Three ways to work together
These examples show how I can work with you. But they are only examples. Together, we can shape a program to fit your teachers, schools, and curriculum.
1. Support after the launch of a new curriculum
Districts that adopt a curriculum such as Illustrative Mathematics usually receive a short launch of 1 to 3 days. The hardest questions come in the months that follow, when teachers are planning unit after unit and wondering how to get students to explain their reasoning.
Jen studies your adopted program closely and then supports teachers through those months. The lessons are the starting point. Jen helps teachers decide where to adapt and why, so the mathematics of each lesson stays intact. She also brings the vocabulary and routines of mathematical argumentation into the lessons teachers already teach, so students make conjectures, justify them, and critique each other’s reasoning.
What this can look like
• Planning sessions with a teacher team, organized around the next unit in your curriculum
• Classroom coaching cycles: plan together, teach, and reflect
• Short workshops on one routine, such as justifying a conjecture, using lessons from your own curriculum
Where we begin
Every engagement starts with two questions. What training came with your adoption, and what are teachers still asking for? The answers shape everything after that.
Jen may already know the curriculum you use or can quickly dive in to the details and the principles behind it.
Support for: Curriculum-based professional learning, HQIM implementation support
Support through: Planning sessions with teacher teams, job-embedded professional learning
2. A 4-session workshop on great lesson plans with AI assists
Teachers learn to guide an AI through the Intentional Planning Table, a structured conversation that gives it the context it needs about their curriculum, their students, and their teaching approach. They also learn how AI works, which helps them judge what it produces. Each session ends with a lesson or unit that teachers can use right away. Some teaching experience is expected.
• The Basics. Build a single lesson.
• Building a Unit. Plan a multi-day unit with a clear through-line.
• Culturally Relevant Lessons. Use the Mathematical Hearts (Zavala & Aguirre) framework.
• Advanced Techniques. Build interactive activities and videos with AI.
Support for: Human-centered AI-assisted lesson planning, AI literacy for teachers
Support through: Workshops
3. Ongoing support for rigor in discussions
High-quality instructional materials are designed to foster rigor. It can get lost when a whole-class discussion becomes a series of students sharing solutions, with no moment where the class decides what is true mathematically. Mathematical argumentation gives students the process mathematicians use. Students make conjectures, justify them, and reach conclusions the whole class can stand behind. Structured for the middle grades, the process helps ideas become clarified and unified. This is the heart of the Common Core practice of constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others, put into language and routines that teachers can use.
Jen works with leaders in monthly sessions across the school year. Leaders learn the process, find places in the curriculum where discussions can build toward a class conclusion, and try ideas with teachers between sessions.
Support for: HQIM implementation support, math coaching, curriculum-based professional learning
Support through: Job-embedded professional learning