Dream Big

Pete Reynolds Blog, Initiatives May 1, 2024May 2, 2024

What’s your moonshot?

What’s the big thing you’d like your students to accomplish– not this year, probably not the next, but what you and they might work up to over the next five years or so?

Coming off the pandemic has been tough, for students and teachers. Next year could be more of the same. Or it could be a chance to work towards something you are passionate about. How much more energy would you have if next year was the first leg of your moonshot.

During the week of June 17th we’ll offer a workshop to help you and your like minded compatriots craft that big vision you want to work towards. You’ll identify what needs to happen to get there, the partners you’ll need along the way, and the first steps to take to start moving.

That same week you’ll also be able to participate in any of several sessions where we will explore moonshot visions for:

How we might engage students to take on big challenges related to water, sustainability, and the environment?
What would we want students, parents, and teachers to experience to heal the anxiety too many of them have around math?
How can we equip students to take on challenges related to the built environment and advocate for the changes they would like to see in their schools, neighborhoods, and cities?
What student led enterprises could leverage the assets of a school to offer rich learning experiences and create new opportunities to engage with the community?
How can we foster brave conversations, build trust, and elevate student voices to drive the changes that allow students and teachers to feel safe, affirmed, and masterful at school.

Where there is interest and energy, we’ll reconvene for project design workshops the weeks of July 29th and August 5th. You’ll come out of those sessions with a solid plan for the 2024-25 school year that moves your big vision one step closer.

We have a short survey to capture interest. Please take a minute to share your thoughts. You can find that here.

Yes, I can dream big!

Building Community and a Joy for Math

Pete Reynolds Blog, Math Conversations November 17, 2023November 20, 2023Math, Parent Engagement

Math = A Traumatic Experience.

It’s almost universal and it stands in the way of our current generation navigating elementary, middle and high school with a different experience regarding math.

Parents who have a negative experience with math are less likely to engage with their student children about homework, encourage them to attend school, etc.

So this school year, Learn Deep is conducting a pilot, in coordination with Carmen Schools of Science and Technology’s Stellar Elementary, faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Math department and our friend Bernie Traversari, with a small seed grant from the Wisconsin After School Network to experiment with how we might provide opportunities for parents to modify their perception of math.

Our experiment Tuesday night: arrange for parents and their children to spend time together in discourse, while attempting to solve math-based puzzles in an after school setting. Since many parents are non-English speaking, we provided UWM student support for translation when needed.

The overall sentiment at the end of the evening: I enjoyed working on solving the challenges together, I will definitely be back for the next math evening, I wish we had math in this way when I went to school x years ago.

Are you a school district interested in addressing parent math trauma as a way to enable parent involvement in the learning process? Follow our story as we host 2 more Math Events this school year.

Thanks to Dean Joshua Mack, Kevin McLeod, Gabriella Pinter, Danny McCormick

#PublicMathMKE @ Doors Open Milwaukee

Pete Reynolds Blog, Math Conversations September 30, 2019January 10, 2020#PublicMathMKE

The weather was less than ideal, but the Public Math booth was there for the Doors Open Milwaukee Block party. Visitors had the chance to play with math actives and test their Venn diagramming skills with a street survey.

#PublicMathMKE @ Maker Faire

Pete Reynolds Blog, Math Conversations September 17, 2019January 10, 2020#PublicMathMKE

Our math booth was out at Maker Faire this weekend testing out activities with kids and families. Mary Langmyer brought her enthusiasm and wagon full of materials to engage students in math explorations.

#PublicMathMKE @ NEWaukee’s Night Market

Pete Reynolds Blog, Initiatives, Math Conversations August 15, 2019September 12, 2019

Family/date night math came to the NEWaukee Night Market last night. Math educators Mary Langmyer and David Temple created opportunities for attendees to solve number puzzles, play with shapes, build nets with Magnatiles, use “shape finders” and participate in our first “street survey”. It was a chance to engage with math (and mathematicians) in playful and creative ways as well as chance to meet others who stopped by for positive math experiences! All in all, a night of great (and humorous) conversations and learning for everyone!

Can you identify dots that correspond to the following two statements? 1) “My parents dragged me down here for a hamburger, which I didn’t really want.” 2) “We were walking back to our hotel and just stumbled into this.”

