Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

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Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. I'm Gene Tavernetti, the host for this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once, and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.

A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords, only stuff that works. I'm very excited today to have a Dr. Randy Palisoc. He's been a featured TED speaker and is a passionate educator and a difference maker. He's known for making math easy. His TED Talk on teaching math as a human language can be viewed on YouTube.

I highly recommend it. Dr. Palisoc is a curriculum designer and professional development specialist. He also currently teaches at James Jordan Middle School, which has won numerous [00:01:00] awards, including the California Distinguished School Award. Formerly, he was the founder and chief achievement officer of the national award winning Synergy Academies.

In inner city Los Angeles in 2013, synergies elementary school won its Fifth National Award and was named the number one Urban Elementary School in America in 2014. Dr. Palisoc designed the Core Advantage Math Fluency System, which can be found@mathfluency.com. This system was designed based on years of experience and figuring out what works best to help struggling students succeed in math.

Welcome, Dr. Palisoc.

Hello everyone, thanks for having me.

Boy, my pleasure. You know, you you developed a system that worked, obviously. You have kids learning math. How long were you teaching before you identified that language that we use [00:02:00] to teach math was one of the main issues?

I would say it came about organically over the years. And I think the first example of the importance of including, recognizing math as a language and making sure to include that in your math instruction probably came when I was teaching in the third grade. And one of the main standards in the third grade is students have to memorize their time tables.

So I remember working with my kids to try to memorize those facts. And they were just taking way too long to try to memorize them. I kept telling the kids we don't have all year. We have to learn in the third grade, but we can't spend a whole year learning this one skill. So, I came up with a system to make it easier for them to memorize their math facts.

And one of the things that I made sure to do was before we spend time on memorizing those facts, just to help them understand what multiplication really means. And when you say seven times three, what does that mean conceptually? So, with Operations like addition and subtraction, I know how to add something, that makes intuitive sense to me.

If you ask a student, how do you [00:03:00] subtract something, that makes intuitive sense to them as well, because adding and subtracting are concrete actions. But if you ask them what it means to time something, times is not an action that they're familiar with. So I had to break it down for them.

And help them realize that when you say 7 times 3, that x in between the 7 and 3 literally means the word times. So you're doing 3, 7 times. So that's how they're able to make the connection that multiplication is repeated addition. So 7 times 3 is 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3. All abstract. 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3, 7 times.

And if you do that sum, that ends up being 21. And after a while, you realize that memorizing those multiplication facts is a lot easier than Doing the repeated addition over and over again. So the, in order to get them to that realization, they had to understand conceptually what times means. So breaking it down and having them spell it in words, help them understand that when [00:04:00] you see seven times three, it literally means take three, add it to itself, seven times.

And it makes much more sense to them because if you think of adding and subtracting, those are concrete actions. Times is not a concrete action. A concrete action, so I had to explain it in a way that made sense to them. So that would probably be the first instance.

okay, so talking about that because other, I've had other guests on talk about math, and I've told them, okay, we're not going to talk about the controversy that whether or not you should memorize math facts. And included in that controversy is the idea of the conceptual knowledge. Now, you've talked about that you had incorporated the concept of what it is through the language.

in, before they memorize the timetables. How much, how long did it take to show them conceptually using your model of the language of the consistent language? Did it take a long time for them to translate what seven times three was?

It didn't take too long once they got that explanation [00:05:00] to be able to understand it. And we played different games, like one of the ones I remember teaching my kids is a game called Circles and Stars. So if you had five times three, for example, you'd start off with five circles. And then within each circle you draw three stars and then you count up how many stars you have in total.

So they're able to see that five times three or three five times gives you fifteen. So just connecting it to pictures that way and actually seeing it in visual form was also helpful for them. So once you give them that visual model, it's a lot easier for them to move on from that point.

Okay, so you were you developed this using the language, using the consistent language and I am going to emphasize throughout this, throughout our time together, the consistency of the language, not only within the grade level, but as you move through the grade levels. So, so you develop this consistency of language.

Did you have to go outside your adopted curriculum to do this?

