Developing Critical Thinking, Reasoning, and Problem-Solving with Mona Iehl, ep. 252

Developing Critical Thinking, Reasoning, and Problem-Solving with Mona Iehl, ep. 252, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:00

Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked now, I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

Chrissy Beltran  00:28

Hey coach and welcome to episode 252. Growing critical thinking, reasoning and problem solving in math classrooms with Mona Iehl. I am really excited to welcome my guest, Mona. She has been a great Instagram person to follow if you are an Instagram person as well. At Hello Mona math and I have enjoyed watching her book come about over the last year. She’s going to talk about the strategies that she shares in the book and the process that she uses to support teachers in growing critical thinking, thinking and reasoning in the math classroom through word problem workshop. In the meantime, as you’re thinking about how you can apply this to your school, and you’re looking into coaching cycles as a way to get teachers on board head to buzzing movement speed com slash cycles to grab a free coaching cycle course that comes straight to your inbox. And I think it’s really going to be a valuable tool for you. It’s going to teach you exactly what you need to do step by step, because this time of year, if you’re listening in real time, this is the time to make those cycles happen. We’re about to hit some crazy stuff in December, and then in the spring. You know how quickly it goes. So let’s really establish those cycles now, before we start going off the rails, let’s welcome Mona to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Mona, thank you so much for being here today.

Mona Iehl  01:42

Hi. Thank you. I’m so excited.

Chrissy Beltran  01:45

All right, to get started, I would love to hear about a few things about you. So who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Mona Iehl  01:54

Yeah, okay, so I’m in k5 k8 math coach. And so what’s interesting about the way that I am a math coach is that I don’t actually work in one school. I’m an independent math coach, so I spend a lot of time in different schools, which is fun, and really doing whatever I need to do to help really build in math culture in the school that is student centered and just, you know, usually, a lot of times it’s around shifting practice in math, I guess, and maybe all of the work that we do as coaches. But either way, that’s what I spend a lot of time thinking about. And recently, within the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time putting thoughts and practices into words in a book. And so I’ve spent the last year writing a book called word problem workshop, which is actually a practice that I teach teachers in to use in their classrooms. So yeah, that’s what I’m up to on the day to day.

Chrissy Beltran  02:56

And then my other question is part of a all this whole season, I’ve been asking people what hobbies they love, because so many times we dedicate all of our time to our work, you know, we kind of pour everything into that, and then we don’t have anything that we do for ourselves. So I’ve been trying to ask people, What is a hobby that you love that you’d like to spend time on?

Mona Iehl  03:16

Yes, and I was thinking about this question prior to this, and I thought, Well, is it having children? And that’s not a hobby, although it does require a lot of my time outside of work. But someone actually recently asked me, I went to a new doctor. This is a such a very 40 year old woman thing to say, but I went to a new doctor, and she was like, getting to know me, which was so lovely. And she asked me the same question. She’s like, and what about hobbies? And then she very quickly was like, chilling out on your couch and watching Netflix as a hobby. And I was like, thank you for that. So yeah, like, I am very fortunate with my family to be able to spend time in Michigan. We live in Chicago, but we get to spend a lot of time in Michigan, and so I would call that my hobby, like sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee, enjoying the outside, getting to take in the wildlife and just watching the lake. You know, the kids are there too. I’m still doing that, but that is a hobby of just like that, relaxing by the lake or being on the pontoon boat looking for turtles. I really enjoy how fun.

Chrissy Beltran  04:24

Yeah, I love that. I I follow you on Instagram, and I seen your picture there of your time at the lake, and I just love it. It’s so gorgeous.

Mona Iehl  04:32

Yeah, it’s, it’s really, a really special place. And so we’re, I’m just so grateful anytime we get to go there.

Chrissy Beltran  04:38

Awesome. Okay, so let’s dig in. A lot of these questions are going to be about things that you’ve been writing about for the last year with your your book about math workshop, right word problem workshop is what your your big focus is. So in keeping that you know in the forefront of your mind, what are some of the standard practices you see in classrooms that are really getting in. A way of kids developing the critical thinking, thinking and reasoning that they need to be successful in math.

