Niwot's Cathy Carter wins SVVSD's Innovative Curriculum Award

Cathy Carter is passionate about math. She also has a passion for empowering both students and teachers, especially when it comes to understanding it. "Everyone thinks about math slightly differently," she explained. "Part of my goal is to help students realize their ideas are amazing."

Math is often seen as something practical; with right and wrong answers; with right and wrong paths to get to those answers. Because of this mentality, students are often discouraged and feel insecure about math--there's a reason Mattel sold a Barbie doll in 1992 that said, "Math class is tough."

But Carter sees the subject as a space with great potential for creativity, if only students are given the opportunity. "I think how we teach students should prepare them for their futures, like critical thinking and opportunities to be creative in all their classes, including math, and giving them opportunities to be confident in their creative thinking in all aspects of their world, she said."

This belief, in part, inspired her to pursue and earn a doctorate in educational studies that focused largely on curriculum. Her dissertation focused on intellectual humility for teachers. She said as a teacher, she and her peers are experienced and knowledgeable, but they ought to be humble enough to be open to learning from their students. "Balancing the fact that you're an expert in your field and that you can learn from your students, makes writing curriculum a little easier."

She has been involved with professional development (PD) training sessions with St. Vrain Valley School District, where she and a number of other teachers in the district collaborate to create new math units.

"The goal is to have teachers develop a unit that they're going to use and have available for others," said Carter. "We use the textbooks as the basis and then develop a unit with questions to ask, thinking about,...What will students be able to do and understand the major overarching ideas? How will I help them [students] know things, interact with them with a cool task and snowball their knowledge into something better?"

This collaboration--with both other teachers and even students--is just one of the reasons Carter enjoys creating new units and curriculum. She said that even though it can be stressful trying out new ways of teaching, it's exciting to implement. "Even if it doesn't work, you're always going to learn how to make it better and learn more about math itself."

Another benefit of this collaborative effort is the amount of input and support she gets from others, saying that she always creates units with her peers. Together, the teachers think about how they understand a given math concept and then they think about it from another perspective.

"Asking yourself, 'Can I do it another way' is simple, but it can open doors," she said. In creating the units, Carter and her peers also consider how to help students develop knowledge about a topic and then how to apply that knowledge. "Those two things need to couple together, if students only know how to do it without understanding the why, that's not ideal [and visa versa]."

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics often write about the balance of conceptual understanding, or knowing a math concept, and procedural fluency, or how to apply and execute that same concept. Finding that balance is something Carter strives to help her students uncover for themselves.

These ideas, promoting creativity in math, collaboration, developing knowledge and applying it, are all part of the math revolution. Carter explained that empowering students to have and share their ideas is at the core of this revolution. In order to empower students, teachers must also be encouraged. "I've developed several PD on my own, co-developed some and taught [them in] the district. I love to help teachers appreciate other ways to engage in math with their students so we can all spread the love."