Do you have that one subject that you just cannot stand? Does the mere thought of teaching it make you feel like you're trudging through mud? I get it; every educator has that one subject that seems to defy their teaching magic. But what if I told you that this very subject could be the secret ingredient to reignite your passion for teaching?

That's exactly what we are talking about on today's episode with my good friend, Mona Iehl. She is your go to for everything math, but what you might not know about Mona is that she is a former math avoider. She is also a teacher and instructional coach in Chicago. Her passion for math came when she discovered how to engage every student in a subject she, too, disliked. But how? Through intentionally changing her math class to help students BE mathematicians. Exploration, real world problems, productive struggle, and math discussions made math come alive for Mona and her students. Now Mona shows teachers how to build math culture through rigorous student centered math instruction.

While we'll dive deep into math because that's her specialty, I want you to know that everything we discuss in today's episode is entirely adaptable to any subject that doesn't exactly light your teaching fire. So, get ready to be inspired and empowered to reignite your passion for teaching, no matter the subject!

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0:00] Hey, Mona, welcome to the Resilient Teacher Podcast. Hey, I'm so excited to be here.

I am too. I introduced you prior, like earlier on, gave you a great little bio, but I got really stuck on the math avoider comment.

And so it's just sticking to me. So can you share like your personal journey?

Like how did you go from being a math avoider to becoming a passionate math teacher?

[0:27] Yeah. Well, so I always like to say I'm a math avoider, but I guess you're right.

I don't always explain it to people what that means. But so I'm an elementary school teacher.

I went to school to be an elementary school teacher.

And when I went to school, I mean, when I was in kindergarten, I came home like the first week and I started being a teacher.

You know, one of those, like my books were in the window sill and all my babies were set up and I was a teacher starting from age six.

And I always was in to read alouds and social studies and learning about people and how, and just like debating and talking and being creative.

And that's always been my passion from when I was a first kindergartner all the way through college and even into my teaching career.

And so math was just never part of the equation. The pun is there.

Yeah. But like, I, I just did the most that I had to do, I guess the least I had to do, as you say, and got through. And.

[1:36] So you know, to me getting good grades was important. And so I would learn exactly what I needed to do to get the grade.

If that meant I needed to turn in accurate homework, I cheated.

If that meant I needed to get A's on the test, I studied the study guide, I memorized the steps, I listened to the teacher, I did what they did, and then I reproduced those.

But I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about math and definitely didn't enjoy math at all.

I just was there to get it done.

[2:11] Yeah, you can relate to that. I feel like that's so many of us, right?

And yeah, so if you got to the other side and you're a teacher now and you're like faced with teaching math, at least for me, I got into the classroom and it was like, I say math avoider because it's like, again, I'm like, yeah, I'm here for the integrated social studies and ELA lessons.

And we're gonna take all these cool field trips that relate to our science studies and all of that.

But when it comes to math, It's like, it's time for math. Get out your book.

Okay, 76, here we go. We just gotta do these three pages and we're gonna get through it.

I'm gonna put it on the board, show you how to do it.

Maybe we'll sing a song, use some whiteboards.

I'll give you some manipulatives, but let's move on so we can get to the good stuff, guys. Yeah. Right?

[2:59] And I was actually teaching a lesson just like that. And we had a resident principal and she came in and she was watching the lesson and I was like, oh no.

Like, here I am teaching one of these lessons that I haven't prepared for.

I just put the lesson number, like I did every week, right? Okay, lesson one on Monday, two on Tuesday, et cetera, in my lesson plans.

And then I'm like, she's in there and I'm like, I'm teaching some random lesson on data or something.

I don't even know why I'm teaching it. I don't understand it.

I don't know the learning target, I'm not even.

I'm just walking the kids through the worksheet.

And afterwards, slightly embarrassed. And she's like, so how did it go?

And I was like, well, I wasn't prepared for an observation.

And we already have like a good rapport, but I was like, what the heck?

And she was like, yeah, what was that lesson? And I'm like, honestly, I have no idea.

I have no idea. And that's how most like math lessons go.

And she was like, okay, thanks for being honest with me. And I was like, it's just not my thing, but like come back in tomorrow, we're reading this awesome like article, you know, and I just like invited her in for something that would be better.

And then she was transformational in my kind of journey to becoming a math teacher.

