Show Notes:

In episode 56, I interviewed Robert Kaplinsky (@RobertKaplinsky), author of the new book “Open Middle Math: Problems That Unlock Student Thinking, Grades 6 – 12.” Robert’s experience is as a classroom teacher, teacher specialist, and instructor at UCLA. He is also a speaker and presenter who has a passion for sharing lessons and resources teachers can use with their students to help them love mathematics.is an expert on supporting introverted students. We discussed the #observe me movement that Robert created and supporting students in math through the open middle concept.

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About Robert Kaplinsky

Hi, I’m Robert. I’ve been an educator since 2003 as a classroom teacher, teacher specialist for Downey Unified School District, instructor for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and presenter at conferences around the world.

I understand how frustrating it is when we’re expected to be experts using teaching strategies that we haven’t had enough training on. So, my passion is sharing lessons and resources teachers can use with their students to help them love mathematics.

When I’m not working alongside and training mathematics educators, I can be found spending time with Megan and Owen, my wife and son.  We love to play board games (like Yahtzee, Pass the Pigs, and Monopoly), travel to US National Parks, watch TV shows and movies, eat delicious food, and play at parks and the beach.  We have two giant cats named Buster and Raki who enjoy eating ribbon and meowing loudly to tell you they’re hungry at 3 am.

I had a not so typical upbringing you can read about here and here or watch this video.

Connect with Robert:

Robert’s Website: robertkaplinsky.com/

Robert’s Twitter: @RobertKaplinsky

Robert’s New Book:

Our Conversation

Dan Kreiness
Very excited to bring on as a guest in this episode Robert Kaplinsky and I was introduced to Robert I want to say a few years ago really through the #observeme movement. But he’s got a lot going for him at this point. And with a book that was just released and lots that he’s doing in the math education world, especially, I thought it’d be great to talk to him. So Robert, welcome. And if you could just introduce yourself before we get going here for the listeners, who are you? Where are you? What do you do?

Robert Kaplinsky
Hey, thank you for having me. My name is Robert Kaplinsky. I have been in education since 2003. I’ve been a math teacher and science teacher, but mainly mathematics and into a math coach role supporting math teachers in secondary mathematics. Now I’m working on my own as a consultant, and also president of a company called Grassroots Workshops that provides professional development for teachers. I live in long beach with my wife and my son and it’s just been a fun experience really trying to learn more about how people learn.

Dan Kreiness
Yeah, that’s awesome. I do a lot of that myself as a coach and it’s really what drives me at this point in my career. And we just spoke briefly off the air about I’m finishing up my dissertation process. And that’s so much of what it focuses on is adult learning and how to how to really shift mindsets in classroom teachers. And so I appreciate you brought that up. And you have that coaching experience too. And it sort of segues me into what I wanted to start this interview off with is talking to you actually, about the observe me movement, because I got to know that as… fairly early on as an instructional coach, and I really appreciated it because whether teachers were looking at it in the sense of like a pineapple chart, or, you know, I kind of created this form with QR codes that teachers could use. But where did that come from? How did that become as big a thing as it became and I guess if you go back to like the why, why did that happen?

Robert Kaplinsky
You know, I mean, it’s funny in a sense that it should even exist and that it should even be remarkable, like something that resonates with teachers when they see like, hey, someone’s welcoming me into my room to observe them. And the fact that that’s even a thing, like the fact that we’re surprised when we see someone welcoming us into a room I think speaks volumes about really how compartmentalized education has become. It began, I saw a tweet from a friend named Heather Cohen. And she had shared a tweet of someone just saying a simple sign, like, Hey, come in, here’s what I’d like feedback on. And it got so many retweets and likes, and I was, I was shocked and I thought, like, there’s something to this right? And, and I really wanted to systematize this idea of first off welcoming people, but then being very specific about how you want feedback, because I think observed observations are really like a four letter word in education. Usually it’s something that’s done to you. You don’t really have a lot of control and it’s really something evaluative. As opposed to something where there is not necessarily one person with power or one person who’s being examined, but really, that it’s a mutually beneficial opportunity where the person observing is learning just as much as the person who is teaching, and is getting feedback from really another set of eyes. Like, I’d hope… I mean in the best case scenario, I’d love there to be, you know, 20 sets of eyes in a room, watching every little detail and helping me become the best possible teacher. But in reality, I mean, we’re so overwhelmed with things to do, it just doesn’t happen. So that’s really the foundation was just a way to systematize observations and getting feedback and normalizing this process.

