Building Strong Classrooms with Kara

What happens when a struggling math student becomes a passionate advocate for innovative teaching methods? Kara Johnson's journey from math anxiety to educational empowerment is nothing short of inspiring. Join us as we explore Kara's transformation, fueled by the Everyday Mathematics program, which led to her remarkable success in teaching and consulting. Her story underscores the power of conceptual understanding in math education, a revelation that not only improved her students' performance but also reignited her enthusiasm for teaching.

Transcript

Devin Pintozzi: 0:00

Hello, this is Spotlight for Success. I am Devin Pintozzi, your host, and we are here at the South Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics with our special guest, Kara Johnson, with Beyond the Classroom. Welcome, Kara.

Kara Johnson: 0:16

Good morning Devin.

Devin Pintozzi: 0:17

Great, Kara. We're so happy to have you here today and would like to know what brought you to SCCTM today.

Kara Johnson: 0:27

Terrific, it's kind of a long story, but I began teaching school in Richland School, District 2, and at that time our school district adopted a program called everyday mathematics and I was teaching second grade at the time and I went to the training and I learned how to teach that program and in that year I started going oh my gosh, that's the reason we do that in math. That's really cool. I didn't realize. That's why we did that in math that way. And that continued for a couple of years.

Kara Johnson: 0:59

And then my husband got transferred to Charlotte and we moved and I started teaching in Clover and I was like I know how to teach math now. I didn't before. I was not a good math student growing up. College math was hard for me. I was always dependent on my friends to help me through that, and so when I started teaching and I was using this program, I'm like math makes sense to me now. And I moved to Clover and we didn't have the program and so I came to this conference and I found the booth and I'm like I really want to be able to teach this in my classroom. And so I did, and they gave me the books and they sent them to me and I used the program and I really learned how to understand and think about mathematics and my test scores were through the roof. My children all were really, really achieving math and it was because I was teaching it the way it was designed to be taught. It wasn't a bunch of steps to memorize, it was conceptual understanding and it was so exciting. When you have success, it breeds success, which breeds more success, and so it was super. It just really worked for me, and at the time, personally, I had two small children, so I decided I would love to do this with this excitement, but I really need to be home with them. So at that time, McGraw-Hill said to me would you consider consulting for us? Just a couple of days a month, I'm like absolutely so. I stopped my teaching job and I started training for them, because they were the ones selling that program at the time and the rest, they say, is history, because South Carolina's standards shifted to more conceptual understanding and less procedural math, and so I started consulting a little more and a little bit more, and then I started my own company and now I have girls that work for me that do the same thing and it's just been a beautiful thing.

Kara Johnson: 2:58

Our passion is to have teachers really understand math so that they can deliver math in a way that's appropriate. So it's just really exciting because, again, success breeds success and when teachers feel good about what they're doing and they really understand what they're doing, they teach it at a whole different level. So we come alongside districts and schools private schools, individual schools but we also have big contracts in districts that we support their teachers ongoing. And one of the things I've learned on this end of my career is teachers learn from people they like. Rita Pearson taught us that in her video. Kids don't learn from teachers they don't like and neither do teachers. So we really we work hard to have relationships with teachers so that they can trust us, so that we can come into their classrooms and teach model lessons and show them how math can be really fun and successful.

Devin Pintozzi: 3:51

That is wonderful, and do you have a particular story or case study that you're like this was so incredible associated with Beyond the Classroom?

Kara Johnson: 4:01

Well, there's so many things. I could talk about this all day long, but so many times when I'm in a classroom, do you remember when you were about in second or third grade and your teacher taught you how to borrow and you would go next door and decompose the number and carry it over and they talked about going to get in a cup of sugar and all this stuff? Well, the problem was we really didn't understand the place value of that, as to what was happening that you know, it was actually a $10 bill being decomposed into 10 ones. And when we show teachers those kind of things and when we show kids that they're just like whoa, I get it. Now I understand, and that happened so much. Yesterday we were were I was doing a session yesterday afternoon on fractions and um, just to see teachers making connections. Oh, my goodness, that's the reason we do it that way. That is what just stirs us and keeps us doing what we do it. It lights a fire for kids and for teachers, so.

Devin Pintozzi: 4:59

That is wonderful, and is there anything else you'd like to share with the south Carolina of Teacher Mathematics community?

Kara Johnson: 5:06

Well, it's just exciting for me. We're so happy to be here. All of my girls are here, or most of them are. I'm missing a couple today but we all came because these are the people that we love. These are the teachers that we care about and we have long connections with, and it's so good just to be able to give them a little treat and to encourage them in this way too, and I able to give them a little treat and to encourage them in this way too, and I'm really thankful for the council. You know, next year is a new adoption of math materials in South Carolina, and because our standards require that our teachers teach in a conceptual way, so that means that the kids really have to understand the math behind the procedure. It's exciting because we have four new programs that we're selecting from to be sure that we pick the right one so that our teachers can continue to grow in South Carolina and be successful. So we're really thankful for the opportunity to be at the conference.

Devin Pintozzi: 5:52

Oh, that is wonderful, Kara. Thank you so much for participating here at the SCCTM and for your time with us. I hope you have a great rest of the conference.

Kara Johnson: 6:01

Super. Thanks so much for having me.

Devin Pintozzi: 6:03

Thank you.