Mona Iehl  05:07

Yeah, I think for me, it’s like, let me see, when I was reflecting on this, I was thinking about, I don’t know if it’s always a practice that shows up, that’s unproductive, but really like a mindset, and I say this with love from my own experience, because as a teacher, I really believed that kids needed to do a lot of practice with naked numbers before I gave them the good stuff, right, like the application question or the project or even the math game, right? But I thought I needed to teach them what to do before I let them do it. And what I found is that kids actually have a lot of expertise and a lot of creativity and a lot of curiosity around math before we ever teach them that? And I know you have kids, Christina, and so do I, and as I’ve already said, and you know, when you give a three year old half of something, they know very clearly if it’s fair or not, like they are able to reason about that. If I ask my eight year old to put his Pokemon cards away into his binder. He’s doing a lot of reasoning and a lot of critical thinking about which ones he wants on the front and how many he can fit, and all of that. And so one of the things that we do when we do school math is we forget about that natural curiosity that kids have, that they come to school with a lot of expertise already, that we might miss when we are having fidelity to a program or, you know, making sure we get to all the pieces of The lesson, and so embracing a mindset as a teacher, that we can work from a place of the of our kids, own curiosity and expertise first, before we dive into or alongside, maybe when we dive into the curriculum.

Chrissy Beltran  07:18

Yeah, that’s such a good a good point. I think that because they’re the standards are so high in such young grades, like over time, very complicated math reasoning skills have come down, you know, yeah, oh yeah, second and the Kinder from, you know, fifth and the third and so, I think that it’s so overwhelming, maybe even to teachers as well, who have maybe a lot of teachers have kind of disconnected their own like, this is, this is division, and I don’t really think about why we use it, except they need to know it and so B, yeah, teachers have disconnected this. Maybe we’re not super fans of math whenever they were younger. It’s a very common, you know, thing that people say is, oh, I didn’t like math when I was a kid. I just, you know, I don’t, I didn’t enjoy it. They haven’t spent as much time, maybe thinking through it themselves. So then it’s difficult for them to support kids and having that time, and, you know, to really think through things, or to make connections to things, yeah, because they themselves have kind of put a little box around it.

Mona Iehl  08:18

That’s exactly right, and that’s actually part of my story I went into being an elementary teacher for the read alouds and the social studies lessons in the in the field trips in, like, all of, right, like, all of those special little moments, right? Like I was collecting a classroom library when I was still in college, like I was ready to be a teacher of reading and like math, to me, was like, it’s okay to have that one subject that we just open up the curriculum and do the problems and close it up and get on to the fun stuff. Like, that’s what math was. And then what I realized was that all the things I believed about being a good reading, writing, Social Studies teacher, science teacher, where that kids got to experience it, right? They got to talk about it. They got to, like, have this community of writers that they could be, like, really feel like a writer. And then I realized all I was doing with math was just making sure that these kids hated it as much as I did, right? And so it was like, hold up. Like, something’s got to change here. And I realized that exactly what you said, which was, I never confronted the fact that, like, I didn’t know what multiplication really was, right, right? And there was one day I remember, I was teaching third grade, and I had a coach, as we always have, a coach that, like, sets us on our journey. Her, her name is like in the first sentence of my book, because she was really transformational. But she said to me when I was teaching this third grade math list, and she was like, Yeah, multiplication is groups of Uh huh. And it was like, screech, how am I? 27 years old, and I didn’t know multiplication meant groups of like, my life could have been a lot different had I known that when I was in third grade. And so you might think, like, people might think that’s weird, that I would be like, Hey, I wrote a math teacher book, and I’m on this podcast telling you that I didn’t know what multiplication was until I was 27 teaching third grade. But I think that’s more common than we like to let on. It absolutely

Chrissy Beltran  10:32

is, whenever I was in school, multiplication with memorization, and whenever you multiplied, you did you put your circles around, you added the zero, you did all the Yep. And that was that did not work for me very well. As a learner, I did not do well with just memorizing things that made no sense to me, like I didn’t understand it. So it didn’t stick if it if I can memorize things well when they make sense, but if they don’t make sense, they don’t stick to me. That’s right. So as a teacher, I was starting to teach that way as well my first year. That’s the way I taught, was the way I had learned, you know, you know, long division. I never could remember as a kid. I still can’t tell you the order of the mother, brother, sister, thing that people used to remember exactly because it doesn’t make sense. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. But as it then, the second year that I was a teacher, I was sent to Sharon wells training, which I don’t know how far of a reach Sharon Wells had. She was a very Texas curriculum line to the Texas standards. Okay, the beauty of Sharon Wells was not all the practice pages and all the stuff the beauty of although we didn’t have any of that prior, so it was kind of nice to have some. But the beauty of Sharon Wells was that you went to a workshop where they taught you with manipulatives. Every six weeks, they would teach you with manipulatives what you were doing amazing. That is when I learned what long division was, yeah, so I can completely relate. I had no clue, and I was like, well, this makes, well, that’s what a remainder is, to make another group, right? That set me down a different journey with math. I loved teaching math, and over time, I developed more of, like, you’re saying, like bringing in things from other contents that I know are meaningful for learning into math, having kids write about math? Yeah, that is not something that was done a lot and, you know, in other classrooms at my school. But I was like, I we write to think and we write to learn. Why wouldn’t we be writing in math class?