[4:15] Non-avoider. And she, you know, really taught me that like math doesn't have to suck. It can be like super fun and like all the things that I love about social studies and ELA and all the other things like those can come alive in math. And she pointed me in the direction of some research that has been around forever that I had no idea about. And I just was like.

[4:42] Honestly, shook. I was shook. Yeah. I'm like, I'm a person who it's like, if I don't know something, and I'm like, I honestly, I'm like, in this moment, I'm like, wait, I was shook. I'm feeling it. I'm a person though. It's like, if I don't understand something, or I don't know about something, I go all in. And so I love it. I love it. I knew that from the beginning of meeting you. But I'm like, I just I read every book, I listened to everything I could find. I watched videos of people teaching. I asked her back in because she is an expert.

And I was like, teach with me, show me, like, plan with me, explain it all to me. And she did. And I very quickly became good at planning and facilitating math lessons that, felt like those really rich literature talks that you would have or when you're debating something in social studies, like that's how math started to feel. And I was like.

[5:50] This is amazing. And it's like, it was helping me learn math. And so, as you can tell, I'm getting all excited. That's how I felt. I was like, this is how it should be for everyone. And for me, it's an equity issue. It's always an equity issue. It's core belief. And it's like, every, child needs to leave our classrooms feeling like readers, feeling like writers, and feeling like mathematicians. And so it just became a thing to me of like, not enough people are talking about this, not enough people are like addressing this with our children that need it most. And so here I am.

I'm like, let's freaking go, y'all. Here is Mona Math.

[6:34] You know, you were talking and you said that you just did whatever you needed to do to get it done.

And I can relate to that so hard that I did that with reading. I did that with math. People thought I was a freaking genius, but I didn't understand any of it. Like, I did not understand multiplication or division until I was in college. I didn't understand the application purpose. Like, I knew I memorized it, right? And I feel like that's so often how, at least how I grew up, the way that education was, they just give you this information. Remember, you memorize it, you regurgitate it. The end, that's all you got to do. And now, being a teacher, being a mom, learning from that experience, and I bet you can kind of like, you can, you get me with this, but I feel like the application part is so much more important. And it's what kind of gives you that energy when you're in the classroom teaching. Like you really, you get it. You know what I mean?

[7:38] Absolutely. Like that is actually probably what changed in my classroom was like, I stopped focusing so much on like the individual skills and I started focusing on the application.

Because I agree with you. Like when I went to school, it was like Worksheet City, those textbooks that they, they weren't even reprint, they were like, you used them every year. You you decided to like copy the problem on the line paper.

You remember that? Yes. Even like the- Do the odds, you know?

The evens were in the back of the book and those were the ones you wanted, but they gave you the odds instead.

Even when you were in like fourth grade, like it wasn't even like, it was so early.

I remember even having to copy like questions like about reading or whatever.

And you would have to copy them on the line paper, whatever, all that like busy work, right?

And it was like, what we were spending all of our time on was not the deep thinking, that like depth of knowledge that we know our kids need now.

And so I think, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is that like.

[8:40] What's the purpose of school? And like, the way we were taught was to be industrial workers. Yep.

Right? And so a lot of our experience in college learning to teach is in our last two years.

And if you really start adding up the hours, like once you get into your classroom for the first time, the amount of time you've spent thinking about teaching is very minimal compared to the amount of hours we've spent in classrooms being students.

Right.

So as a student, if I'm being taught in a way that's preparing me to be a line worker, to, you know, I'm in Michigan, but I grew up in Michigan, I should say, you know, to be a car maker, right?

To work on a line, then like you just need to do the things.

[9:34] Then when we're in our classroom, if that's been our experience, we are going to default to teaching in those ways.

Not because it's like we're trying to do the wrong thing, but it's because, I say this all the time, we are products of a broken system.

We know better, we know we need to do better, but we default to doing things the way we were taught.

Because we don't know a different way.

Right, I completely agree with that. And I have been there.

I think when, when I was burned out the hardest in my teaching career, it was because I was defaulting to that. I was going straight into, Well, let me just do what everybody else is doing. Let me act just how everybody else is acting.

Like, did you ever, did you ever get teacher burnout? Like, did you have any experience with that?