Funny that you asked that, actually. I started teaching in 1997, I believe, so [00:06:00] 27 years ago. And when I first started teaching in the school district, we had no curriculum. So basically teachers had to go into the classroom. I was a brand new teacher at the time, and I pretty much had to invent my own stuff, since we didn't have a curriculum school wide that we were using.

So it was As a first year teacher, I'm being thrown off into the deep end, and so I would say half of my time was spent teaching, and the other half was just developing the lessons. So those first few years were pretty exhausting, because you're not just being a teacher, you're being a curriculum designer as well.

Yeah, which again, since you don't know what you don't know but then you do, you discover that so the fact that you didn't have a curriculum meant that you weren't getting any resistance from anybody doing it this way,

Exactly. The administration was just happy that you're teaching and not still trying to figure things out in the classroom.

All right. As you moved on, as you became more got out of the 90s game, came into a very high a time of high accountability where people were looking at [00:07:00] curriculum are you using the adopted curriculum? How about then? Was there any, were there any issues then with your administration or anybody about what curriculum you were using?

so I taught in the classroom at my school for four years, so as years went by, we had adopted official curriculum and so on, but by that time I had moved out of the classroom and took on a coordinator role, so we won what was called the Title VII grant at the time, which was meant to help English learners develop their English language skills, so I ran the computer lab where the students would come into our computer labs on a, several times per week, and we teach them language lessons and so on.

So there wasn't too, too much resistance. Actually, the administration was pretty happy with what the results that my kids were getting due to the fact they had actually asked me to leave the classroom and take on this role instead. So that shows they had actually put faith and trust in me. Otherwise, my first joy, my first love would have been to stay in the classroom if they had not asked me.

to come out of the classroom to take on that role,

Okay. Okay. So, and you're [00:08:00] obviously in the classroom now. And one of the things that when I talk to everybody who's a teacher who has done something like you've done, developed a curriculum or have become well known outside the school. for their skills, for their accomplishments. They're not too well known within the school.

Did you was that your experience as well as you were developing these things?

Pretty much, I would say so. I've gotten along well with all my colleagues and so on, but in terms of them seeing what goes on in the classroom, back in those days, teachers were just islands upon themselves, so we didn't really get a chance to go into each other's classrooms. It wasn't until Seven years after I started teaching, my wife and I actually left the classroom.

So she was teaching at a previous school at further south. And we had found out about charter schools. So we wrote a grant to start up a charter school, got funded, and actually I had to resign our [00:09:00] jobs with the school districts to open up a charter school. So now, instead of being just one classroom teacher responsible for just your roster of students, when my wife and I took a leadership role at the charter school that we started, We now weren't responsible just for our kids, we were responsible for everyone's kids at that school.

So, not just the 3rd grade, but also the 4th, 5th grade teachers, all the way down to kindergarten. So, that's when a shift would happen, I say. I couldn't just be responsible for myself, but I had to make sure that all my other teachers that were under us were successful as well. And you were asking how this approach to language came about, so when we were in the charter school, this is another example of how that came about.

And one of our teachers in the fifth grade, she was, she came up to me and said Mr. Polysockets, the kids are really having a really hard time with this concept of Adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, which is a totally abstract concept for fifth graders to understand.[00:10:00]

So I met with her, went to the classroom and thought about how can we teach this concept in a way that actually makes sense to them? Because if you're adding two fractions with unlike denominators, one half plus one third, for example that you can't do because they don't have a common denominator.

If you had 1 3rd plus 1 3rd, you can add those together because they have a common denominator. You just add the numerators and then keep the denominator. But if you explain that to a kid, that makes absolutely no sense to them, especially at the 5th grade level. So that's when it came to the realization that You can think of one third plus one third in concrete terms, just like you do apples and apples.

So we backed up the lesson. Instead of talking about numerators and denominators first, we took it back and started off with something simpler, simple. We said, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start with kindergarten. What's one apple plus one apple? And intuitively, we knew that one apple plus one apple gives you two apples.

And if you had three pencils plus two pencils, again, pencils plus pencils give you pencils. How [00:11:00] many pencils? You have five pencils. Then have them take that stretch and say, What's one third plus one third? So they knew that one apple plus one apple equals one apple. So therefore, it makes logical sense that one third plus one third equals two thirds.

