In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis learn about a new publication: Decluttering Mathematics: 5 Fundamental Understandings That Unleash Meaningful Student Thinking Grades 6-12. Three of the book’s authors join us to share how that when secondary mathematics instruction is cluttered with disconnected procedures and a focus on computation without meaning, students are essential being handed a huge pile of tiny puzzle pieces without ever building or even seeing the picture on the puzzle box. Ted, Scott, and April call out the clutter and describe how educators can connect the disconnected and focus on what’s important to allow students the opportunity to think, reason, and make sense of mathematics.

In the conversation, the authors touch of the five fundamental understandings in the book: Measurement, Comparison, Proportional Relationships, Equivalence, and Graphical Representations, and provide examples of how and why attention to student thinking leads to better teaching and better student learning. Curtis and Joanie appreciated the approach of having students “think first; compute only if necessary,” and the idea of retiring some common topics to the “math attic.” The authors share their grounding the book in ways of thinking, ways of approaching, and ways of doing mathematics, all in the service of doing bigger things in math class.

Resources mentioned in this episode and ways to learn more:

· Order the book HERE or HERE or HERE

· Ted’s website https://www.coequalmath.com/home and LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedcoe/

· April’s LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildstrom/ , BTC info page https://www.buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/team/april-strom

· Scott’s website https://www.scottadamsonmath.com/ and LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-adamson-465202327/

· James’ website https://jamestantonmath.com/ and LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-tanton-9920bb58/

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this back to school episode, Curtis and Joanie discuss key ideas for starting the new school year off right, to ensure effective teaching and learning for teachers and students. How do you spend the first day of school with your students? Do you get them working in groups right away like Curtis, learning about them as students and how they engage with math and each other? Or maybe you focus on learning their names and helping them learn each other’s names like Joanie, ensuring a community is built as early as possible.

Our hosts discuss ways to frame struggle and mistakes, and how to be sure that what you put in place the first week stays aligned through your words and actions all year long, ensuring that students “end the school year with a more positive math identity than when they started.”

Resources mentioned in the episode and others to follow up on:

· NCTM President’s Message (Latrenda Knighten) for August 2026 (no login required)

· Book Productive Math Struggle

· Edutopia blog post Instructional strategies for managing student mistakes in math and Mathnasium blog post for parents

· Youcubed Week of Inspirational Math – Activities and resources for the first week of school (or anytime) to support positive math identity and student engagement

· Book Impact of Identity in K-12 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices

What do kindergarten counting concepts have to do with high school algebra? More than most teachers realize. In this episode, Joanie and Curtis sit down with Erin Wahler-Cleveland, founder of Roots and Wings Math, to explore how deep understanding of early and elementary mathematics lays the groundwork for everything that comes later — and what teachers at every grade level can do to better support that understanding.

Erin opens with a thought-provoking coordinate-plane framework that distinguishes between easy/hard (subjective) and simple/complex (objective). The key insight? As we gain expertise, complex things start to feel simple — and that's exactly what makes teaching so hard. Early numeracy lives in the easy yet complex quadrant, and its depth is routinely underestimated by the adults who teach it.

We discuss important instructional shifts for teachers at every level, and land on an important key takeaway: The central challenge of teaching mathematics is maintaining awareness of a complexity that has become invisible through expertise. The remedy — at both elementary and secondary levels — is giving teachers genuine learner experiences with the content they teach, paired with disciplined questioning practices that reveal student thinking rather than assume it.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Roots and Wings Math – https://www.rootsandwingsmath.com/
• The Dunning-Kruger Effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
• Room to Grow Podcast – www.roomtogrowmath.com