Mona Iehl  12:19

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and just being able to have an opportunity to reason right? Like, I think that was what we had talked about first. Like, how do we develop critical thinking and reasoning? Well, we have to practice it. We have to practice it every day. We can’t leave it until we think kids know enough math to reason about math, because math is reasoning. Math is making sense of our world through numbers. And so, you know, kind of back to my point of little kids can reason. Like, if you give kids eight or nine things and say, put these into four groups, there will be one left over, and they’re going to reason about what to do with it. If they’re cookies, they might say, I’ll just eat this one. And then it can be even Right. Or they might say, you can have this one mom. Or they might say, let’s put make one plate with a few with one more. That’s reasoning, and little kids can do that just as like they will then further learn later that that’s called the remainder. And that happens when we divide and all these things. But we have to believe that kids can reason about math, starting at an early age and continuing on, that we are not the ones who supply them with the steps to memorize, because we know that’s not good learning, that they aren’t going to fully understand. We know that from our own math past, right? And even if math worked for you, that traditional way of learning math that most of us experience, if that worked for you, then that’s fine. But like, what we know now is that that doesn’t work for everybody.

Chrissy Beltran  13:54

Yeah, yeah. And kids are going to have opportunities to memorize if that’s what they you know, like those processes stuff. So yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think you’re describing already one of the shifts that coaches help teachers make in order to change the culture of their classrooms. But can you kind of dig in that to a little bit more in terms of looking at this as a coach, what are some of the moves that we need to help teachers start to make in their thinking, to help them, you know, move towards better practice?

Mona Iehl  14:19

Yeah, I think if one thing that, if I was going in and I was teaching, like, not teaching, if I was going in and coaching teachers, one thing I would really want them to understand is that, you know, it’s about student understanding, not students mimicking steps. So, like, that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about, right? Like when we show them what to do and they do it, that’s not them showing us that they understand. That’s them showing us that they can copy down and they are good listeners and can remember to do what we told them, right? So we really want to, like, drive toward that understanding. And how do we get there? Well. You know that would be things like, what, exactly what you described that PD did for you, which is experiencing math with manipulatives. A lot of times, adults these days are saying, well, those new math strategies, those new ways of doing math, well, that’s just a way for us to mask that we don’t really understand what the heck is going on. Yeah. And so the more experience we have to do the math, the better. And so one of the things I write about in word problem workshop, and is a like cornerstone of planning for math, for word problem workshop, is to forecast student thinking. And what I mean by that is you can’t really anticipate what kids will do, but you can create a forecast, right, like a weather forecast that might change, and that’s what we do during planning. So we look at the problem that a kid might that the kids are going to solve, and we anticipate, or we forecast, all the strategies that we think kids might use. So maybe someone is going to use base 10 blocks. Maybe someone’s going to draw a picture by ones and they’re just going to draw them all out. Maybe someone will break that number up. Maybe they’re going to decompose it and make it into a simpler problem. You know, lots of strategies that we can use, and we’re going to think about, what might they do, and we, as the teacher and maybe as the coach, together, it’s really good to do this together, to have a thought partner. We’re going to look at those strategies. We’re going to do them ourselves. And then we’re going to talk about, where are they going to struggle? What are these like? What are the struggle? What are the sticky points going to be and then, what are the connections? What are the connections between the kid who did ones and 10s and base 10 blocks? What are the connections between those base 10 blocks and this decomposing strategy? And we’re going to pre plan for that and understand it deeply ourselves, so that in the moment when we’re facilitating students grappling or productive struggle or student discourse, we’ve already done the heavy lifting. We’ve already thought through all of the potential questions, connections or stumbling blocks. So when we’re facilitating we have those questions kind of ready to ask to keep kids thinking. So I think, as the coach, if you’re like, having an opportunity to plan with a teacher, really doing the math together and then thinking through those things, so that in the moment, we’re armed with that knowledge?

