it still has the ordered pair issue and the movement issue. I will submit another public comment to see if it gets fixed before the May 4th hearing.

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 5

Yesterday, The Hechinger Report released an article related to the South Dakota proposed math standards. The author, Steven Yoder, contacted me in early November to discuss his idea for an article focused on the Archimedes Standards. I spoke with Mr. Yoder on two occasions and emailed with him a few times as he was writing the article. I didn't see the final article until it came out, and there are some statements in the article that puzzle me.

From the article, Dr. Joseph Graves, SD Secretary of Education said that "teachers and parents don’t understand the current standards because they’re so complicated. 'Our whole goal was to simplify, simplify, simplify.'" The Department of Education keeps saying that parents and teachers don't understand the standards. Where are they getting that information? Did they do a survey? Is it anecdotal evidence?

The Archimedes Standards were produced by the National Association of Scholars. This conservative group is urging states to eliminate Common Core math. They got the help of Jonathan Gregg, an Assistant Professor in Education from Hillsdale College, to write the Archimedes Standards. Yes, this is the same college that helped craft the current SD Social Studies Standards. Dr. Graves liked the simplicity of the Archimedes Standards so "last summer his department, using the Archimedes document and a few other state standards as examples, produced the dramatically slimmed-down rewrite." The proposed high school standards draw heavily from the Arkansas Math Standards.

Some SD teachers do like the simplicity of the proposed standards. Susan Fairchild, a Watertown High School math teacher and member of the committee, said, "As a new teacher, you don’t have to try and figure out what all of these fancy words mean.” I am not sure what she means by "fancy words?" Does she mean mathematics vocabulary? All teachers who complete an accredited teacher preparation program take math content courses and a math methods course. Vocabulary is very important in teaching and learning mathematics. In fact, a recent study indicates that students perform better in math when teachers use math vocabulary.

Monte Meyerink, an Assistant Professor of Education at Northern State University, was also on the committee and provided research to the advisory group. Most of the research articles focused on intervention techniques that help students with disabilities. In The Hechinger Report article, it says about Meyerink, "He said he doesn’t know of research supporting the connection between standards’ lucidity and student proficiency. But simplifying standards is a new trend, one whose effects on student outcomes won’t be understood for another 15 or 20 years."

Are we really experimenting with standards that we won't know if they will work for 15 to 20 years? The students in SD deserve better than that. Our teachers deserve better than that. I am pleading with the Board of Education to NOT approve the proposed standards on May 4th. I request that the Department of Education start the revision process over and include more stakeholders in the process.  

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 4

A November 22, 2025 article in The Dakota Scout talks about the U.S. Mint no longer producing pennies, which led the SD Education Secretary, Dr. Joe Graves, to talk about how money is used in early grades to teach math. In fact, counting pennies and knowing that they are worth 1 cent is a Kindergarten standard in the Current Standards. In the Proposed Standards, there are two standards listed in Kindergarten related to coins and counting.

• K.M.6 Identify pennies and dimes by name and value. 
• K.M.7 Count groups of pennies and groups of dimes by their values. (coins not combined) 

Later in the article, Dr. Graves was critical of our current standards, which are largely based on Common Core Standards, when he said: "...We believe that changing the math standards so that we can get away from a very complicated common core based system to one that is, that treats math like math, will improve that as well. So that's the direction that we're trying to go in and make."

However, a little over a year ago, at a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting of the SD State Legislature, Dr. Graves seemed more positive about Common Core. He talks about how math involves two skill sets: calculation and number sense. He goes on to say that he believes that some people can do calculations but not have number sense; and that people can have number sense but not do calculations. While I disagree with the second part of his statement, he does emphasize that number sense is important and that doing well in math involves both skill sets.

During that meeting, one of the legislators, Taffy Howard, asks, "Have we at least recognized that Common Core does not work?" Graves responds:

    "...Common Core fed deeply into the sense that we need to have number sense and an overall global understanding of what we're doing versus the ability to actually do calculation or decoding and those kinds of things. So, actually to me at least, Common Core is a great example of one side of the equation."