Dan Kreiness
You know, it’s really… and I agree wholeheartedly that you said that it almost shouldn’t really be a thing in the first place and you used the word compartmentalized… you know, it’s timely that we’re talking about this actually because as a coach and and being in my first year at my school, I’m quite literally in the last couple of days trying to bring about a system of teacher intervisitations. Now, my role in the school is really to coach just the teachers in the ELA department. So right now that’s, that’s going to be my focus. Ideally, it’d be great if we could make this more school wide. But you know, setting up a system where teachers can visit each other. And, you know, I agree with you when you say that you as a teacher become better and stronger when other… you know, you have 20 pairs of eyes on you, other teachers are watching you. But I don’t know about you if you would agree with this as a coach and having spent almost half my career now as a coach and being out of the classroom, visiting other teachers regularly, I have learned so much and I appreciate what each teacher individually brings to the table. So one of my goals is to get teachers to just watch other teachers and to learn and you know, pick up tips and tricks that maybe they never considered before. Would you agree with that?

Robert Kaplinsky
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was awful my first years of teaching. I had… I mean, I really didn’t even know how about I was an until I saw other teachers teach and thought, oh, okay, that’s what I should have been doing. And I think that really you just don’t know until you see what other teachers are doing. And you know, there’ll be some things you’re like, yeah, I’m glad I’m not doing that. But they’ll also be like, wow, I had never considered doing this. And it really until you see that you just don’t know. It’s like eating in the same restaurant every day. Until you go to other restaurant, you just don’t know what else there could be.

Dan Kreiness
Yeah, you know, again, I’m going to mention this. You know, I’ve said it multiple times here on the show, a fairly recent guest, on the Leader Of Learning podcast, George Couros, in The Innovator’s Mindset said, basically, at this point, in the year, you know, whatever year The Innovator’s Mindset came out, 2016 but even now in 2019, like if you are isolated, or as you mentioned before the word compartmentalized, like that’s a choice, you’re choosing not to step out of your own classroom, not to watch how other teachers do things. And I’m going to go out on a limb and get a little bit blunt here and say like, that’s wrong, you know, you can’t do that anymore. You can’t just live in isolation. But that’s just my opinion. And I’m going to stick to it. But yeah no, I really think that whether it’s observe me, pineapple charts, or just, you know, an old fashioned invite where someone says, Hey, why don’t you come watch my watch my lesson? I think there’s lots of value for both the visitor and the visitee.

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah, I mean, I think it leads to really some deep conversations about why it’s not happening. Like, for example, if you’re an elementary teacher, and you’ve got no prep, well, that’s, that’s possibly why. If you’ve got a culture where people don’t really feel safe, where they feel like they’re being judged, or if they’re, you know, not good enough, they’re going to be let go. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons that it can happen. And I think that, really, it speaks to bigger systemic issues that are worth discussing as a group.

Dan Kreiness
Yeah. And I think you just mentioned to something that that tipped, you know, made my mind go toward my dissertation, which is really studying how leaders can impact and inspire growth mindset in teachers. And if you have teachers who are uncomfortable, or that they feel inferior, or they’re insecure about something, that’s a fixed mindset right there. And it could be a cultural thing that a leader says, You know, I need to fix that. And it might not be as simple as setting up a intervisitation schedule. But there might be some deeper seated reasons why it’s not happening or why it’s it’s been difficult to at least start at some point.