Chrissy Beltran  17:43

No, I love that, because you’re really supporting the teacher in diversifying their own thinking about math that you’re working on together. And you’re like, stretching, you know, whatever they’re because it’s easy to be like, well, this is the way I learned it, or this is the strategy I like to use. So this is what we’re going to do, yeah. So if you’re like, Well, what are the different ways this could be solved? Then over the time, over time, the teacher is going to develop so much more comfort and, like, confidence in that area. Because I feel like a lot of our problems in this area are just because teachers themselves struggle with math and feel inconfident about it. So yeah, I really love that you’re you’re kind of building outwards on what the teacher is able to do comfortably and and, like, really just changing the way that they think about approaching a problem, because if we can change the way the teacher thinks, then the teacher can support kids in doing things. You know, that’s right as well.

Mona Iehl  18:32

And a lot of times in our curriculum, it says, like, teach this strategy Monday, and then this strategy Tuesday, and then this strategy Wednesday. And that’s all fine, but, and that’s what it is, we can’t really, like, I don’t want to have a conversation about changing the curriculum, right? Like, that’s not what it is. It’s more about, like, really, truly understanding those strategies and the reality that just because you teach it to me on Monday doesn’t mean that I learned it as a student, or that I’m ready to use it in my problem solving, and so providing a little bit of open space for kids to solve with a strategy that they truly understand. Because what happens with the curriculum when it says teach base 10 blocks Monday and decomposing Tuesday, and then whatever, Wednesday? Yeah, it’s so fast and like, then all that it’s deduced to is, I tell you what to do, and you do it. And so if we go back, like, that’s what I was saying, like, that’s not understanding. That’s just your students being really good listeners to you and following your directions. And so we want students to use what makes sense to them and use math to make sense of the math, right? And so we have to provide that little bit of open space, and so you might still teach your curriculum lesson that way, but word problem workshop gives you an opportunity to say for this 2025, minutes of math class. Is you’re going to solve with whatever strategy you want, and then, as the coach, it really does open up an opportunity for you to have a conversation with your teachers about what kids actually understand. Right? A lot of times our coaching conversations are around assessment and looking at student work. Well, now we have a sample of work that really shows what students understand.

Chrissy Beltran  20:24

I love that. I love the idea of, like, Okay, let’s see what they’re actually walking away with. You know, all these things that you’ve taught them, what can they actually do whenever they’re trying to solve a problem? And that’s such good information for a teacher to see, because that’s, I mean, that’s how you’re going to shape your instruction moving forward, it’s going to guide you into what kids still need. I love that. So then I can’t wait to hear about this, because you describe a five step process to creating a classroom of problem solvers through this math workshop, right? So I’m sorry I keep calling math workshop a whole other thing. That’s true. So can you walk us through this process? And I would love I just really want to hear like, what does each step look like, and definitely what kind of facilitation is happening. It’s just, I’m really excited to hear about it. Yeah.

