Four Surprising Lessons from Joint NCTE-NCTM June 2024 Conference

When you've been to enough conferences, you come to expect a few things. You expect a decent exhibit hall filled with free goodies. You expect to meet a few interesting people sitting next to you. You expect to listen to keynotes that inspire you. What you don't expect is how little math and reading strategies were discussed compared to how much was focused on creating learning spaces for all children. A session named - Learning While Black: Trauma-Informed Teaching That Empowers was a packed session. Others included Facing Our Fears: Exploring Emotions and Bias. Here's another - Social Justice Teaching and Learning in Today's Sociopolitical Environment.

Do these sound like typical programming for NCTM and NCTE? Well maybe it's about time that we think about the students we are teaching from their perspective - and challenging what we bring to the profession as individuals with biases and unrelated experiences. This was a refreshing, much-needed, and welcome surprise in today's education environment. Content strategies don't matter if students aren't with you to learn.

Let's face it. Attendance is a problem across the country. Students are disengaged. We are still not reaching the most underserved among us and there is a growing English Language population that has taken over many areas unexpectedly. So what are the four lessons learned from this conference for educators working with K-5 learners of English and Math?

1. Check Your Biases - This is a complex, uncomfortable topic that must be addressed in order to support our underserved learners. When students are not learning, it is not because they can't, don't want to, don't care to, and are too behind to even bother. Many times, they are not in a place mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. We must take these into consideration more than ever before. It is no longer acceptable to call them deficient. This was very clear at this conference.
2. Math Anxiety is Everywhere in K-5 - It was disappointing when the first two keynote speakers Grace Lin, and Don Tate, two renowned authors of award-winning children's books easily bragged about how they were not math people. This sentiment about being bad at math was prevalent and completely acceptable in the conference. This is a problem. You should be embarrassed to say I don't know math, not proud. We don't brag about how bad we are in reading. If educators in K-5 are saying this, how do you think this translates to the children they teach?
3. The Connection Between English and Math Is Must - In many K-5 classrooms, English and Math are still taught by the same teachers, yet they have to switch curriculums to ensure fidelity. However, it would be much more efficient if there was a way to leverage English skills to help with math skills and vice versa. As an example, in math word problems there are nouns, verbs, and adjectives which can be used help with learning grammar. Journaling and writing out your work in math could help with writing skills in general. Several sessions included reading books that had math in them as well as cultural relevancy. Let's get smarter and more efficient while giving students more opportunity to practice both.
4. Relationships Matter More Than Ever - The discussions around bias, inclusion, equity, social justice, and access all boil down to human connections and building relationships. Without it, the smartest teacher, the best award-winning curriculum, or the latest AI tool will not matter if no trust is built between students and their caretakers. How do we build trust in an education environment obsessed with technology, and fewer people having the patience or willingness to invest in that hard work is the question.

If you are interested in how we support students through tutoring and teacher training, contact us at [email protected] for our free guide on how to create an inclusive math environment. At Eurekii, we take our lessons learned from various conferences, books, and events to bring best practices in tutoring and engaging students that ultimately produces strong outcomes in mathematics.