It seems that Dr. Graves thinks that Common Core has helped with improving number sense. I agree with that. Number sense is so important. In fact, a recent opinion piece in the New York Times talks about how the current U.S. administration tends to exaggerate numbers, and they do this because they must believe that Americans won't know enough to critique them. This is why we need people with number sense so that they can look at data and understand enough math to know when something doesn't make sense.

What has happened in the last year to make our Department of Education think that we need to change our math standards? When Shannon Malone gave the rebuttal to the opponents' testimony at the Board of Education hearing on February 23, she said, "This department is committed to replacing Common Core with Common Sense."

If we go back to that Dakota Scout article, it quotes Governor Rhoden echoing Dr. Graves criticism of Common Core when he says, "When I think about where we came from and where we are headed, I've surmised it by saying we're going to trade common core for common sense."

This makes me wonder if Governor Rhoden is the one who wants to get rid of our current math standards. This doesn't make me feel great, especially since this is an election year, and he is in a primary race with three other candidates. Today, the first polls came out and Rhoden is polling in third place. 

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 3

At the SD Board of Education meeting in Pierre on February 23, 2026, Shannon Malone was tasked with introducing the proposed math standards to the board, but she gave the floor to Dr. Monte Meyerink from Northern State University, who presented this slide show. Dr. Meyerink, who was a member of both the Math Advisory Group and the Standards Review Committee, presented the research that he said helped inform the writing of the standards. The slide below illustrates his role in the standards revision process. His last bullet point leads to a question from me: Where is this draft standards progression document?

It isn’t in the current version of the proposed standards. It wasn’t in the first version that the Board of Education discussed at the October 15, 2025 meeting, and it isn’t in the second version that was discussed at the November 10, 2025 meeting. I would love to see the standards progression document, as would all SD math teachers. I think many teachers are concerned about vertical alignment in the proposed standards, so this document might alleviate that concern.

If you look closely at the first version and the second and third versions of the proposed standards, you might also notice that the Introduction section in the first version is now missing from the second and third versions. That introduction explained the “collaborative process” that they used for the revision process. I do have some issues with some statements in that introduction. For example, the last sentence of the second paragraph says, “This group included K–12 educators and administrators from districts across the state, as well as representatives from higher education educator preparation programs.” I have seen the email list of the people in the math advisory group, and I think that there was only ONE representative (Dr. Meyerink) from higher education educator preparation programs.

The last sentence at the bottom of the first page also caught my attention. It says, “In lieu of identifying essential standards, the Department is creating a supplemental progression document that clearly outlines the development of mathematical skills across grade levels, organized by specific concepts.”  That sounds like the document that is mentioned in the last bullet on Dr. Meyerink’s slide. Where is that document? Again, I really feel like it would be helpful to all interested parties to see it, and it really should be included in the proposed standards.

It was nice to finally see the detailed list of research that Dr. Meyerink provided the group. I did read through the articles. The first three articles are all about research on math intervention techniques, primarily interventions used with students who have disabilities. This confused me because state mathematics standards are written for ALL students. I am not sure why that research would be used to write standards. The last article is about Direct Instruction (DI), and while it covers research done over 50 years (which Dr. Graves mentioned in the first hearing), those years are 1966 to 2016. Also, I am not convinced that DI is the best way for students to learn math. This quote from the article stood out to me, “…DI assumes all students can learn new material when (a) they have mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills and (b) the instruction is unambiguous.”  Since COVID-19, we see many students in classrooms that have gaps in their math knowledge, so they won’t have necessarily “mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills.” This poses a huge problem for teachers across our state as they need intervention techniques that they can implement while students are learning new material.

At the October 15th hearing, Shannon Malone mentioned that the Department of Education had just received a five-year $3.7 million SPDG grant. SPDG stands for State Personnel Development Grant. These grants are awarded from the Special Education Division of the U.S. Department of Education. On the U.S. Spending website, it says that the objectives of these grants are:

To assist State educational agencies in reforming and improving their systems for personnel preparation and professional development in early intervention, educational and transition services, to improve results for children with disabilities. As used in this program, "personnel" means special education teachers, regular education teachers, principals, administrators, related services personnel, paraprofessionals, and early intervention personnel serving infants, toddlers, preschoolers, or children with disabilities, except where a particular category of personnel, such as related services personnel, is identified.