Like, because you can only really feel like fulfilled and sustained in maybe a couple parts of your life at once, you know? And so I think the most the time where I felt the most burnt out was probably when I was just like, doing that, like lockstep, just like, do this, do this, do this. And it wasn't any, I wasn't bringing any of my intellectual, like, greatness or skill to it. And like, I'm really good, I know now, and I'm okay with saying that, y'all. If you're good at something, say it, right? Like, I am good at facilitating discussions. I'm good at listening to people and getting all the voices to come in and have a rich discussion that leads us somewhere great.

And I can do that about social studies. And I can do that about a really great read aloud.

And I wasn't doing that in math. And I think that's what it was. It was like, I was just slogging through, you know, and nothing was getting me excited.

And I, yeah, I just think, you know, the jobs our kids are going to have, like, in the future, with, like, technology, the problems they're going to solve, like, those aren't invented yet. And so.

Let's go. I feel like a little bit of our teacher prep was to prepare us, same kind of thing, is to just plug and chug, is to just be that line worker where they can dole out the curriculum and you will just do it.

Yeah, you just read the script, just. Exactly.

Yeah, and that is not, I think so often, teachers get burned out just because, I mean, like, because they're having to follow a specific curriculum. They're not allowed to talk about what lights them up. Because in some states, you can't even do that. You can't even have a book in your classroom. So, you know, like, I get completely, like, where you're going. I know, we've talked in the past, like, on this show, like, we've talked about how, like, the culture of our classrooms is, like how it impacts teacher burnout, how it, you know, really does that.

But you talk about like math culture in your classroom, like how, what is exactly does that look like? How do you bring math culture into the classroom?

And so to think about like having a specific culture around a subject might be something you haven't thought about before. it surely wasn't something I thought about 12 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think people who maybe haven't thought about this can relate it to like the joy we create in reading.

We want our students to be readers. And so we make beautiful spaces for reading in our classroom and we make sure we have high quality texts for our kids to read.

And we talk about our own reading lives.

And like all of that has to happen in math. We have to create this like culture of like, yeah, we're gonna solve problems today. Yes, we're gonna be challenged.

And your energy has to match. And like...

And I was like, I don't know, I hate math. Like so many elementary and middle school teachers say, right? Like, don't come to me for math, go to her, go to him, whatever.

We just normalized the fact that we aren't math people in the biz, right? Like, it's okay.

But nobody is okay with saying like, I'm not a reading person.

I don't like to write.

Changing that culture. And if all you can do is change your culture in your classroom, start there, because it will inspire others. And you, even if this coming year, you just say.

But then, you know, like kids pick up on what you're putting down, right?

Like, who are you and how you're showing up if you're all in for reading and you're just like I was at the beginning of my career of like, here we go, math again, here's the script.

That's the culture of your math classroom.

So spending time thinking about where you're at with math is so important in creating that culture in your classroom.

Yes. Oh, wow. I love your honesty, too, because it just is coming, coming straight out. So when we're building this math culture, OK, like, I think one of the things that really gets me going, gets me excited is when the kids are engaged. When the kids aren't engaged, I'm like, there's nobody to perform to. Like, what am I doing here? You know? And so, like, culture kind of contributes to that but like how does building this math culture contribute to student engagement that learning reducing the teacher your burnout section of all of this?

Yep. So, I think...

Okay, they'll probably do it because I have good management and I've worked on that a lot, right? Yeah.

And I need to know how many rows can fit everybody.

Okay, what about if all 120 fourth and fifth graders wanted to come to the third grade show? So that would be all the third, fourth, and fifth graders.

There's 120 of them. How many rows of seven would we need then?

Would there be any extra, right? So the difference in framing of the problem is instantly engaging. Yeah.

And so I'm a big proponent of saying, create the math culture where we solve real world math problems, right?

And we're all showing up to math every day knowing we're not going to phone it in on just doing what I did in math, which is figure out the steps, follow the steps, fill in the blanks on the worksheet, and carry on.

But you will be challenged here.

You will have to discuss your thinking and support your reasoning with evidence, and all of those things that we want our kids to be able to do in real life.

Like, hey, you're gonna be challenged and that's gonna feel a certain way.

And so we gotta talk about like who you are inside and what you do in your brain and how your body feels and what you're gonna do with that, right?

So some intentional character work about being courageous in math and like persevering and all of those things.

And so we will productively struggle and then we will come back together and we will discuss it.

And we'll work together as a community to make sure every single person knows.

And that's where I love to like facilitate that student-led discussion.

Cause it's different every day. We went into this job because it's different every day.

