Cultivating Critical Thinkers and Effective Problem Solvers at Mobile County Public Schools

The math team at Mobile County Public Schools has a vision. They want to provide their high school students with the tools and knowledge they need to become lifelong critical thinkers and effective problem solvers. And they think they’ve found the formula for success.

“At the end of the day, problem solving is not just a math skill, it's an everyday skill,” said Kyle Burney-Lamar, Mobile’s K-12 math academic supervisor. “And math class is the class to teach you how to problem solve — how to have an issue and get to a solution.”

In order to make their vision come to life, the math team came up with a plan that included the following three main components: common formative assessments; fidelity in the implementation of their core math curriculum, enVision Mathematics A|G|A; and strategic professional development.

Creating a Shared Vision to Help Every Student Succeed

Prior to the pandemic, many high school students at Mobile County Public Schools were struggling to fulfill prerequisite math classes needed to graduate. Then, when the pandemic hit, instruction took a backseat to other issues, such as social-emotional wellness. As students returned to the classroom, educators were faced with tackling challenges leftover from before the pandemic as well as challenges created by the pandemic.

“Post-Covid, students came back into the classroom and we recognized the lack of prerequisites, the lack of number sense, the lack of application,” said Instructional Specialist Victoria Wilson. “Students might know how to solve a problem, but they didn’t know the purpose or the intent of that problem. So those were a lot of the difficulties that we were facing as a collective whole within the district.”

Before the math team set out to develop a plan, they sat down together and developed a mission and vision that would help inform that plan and guide them toward their goals. They decided that vision was to “cultivate critical thinkers who become effective problem solvers.”

“We live in a world where numbers are all around us, whether we recognize that or not,” said Victoria. “We wanted to make sure that we were providing that number sense to students so when we send them out into the world, we want them to be prepared and we want them to succeed.”

Step 1: Use Common Formative Assessments to Help Drive Instruction

The 2021-22 school year is when the Mobile math team really put their plan into motion.

They first focused on creating common formative assessments that could be used in math classrooms across the district to both track student progress and identify areas of need.

“In order for me to be effective in my job, I have to be informed. How can I know what the students are doing and how they're doing along the way before we get … to a state assessment?," said Kyle, adding that the answer is common formative assessments.

The district had been using enVision A|G|A from Savvas Learning Company since the fall of 2021 for its core high school math curriculum, so they took advantage of the many progress monitoring features within the program.

“Just with the vast reports that [enVision] has — there are so many different ways that you can pull a report. That was so beneficial and helpful for me to help teachers drive their instruction,” said Victoria.

Step 2: Ensure Fidelity in Curriculum Implementation

Kyle often emphasizes to the math teachers in the district the importance of teaching enVision with fidelity, because enVision matches the state standards.

“When our state standards changed, we changed our textbooks and those textbooks meet our standards,” he said. “That's why I always tell teachers to use the curriculum provided because it meets the standards.”

Kyle and Victoria also know that teachers need autonomy to make decisions about their instruction to meet the needs of the individual students in front of them. So, they tasked teachers with selecting the pieces from enVision they enjoyed most and then asked to see those being used in their classrooms. The math team also had elements from enVision that they required to be used in instruction to maintain that fidelity.

“There were a few non-negotiables,” said Victoria. “But, for the most part, we made sure that we supported the teachers and showed them all of the things that enVision was capable of doing and then gave them the freedom to apply it appropriately within their classroom.”

Step 3: Provide Strategic Professional Development

Kyle believes that in order for students to be successful, teachers need to be successful. And the key to that success is on-going professional development (PD) opportunities that are differentiated to match the needs and experience levels of the individual teachers.

“I don't like it to just be that one PD and that's it,” he said. “We want to make sure that it's something that's sustainable. So, each time we meet, we talk about the last session and move on to something else. We build it.”

The math team brought in Savvas Educational Consultant Cindy Ham who provided each individual high school with their own professional development as well as district-wide PD. The math team also put together what they called the Savvas Leadership Academy, where a few lead teachers were chosen from each high school to receive in-depth training from Savvas. Those lead teachers could then take those resources, tools, and knowledge back to their schools to help with everyday questions and challenges.

“Professional development is critical for anything in life,” said Victoria. “We want to make sure that we are teaching you how to use it. We are supporting you along your journey of usage.”

Seeing Growth

Since implementing their plan three years ago, the district has seen significant growth in students' academic performance as well as in the development of the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills they were working toward.

“We have seen our students so much more confident when it comes to application problems and word problems,” said Victoria. “There is a portion of the practice problems in every single [enVision] lesson that is specifically tied to ACT- and SAT-style questions. That has been so beneficial, and we have started to see that carry over to our standardized test scores.”

Kyle pointed out that, a few years ago, one of the high schools in the district had a dip in state math test scores because they weren’t using the curriculum with fidelity. But after the math team set out to emphasize the importance of using the curriculum, that school did just that, and the next year they became the number-one performing high school in the district.

He believes that because he and his team provided the right resources, guidance, and training, teachers became more confident in teaching with enVision, and that translated to better student performance.

“We've got more teachers using [enVision] and are more comfortable with it. And that's what it was all about, them being comfortable with the program,” said Kyle. “Our students can problem solve. They're effective problem solvers. They can think about what they're doing and get to a solution.”