So, the grant that they say will help implement the proposed standards is a special education grant. Dr. Meyerink’s research on intervention techniques now makes more sense. Now, my hard question is: How is this all related to the Standards Revision?

I want to remind everyone of the Goal of the Math Standards stated in the Board of Education Hearing, shown in the image below. We want ALL SD students to be mathematically proficient and able to problem-solve, think critically, communicate, and reason. I feel strongly that our current standards do that.

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards Part 2

Today I attended the SD Board of Education Standards Meeting to once again testify as an Opponent of the proposed math standards. In her rebuttal to the opposition testimony, Shannon Malone, Director of the Division of Learning and Instruction, mentioned that they have made several changes that we have suggested and that they have been listening to us. And, I agree with that. At the end, she paraphrased Governor Rhoden, from a November 22, 2025 article in The Dakota Scout when she said, "This department is committed to replacing Common Core with Common Sense."

I know what Common Core Math is, but I have no idea what is meant by Common Sense Math. Of course, I went to Google and here is what I found. There is a website called commonsensemath.com, where it seems that they are trying to sell study aids to help students learn math. I cannot really tell who runs this site, but, guess what, their help is aligned to Common Core Math. I also noticed that they did reference some NCTM articles on the site. Then I went to commonsensemath.org, which redirects to a site run by Edric Cane, who has written some books about teaching math. He has a PhD from the University of Michigan, although I don't know what content area his degree is in. He has taught math and has some interesting ideas. In addition, the Standards for Mathematical Practice came up when I googled common sense math standards. That was interesting to me since those are part of the Common Core Standards.

But, I have digressed a bit as I wonder why Governor Rhoden thinks that we need to get rid of our current standards, which are largely based on the Common Core? It is an election year and he is in a primary race for the Republican nomination in June. What if he loses the primary? We are then stuck with his "common sense math" standards if the Board approves them.

Maybe the data shows that we need new standards? Nope--the data actually shows otherwise. Table 1 shows the top twelve ranking states on the 2024 NAEP in 4th-grade math. The second column in the table explains how close each state's math standards are to Common Core. Notice that South Dakota's current math standards match Common Core more than 80%. More importantly, South Dakota's 4th graders are 9th in the nation on this assessment. 

Table 1: 2024 4th-Grade Math NAEP Top Twelve States

Then I looked at the 8th-grade math rankings, which is shown in Table 2 below. Again, South Dakota ranks 6th in the nation! Now let's look at states that are in both lists: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Of these seven states, five of them (71%) have math standards that match the Common Core more than 80%. So, it seems that the Common Core Standards are working just fine!

Table 2: 2024 8th-Grade Math NAEP Top Ten States

Again, I am going to ask the hard question: If our current standards are enough for our students to be placing in the top ten on the 2024 NAEP Assessment, why do they need to be rewritten? Notice that I said rewritten rather than revised. A revision would look more similar to what we have now, and the proposed ones do NOT resemble our current standards. Here are the current SD K - 12 math standards if you want to compare.

Data for the tables came from the following sites.

https://edgate.com/standards/us-comparisons 

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards Part 1

First of all, I want to thank the members of the Math Standards Review Committee for all of the work they have done and continue to do to try to get the proposed K - 12 math standards where they need to be. They were given quite a task and having only 2 days to work together in Pierre really wasn't enough time to do what they wanted--at least some members of the committee feel that way. I know that they are continuing to work on the standards, based on public feedback. 

I also want to thank all the wonderful math educators and parents that have submitted feedback on the standards. A special shout out to the Watertown school district for 3.5 pages of feedback on the K - 4 standards! In total, there are about 25 pages of feedback, but the link above has some comments cut off so it could be longer. The proposed standards themselves only make up 37 pages so the fact that there are 25 pages of public comment is incredible, and I want to thank everyone who has contributed comments. 

However, the fact that there are 25 pages of comments on a 37-page document says something about the document itself. It seems to say that there is a lot of stuff missing! While I understand why some wanted to "simplify" the standards, it seems like now they might be too simple. 