And so what better than to hear students' voices and to empower them to explain their thinking and respond to each other.

That's it for me. I could work on that for the rest of my life.

And that is truly how I feel about it.

I could always get better at facilitating discussions, even though I think I'm pretty good, like I said earlier, that is my life's work.

I wanna get better at listening and facilitating discussions because that's how people learn best.

Yes, and then that's how they can apply. And that's like, that brings in some of that emotional intelligence that so often with phones everywhere and kids don't even know how to talk.

So really bringing that into the classroom, you get to teach that skill.

Not just math. You're doing, you're doing all the things. Like you have really rolled this up into, and this is why they call you Mona Math.

I think I just call myself that. But yeah, y'all can call me Mona Math.

I'll talk it. I'll say it out loud. And you guys do it, and I'll be the person who says it. I know.

I instantly go to shut down. Like, why is he making us do that?

Why is she making us do that?

I'm like, I do that in my PD. So I get it.

We all have that feeling. It all crops up. And it's our baggage.

I always like to say, like, we all bring suitcases of drama with us to math class, right?

And so knowing that, I think, helps.

And...

So if you're already there and you're listening to this and you're like, okay, yeah, maybe that's me, like spend a little bit more time. Listen to another podcast about math or pick up a good book about math and just a little bit like right like a little bit at a time um and then the other thing I would say is just being in community with people and so now we live in this like digital age of like all sorts of communities of people who talk about math um and I was fortunate to have like that one coach and a few other colleagues that were like willing to help and do it and And then what I did was I just did a lot of math with them, which sounds lame.

I know that sounds lame, but like we solved every problem that we would give our students.

We solved every single one in as many ways as we could. So that problem I was talking about earlier, it was like seven, you know, seven chairs in rows and how many would be in 13?

How many would be in 20?

Okay, for our second graders, we're gonna do seven chairs in each row for six rows.

And when I really started to learn about like learning trajectories of like how kids understanding of multiplication develops throughout the years, that's when I learned how to multiply, y'all. So like here I am known to math, hey, and I learned how to multiply when I was in my fourth year of teaching, okay? Like relax, it's okay. Do the math because that's how how you learn the math. I'll say one more thing on that really quickly. I got moved from third grade. I had spent a long, long time teaching third grade. I got moved to fifth and sixth grade, taught social studies for a couple of years. And then my principal was like, and now it's time for you to teach fifth and sixth grade math. And I was actually like, yes, let's go. Cause I need a challenge. Right? However, I opened up the sixth grade curriculum and I was like, oh my goodness gracious. What is, what is a rate? What is ratios? What is, what is the unit? Yeah, I don't understand. And I, but I think it was like, um.

Keep teaching your curriculum, but know the math really well. And if you know it, you can show it to that lesson and be like way more confident. Yeah. And then we can work on your teaching practices and facilitating discussions and doing all all these different fun things.

You know, we can add that on when you're ready. But like, just spend some time answering those like complex questions. Yeah, just get into the math. Yeah, that makes that makes a ton of sense.

And I would probably have never thought of that because I am not. Well, I, I am a math person.

You can find me there. I have a podcast.

I have new episodes every Monday and sometimes when I can get it together, when I'm not too burnt out.

I try to give like some really action-packed episodes where you can hear something and it'll hopefully make you think for a little bit.

And then you can go over to Instagram and blow me up at hello, Moda Math and be like, wait, you've had this, but what about this?

And we can like have a back and forth and chat about it because, you know, like I've got some different ideas.

I've been doing this for a while and you might be at the beginning of your journey and we can start there too.

I know Brittany, you're all about like automate, automate.

And so I agree, like I have a routine for how I get kids thinking deeply, productively struggling, discussing their math thinking.

And it's what we do every single day. And it's called Word Problem Workshop.

And it's based on research. I didn't make it up. I just took all the best research and made it a routine in my classroom.

And I've taught lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of teachers how to do it.

And if you wanna learn more about that, you can go to monamath.com slash WPW for Word Problem Workshop.

And you can find out about Word Problem Workshop. It's literally my favorite thing of all time.

Yes, and we are gonna put that in the show notes so that everybody can go and check you out on the Instagram, on your podcast, and get that workshop because yes, yes, yes, yes.

Thank you so much again for coming onto the podcast, Mona. I hope to have you again with us to share some more.

Yeah, I loved it. You're the best, Brittany. Thank you so much. Thanks.