So they're able to come up with that correct sum without once ever having to understand what a numerator and denominator was. So, once, once we got to that point in helping them understand that a third is a concrete action, a concrete object. I'm showing it here on Zoom, but the audience can't see it. I'm holding a perfection circle of a third.

It's a concrete object, so if you make an analogy to something concrete like apples and apples, then that makes a whole lot more sense. So that's a, that's an example of, another example of how we infuse the language approach into mathematics instruction to make it easier for students to understand.

You know, and again the consistency, you don't have to know. I'm not sure if this was your example or not, but if if it was 1, 1, 000th and [00:12:00] 1, 1, 000th it doesn't matter. It's the same because it's the language. It's the logic of the language. It's the syntax that makes things make sense.

And it's interesting that you developed this on a Title VII grant. Because, again, it is so hard for a teacher to understand that this poor kid we're using multiple meaning words throughout we're talking about tables, and we're talking about time, and we're talking about all of these things, and it doesn't they're just struggling to get by throughout the day, and it's exhausting but having that consistency was very impressive.

So, you you and your wife? You started your charter school, and I'm guessing you provided the professional development for all the teachers for how to do math?

Correct. And in their first year of operation, we let the teachers just do whatever curriculum they were comfortable with, because we had hired our, Former colleagues at the schools that we were teaching at. So they came on board as the teachers at our school. And after [00:13:00] the first year of operation, after the first year of operation, we were reflecting over the summer and they said, you know what, can we have a school wide curriculum instead, because it would be easier when kids move from third grade to fourth grade to fifth grade to have that level of consistency.

So it was the teachers that actually approached us, the administrators asking for something consistent across the board so that. Transitioning from one grade level to the next would be easier. So it was interesting that when they started out more interesting, more individual, but then as time went by, they realized that.

Having something consistent, like you mentioned, is actually a powerful thing to do.

You know, it's interesting because at this point, I know that there are a lot of good things available to schools to teachers. Yours is one. There are others. Yours isn't the, yours isn't the only one, but it doesn't matter how good it is. It doesn't matter how good it is until it is accepted and adopted, and not adopted in an official sense, but adopted by the teachers as this is what [00:14:00] I, what, this is what I want to do.

So you move. So your story is very interesting to me in that is it just the teachers that you hired that? That was their, that was their mindset, that, you know what, no, we want to do this, or could it be replicated someplace else?

I think it can be replicated, and that was a story from the charter school that my wife and I started Synergy Academies. So those were teachers that we handpicked to work with us that first year. Currently, as you mentioned, I'm teaching at a different charter school, not one that I founded it's called James Jordan Middle School.

And the sixth grade team that I'm working with right now, Those are not teachers that I hired because I'm not the administrator at that school. So as a sixth grade team, they were, most of the teachers that I'm working with were pretty novice. They started at most three years ago. So they have at most three years under their belt.

And when they're presented with the approach, they realize for themselves the power of using language in, in [00:15:00] your math instruction. So even though these were not handpicked teachers, once you see the benefit, they're completely on board. So that's what I enjoy about the six week team that I'm working with is they get it.

And when we do lesson planning together they're all in and making it happen.

So it was almost as if you're describing a PLC that actually works. Okay.

say teachers have to know not just how something works. But they also have to know why it works.

Okay. How about the articulation downward? Has that happened yet? Has everybody in the school adopted your approach? Okay.

Articulation at the school. We use it at all three grade levels. So, we are 8th grade. 6th, I kind of think of it as a three stage rocket, like the Saturn V rocket that went to the moon. So, 6th grade is the first stage of the rocket. We basically have to get our kids off the ground. Because being a middle school, we don't have control over which elementary school they went to.

So, they come in, the students, our incoming 6th grade students come in [00:16:00] all over the place in terms of their grades. proficiency with mathematics and with reading. So sixth grade is the first stage of the rocket. It's just get them off the ground, build that foundation. The second stage would be the seventh grade and the third stage that helps the lunar module and the command module actually get into orbit around the moon.