Math is a complicated subject and it is difficult to teach well. I doubt that people will disagree with that statement. Our current standards often give examples of how to teach some of the standards, which is helpful to teachers, especially new teachers. For reference, the current standards are about 81 pages. So, we have lost 44 pages, and I feel like that is a lot of information to lose.

If we look at states that do well on the 4th grade and 8th grade math portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the length of their K - 12 mathematics standards documents, we see that they tend to be long, as illustrated in Table 1. I want to point out that when counting pages, I didn't count the introduction pages or appendices, just the pages with the standards and any explanations at the beginning of the grade level.

Table 1: States that score well on the NAEP and page length of their math standards

Again, math isn't easy to teach, and teachers need guidance to help students learn and achieve their full potential. Minnesota recently rewrote their standards and their new document is actually longer, not shorter. Another thing that I find troubling is that I feel like there should be more emphasis on Data Analysis in our standards because we live in a data-driven world.

Where Everyone is a Bright Spot

It has been four years since my last post on this blog. I had recently been chatting with my students in our Technology class and they encouraged me to get back to it. Apparently, I have a lot to say!

Once again, I just got back from the 2026 SD STEM Ed conference in Huron, SD. This conference was very different for me because I am currently serving as President of SDCTM, so I had a lot more responsibilities. While I was nervous, everything went well, and I stayed on script (mostly).

Some of the highlights for me were:

• Meeting RunningHorse Livingston and getting to interact with him and hear his story! Storytelling is so important for our students and I think we need to share our own stories more.
• Getting to see John Golden, one of my Twitter friends, and participate in one of his sessions, with my students and alumna.
• Hosting important conversations about the Proposed SD K - 12 Math Standards. A shout-out to the Department of Education for bravely showing up to listen to awesome math teachers.
• Watching alumni present and shine--we had three of them present. Colin Marsh had a session on Building Thinking Classrooms, where people could share their journey, asking for advice, and give tips. Leanne Holdorf did a session on how she uses Breakout Boxes in her classes--with a breakout for everyone to solve. Emily Siemonsma shared lessons that she is creating from her experience working at SURF, where students have to determine airflow at certain places underground based on the information given.
• Presenting awards to some awesome people and getting to witness awesome teachers get recognized for all they do every day!
• Hanging out with some of the best math, science, and STEM teachers in South Dakota!

I stayed an extra night so that I could watch project pitches by teachers in the STEM Leadership Cohort, funded by the E-CORE project. I am involved in the E-CORE project and I wanted to hear about projects these awesome teachers had decided to lead. And, let's just say, I was so inspired by them! They were vulnerable, creative, and so passionate about their projects. It is going to be on my list of things to do after the conference every year!

One of the teachers wanted to acknowledge others for their hard work, dedication, and inspiration, so she had one of our friends, Kevin Smith, create a thank you card. I don't think it is on the website yet, but he has some amazing items! 

I want to thank all educators and exhibitors who attended the 2026 SD STEM Ed conference. You are all bright spots, which we desperately need in education right now!

Crisis in Education: We Can No Longer Sit Back and Watch

In the August 2014 IMPACT State publication, I wrote a commentary called, “Where have all the teachers gone?” While I am not usually one to say “I told you so,” I feel like that commentary could be published again right now and it would still be very relevant.

Last week there were numerous articles about teachers leaving the profession in record numbers and fewer students enrolling in education programs. These include:

From CNN, “Teachers are leaving and few people want to join the field. Experts are sounding the alarm”

From the Wall Street Journal, “Teachers are quitting, and companies are hot to hire them”

From NPR, “More than half of teachers are looking for the exits, a poll says”

Hopefully, as citizens, we are getting the message. Teachers are burned out, they are tired, they are not appreciated, and they are not paid well. For a moment, put yourself in a teacher’s shoes or even better yet, substitute in a classroom. If you were a teacher now, would you stay in the profession?

Many of you will say that this burnout is because of the Covid-19 pandemic and while that has certainly played a role, the fact is that teachers are not respected. Well, except between March and June of 2020 when everyone was praising teachers for all of their hard work to educate our children remotely. A headline from the Washington Post says, 'Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars’ — Shonda Rhimes, plus other homeschooling parents on appreciating educators.

