2024 Track H: BEdA Equitable Math Pathways & Practices

Math students come into a community college setting from a variety of programs including BEdA, high school programs, adult high school, professional/technical certifications, and developmental math – all of which frequently have their own placement policies, their own course structure/maps, and their own curriculum to get students college-ready. However, they all share one goal – helping their student successfully navigate to a degree or career.

In this session we will look at concrete ways to work together across departments to simplify and align math pathways – from intake through a student’s first college-level class.  Faculty, administrators, navigation and support staff will walk away from this session with: 

• A vision of an integrated approach to placement, curriculum, course mapping, and advising
• A practical action plan for transparency and change at your college
• An understanding of roadblocks, cautions, and best practices to plan for while creating a better math experience for students

Session Materials

• Getting Everyone in the Room

class discussions that invite learners to develop language for learning mathematics, while deepening understanding of important math concepts. You will learn to facilitate Number Talks with enhancements specifically designed to make them accessible to multilingual learners (MLs). This practice invites voicing of mathematical ideas, builds mathematical competence, and develops deep, flexible number sense.

Outcomes: You will learn to:

• Effectively understand how to make students' thinking visible as they share.
• Reinforce visualizing as a sense-making strategy.
• Listen for computational number sense.
• Build on learners’ strengths as mathematicians and communicators.

Session Materials

• Number Talks for Multilingual Learners
• Number Talks Basics
• Properties of Number

This session introduces the Thinking Classrooms framework, developed by Dr. Peter Liljedahl (Building Thinking Classrooms). This teaching practice fosters deeper mathematical understanding by actively engaging all students in the learning process. Through decades of research and testing, the Thinking Classrooms framework is based on evidence to support student thinking about mathematics. This presentation will go over some of Dr. Liljedahl's research, describe some of the fourteen essential practices he has found to create a thinking classroom, and have you try it!

Outcomes: At the end of this session participants will:

1. Have experienced a thinking classroom, including the setup, facilitation, and question types.
2. Know at least one of the fourteen essential practices and identify one way to implement it in their educational setting.

Session Materials

• Empowering Student Thinking in Math

This workshop will start by copying a WAMAP/MOM course that we will then use as an overview of what existing questions can do and then we will modify/create questions to meet our needs. We can sign up for WAMAP accounts during class. If you use MOM – you need to have a teachers account before class.

Outcomes:

• Be able to copy questions and update as needed;
• Create original questions.

Session Materials

• BEdA Equitable Math Pathways & Practices

Feeling lost in the labyrinth of math course placement, common course numbering, and I-BEST v corequisites? You're not alone! This roundtable discussion is designed to unravel the complexities and bring clarity to these often-confusing topics. Come prepared to share your experiences, ask questions, and gain valuable insights from your peers! Come duke it out at this equitable math roundtable.

• Round 1: I-BEST v Coreqs: A Smack Down
• Round 2: Common Course Numbering for BEdA: Pi in the Sky or possible
• Round 3: BEdA to Math: Name That Pathway

Outcomes:

• Discuss how I-BEST and Co-reqs models can work together in college level math