Math activities at the COA Family Picnic

Pete Reynolds Blog, Initiatives, Math Conversations July 20, 2019September 12, 2019#PublicMathMKE, Math

Following on from discussions with COA staff earlier in the summer, Collab-Labist Mary Langmyer set up a number of math activities for COA’s family picnic. Children had fun with the chance to play number games, count collections, create number sentences, build with blocks, make patterns and design attribute trains…and play with bubbles! It was a great day to sit down and relax with new friends… while using one’s imagination to engage with math!

Family Night at Silver Spring Neighborhood Center/Browning Elementary

Pete Reynolds Blog, Initiatives, Math Conversations May 25, 2019September 12, 2019#PublicMathMKE, Math

Last night Silver Spring Neighborhood Center held a family night for parents in the neighborhood or whose children attend Browning Elementary School. As part of the activities they planned for the evening, we brought along some math activities to see what children were inspired by.

The playground at Browning has a number spiral that to date had been used as the place to pile coats while playing elsewhere on the playground. Last night we proposed rules for some games students might play using a pair of large foam dice to figure their next move.

The big hit of the evening were the Zometool bubble wands students built.

It was a beautiful evening to watch bubbles drift across the playground, or when the breeze calmed, observe the structures created within a wand. A student was heard to say “that’s a tetrahedron!”

UWM Hosts Zoo Train Challenge Design Review

Pete Reynolds Initiatives, Zoo Train May 10, 2019May 28, 2019

On May 2nd, UWM hosted the final design review for students participating in our challenge to design a replacement for the wooden water tower that services the Zoo’s steam locomotives. Teams presented their designs to a review panel that included:

Wade Kostiwa, project Manager CG Schmidt
Jason Gross, Structural Engineer, Graef USA
Davidson Ward, Coalition for Sustainable Rail
Ken Ristow Milwaukee County Zoo
Brian Krause, Milwaukee County Zoo

Over lunch, the review panel identified key concepts to include in the final specification. This list included contributions from all of the participating teams.

Brett Peters, Dean of the School of Engineering provided closing remarks.

What’s next

We’re grateful to have the help of Jason Gross from Graef to finalize the spec and provide the engineering analysis on the final design. This summer, through the support of Building2Learn, UWM will host a two week workshop for a group of students from area high schools to produce construction drawings for the new tower.

This fall we’ll work with a schools to fabricate components for the tower. That will also see the kick off of our next challenge — design of a coal handling system to replace the current manual process.

If you’d like to get your school or company involved in the initiative, let us know. Here’s how.

UWM Hosts Zoo Train students, lets them break things

Pete Reynolds Initiatives, Zoo Train January 25, 2019January 28, 2019Franklin, UWM

On Thursday UWM’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences hosted the first of three sessions for students in our Zoo Train challenge. We met in the College’s new maker space where students from Franklin High School used short lengths of lath to assemble beams of various configurations. With these in hand, students went from there to the structural testing lab where UWM faculty had students estimate the maximum load their beam design could support. Each design was tested to the point of failure.

For round two, students went back to the maker space to design and assemble a five foot high tower from angle irons. That tower was put under load in a different device to measure deflection. The maximum load there was capped at twice the load the Zoo’s water tower needs to support.

UWM will host two more sessions to accomodate students from other schools. Thanks to the UWM team who made this happen: Chris Beimborn, Andrew Dressel, and Rahim Reshadi, and Avie Judes.

Number Talks Workgroup – January Recap

Pete Reynolds Embedding Discourse, Initiatives, Math Conversations January 21, 2019September 12, 2019Number Talks

Our January session focused on what should happen between now and next fall for schools that want to expand the number of teachers using number talks as a regular practice or support an initial cohort of teachers willing to make that happen. Here’s where we landed:

Spring 2019

Introduce number talks in an in-school PD session for teachers new to the practice
- Understand how teachers think about Number Talks
- What are their goals for math lessons?
- Where do they hope the practice might bring?
- What do they fear might happen during number talks?
- What do they value most in their current approach to teaching math?
- What do they think is least effective in their current approach to teaching math?
Have a teacher or coach that is comfortable with Number Talks lead a session for the class of a teacher new to the practice
Have teachers try out the practice in their room with a coach or experienced teacher on hand to provide feedback
Participate in UWM’s Math Circle for Teachers
Line up funding for resources, PD
- Wisconsin Mathematics Educational Foundation grants
- Donors Choose
- Go Fund Me
Identify teachers for pilot effort– the goal here is to require participation, but identify teachers who want to kick of the 2019-2020 school year with Number Talks as a regular practice.