Yet, even then, some predicted that the appreciation and respect for teachers wouldn’t last. The Economic Policy Institute asked the question “will it give them a voice in education and their working conditions?” Looking at what teachers in South Dakota are enduring, I believe the answer to that question is NO.

In 2016, the South Dakota legislature passed a bill that would increase our state sales tax by a half-cent to increase teacher pay in the state. This led to SD ranking 48^th in teacher pay, but that was short-lived as we are now back to being 50^th out of 51 in teacher pay.

What can we do? Here are some ideas, many of which are the same ones that I listed in 2014.

1. Respect teachers as professionals.
2. Increase teacher pay, not just the amount of money being allocated to the district.
3. Support teachers—send a thank you email, ask them how they are doing, substitute in the classroom.
4. Provide good mentoring to teachers in their first one to three years. Maybe each new teacher should have two mentors, one in their district that may or may not be in their content area and one outside the district in their content area.
5. Give new teachers an extra preparation period during the school day during their first and second year.

This is the third school year that teachers have had to deal with the pandemic, on top of their regular workload. Except for healthcare workers, many professionals have been allowed to work remotely for their health and safety. We have put teachers in the direct line of fire by not mandating masks in classrooms and giving up on contact tracing.

I just returned from the South Dakota STEM Education Conference, which is co-hosted by the South Dakota Council of Mathematics and the South Dakota Science Teachers Association. The conference was last held in February 2020. Every time I attend this conference I am always inspired by the many excellent math and science teachers in South Dakota. During Saturday's lunch, teachers who plan to retire this year were asked to stand up—everyone looked around the room with worried faces and miraculously no one stood.

There is a crisis in our state and our nation in education. Contact your representatives, substitute in a classroom, run for school board, etc. None of us can afford to sit back and watch because education is the future of our country and that future requires good teachers.

A New Normal

 

Before the fall semester began, I was very apprehensive about how it would go. I was worried about contracting COVID-19 and how that would affect my family. I was dreading wearing a mask, having to use a microphone to teach, and having a video camera in the room. I figured that we would be online within 3 weeks of starting the semester so why bother starting in person.

Today is the end of 5.5 weeks, and my classes are still meeting in person. Despite all of my fears, the semester is going well. I love being back in the classroom—there is nothing better than engaging with students in person. My students are learning a lot and are working hard, both at school and at staying safe by wearing a mask.

No, this semester is not the same as last fall because students aren’t studying in the building, hanging out in the Math Education Library, and faculty’s office doors are shut. But it is wonderful to be back on campus, to see my students in person, and to be in the classroom teaching. I have gotten used to the classroom technology and it seems to be working well for my students.

As the number of COVID cases rises dramatically in my state, I still feel safe going to work. More importantly, I look forward to going to work to see my students and to help them learn more mathematics. Fall 2020 is definitely a unique semester, but it has been a great one so far.

Silent No More

I have watched the events of the last week unfold and I have been silent; as a white privileged female what can I possibly say? I will never understand what BIPOC endure on a daily basis. However, I am very empathetic and after today’s actions, I can no longer be silent.

I am a teacher educator so my job is to prepare math teachers for their future classrooms. So I MUST speak up to set an example for my students. We all need to stand up for what is right, which is something that I have always done, even when it wasn’t popular. You can ask some of my siblings about that.

And while we are supporting #BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19 is killing thousands of Americans every day. In fact, these two things are tied together because COVID-19 affects BIPOC more than white citizens. Both the pandemic and the blatant racism have been fueled by an incompetent leader. The fact that he went into a bunker and shut the lights off at the White House tells us that he is not the leader that we need right now. In fact, he makes things worse every day and it needs to stop. I am pleading with all of you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to use the 25^th Amendment.

Even though the calendar says that it is 2020, I feel like our country has regressed 50 to 60 years. In my opinion, this regression has been caused by our current president. He has gotten away with being racist so some of our citizens think that this behavior is okay. It is NOT okay. Everyone in our country deserves to be treated fairly and justly.

I fear for the future of our country, for my BIPOC family and friends. We cannot stand by and let our country be ruined—we must stand up peacefully and take back America.

