I spent several years as a middle school math teacher before switching to software engineering about 3 years ago.

I am sad to see Jo Boaler/youcubed quoted and promoted in this Middle School Math framework. This person has persuaded school districts and admins throughout CA to believe that every mathematics lesson should be a student-led, creative, multi-disciplinary experience. School districts are shown hyper-curated math lessons where teacher input is minimal and students are allowed to creatively interact with a math topic that's several grade levels below them, and school districts then have their district-level math coaches repeat these lessons ad nauseum to teachers in order to push teachers to a more student-led instruction model. I once saw one of these district coaches in an 8th grade honors Algebra classroom present a lesson on counting dots -- how interesting it is how some students count one by one, some group count, some use symmetry, some start at the top, some at the bottom, etc. Don't get me wrong, these demonstrations are interesting, and allow students the ability to explore and discuss more than a standard teacher-led mathematics classroom. But my experience is that they are closer to one-off, interesting demonstrations rather than an appropriate model to handle an entire mathematics curriculum. When superintendents and administrators are presented these demonstrations, and they observe how much discussion there is, how students can be creative, how students are able to confidently interact with the material, they then believe that's what every math lesson should look like, and set their expectations accordingly.

There are a lot of fancy ideas of what modern day math lessons should look like. Student-led investigations, few teacher prompts, creative outlets for students, and for some unknown reason, an underlying belief that students who are deficient in math will be able to achieve higher with this model. These ideas, and the people that promote them, are then able to secure massive textbook and district consultation contracts, but the actual teachers in the district are left wanting. The thing is, for this type of lesson model, the amount of resources necessary for every lesson is incredible. Interactives, worksheets, the overall pedagogical arch of the lesson, the right teacher questions to ask -- for the types of lessons that is being promoted, it's just not something that can be done 5 times a week for multiple classes. The district/admin expectations are set by these companies/evangelists, the appropriate materials are not furnished to the teachers to actually do something as involved as what they're expecting, and there's no possible way that teachers could create the amount of content that's expected.

Ideologically, it was hard for me to square my love of math and what I fundamentally believe how math should be taught with what I saw at the admin/district level, and my Principal was more than happy to explain that I was in the wrong.

As a 6th grade math teacher, I was told by my Principal that every student (and their parent) entering my classroom had been taught math under this "Jo Boaler" model, and had never seen a math fact quiz. So when a student needs to multiply 7 by 8? I actually had students that were making an 8 x 7 grid of dots and then counting to 56. Even though the Common Core framework has comments about the need for fluency, this model of instruction where students should both investigate a topic and then use that same investigative approach (e.g., setting up m rows of n dots to multiply m * n rather than memorizing the result for 0 <= m,n <= 12) just didn't jive with me. A common kneejerk argument for not prompting students to memorize math facts is because students can "just use a calculator." There's even calculators on their phones nowadays! However, I believe basic math facts are closer to language than math, especially with how often such basic math facts are expected to be known as students progress. A 7th grade teacher adding two fractions together with unlike denominators isn't going to stop mid-example and do a counting exercise for 6 * 7, so wouldn't it be a minor detriment each time a student that doesn't have 6 * 7 memorized see that unknown math fact in class? Saying that the student could simply use a calculator each time they encounter an unknown math fact is, in my opinion, like saying that there's no need to memorize words when learning a foreign language, because if you don't know the definition of "el", "es", "esta", or "un" when in a Spanish class, you can just use Google Translate to figure it out!

What I found out from veteran teachers -- I was told too late for me to be saved, unfortunately -- is that the expectation for new teachers is to drink all the admin Kool-Aid with reckless abandon until you have tenure, and then you see admin maybe once every five years after that. Instead, when I had issues with the textbook we were provided, or saw struggling students left in the dust during student-led investigations, it was in my error as a new teacher to question these approaches and provide other instructional materials for students. Too bad for me, as I really loved teaching that middle school age group and interacting with my students. The money, freedom, and severely reduced working hours in software engineering, though, are a welcome change :P