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ACT I

ACT I: Huddling

ACT I supports teachers in selecting a shared, asset-focused lens for noticing how students are participating in mathematical activity. The tool prompts teachers to meet up or “huddle” during instruction to share what they are noticing and collaboratively make decisions together about what to try next in the lesson.

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ACT II

ACT II: Co-Conferring

ACT II creates opportunities for teachers to learn about the complex work of eliciting students’ mathematical assets through conferring. The tool prompts teachers to confer with students side-by-side during the lesson as they work together to understand and surface students’ mathematical ideas and strengths.

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Prepare to co-learn

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Notice, huddle and make decisions together during instruction

3.

Debrief and make new plans

Key Features of Our Tools

Our tools engage mentor teachers and teacher candidates in opportunities to practice and enact equity-oriented mathematics instruction in-the-moment, together. In particular, the tools center around the question:
How can we authentically center and leverage the assets of students often excluded or marginalized in math classrooms?

Asset-Focused

Asset-Focused: Our tools are designed to activate and develop teachers’ attention towards the assets of students who are often marginalized in their mathematics classrooms. The tools invite teachers to notice, draw on and highlight their students’ mathematical competence, strengths, and experiences, as well as question their own biases and assumptions.

Responsive

Responsive: Our tools are designed to prompt teacher candidates and mentor teachers to engage with one another not only before and after teaching but also during instruction. These interactions create new opportunities for teachers to practice and reflect on the complex work of responding in the moment as they notice, elicit, and center students’ assets.

Collaborative

Collaborative: Our tools are designed to generate shared inquiry and create opportunities for teacher candidate and mentor teacher learning. The tools offer structures intended to shift the dynamic from cycles of observation and critique of teacher candidate teaching towards mutual exploration into equity-oriented instruction wherein each teacher has valuable perspectives to offer and the work of learning and refining teaching practice is shared.

Our protocols prompt teachers to examine aspects of the enduring question:
How can we authentically center and leverage mathematical contributions from culturally and linguistically diverse students to disrupt inequitable participation patterns?
Our protocols help teacher candidates notice who speaks, who waits, and why. By centering students' assets, we design math talk that invites more voices and turns curiosity into shared problem-solving.
Using the co-confer protocol, my mentor and I learned to listen for ideas, not just answers. Students who had been quiet began sharing strategies, and our feedback became specific, humane, and actionable.
The tools are practical in real classrooms. Asset-focused notes, quick reflection prompts, and clear next steps made equity work feel doable. Small shifts in facilitation led to significant gains in participation.
These resources moved us from assuming to observing. Video, tally maps, and debrief questions showed patterns we missed. Now we plan intentionally so that multilingual students and newcomers enter math conversations with confidence.
Co-learning reframed mentoring as a partnership. We examine evidence together, try responsive moves, and return to students to see what changed. Professional growth feels connected to what learners actually experience.
The enduring question keeps us honest: whose math is being centered today?
The protocols give us a routine for checking access, broadening who is recognized as mathematical, and celebrating multiple solution paths.
I appreciate how the site pairs clear guidance with reflection. Each protocol names the purpose, shows what to look for, and prompts us to ask better questions about equity, belonging, and mathematical sense making
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Please email Torrey Kulow at kulow@pdx.edu for more information about our project.

Please explore our site to learn about our protocols and think about how you might use them in your own work as a teacher candidate, mentor teacher, or teacher educator!

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2010634. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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