Mona Iehl  21:09

Okay, so it’s five steps. So the five steps are launch, grapple, share, discuss and reflect. So launch is all about, like, I think of it like packing the kids backpack with all the strategies they’re going to need on their problem solving journey. So we’re going to take one word problem, one worthy word problem that can really be dug into. It’s not going to be a problem that like tells kids what strategy to use. It’s not going to be a problem that like is something they can solve mentally. We want something that’s going to put them into productive struggle, okay? And with young learners like you are going to use strategies in the launch to help them unpack the words right with and then that can kind of your launch will morph based on the age and ability of your students the type of content or problem that you’re doing with your students. But we really want to draw on students expertise, like I was saying, like, so I’m going to tell them the story this. Like, maybe it’s about poison dart frogs. And we’re doing a whole unit on frogs and reading and science, right? So we’re reading books about poison dart frogs. And we’re doing, you know, I don’t know, mapping or something, and I don’t know, so we’re gonna count poison dart frogs in math, right? And so I’m gonna tell them this story, and then I’m gonna read them the problem, and we’re gonna talk about, what do we already know, and what do we what are we trying to figure out? And it’s quick, though. The launch is only, like, one or two minutes, because the idea is to really get kids, like, tapped in and invested in the context, and then we’re going to ask them to retell it in their own words, right? And so we know that’s a good reading strategy. And so we’re going to do use it in math, of like, I’m I’m also like to ask them to make that mental movie in their mind, like, visualize, but make it move right. Like, what’s the action here? Those frogs jumped away, or whatever it is. And then the the most important part, I think, of the launch is where we ask a comprehension question that’s going to allow us to check for their understanding. So I’m gonna say, like, I think the problem is maybe, like, you know, let’s say that it’s 1700 frogs are on the trees, and now there’s only 400 right? Something happened, a hawk came, or something. I don’t know. Jaguar. Are there gonna be more or less than 1000 frogs that jumped away, right? So now it’s like the kids who are immediately like, oh yeah, add those two numbers together, as they do, right? They’re like, well, it’s more, of course, because it’s 1704 100, so it’s definitely going to be more than 1000 whatever. So you can start to pick out, okay, who’s getting it, who’s not getting it, and now your radar is up. I’m not saying that you should go and, like, straight to them or pull them in a small group right away. No, but we’re gonna make note. Like, okay, I see who these kids are that have it and who don’t. And then we move into step two, which is grapple time, which is where students are actually going to solve. This is where they are using any method that they want to solve. There’s manipulatives on their tables. There’s a lot of space to draw and write out their ideas, making those clear models and really just time for them to solve. Now I always have to prepare kids for this time, because this is where I take on a very neutral stance. Because, you know, when kids are solving math problems, they’re always like, miss, is this right? Right? And you’re like, um, yeah, honey, keep going, or take a look at that, right? So we then immediately do the. Thinking for them, and so I always tell the kids, I’m like, I’m it’s gonna feel different. It’s gonna look different, because I’m not gonna say yes or no. I’m just really gonna be looking now, the secret sauce here is that I took that forecasting guide that I was talking about that I complete when I plan. I take that with me as I walk around during grapple time, and I make note of where my students are on there, so I write the names or initials of the kids that are drawing all of the 1700 like, okay, these kids are doing this. And here, these kids are using base 10 blocks, and these kids have broken that 1700 down into, you know, the 1000 and the 700 and so I’m making note of what strategies the kids are using. Now I’m also going to use a little bit of this time to conference with them, right, dive in, into their thinking. But it’s not to help anybody. I really want this time to be where kids are, like building that stamina of problem solving. So the the conferencing is actually to tap in to some strategies and some students thinking that I want to highlight for the class. So if my learning goal for the day is to really show kids the connection between base 10 blocks and that decomposing strategy, and show them how those are actually very similar strategies. Let’s talk about that. Then I might go and talk to a kid who’s using the base 10 strategy and see how they’re doing it, describing their thinking and getting, you know, asking them what’s up and how it’s going and see if they can describe it. And if they can, I might say, Okay, I’m going to have you share first today. If they can’t, maybe I’ll be like, Okay, I’ll come back to you or give them a little nudge and, you know, and then do the same thing for the kid with the decomposing strategy. And then once grapple time is over, I’ve asked two kids to prepare themselves to share, and then that’s when we go into the third step, share. So we will all gather on the carpet around like a piece of chart paper, and I will scribe it, because kids writing on big paper, and spatial awareness isn’t. Oh yeah no, right? Sometimes teachers are like, I’m gonna let them draw it, and I love that, but like, there’s other times when kids can draw on the whiteboard and on chart paper. Right now, we’re gonna, we’re gonna prioritize efficiency, and we’re gonna really prioritize that student’s voice, so we’re gonna get all the kids to listen to these little sharers, and we’re going to chart up their strategies. And all of this is so that these two or three strategies become the like the text. This is our evidence here of math thinking. I love this because, you know, you have all those kids in your class that are mad that they didn’t finish, or they didn’t get it, or they’re, you know, they’re halfway through their cleanup, and you were like, No, you have to come to the carpet now you’ll have to clean that up at snack time. And so they’re now, they’re at the carpet, and they’re like, I didn’t even solve it, and I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. And you’re like, it’s all good, because now we don’t have to talk about what we did. Now we’re only going to talk about what Ana and Jose did. Okay, that’s it. And so I love that, because I’ve always taught students who struggle, and a lot of times that’s the reality is that we don’t solve this problem. It’s really hard problem, and every day I’m going to give you a hard problem, because I know you can do it, but I’m not going to expect that you do it perfectly every day. I just want you to learn a little bit each day, right? But now we get to learn from Anna, and now we get to learn from Jose, so it kind of lightens it up, right? Like, okay, well, I can listen to her and hear what she did and why she did it, and then after they share, we are going to get into a circle on our carpet, and we’re going to talk about their strategies. And I like to start I have, like, a whole framework in the book of, like, what questions to ask and in what order, but I always like to just start with a turn and talk so that everybody’s voice is warmed up right away. And I just asked the notice. Wonder, right? Like, what do you notice? What do you wonder? And then we do, like a brain dump, where we try to get everybody to talk within those first couple minutes of the math discussion. And then, yeah, we use the math discussion to really deepen our understanding and talk about those connections. And by we, I mean them, not me, right? So I’ve totally, as a teacher, stepped into this facilitator role, like the coaching role, and let kids, kind of like, work through it and figure it out, and then after we’ve had our math discussion, and hopefully it ends with, like. Or some sort of like, enduring understanding, or some sort of conjecture or whatever. Oh, so when you decompose the number, you’re actually doing the same thing you do with base 10 blocks. Because that’s like all the hundreds are grouped together, and all the 10s and all the ones. Oh, yeah, that’s true. Those have a lot in common. Great. Let’s write a little note up here. This is what we learned today, kind of thing. And then the fifth step is to send kids off to solve another problem. And so I call it one more problem, just one more. And so use what you experience today and go off and solve another and then that kind of becomes my exit ticket. That’s my formative assessment and what I’m using. But the whole experience is wrapped up by mobilizing the experience instead of just kind of like, oh, we had a math discussion, and I hope you remember it. It’s like, No, I want you to take that right now and go and apply something. I like

