Math coaches wear many hats. You think on your feet and have to invent, react, and respond―often without time to prepare―in a myriad of professional contexts. What’s your go-to resource for support?
Plan, focus, and lead: Your toolkit for inspiring math teachers
Meet Everything You Need For Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader. This one-stop, comprehensive toolkit for improving mathematics instruction and learning is designed for busy math coaches and teacher leaders who often have to rely on their own competencies. Using the Leading for Mathematical Proficiency Framework, the authors position student outcomes as the focus of all professional work and connect the Eight Mathematical Practices for students with NCTM’s Eight Effective Teaching Practices to help you guide teachers toward growing mathematics proficiency in their classrooms.
This hands-on resource details critical coaching and teaching actions, and offers nearly a hundred tools for:
- Shifting classroom practice in a way that leads to student math proficiency and understanding of mathematical concepts.
- Honing in on key areas, including content knowledge and worthwhile tasks, student engagement, questioning and discourse, analysis of student work, formative assessment, support for emergent language learners and students with special needs, and more.
- Navigating a coaching conversation.
- Planning and facilitating professional learning communities.
- Finding a focus for professional development or a learning cycle.
- Making connections between professional learning activities, teaching, and student learning.
- Using the coaching cycle―plan, gather data, reflect―to build trust and rapport with teachers.
With examples from the field, a comprehensive list of resources for effective coaching, and a plethora of tools you can download and share with teachers, this toolkit is your must-have guide to designing a professional learning plan and leading with clarity and purpose.
Maggie B. McGatha works full time with coaches, teacher leaders, and administrators as a Training Associate for Cognitive Coaching? and Adaptive Schools. At the University of Louisville, she teaches courses on coaching and supporting collaborative groups along with advanced mathematics methods courses. Maggie is a former middle school mathematics teacher, the author of numerous articles, a co-author of Mathematics Coaching: Resources and Tools for Coaches and Leaders, K-12 (Pearson, 2014) and On the Money: Math Activities to Build Financial Literacy, Grades 6-8 (NCTM, 2015). She is active in state and national mathematics organizations including currently serving as the Vice President for the Membership Division (2017-2020) of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) and member of the Advisory Board for the Mathematics Institute of Wisconsin. She received her doctorate from Vanderbilt University (Tennessee). Maggie enjoys traveling and spending time with her family, especially her grandkids!
Jennifer M. Bay-Williams is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Louisville, where she teaches preservice teachers, emerging elementary mathematics specialists, and doctoral students in mathematics education. She has authored over 40 books and 100 journal articles/book chapters, many of which focus on procedural fluency and developing mathematical proficiency. Beyond the Figuring out Fluency series, these include Math Fact Fluency, and Everything you Need for Mathematics Coaching and Elementary: Teaching Developmentally and Middle School Mathematics. Jennifer′s national leadership includes NCTM Board of Directors, the TODOS: Mathematics for All Board of Directors, and as president and secretary of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE).Beth McCord Kobett serves as Professor and Dean in the School of Education at Stevenson University, where she works closely with early childhood, elementary, and middle school preservice teachers. She brings experience as a classroom teacher, mathematics specialist, and university supervisor. Beth served on the NCTM Board and served as president of Association of Maryland Mathematics Teacher Educators. Beth has authored ten mathematics education books and supports professional learning efforts nationwide. She has been honored with awards such as the MCTM Mathematics Educator of the Year and Stevenson’s Rose Dawson Award for Excellence in Teaching. Deeply committed to her students, she strives to create a supportive, strengths-based learning environment that fosters curiosity, collaboration, and meaningful growth.