That's the only one that makes it to the moon. So the first stage of the rocket, it doesn't even make it into earth orbit. It falls. Back to earth. So that's the analogy that I use with our school is it's a three stage rocket and sixth grade does a lot of the heavy lifting and our goal is to build up that foundation as much as possible so that when we pass those students on to seventh grade, they still have a lot of work to do, but at least we've got them off the ground.

So that's a that's our philosophy there.

So you, you mentioned a couple of minutes ago about going back to you gave an example from kindergarten that you can go to that level. So when you get these sixth graders in who choose to go to your school and some of them are going to have [00:17:00] some deficiencies in their content knowledge is there a remedial part of your program?

How does that how does that work?

So my

to speed?

sure my school actually recognizes that problem. Since, as I mentioned, we have no control over. Where our students attended elementary school and what level of instruction they got. So can you repeat the question one more time?

There's going to be a remedial component. I mean you work with, I've never been to a school in California. Most of my work is in California. It doesn't matter if it is a lower SES, higher affluence. If I go to a middle school, The teachers will tell me this, my kids don't know integers, they don't know fractions, and they don't know, I can't remember what the third one was, but there are three things that no matter where I go, oh, they're math facts, they don't know the math facts, so I'm guessing it's the same when they come to your sixth grade.

Sure, absolutely.

do we get them to that second stage of the rocket?

So my school has actually recognized that the students do have a lot of makeup work to do, so [00:18:00] they've set aside time. That's one of the most important things that they've done. They don't just have the expectation of getting the kids up. They actually redirect their resources so that what they're asking for can actually happen.

So instead of a single block of mathematics, we have a double block of mathematics at our school, including a double block of math. English as well. So my class, the one that I teach is called Math Fluency, and that's where we're going over all of the basics, the foundational skills that they need. And the second block of math is for their Math 6 is what it's called, and that's their grade level standards for math.

So they're getting both the foundation that they should have gotten in elementary school, building that up with my class, the Math Fluency class, and then the regular math class, that's the other hour of math that they get with one of the other teachers.

Okay, and the results? Would you say?

Those kids have done very well. And as you mentioned our school has won a number of awards. So they won California Distinguished School Awards in [00:19:00] 2019. That was the very first one after being in operation for about 15 years or so. And then a couple of years after that, they won another one in 2021.

And this past year, actually past two years ago, they were named by the California Charter Schools Association as a student award. Heart Vision School of the Year Award.

Congratulations. Congratulations. Tell me about you know, the, I'm going to try to phrase this ah, I'm not going to try to phrase it well. I'm just going to ask you how's the attitudes? It sounds like you, you're very much into getting kids fluent. Fluency, basics math facts, learn their skills, basic operations how's the attitudes?

Do we see attitude changes in the kids by the time they're leaving sixth grade?

Absolutely. So if you take a look at the numbers on our diagnostic results at the beginning of the year, most of our students are in the red. So there's a three tiered system that we use. Green means you're at grade level, yellow means you're almost at grade level, and red [00:20:00] means you're two or more years behind grade level.

So when the students first come in sixth grade, about 50 percent of them are in the red, so two or more years behind grade level. And by the time the end of the year, end of the school year comes around, that number has shrunk to maybe 25%, 25 percent or so, so we cut it more in half. And the number of students who are green or on grade level has increased significantly to, About half or approaching half.

So within one year, and you can make that giant jump in one year to go from red all the way to green. But if we get them from the red zone to the yellow in one year, and then the yellow to the green the next year, that's our goal is to make continuous improvement. And the kids see it too. When they see the results that they've been making, they realize, Hey, I'm actually not awful enough after all with practice, I can actually get this.

So, in terms of attitude they recognize the improvement that they made, so, so their whole outlook on math does improve [00:21:00] over the year.

All right. Speaking of Outlook on math we're in the middle of a new math wars about how we should be teaching math and you talked about learning times tables and the third grade. I'm not, is that still in the frameworks that they're supposed to, students are supposed to memorize their math facts?

Believe it or not, if you take at the, look at the Common Core Standards, which California uses for the public schools, it's in there that by the end of third grade, they have, Memorize their multiplication facts. A common myth, though, is that since there's such a heavy emphasis on conceptual learning, that the fluency no longer matters.

