Hey everyone — welcome to Math Universally Speaking…Season 2. I’m Ron Martiello, and it’s August 2025. I hope you have had a great summer and enjoyed your time with your friends and family. I hope you have been able to invest in you because you deserve it. I hope you are able to soak up these last days of summer vacation while keeping an eye on the horizon ahead of you. I know you will do amazing things this year. Believe it!

This summer has flown by. From the time I got out of school in mid June until the first week of August I was on the go. I lived out of a suitcase for a majority of the time. I got to take some family vacation time at the Jersey shore and up in the Finger Lakes. We said good bye to our oldest as we moved him out of state for his new job. We moved my daughter into a new apartment off campus at the university she attends. Meanwhile, my youngest got his driver’s license and has been on the move ever since. That’s right…No more Uber Dad!

I also had the chance to attend two amazing conferences. First, the ASCD Annual/ISTE Live conference in San Antonio, Tx, where I presented on our book Conquering Math Myths with Universal Design. Then, UDL-Con International in Washington, D.C., where I met incredible people and learned a ton of new ways to make learning more accessible. I look forward to sharing what I learned with you during this second season of the podcast. 

Oh, and big news — I’m now a part-time consultant on the Empowered School team led by my co-author, colleague, and friend Dr. Jenna Rufo. If we can support you with your professional development goals to make math more equitable and inclusive for all your students, we would love to talk with you. Just go to mathuniversallyspeaking.com and you will find links to get you started. 

Now, that we are all caught up, let’s get on with the show.

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Don’t Give Up the Ship

Back when I was a principal, every July I’d dive into state test results, end-of-year surveys, unit assessments, and teacher input. I’d look for patterns — what worked for our teachers and students. What were our challenges and where were the possible opportunities for growth?

No matter if the data looked amazing or disappointing, the message was the same: don’t give up the ship. This phrase, coined by Captain James Lawrence in 1813, has been the inspiration for perseverance in the US Navy. I use it to remind myself that no matter the setback, we should carry on in brave new ways. In schools, despite how it may make us feel, one score doesn’t define one year’s success or failure. We have to see the whole picture and recommit to our efforts to make math more inclusive and keep our expectations high for all students. 

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Looking Past the Surface

There isn’t an “easy button” for building a systematic approach to continuous improvement. The task requires us to look carefully at multiple sources of data and meaningful information to really understand where students are and how we can help them grow. While the good work takes time and intentionality, the payoff is worth it—because digging deeper is what leads to lasting impact.

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Who Is in Your Starting Lineup?

I have coached several sports. And no matter the sport, I needed to be aware of my line up. Who is new to the team. Who is trying a new position? How do my players match up to the other team. How are players working together? How can I put my team in a position to be their best on the field?

We often focus on student demographics when we analyze student learning data, but what about our teachers? Who’s new to the school, to the grade level team, to the grade-level content or to teaching math period? I used my experiences coaching sports to guide how I built my teams and supported them. As an instructional coach, I ask school leaders a lot of questions about their lineups and how teams can work cohesively. These conversations create discoveries about productive role-players on the teams and who might grow stronger with a little extra support. Some school leaders may not be facing any changes to their school roster, while others may be facing a number of unforeseen events leaving school leaders with a totally new team. Some principals may actually be the new person, trying to find entry points into discussions about the current state of the school. In any one of these cases, the demographics are not an excuse but a factor in planning goals for the upcoming year. 

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Are Your Schedules and Calendars Working for You?

Sometimes dips in performance aren’t about effort — they’re about time. Do we have enough math minutes? Are we making the best use of the minutes we have? Are there transitions affecting instruction. Is math taught right after recess and/or right before students leave for special area classes like art or music? Is math taught at the end of the day? How are specials education teachers and assistants assigned to classrooms so students are supported in learning grade level content?

And let’s not forget the calendar. Some units of study get stuck during high-disruption times — including holidays, assemblies, special events and even state testing. We can plan around disruptions by exploring optimum ways to turn the dial up during uninterrupted stretches and dialing it back a little during times with competing events. 

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You Can’t Intervene Yourself Out of a Tier One Challenge

During times of uncertainty and lower than expected proficiency levels, we could be susceptible  to “giving up the ship” in the name of intervention. Sorting students and sending them into spaces where instruction is disjointed from the core, watered down, or well below grade level will be counter productive for individual students and the school as a whole.  All intervention efforts should support students’ ability to learn on grade level. When we incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning we can take a proactive approach. Let’s unpack our standards and create viable goals for students. Proactively plan for barriers in the environment and provide options for variability. If your school is lucky enough to have staff members who can support “intervention”, coordinate efforts so that they can use their skills and talents to support core instruction. 

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Three Steps for a Strong Math Plan

Step 1: Collectively Commit to Tier 1 Instruction

As a school, pick one strand of standards across grades and focus on it deeply. You can identify standards through a combination of data analysis and teachers’ input. In my district, we provide two high-leverage options for staff members to pursue:

1. Problem solving in algebraic concepts (situation types)
2. Numbers and operations in base ten

Side Note: For those of you who are following the podcast, you will remember I published a few episodes on these topics in season one. 

We can take time throughout the year to address these high leverage standards and how they impact other related math topics at staff meetings, Professional Learning Communities and individual coaching sessions so we can unpack standards vertically across grade levels. We can meet as grade level teams with student work samples that show trends in students thinking, not just results. We also look forward to future lessons to identify standards-based goals, establish why they are important for future learning, and recruit ideas from teachers for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. 

By taking steps to  attend to tier one instruction, we also get to onboard teachers who may be new or new to their grade level. We can plan around barriers in the schedule and calendars. We can also see beneath the surface of quantitative data in real time and make more meaningful adjustments throughout the school year. 

Step 2: Align Intervention with Tier 1

Accelerated Learning or “just-in-time” learning means identifying gaps before new lessons and addressing them in a timely way. For example, if you are in 3rd grade and you are about to start teaching fractions as numbers, you may want to look at the 2nd grade standard where students partition shapes into equal parts. Then identify students who may benefit from a mini-lesson on partitioning shapes so you can build a scaffold toward the new lesson on fractions as numbers. Bring co-teachers, assistants, interventionists and multilingual teachers into the process. This is your time to group students by need and prep them for what’s coming next so they are not excluded from tier one instruction.

Step 3: Make Space for Personalized Learning

Conduct student conferences. Provide space throughout the week to meet with a couple students a day. Co-craft goals, identify any barriers they may be facing in their learning. Identify and capitalize on their strengths and what they can do. Then, provide options that play to those strengths. Finally, set a course for growth by finding ways to stretch their abilities and lean into new learning that may be challenging for them?

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Bringing It All Together

When school teams commit to strong Tier 1 instruction, align intervention with tier one , and create opportunities for personalized learning, they can begin rowing together. Once teams are rowing together, we can provide valuable evidence and make more intentional and strategic decisions. We can see

-what efforts are working,

-what needs tweaking

-what may need to be scrapped and rebuilt. 

This is how collective efficacy is built. Once we can identify those efforts that are truly working for our staff and students, we can celebrate and move forward confidently together, without giving up the ship.