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah, I mean, definitely, there are deep conversations. I mean, even one thing I think is very interesting about the observe me is a creation of the feedback goals. I’ll get specific. I see three levels of goals often. The first level, someone’s just putting the bullet point of student feedback, or let’s say student engagement. And so they say like, I want feedback on student engagement. But that that might make sense to the teacher saying that but what does that mean to the observer? Like does… if everyone’s sitting there with their hands crossed in front of them and quiet is that engagement? If everyone’s talking is that engagement? The next level is are my students engaged? And now it’s a yes or no kind of fixed mindset question. And and the reality is no one’s going to want to say no. So then they put Yes, but either yes or no is not particularly helpful. And then framing it more as How can I improve student engagement? Well, that’s a growth mindset framing. And now, it presumes it begins by presuming it can get better and it invites and makes it welcome for more changes. And I think it’s really indicative of the fact that just teachers are not used to having to even ask for feedback because it’s never something that they really are seeking. Because oftentimes, it’s evaluative and not really something that they have control over.

Dan Kreiness
Yeah, no those are great points. And, again, I appreciated the observe me movement, whether it was totally necessary or not, or whether it needed to happen, it did. And I think if it inspired even a few people or a few dozen people, but I have a feeling it inspired a lot more to to kind of open up their doors and welcome people in and feel more comfortable visiting each other. So I think that’s great. I do want to switch subjects here a little bit though. And I’m going to preface this by saying, I’m really not a math guy. I did pass

Robert Kaplinsky
Is that a growth mindset comment or a fixed mindset comment?

Dan Kreiness
That’s a great question. I did pass doctoral level statistics. So when I say I’m not a math guy, I mean, I can do math and I can learn math okay. I’m just not used to teaching it. So I’m going to sort of go into these next questions with a growth mindset and and basically pretend like I know little to nothing about math and whatever open middle is and just literally just ask you generally, what is this project and website that you have going on here open middle? I see that it says math problems that replace worksheets. So I’m all for that whether it’s, you know, going digital or really just pushing teaching and learning into this, this next phase of student led and student ownership. But open middle, explain that.

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah, I mean, let me let me begin by saying that like, I was a math robot. I could do math, but I, I didn’t have any freakin clue what I was actually doing. And I didn’t even realize that I didn’t know what I was doing until I was much older. I should I should preface this also by saying I got a Bachelor’s in mathematics from UCLA. So I can do math, at least on paper. But I didn’t know that I didn’t understand math, I didn’t understand why it worked. I didn’t even know that there was a reason. So I come from a place of knowing what I don’t want. And so I’m constantly looking for tools and resources and strategies that will help me get.. really avoid creating more students who were like me. To explain it open middle, I think it’s worth just considering that problems have beginnings, middles, and ends. And a lot of times people say oh, I love open ended problems, but I think what they really like are open middle problems, and I’ll give you an example to explain it. Consider like a reality TV show like The Amazing Race. I’m going to spoil every single episode for you. Guess what? Every single season begins with lots of contestants. And every single season ends with one of those teams winning. That’s it. Every single season’s like that. The reason that you stick around and the reason it’s won over 13 Emmys is because you want to see what happens in the middle. And I think that really having that middle open is the key. So again, the beginning is closed, the end is closed. It’s the open middle. And I think that that’s essentially what is happening in mathematics. We’ve created problems where every child begins the same problem. And every child ends with the same answer. But the middle is open, which allows for a lot of different strategies. And so what winds up happening is essentially kids get the same answer. But they solve it using totally different ways. And it leads to really interesting strategy conversations like which strategies were more efficient? Or which strategies were better represented visually? And everyone has an entry point, but everyone also sees what could be. And so you see kids really learning from each other and having the conversation that you wouldn’t normally expect to have in a math class. And so that’s really what I love about open middle, and the website openmiddle.com where we have like hundreds of free problems from kindergarten through calculus.

Dan Kreiness
That’s awesome. And I’m going to actually take a just a little bit of a tangent here. And I’ll get back to the open middle point in a minute. But let me ask you a question. I’ve been dying to ask sort of a respected math teacher this question. When I hear people say, I hate Common Core math. I always think to myself, like, that doesn’t make sense. Isn’t Common Core math just math that is aligned to Common Core standards? We’re not really asking kids to do math differently, are we? How would you answer that? I don’t… I have no idea.

