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I’ll start with a confession: I’ve never taught kindergarten. Honestly? I don’t think I could. Kindergarten teachers bring superhuman levels of compassion, patience, and organizational magic. They teach kids how to be at school while also supporting families.

Yet I support K–8 math, and as a parent of two kindergarteners, I know exactly what a Monday afternoon classroom feels like. So when a kindergarten teacher asked me to model what math could look, sound, and feel like with deeper engagement, I said yes. Today, you’ll hear the case study that proves Word Problem Workshop is the solution for low-level, boring curriculum tasks.

Here’s the encouragement I want to leave you with: you don’t need a new curriculum. You just need a routine that reveals student thinking. Word Problem Workshop does that — every single time. Even in kindergarten.

So try one step next week. Launch a real problem. Give space. Let kids think. And watch what happens.

🎧 Listen to the full episode, subscribe to the podcast, and leave a review to support more teachers bringing sense-making into math.

❄️ NEW: Join the Winter Break Book Club HERE

If you want a simple, supportive way to deepen your practice over break, join our Word Problem Workshop Winter Book Club. It’s cozy, low-pressure, and designed to refresh your teaching before January hits. You’ll get discussion prompts, coaching insights, and a community of educators who care deeply about student thinking.

Come as you are — pajama coffee, holiday chaos, and all.

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💭 What “Let’s Just See What They Can Do” Really Means

This phrase isn’t about tossing students into a problem they can’t handle. It’s about honoring the strategies, intuitions, and lived math experiences they already bring. You’ll hear how the Grapple step in Word Problem Workshop allows students to make sense of the story without the teacher rescuing, modeling, or pre-teaching every step.

In this episode, you’ll hear a vivid classroom moment where a teacher doubted her students could handle:
“There are 27 puppies. Eighteen are big. How many are small?”

Even with large numbers and no regrouping lesson yet, students entered the problem with drawings, cubes, equations, and revising strategies. You’ll see how every learner — regardless of level — found a way to show their thinking when given space to explore.

🎧 Tune In and Try It Yourself

Ready to try this mindset shift in your next lesson?
Listen to the full episode to hear how Word Problem Workshop helps students think deeply, reason flexibly, and approach big problems with confidence.

➡️ Listen now, subscribe, and leave a review to support the podcast and help more teachers bring sense-making into their math classrooms.

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Coaching often becomes hectic fast. Schedules shift, classrooms get noisy, and teachers feel stretched thin. While the instinct is to fix everything, coaching isn’t actually about fixing at all — it’s about refocusing on student thinking.

In this episode, Mona introduces the anchor moves she relies on when coaching feels chaotic. These moves bring clarity, calm, and purpose back into the work.

When coaching feels wild, return to the routine:
Observe → Name → Nudge → Celebrate.

This is enough.
You are enough.
Your coaching makes a difference — especially now.

And if you want a space to practice these moves with community, we’re diving into them inside Math Coach Huddle on December 8. Bring your questions, your chaos, and your curiosity.

👉 Listen to the full episode
👉 Subscribe and leave a review to support the show
👉 Join Math Coach Huddle anytime at monamath.com/huddle