But if you actually read the standards, those standards about knowing their basic facts never went away. They're in there. It's just a lot of people don't think they're in there because of the huge shift into conceptual understanding.

And how did that happen? I mean, when I look at your stuff, Yeah. Again, small sample looked through several, several grade levels, saw the consistency. It seems like you [00:22:00] have a very explicit model to teach the students, allow them to practice provide practice and allow them to become fluent in all those areas.

What is the, your thoughts about the conceptual instruction and how that ties in?

I think you need both. So there's a danger in only focusing on the procedural side. There's a danger in focusing only on the conceptual side. But if you focus on both of them together, that's when you're going to, that's when you're going to have the greatest gains in student achievement. So I do believe that both needs to occur.

You might not necessarily teach them both at the same time, but if you teach it correctly throughout the course of the year, you would have covered procedural knowledge as well as conceptual knowledge. So you can't do one or the other, you have to do both of them

And you have to do the both, but it may not be at the same time.

correct. And that's it. Yeah, it's interesting that you mention that. One of the, my favorite videos on YouTube that I often refer people to was a study by Western University [00:23:00] and the impact of basic skills on higher level learning. So they put a number of people through a CAT scan to determine which areas of the brain would light up depending on what kind of questions you would ask them.

So they're trying to see, make the connection between procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge. And it turns out that, The students who did best on base, on the basic skills, like easy stumps, like seven times seven plus six is 13, for example. The students that could do those with fluency also had the higher conceptual skills.

So it shows that those two skills go together. And if you have high procedural knowledge, you also have high conceptual. So it's not a matter of which one do you pick. If you want to excel, you have to focus on both of them.

So the current battles that we're fighting based on ignorance or why are we fighting them? Why? I mean, because it's crazy. I mean, and I don't know if it's just social media amplifies these [00:24:00] things. But I do know that when I go into schools teachers are surprised sometimes because I worked You know, I always go in and my focus is on explicit instruction and I've heard special ed teachers say, Well, we're not supposed to teach anymore.

I mean, we're not supposed to tell them. And I'm thinking, boy, what a shame how that message came across like that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you do need both. I firmly believe in that.

Okay. Randy besides watching your videos, buying your books what advice do you have for beginning teachers or any teachers as they're teaching, teaching math to students?

For beginning teachers or any teacher, I would say practice is one of the main things. And that's what I tell to my, say to my students too, is you're going to get better the more you practice something. And even with myself, with the curriculum that I designed, I have the privilege of teaching that exact curriculum in my classroom.

Because of the, before I went on board with James Jordan Middle School, they were actually one of my [00:25:00] clients that had, I had trained the teachers on in the past. And when a vacancy opened up they said, Hey, would you mind coming on board to help us out? And so I accepted that position. And one of the draws was that I'd be able to teach my curriculum that I designed.

And even though I created the curriculum every day on my way to work, I live about 45 minutes away from school. I'm rehearsing that lesson in my mind, going over, how am I going to explain this concept, how to explain this concept. And that's coming from someone who knows the curriculum inside and out because I wrote it.

So even with me, I still rehearse those lessons in between periods, I'm going to have a class that I know is struggling with a certain concept. During recess time or break time, I'm right there squirreling on my iPad, actually practicing my delivery to the students, so that when I'm presenting it to them, it's not the first time that I'm showing it to them.

I've run through the scenarios multiple times, and now it can be presented to them in a way that makes sense.

Great [00:26:00] advice. Great, great advice. Because. that consistency of explanation, the consistency of the examples is so critical. I mean, you're trying to learn it and I got it. Oh, and then the explanation is a little bit different. Oh, I thought I had it. And then, so, so great advice, Randy Randy, it has been a pleasure having you on, and we're going to be sure to put where to contact you.

I really, I think teachers, it's worth. First, absolutely go see your YouTube videos to see what this is about. It's very difficult to talk about something without seeing it, and I really recommend teachers take it a look because it, I think it would make their life easier and certainly make the kids life easier because I liked what your description is that you make math easy. So,

Absolutely.

all right. Randy, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Gene.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a [00:27:00] five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.

Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.