{"id":7262,"date":"2026-08-11T10:06:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/mathequityforum\/?p=7262"},"modified":"2026-08-11T14:55:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:55:48","slug":"trtg3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/mathequityforum\/trtg3\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories from the Field: Inviting Students into Conversations about Participation in Math Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/mathequityforum\/about-us\/\">Megan Murray<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">August 11, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How do teachers know whether all students have meaningful opportunities to participate in mathematics? One way is to collect evidence. In this blog, Willa, a math coach in a small urban district that uses <a href=\"https:\/\/illustrativemathematics.org\/\"><em>Illustrative Mathematics<\/em><\/a>, describes working with Julia, a third-grade teacher who noticed a lack of broad-based participation in math class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-electric-grass-gradient-background has-background wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cI was in a third grade classroom and we noticed that some students weren&#8217;t participating in conversations. So, for two weeks, I used <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/mathequityforum\/terc_products\/equitable-participation\/\"><em>the Teacher Reflection Tool<\/em><\/a> <em>to collect data on student participation. Every day, I literally just checked off who talked, and I kept track of how they came to be engaged in the conversation. Were they called on after raising a hand? Were they cold called? Did they raise a hand and not get called on? Did they talk to a neighbor? I was looking at the kinds of ways kids were simply entering the conversation, as well as who was participating. After two weeks, I discovered one significant thing, which was that most of the people participating were kids who identify as male.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Willa and Julia decided to share the data with the class because the students knew that Willa was collecting it and they suspected the students wouldn\u2019t be surprised. Addressing the issue would send a message that this mattered, that they mattered. And, that their teachers would work to disrupt the status differences that were impacting learning and would give them a chance to be part of the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-electric-grass-gradient-background has-background wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cThe kids knew I was collecting this data, and as soon as I told the class what I was noticing, all the people who identify as female did the classroom sign for \u201cI agree\u201d. They were all aware of it already. They already knew.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fact that many students already knew what the data showed surprised some of the students. This opened up a space for conversations about how to create a math learning community where all students were comfortable sharing, wanted to share, and trusted that their ideas would be valued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-electric-grass-gradient-background has-background wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201c<\/em><em>Putting it out into the open started to change the game. It was like shining a bright light on the elephant in the room. Julia and I began to talk very deliberately &#8211; with each other and with the students &#8211; about what it meant to be a participant in the mathematics classroom. We changed the seating arrangement. We introduced the idea of the math discussion as akin to \u201cthe dinner table.\u201d At a dinner table, you build on each other&#8217;s ideas. You don&#8217;t necessarily have to raise your hand when you speak. People sit and have a conversation. They might share ideas and questions, they might argue, they might leave with more questions than they came with, and that&#8217;s what we wanted math discussions to be like.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to ongoing conversations about how to make the math community more inclusive, continued data about participation would show whether they were making progress towards their goals. Interestingly, it was the students who took on the work of collecting and analyzing the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-electric-grass-gradient-background has-background wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cEvery day, for the rest of the year, students rotated the responsibility of \u201cdata collector.\u201d&nbsp;That person had a clipboard with an attendance sheet on it, and a pencil, and they collected data on who had participated. They reported this information to the whole class &#8211; noting the increase or decrease from the previous conversation, as well as the number of students participating identified as female, or male, or non-binary. For all of us, the goal became one of ensuring that everybody participated at some point every day and that there was a balance in whose voices they were hearing. Over time, what the teacher and I saw was the students beginning to rely less on the teacher and more on each other to build on each other&#8217;s math ideas.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This teacher\/coach team wanted to broaden and deepen student participation in math class.&nbsp; They began by collecting data, which uncovered a striking pattern. The real shift came when they invited students into the process, sharing the findings and encouraging them to be a part of addressing the pattern. Together, they created a shared vision for more inclusive math discussions. Students took ownership of a system for tracking how they were doing. Rather than being the subjects of data collection, students became partners in creating the kind of community they envisioned, one in which everyone had meaningful opportunities to contribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A math coach describes using the Teacher Reflection Tool with a third grade teacher to uncover patterns in whose voices were being heard, and how they invited students into the conversation about those patterns and how they could be changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":2285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"2949,2677,6807,1790,5773,218","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,7,16],"class_list":["post-7262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-discussions","tag-teacher-reflection","tag-teacher-reflection-tool"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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