Summer 2019

Script the first 20 days of number talks so that teachers new to the practice can focus on leading the practice rather than figuring out what problems to use. Here teachers can tap into the work Brown Street Academy and LaCausa did to kick things off this year.
Assemble resources for teachers participating in effort
- Reference materials
- Anchor charts
- Number Talks quick reference card
Number Talks PD just prior to the start of school
- Teachers have a chance to both lead and participate in number talks
- Teachers have a chance to practice charting student thinking
- Teachers get a chance to preview strategies they are likely to see in their first 20 days of number talks

Fall 2019

Teachers use Number Talks 2-3 times per week starting the first week of the semester
Quick, frequent check-ins with in-school coach or teacher lead to address issues and concerns
Work with grade level groups to select problems focused on specific strategies to guide problem selection after the first 20 days of Number Talks
Participate in peer led PD with other teachers working with Number Talks

Want to be part of the Number Talks Workgroup?

← Previous

Building Community and a Joy for Math
November 17, 2023

Math = A Traumatic Experience.It’s almost universal and it stands in the way of our current generation navigating elementary, middle and high school with a different experience regarding math.Parents who have a negative experience with math are less likely to engage with their student children about homework, encourage them to attend school, etc.So this school year, Learn Deep is conducting a pilot, in coordination with Carmen Schools of Science and Technology’s Stellar Elementary, faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Math department and our friend Bernie Traversari, with a small seed grant from the Wisconsin After School Network to experiment with how we might provide opportunities for parents to modify their perception of math.Our experiment Tuesday night: arrange for parents and their children to spend time together in discourse, while attempting to solve math-based puzzles in an after school setting. Since many parents are non-English speaking, we provided UWM student support for translation when needed.The overall sentiment at the end of the evening: I enjoyed working on solving the challenges together, I will definitely be back for the next math evening, I wish we had math in this way when I went to school x years ago.Are you a school district interested in addressing parent math trauma as a way to enable parent involvement in the learning process? Follow our story as we host 2 more Math Events this school year.Thanks to Dean Joshua Mack, Kevin McLeod, Gabriella Pinter, Danny McCormick
#PublicMathMKE @ Doors Open Milwaukee
September 30, 2019

The weather was less than ideal, but the Public Math booth was there for the Doors Open Milwaukee Block party. Visitors had the chance to play with math actives and test their Venn diagramming skills with a street survey.
#PublicMathMKE @ Maker Faire
September 17, 2019

Our math booth was out at Maker Faire this weekend testing out activities with kids and families. Mary Langmyer brought her enthusiasm and wagon full of materials to engage students in math explorations.

Coal Handling Virtual Design Review
May 8, 2020

Covid-19 threw a wrench in our plans for the final design review for students engaged in our Zoo Train Challenge. MSOE had planned to play host for the session, but as schools and universities first closed and then moved on-line we adjusted as well. As schools reopened for distance learning, five teams were able to continue work on the challenge to redesign the process used to store and load coal for the Zoo’s steam locomotives. In most cases, they were forced to do so without the resources and physical prototypes they had started to produce. On Wednesday, four teams were able to join a review session on Zoom where they presented their ideas to and took questions from a review panel representing the advisory team for the project. That group included industry professionals from We Energies, Kumatsu, County Materials, as well as faculty and staff from MSOE and UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science. While the virtual format was less than ideal, two things stood out across the presentations. All of the teams were able to leverage feedback and ideas from the conceptual design review UWM hosted in December to improve not just their designs, but their ability to talk through and communicate their design decisions. When asked by panelists about where they saw value in the experience, students consistently mentioned both the experience of figuring out how to work effectively as a team, and the opportunity to leverage and learn from outside experts. Congratulations are due to all of the teams involved in the project. Thanks are also due to their teachers. Nothing interesting happens in a classroom without a teacher willing to say yes. Their willingness to involve their students in an open ended project, coordinate student participation in project events, and help their colleagues at other schools with ideas on how to manage project teams is the key ingredient in efforts like this. Zoo Train Schools and Teachers Elmbrook Launch – Ryan Osterberg Golda Meir – Tina Gleason Menomonee Falls – Robert Regent-Smith New Berlin Eisenhower – Devin McKinnon New Berlin West – Bill Trudell Pathways High School – Angelique Byrne/Chris Kjaer St. Joan Antida – Cynthia McLinn/Melissa Peppler St. Thomas More – Emily Pirkl Wauwatosa East – Julibeth Favour West Allis Dottke – Bernie McCarthy
UWM Hosts Zoo Train Design Review
December 18, 2019