After Week 1 of Teaching Online

So my students and I have survived the first week of online classes. Some takeaways from this week are:

• Zoom is a great platform for synchronous classes and is easy for class discussions if you have less than 15 students.
• The breakout rooms feature on Zoom is great, but pre-assigning students to rooms hasn’t worked well for me yet. Some students ended up in the correct room, but I had to manually place most of the students in the correct room. It is still a great way for them to have small group discussion.
• Time seems to go faster than expected. In my 2-hour class on Tuesday, I intended to have discussion for the first hour and then give them an assignment for the second hour. We ended up talking the entire time. I definitely need to change that this coming week as many of my students have class from 8 to 12:15 that day and all classes were synchronous!
• In History of Math, I wanted to use COVID-19 as part of our conversation so we did a problem on Monday, where I asked them if every person in South Dakota could have a circle of radius 2 meters around them without the circles overlapping. And, we do have enough room for that—even extra to invite some friends.
• Then I asked the History of Math students to post on the Discussion Board their thoughts on what impact they believe Covid-19 will have on the History of Mathematics. It was an interesting discussion and I appreciated reading their perspectives.
• In our Assessment course, we had our annual Homework Debate, where we assign students to be either Pro Homework or Con Homework. Then they have to argue their side. They did a great job, but it wasn’t as fun as it would have been in person. We were all in agreement that there needs to be some middle ground in homework so they are writing their homework philosophies and homework policies for homework this week.

One question that I have consistently asked my students every class is “how are you doing?” They seem to be doing well, but some of them feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the homework and coursework this week. I am not sure that university faculty understand that we cannot possibly cover the same material as we had originally planned this semester. This is leaving the students tired, overwhelmed, and anxious. I was talking with a middle school teacher and she said that her administrator told them to “take what we were planning and cut it in half, and then cut it in half and assign that.”

How does one tell a colleague that perhaps you are expecting too much of your students without upsetting them?

The Assignment That Keeps on Giving

Every fall I teach the Geometry for Teachers course at South Dakota State University.  It is the first math content/pedagogy course that our Mathematics with Teaching Specialization majors take. So I find this class especially important because I am starting to build their foundation as a mathematics teacher. Dr. Christine Larson, my awesome colleague, loves that “I get to break them in first.”

The first assignment in the course every fall is a journal entry, where they are to answer the question: Why do you want to be a math teacher? I love lots of assignments in my geometry course, but this is my favorite for two reasons:

• I get to know the students better; and
• They always give me hope.

This semester was no different. First of all, I was really impressed that they all had their assignments submitted by 11:30 when they weren’t due until 1:30. Second of all, I am impressed with these students as people. From this journal entry, I can tell that they are kind, generous, thoughtful and caring. The main reasons that they say they want to be math teachers are: making an impact on students’ lives, having had teachers who influenced them, and sharing their passion and love for mathematics.

Every fall after reading this assignment, I get renewed with hope because we have some really awesome future math teachers. They see the importance of teaching, value what teachers do despite the fact that the pay is poor, and pursue this career despite their family’s opposition.

It helps me realize the importance of my job as a math teacher educator and it makes me so proud of them. While I know some of the students in this class as they are my advisees or I have had them in other classes, I don’t know all of them well. However, I am looking forward to another great fall semester in the geometry for teachers course with these intelligent, thoughtful young adults!

Highlights of the Kansas City NCTM Regional Conference

I am behind on my grading, but I feel that right now I need to reflect on the NCTM Regional conference in Kansas City.

First of all, if you are a Mathematics Teacher Educator, I highly recommend that you take your preservice teachers to an NCTM regional or state conference.  These conferences are a great place to get your students engaged in the culture of becoming a great mathematics teacher. I am not downplaying the idea of taking them to the national conference, but I think that they might be overwhelmed by the size. State and regional conferences are smaller and allow for more interpersonal interaction. 

For me, one of the best parts of this trip was the conversations in the minivan to/from the conference.  Sometimes they were about math and sometimes they were not, but these students bonded with each other in a way that cannot be done elsewhere.  If you really want to get to know someone, you take a road trip with them!

