From Quiet Struggle to Striking Clarity
What’s really underneath math difficulty?
When students struggle in mathematics, the answer is not always more practice, more repetition, or a simpler worksheet. This session helps educators look beneath student performance to identify the concepts, relationships, representations, and reasoning that may be getting in the way.
Participants will explore how conceptual understanding, mathematical identity, and instructional choices interact—and how small shifts in teaching can help students move from confusion toward genuine understanding.
Math is a Gatekeeper
Helping students see themselves as capable mathematicians
Mathematics can open doors—or quietly close them.
This session examines the long-term impact of students deciding they are “not math people” and the role educators play in shaping mathematical identity, belonging, confidence, and access to future opportunities.
Drawing on experience in special education, alternative education, intervention, and secondary mathematics, Shelley shares practical ways educators can create classrooms where students feel safe enough to think, struggle productively, make mistakes, and begin to see themselves as people who can succeed in mathematics.
Stop Chasing Gaps
Find the mathematics that will move students forward
Students who struggle often have years of unfinished learning, and trying to remediate every missing skill can leave both teachers and students overwhelmed.
This session offers a different way to think about intervention: identifying the high-leverage mathematical understandings that unlock future learning.
Participants will explore how to use student thinking, representations, learning progressions, and recurring mathematical ideas to identify what matters most now—and design intervention that helps students reconnect to grade-level mathematics instead of remaining permanently stuck in remediation.