Robert Kaplinsky
I have a few thoughts on this. I think one important thing is that people have a hard time separating what they’re familiar with, with what’s truly best. Like I have a deli that I went to as a child, and I’m impossible… it’s impossible for me. Cantor’s Deli in LA. It’s what I think deli food should taste like. And it doesn’t matter what other delis taste like. That’s what I measure it by. And I think people do the same thing for their mathematics experience, the way they learned must have been good enough for them. So it must be the same for other people. And I think that that clouds it, I think on the point you make is really valid. Like when people change the different standards like, do you think like some states are not teaching subtraction? Or some teachers states are not teaching like factoring? Like the same standards, people. Like what else could there be? Like by and large, it’s very much the same. Like Common Core has a standard about math practice, construct a viable argument, where they want students able to convince others by using kind of mathematics to explain the reasoning. Like, are there some states that don’t want kids to do that? They’re… really when you look at it, you can map all the standards to one another. Like Arizona, for example, does not have common core, but they have the exact same standards word for word. So I think by and large… I could get more into it. I don’t know if there’s time for it but the reality is that there’s a disconnect between the way we actually do math in our heads and the way we do math on paper. Like, I’ll give you a very simple example. If I asked you to do 99 plus 46 in your head, I imagine all your listeners are done. But if you were doing that on paper, you put up a NINE and a NINE and a four and a six underneath, you would add the nine to six and carry the five… and you’re still working on paper. But if you’re doing it in your head, you think well, nine, that’s basically 100. So I’m gonna take one from the 46, and make 100 plus 45. Now, that’s really, really easy to do in your head, because in your head, you can work with 10s and hundreds very easily. But if you wrote down what I just said that you put the 99 and the one together to make 100 on paper, it would look like what the hell is going on in this math? This common core thing is awful. So there’s a difference between how we think about math in our heads and how we do it on paper. And I think that’s a lot of the drama that comes from it. Just this reality of the way we think about math may not be what people are used to seeing on paper.

Dan Kreiness
I get that and actually leading back into this open middle thing, what I appreciate about your explanation there of Common Core and all that, is that the open middle concept then it doesn’t matter, necessarily what the standard is, or it doesn’t matter how… I’m not, I’m not gonna… I don’t want to say it doesn’t matter how it gets taught. But what matters in these problems is that students are coming up with some way of exploring how to get to the end result, right? Like you said before, a beginning a middle and end, there is an end, there is a right answer, there is a wrong… there are lots of wrong answers. But how they get to that right answer at the end is what it’s all about. And that open middle allows for exploration. You know, we talked about like problem based learning. I think this lends itself really well to that. Is that what you’re going for here?

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah, I mean, I think some there are some attributes about open middle problem that are shocking to people and in a positive way. The first one I think is really interesting is that kids freakin love doing them. Like, if you go check out if you’re on Twitter, here’s a hashtag, I challenge you to check out #whyopenmiddle, just WHYOPENMIDDLE. I’m sharing tweets from teachers who are saying things like, my kids, they can’t stop doing it that they don’t want to go to recess that they asked if I can do it more on the weekend. That is a showdown. Like, I’ve never heard kids talking like this. So the kids love them. You wouldn’t think that right? No kids are excited for worksheets. I should also again, like you said, each problem has so much embedded practice that they might do a whole worksheet’s worth of practice in one problem. They also help teacher spot hidden misconceptions. Like we’ve all had kids who appear to know what they’re doing. But when you take the test and they see the results were like, Oh my god, they didn’t understand this. Imagine you had X ray vision glasses where you could see inside those kids’ heads. These problems on open middle are like that. And I think that really it helps you really scaffold these problems so that even your struggling students have a way to enter in but that your most talented students are, are really not bored. So they’re really just just somebody new that I don’t think a lot of teachers are familiar with, but I hope they will become more familiar with.

Dan Kreiness
Now I’m gonna and I’m not trying to sound like I’m pushing back here, but I think what you just said was your most talented students aren’t bored. But if I could kind of play devil’s advocate, I guess, or just out of sheer curiosity, does this then provide any extra frustration maybe for students who feel like they need sort of concrete steps or explanations for how to get to the answer versus kind of I don’t even know the right word sort of a process that is left a little bit more up to their interpretation and their exploration. Is it more frustrating for them?