Chrissy Beltran  31:01

that, yeah, immediately. Because if you wait till the next day, when you come back around to math, the word problem workshop, it’s already gone, like, that’s right, they have that opportunity to apply it. They have to apply

Mona Iehl  31:11

That’s right, exactly. And so that was a lot of talking, and that was like, you know, all five steps. But I feel like, hopefully you maybe got, like, an idea, like a little picture in your own minds as you were listening, of like, what that might feel like as a student is hopefully really empowered, like you can take on this complex problem, because there’s moments of independent work, but there’s also these moments of support from your class, and where you can really feel like I might not be able to solve that way myself right now, like as a student, I might not be ready to decompose a four digit number, but when Anna explained it, I really understood it, and I could turn and talk with my partner about what she did. And so that’s building that understanding. And we we know like whoever’s doing the talking is doing the learning. And so there’s all these moments within word problem workshop to get kids describing their thinking.

Chrissy Beltran  32:11

I love that, because I think that it’s easy for like when a teacher hears something like this, they think, but when are they going to learn this? And when are they going to learn how to do that? You’re still teaching your math content, that’s right that you were going to teach. So they’re fully acquiring these different skills. They’re acquiring, you know, the algorithm of things. It’s not that you don’t directly teach them how to do all these other things, but you’re saying, okay, you’ve added all these tools to your toolbox. So these are different things that you know how to do. Let’s see what happens when we try to apply them to this challenging problem, you know. And then let’s see how different people use them in that way. So I just love that approach, because you’re building knowledge and another place, and then you’re working on the application of that, of all the stuff that they’ve acquired over time, that’s right, plus their own, you know, background knowledge, and you’re actually using it to solve problems

Mona Iehl  32:58

and and for the student. Now math becomes like this very different thing, right? It’s not I sit in my seat and I listen, and I scribble down my ideas silently, right? Now, it’s like, Oh, you mean, I have to make sense of this problem, and then I have to try a lot on my own and but then I get to talk to my friends about it, huh? Like, you know, it really, hopefully gives a glimpse into what a classroom could be like that is a community of problem solvers, just like we create a community of writers and a community of readers.