Some of the highlights of the conference:

• Presenting with my wonderful colleague and friend, Dr. Chris Larson.  Our presentations were well attended and our students heard some reviews of the one on Inverse Functions.  They overheard some teachers talking about this great session on inverse functions they attended so the students asked them what time the session was—sure enough it was our session.  The best part was that our students said to these teachers, “those are our professors!”
• Observing and listening to our @SDState preservice math teachers as they absorb lots of information, get excited about free manipulatives, and most importantly, start their journey in their profession.  I always brag that we have the best math certification program at @SDState, but more importantly, we have the best students!  They are what make our program great.
• Meeting people from #MTBoS that I have followed for years on Twitter in person, Justin Aion, Annie Forest, John Golden, and Heather Kohn! And meeting new people in #MTBoS, Joel Bezaire, Will Gunn, Pam Harris, and Cindy Johnson. This group has changed my life as an educator.  I keep trying to convince my students of the importance of connecting with fellow math educators on Twitter—I think the conference may have helped those students understand what I mean.
• Seeing the interview that NCTM did with my amazing colleague, Dr. Larson.  She knocked the interview out of the park.  Check it out at https://twitter.com/NCTM/status/1058412868612186112
• Growing as an educator. Educators have so many wonderful ideas and listening to them share what they do in their classroom makes me better at my job.  I always tell my students, “if you think that you are done growing as a teacher, then you should probably retire.” As a teacher, you should always be learning new things.

Thanks to the KC NCTM Regional committee for accepting our presentations and thanks to my students for attending the conference with me and making me think about what I can do to become a better math teacher educator.

Am I convincing my preservice teachers of the power of Twitter?

I am doing a study with Dr. Christopher Parrish from the University of South Alabama on the use of the #MTBoS community with preservice teachers.  So, I asked my students to get a Twitter account if they didn’t already have one and they have had a couple of assignments with Twitter.  The first one was to follow 10 math people on Twitter and share why they chose to follow them.  The second one was to observe a Twitter Chat.  I didn’t want to force them to participate in one as I felt it would be too intimidating.  However, I thought following along with one would expose them to what a Twitter chat was like, without the pressure of participation.

Throughout this semester, I have sensed the skepticism of my students of Twitter being helpful to them as a future teacher.  However, after they completed their reflections on the Twitter chat, I feel hopeful that they may actually see the potential of Twitter.  Here are some comments from their reflections that stood out to me:

I think it is unique, fun, and interesting that teachers from all over the country hop onto Twitter and chat together! I think that it would be fun to answer questions about this, but more fun to debate with people on why they answered the topic question. I like debating. Don’t get this mixed up with arguing. I like seeing different sides. I would consider myself an easy-going, open minded individual. I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that is what I think the

beauty is in Twitter.

I love that the ED chat is based off of a hashtag so that I can look back at some of these teaching techniques after the chat is over and take notes on what I want to use in the future for my own classroom. Also, following along with an ED chat really opened my eyes to how useful twitter can be to me in my own classroom. We had so many chats to choose from for this assignment and it has helped me realize that I constantly can ask for help from the many math teachers in the world of Twitter.

I had no idea things like this existed; and I think they are such a beneficial way to learn about topics you might not know much about.  You can also see what opinions other teachers have out there.  Lastly, I think it is a great way to share resources one might have found and has found useful.  Twitter chats are really beneficial, and in the future I definitely would like to read more.

My first and biggest reflection was that I am completely overwhelmed by it. I did choose one of the more popular chats so I assume this would be subject to change based on the chat. My next emotion that comes to my mind is surprise. I was honestly surprised at the participation level across the nation. This brings me to my final emotion, happiness. Knowing that there are so many resources out there that are willing to be shared by so many is such a great resource for me as a future teacher.

But the best part of this week was that two of my students actually tweeted at me and included the class hashtag, #Math261. These tweets are below.

A Geometry Scavenger Hunt

Last year on the first day of my Geometry for Teachers course, I decided to have the pre-service teachers do a geometry scavenger hunt.  What does one do on a geometry scavenger hunt?  Find geometric objects, of course.  The groups were required to document the object they found with a picture.  Then they had to describe the campus location of the object and how they knew the object met the criteria for the required geometric shape.