This past Friday, UWM’s College of Engineering hosted the conceptual design review for students in this year’s Zoo Train Challenge. Teams from 10 area schools presented their ideas to re-work the coal handling process for the Zoo’s steam locomotives. The Zoo’s current process has train staff manually sift coal into 17 gallon buckets that may weigh 80 to 90 pounds when full. These are then carried over an often slippery, uneven surface where they are staged for use later in the day. When the train stops at the depot to take on passengers, the train crew will hoist and dump these bucket’s into the train’s coal bin, which is close to four feet above ground level. The train team is also concerned with the deteriorating condition of the coal bin and a retaining wall against which coal ash and fines are stored prior to removal. New Berlin Eisenhower students present their design concepts. (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey) At this point in the process, most teams focused on the design of a new coal bin that could keep the coal sheltered from rain, and automating or augmenting the process of sifting and loading coal. Teams presented their designs to review panels that included zoo train operators, staff from We Energies coal handing facility, students and faculty from industrial engineering programs at UWM and MSOE, and engineers with GZA Environmental and Komatsu. Following each presentation, teams responded to questions and feedback from both panelists and peers from other teams. Both panelists and students in the audience for other presentations also provide written feedback for each team. Golda Meir students provide feedback on presentation by their peers . (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey) Students will use the feedback and ideas they gained from this session to finalize their designs. The final design review for the project will be hosted by MSOE at the end of April. Nothing interesting happens in a classroom without a teacher willing to say yes, so we are extremely grateful to the teachers who stepped up to get their students involved. Thanks also to all those who helped pull both the project and review session together, and of course, the students who have taken on the challenge! UWM has a brief write-up of the event here: https://uwm.edu/news/gallery/milwaukee-area-students-create-solutions-for-zoo-train/ Zoo train Schools and Teachers Elmbrook Launch – Ryan Osterberg Golda Meir – Tina Gleason Menomonee Falls – Robert Regent-Smith New Berlin Eisenhower – Devin McKinnon New Berlin West – Bill Trudell Pathways High School – Angelique Byrne/Chris Kjaer St. Joan Antida – Cynthia McLinn/Melissa Peppler St. Thomas More – Emily Pirkl Wauwatosa East – Julibeth Favour West Allis Dottke – Bernie McCarthy
MATC Students Put Zoo Train on the Map
October 18, 2019

While MATC students were doing fieldwork to create a survey of the coal handling area for our Zoo Train Challenge, they took the time to shoot some 3D photos. Those images are now available on Google Maps, and give a good look at the site our Zoo Train students are focused on. [raw] [/raw] To view other images in the series, pull up the Zoo on Google Maps, and click the icon of the little person in the lower right corner of your browser
We Energies Hosts Site Tours for Zoo Train Students
October 18, 2019

Over the past two days, We Energies hosted four tours of their coal handling facility in Oak Creek for students in our Zoo Train Challenge. A team of five from We Energies walked students through the procedures they follow to safely store and move coal from when it arrives by train to when it is used in the power plant. On their tour of the facility, students were able to see the equipment and systems in use. What students learned about how to manage coal on a very large scale, they will now bring to bear as they think through how to revise the coal handling process at the Zoo.
Zoo Train Challenge for 2019-2020 Kick-Off
October 2, 2019

This year 140 students from 11 area schools will participate in our Zoo Train Challenge– redesign the coal handling process used for the Zoo’s steam locomotives. At yesterday’s kick-off event, students had a chance to visit the site, see what it’s like to lift a bushel bucket of coal, and meet their peers from other schools. Before we went into a Q & A session, we sat students at tables where they got to know peers from other schools and worked together to identify the questions they wanted to see answered at the session. That process was led by Dr. David Howell from MSOE, who brought along 13 MSOE student volunteers to help facilitate the work at each table. While students went through that work, teachers and industry advisers had a chance to meet and talk through how they will run the project in their classrooms. Two New Berlin students from last year’s challenge joined us for the event– one, who went to the school board for permission to retake the engineering class so she could participate this year, and a second who is now at MSOE, and came along to help.

Initiatives