Robert Kaplinsky
So there are some there is structure involved. But I will say that like if you have come to see math as my teacher gives me problems, I follow the steps in my notes, and then I blindly repeat these processes until I get the answer. Yeah, it’s going to be frustrating for you because you’re not going to be able to be a good robot. But if you like… but what what happens is that kids start to realize that they don’t understand. It’s something that they should be able to do, but they don’t understand that quite right. And so they keep trying, keep trying, and they start to build that conceptual understanding. And kids always come around to loving these problems. So I wouldn’t, and I think maybe I could revise what I said. It’s not the kids that are your high flyers, they just find endless challenge. And so it’s not that even that they’re bored, that they’re not bored, but that they just, the more they try, the harder they they find to get these optimal best answers like find the greatest product, and they’re trying and trying. They’re trying to figure out the best ways to do it. And so it’s like this endless challenge for your your highest flyers.

Dan Kreiness
Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense to me, and I’m all I’m a very big proponent of productive struggle. You know, I do think that students, especially students, nowadays, where just everything is like right at their fingertips right at their disposal. They need a little bit of that you know, grappling. And especially in math with these problems like you say that have a beginning and an end. But sometimes getting there is not only challenging, but just like you’re all over the place and there are so many ways to solve a problem that they may need to wrestle with it a little bit first. So I again, I appreciate that very much. And again, before we started recording, we talked a little bit about our sons who are around the same age. I don’t know if you experienced the same thing, but my son has very little patience and and he does want everything to be right at his fingertips and to happen immediately. And it’s like, you know what, sometimes buddy, you got to like, be bored, you know, learn how to be bored or learn how to just be by yourself or figure out a problem without just asking for help right away. Anyway, I’m… I digress. But that’s, that’s how I feel about that. So in the last couple minutes that we have together here, I know that you actually just published a book and it has this open middle math concept involved in it. So if you could please explain what that book is all about and where our listeners could go and find it. I’d appreciate that.

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah, thank you so much. So I just published a book called Open Middle Math: Problems That Unlock to Student Thinking for Grades 6 through 12. And really, if this is of interest to you, it takes you through the whole process of how do you pick a problem, how do you prepare to use the problem, how do you facilitate the conversation around it, what do you do when things don’t go as you expect, and even how to make your own problems. And so I really… I wrote it conversationally, like I don’t and really, I wrote the shortest possible book I could write. There’s no secondary math teachers wishing for longer books. And it really just takes you through that whole process. You feel like you’ve got a coach sitting by you, really walking you through so you feel comfortable with it. And you can get it from a lot of places. The book is published by Stenhouse. So if you go to Stenhouse, which is STENHOUSE.com, and look for open middle, you’ll find it there.

Dan Kreiness
That’s great, well congratulations on publishing that book. And and here’s to success with the book for you and Stenhouse publishers. You know, let let the teachers out there and the listeners know where else they can find you. So you mentioned Stenhouse.com for the book. You mentioned we already talked about the openmiddle.com. What about connecting with you on social media or anywhere else that our listeners can find you?

Robert Kaplinsky
Yeah. So my website is RobertKaplinsky.com. That’s Robert and KAPLINSKY.com. That’s my website, where I have lots of blogs and stuff like that. I’m also RobertKaplinsky on pretty much all the social media platforms. I also created a website called GrassrootsWorkshops.com which I’m trying to reimagine professional development. Like I think a lot of PD is given to us in a way that it’s we’re supposed to kind of work around it like we’re supposed to leave the classroom, you write sub plans and learn from someone we didn’t choose and on a topic that maybe we didn’t pick. And so this really gives teachers more of that power back and that’s grassrootsworkshops.com.

Dan Kreiness
Excellent. Robert, thank you so much. You know, again, I became aware of you at least a few years ago through the hashtag observe me movement, but obviously you’ve done a lot and you continue to do a lot in terms of not only math instruction, but just helping teachers and students get better and and improving that teaching and learning process. So I thank you for that work. And most importantly, I thank you for your time coming on here on the leader of learning podcast and, you know, giving my listeners, some of that amazing mathematical knowledge and, you know, pushing, pushing our thinking really around all the stuff that you’ve been working on for for all these years in your career, so I really appreciate it.

Robert Kaplinsky
Thank you, Dan.