Guest post by Dr. Patrick Jones

Let me introduce you to second grade me and a moment I’ll never forget. A teacher asked me to be quiet when I told her she was wrong about a math concept. I didn’t back down. My reward was a letter sent home to my parents, who didn’t play around about school, either behavior or grades. But they took my side that time.

Was I a horrible student? A victim of a punitive educator? I think neither. In fact, I recall that moment so vividly because it’s ultimately a story of triumph and belief in one’s ability.

I promise to tell you how it ends. But first, a detour.

You see, math is my passion. I’m a math teacher who loves nothing more than watching the fire ignite in young minds. At the same time, I know the pain in kids struggling to learn it and educators wrestling with how to teach it.

I’ve seen teachers try to make math more fun by connecting story problems to students’ lives. I’ve also seen teachers drill math concepts like memorization is going out of style. None of that is wrong per se. But frankly, those approaches haven’t moved the needle for most kids.

So a while back it became my life’s work to figure out why students struggle with math. And to figure out if there was something that actually worked to produce math achievement. After immersing myself in the research and continuing to work directly with students, I came to a surprising conclusion. Students are taught how to solve specific problems, but not the joy of actual problem solving.

This distinction is everything. Our outcomes are suffering for it. I started my quest largely focused on moving proficiency outcomes for students of color. But you don’t have to look far to see math achievement is a widespread issue. It’s not contained to a specific student group or geography.

More surprisingly, math performance gets worse the longer you stay in school. According to 2022 NAEP data, around 36% of 4^th graders rate as proficient. That number drops to 26% for 8^th graders. And to around 24% for 12^th graders. It’s a national crisis. But it’s one that rarely makes the headlines compared to lagging reading scores.

Meanwhile, 2020 research from Almeda and Baker indicates middle school math achievement is positively correlated with pursuing a STEM degree and careers in STEM fields. Perhaps most starkly of all, a 2018 TNTP study called “The Opportunity Myth” found students spend three quarters of their time on math work that is below an appropriate level of rigor, causing students to miss out on approximately six months of learning.

Add all that research up and I’ve arrived at the following conclusion: there’s something broken about the way we teach math. Students need to master basic math skills. But that mastery is a means to an end: becoming a problem-solver. It is not the end in and of itself. That’s why I’ve made it my mission for the past several years to speak to educators about injecting math classrooms with the joy of problem solving.

How can we accomplish this? I believe we must introduce students to things like number games, strategy games, spatial reasoning exercises, and even competition math on a daily basis. They collectively serve the purpose of teaching problem solving in ways that connect for kids. When I advocate for this approach, I usually hear, “It can’t be done” or “Students won’t embrace it” or “There just isn’t time.” But really? Is the status quo so good that we’re unwilling to try?

Time to come clean. I told you I was a math teacher. But I didn’t tell you that when I taught 8^th grade algebra I used this alternative approach. And I admit, it was hard at first. All the tropes of students fearing math and not persevering seemed like they were coming true.

But I stuck with it. Eventually, something magical happened. Students started doing the problems. No moaning. No pushback. My consistent expectations moved students to a place where they challenged themselves, even getting to where every student was doing problem sets from competitions like MathCounts and AMC 8. I catalyzed a new era of problem solving in my classroom by sticking to a different approach.

Okay, back to second grade me. Remember that letter my teacher sent home? It stated I had argued with my teacher about being able to subtract a larger number from a smaller number. The note mentioned that I told the class there was such a thing as negative numbers. But the teacher said the class wasn’t ready for that yet. Hence our disagreement.

In that moment, I realized my father was a catalyst for turning me into a problem-solver. He taught me that I could experience a world of possibility, with new rules to be discovered and unknown challenges to be faced with confidence. Because of my father, I graduated with a degree in computer science from Fisk University. Because of my father, my teacher self knew I had to do more than just teach to a specific math problem.

Here’s the other thing I need to tell you. By teaching the joy of problem solving to my eighth grade students, over 90% of them passed Indiana’s state test for math. I don’t say that to brag. I say it to prove that when we teach the joy of problem solving, we help students achieve.

The way we teach math may be broken, but this is one problem we can solve.

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About Dr. Patrick Jones

Dr. Patrick Jones is the Vice President of Leadership and Equity at The Mind Trust. Dr. Jones leads The Mind Trust’s implementation of their talent development strategy, high quality seats growth initiative, and racial equity priorities and commitments. He also serves on their leadership team. Dr. Jones also leads MelanatED Leaders as its Executive Director and drives priorities of preparing leaders of color to be effective in prominent education roles in Indianapolis.

In 2022, Dr. Jones launched Exponentia Prime, an organization focused on closing the opportunity gap in high-level math by providing access to math circles and competition level math work to urban youth.

Before joining The Mind Trust in 2018, Dr. Jones served as Director of Secondary Schools for Tindley Accelerated Schools, where he coached principals and oversaw the development of instructional systems at the Indianapolis-based network of six charter schools. In 2011, Dr. Jones led the founding of Tindley Preparatory Academy as its first principal. Under his leadership, the school earned four consecutive A letter grades on the Indiana Department of Education’s school accountability framework. 

Before becoming principal, Dr. Jones taught at Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School, where he led the improvement of his 8th-grade students’ Algebra End of Course Assessment pass rate from 45 percent to 91 percent proficiency. Dr. Jones holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Fisk University, a master’s degree from California State Dominguez Hills, and an Ed.D. in organizational leadership from Marian University.