Chrissy Beltran  33:33

Yeah, I love that. I think that’s it’s so nice that this, this component, the smaller piece every day, can influence the work done in the rest of your math block, because it’ll change the thinking, not only of the kids, but the teacher as well, so that they can start to say, like, oh, we can embed some of this dialog, like this discussion, these, this discussion protocol that I’ve taught kids, or, you know, the way that we do that during math or word problem workshop, we can bring that into other parts of our day, because kids have learned how to do it and understand the value of it,

Mona Iehl  34:05

that’s right? And I Yeah, exactly. I found myself like, once I started teaching math this way, I started teaching everything this way, right? Then all of a sudden it’s like, well, let me give you a complex task to read, right and and annotate, and then we’ll bring it back to the carpet, and we’ll have a few people share, and then we’ll have a discourse about it. And it really just became the five steps of how I taught everything. But you can’t really write a book about that. Have to, like, pick one. No, I’m just kidding, but no. But it really all started in math, and it really shifted my own philosophy of teaching, and then from a coach’s perspective, because obviously we’re talking to coaches, I think that for me, the best way that I have found to, like Teach this to teachers is through doing it together, so lesson study or like lab sites, where one teacher teaches and we all kind. Are in there together, has just provided such a fun, professional like community for us to learn this strategy. And so sprinkled throughout the book, it’s very much like a teacher to teacher book, like I’m writing from my perspective as a teacher of math, but I also have sprinkled throughout the book, like moments of me coaching this and so I also think that this book is a really great read for a coach, because we know that coaches can bring things in to teachers at that right moment. And that’s how, like, my math philosophy shifted was a math coach said to me, like, hey, maybe we could try, like, try these things. And I was like, Yeah, let’s, let’s try it. And next thing, you know, my colleagues were like, Wait, she’s teaching you how to do what. Wait, you don’t have to do this crappy curriculum. I want to do that, like, right? And so we know, as coaches like you can kind of, you know, the teacher that’s ready for that next shift, or who has prioritized working on math or whatever. So I hope that this can also be like a tool in a math coach’s toolbox as well.

Chrissy Beltran  36:12

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I’m thinking about how many opportunities you have as a coach where you see things happening in classroom. And, you know, like, as a teacher, I wanted more, like I was always trying to find out better ways of doing things, and so if the coach that I worked with had had some of that knowledge, you know, they could bring that to my classroom and introduce you to something different. So I think that’s, that’s such a good this is such a good resource to have in your pocket as a math coach, or any coach, the coach, like an instructional coach in general? Yes, absolutely, yeah. Well, thank you so much for everything that you have shared here. How can people continue learning from you? How can they get your book, you know, just give it up. Okay.

Mona Iehl  36:54

Well, I’m Mona, and my website is Mona math, so that should be easy to remember everything is. Everything lives there. If you want to, like, hang out and chit chat and see what my life is like, come to Instagram. Hello, Mona math and then, yeah, my book is called word problem workshop. Five Steps to Creating a classroom of problem solvers. And it’s going to ship, or you should get it on October 24 you can pre order right now. And if you do on my website, you just go there and you enter that you pre ordered it, and you can get all these free resources if you pre order. So definitely pre order if you’re thinking about buying it so that you get all those free resources. It’s like a couple months of problems and all sorts of like, goodies, yeah, and so you can get the book anywhere that books are sold, and I would be super honored if you do pre order and let me know so that I can thank you. But this has been really great, and I hope that, yeah, I hope folks reach out and let’s chat.

Chrissy Beltran  37:58

That’s great. Thank you so much. I appreciate everything you shared today, and best of luck on getting your book into lots of teachers. And yes, thanks. I just love chatting with Mona, because she makes you feel like you can do anything right. She has some really great ideas about how to develop the kinds of thinking that we want to see in math classrooms and in all classrooms, really. And this kind of thinking can affect the way your teacher teaches all day long. So it’s such a valuable tool for you to have as an instructional coach, and I’m so glad that I was able to bring her to you today. Definitely grab her book. It’s going to be such a good one. I’m excited to see it. It’s called word problem workshop, and you can, I think, pre order on Amazon. So check that out. I’ll put the link in the show notes for you, and I know it’s going to be valuable for you to have with your teachers. For sure. Show it to your principals, they’ll probably love it. So if you want to grab a coaching cycle, free mini Crash Course, I know this is like a big jump, but one of the ways that we get teachers to do these things is to work alongside them, like Mona said, and coaching cycle is the way to do that. If you head to buzzing with Miss b.com slash cycle, you can grab a free crash course in coaching cycles. And it’s going to be a little mini course that comes straight to your inbox. Will teach you everything that you need to know. And until next week, happy coaching you. Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee and check out the podcast. Show Notes. Happy coaching!