In the #Math261 course last fall, there were only 5 students, 2 groups of scavengers.  This year I have 17 students so I formed 5 scavenger groups.  I thought it would be easier for the students if I created a template in Google Slides, one geometric figure per slide.  Then they could just add their pictures and descriptions to the slides as they hunt.

I used a random group generator to create the five groups, 4 groups of 3 and 1 group of 4 (one student added the class late so only 16 students at the time).  It was definitely more fun because there are more students in the course.  I loved randomly putting them in groups so that they can get to know their classmates on the first day.  It is a fun activity and I will continue to use it on the first day of class. I think that the Google Slides template worked well also. 

The best part is that I actually enjoyed “grading” the results.  That is pretty impressive as my students know that I am not a huge fan of grading.  One bonus is that I got to know the students a little better when I graded—this wasn’t something that I was expecting.  This group of pre-service teachers is creative, funny, thorough, and competitive.  We are going to have a lot of fun in class this semester!  Here is an Adobe Spark video of some of my favorite slides.

My Favorite Two Days of Summer

Each summer since 2011, I have had the privilege of planning and organizing the REMAST Summer Conference. The REMAST Scholarship Program is funded by the National Science Foundation—it provides ‘scholarships’ to SDSU students majoring in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics seeking Teaching Certification. For each semester the student receives the 'scholarship' the student is required to teach for one year in a high-need district. Since NSF funded the REMAST in 2007, our program has done the following:

•  Awarded $895,000 to 60 undergraduate science & math majors;
• 56 scholars have graduated with teaching certification in math or science; 3 dropped out of REMAST; 1 is still enrolled in REMAST;
• 44 of 56 (78.5%) are either teaching or involved in some aspect of education (counseling, administration, Dept of Education); and
• 4 of 56 (7.1%) are enrolled full-time in a graduate program.

Yes, these numbers are very impressive, but even more impressive are the REMAST alumni. It is hard to explain so I will give some personal anecdotes:

•  one teaches all the high school science courses and has started a Family Science Night in her school district to get elementary students excited about science;
• one has a morning bus route, drives bus for the basketball team, serves as FCCLA advisor, and does statistics for all of the home basketball games;
• one teaches on an Indian Reservation and posted this on FB recently, “Five years ago they made me question why I ever thought I could be a teacher. Today they walked across the stage and made me proud to have known each and every one of them. I’ll remember all the laughter and headaches they have brought to me over the years and continue to pray for their happiness and success;”
• one had a nickname for the students in her classroom--this year it was Baumbach’s Blue Baracudas;
• one helps students with math during the lunch hour, coaches MathCounts, and is starting a XC team;
• one took a long-term sub as an elementary music teacher and then incorporated science by having the students learn how to identify songbirds; and
• one has 5 preps, 2 student clubs, coaches grade girls basketball, and teaches her students how to make hexamexaflexagons (hexaflexagons out of tortillas).

Now you get the picture—these are dedicated math and science teachers who have learned that the key to being a successful teacher is building relationships with their students!  I don’t take credit for that—they have that quality all on their own and I suspect that they all had it before being involved in the REMAST program. I can take credit for organizing and planning the conference and bringing them together each year—and it truly is my favorite two days of summer!

This year we had Joy Kirr as our keynote speaker—we talked about grading, what does a grade mean, what should be included in a grade, and how we can make small shifts in our classrooms to have a big impact on our students.  Most of the REMAST alumni already get that!  They now just have specific ideas that they can use.  In addition, we had Sara VanDerWerf explain how to do Stand and Talks—I am excited to try that in my classroom this year. One of our alumni talked about how to create a Family Science Night, several people shared favorite lessons and technology, and Mark Iverson showed us how he uses 3D printing in his middle school classroom. And I created a Straw Bridge Building activity that needs lots of improvements, which we learned during the activity.

I think that Joy Kirr said it best when she emailed me and thanked me and said, “What a stellar group of educators you've got here - I felt both humbled and inspired by them!”  These two days of summer always remind me why I do what I do and why I love it! It IS about building relationships and I model that with the REMAST group every day.