Earlier this month, Stephanie Johnson, a first grade teacher at Pine Ridge Elementary School in Bend, found out she won a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Central Oregon Daily News first reported on Johnson’s achievement. The award is considered to be the highest national honor a K-12 educator can receive for teaching science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
Johnson was one of five teachers in Oregon who received the most recent award, which was given to educators nominated in 2021, 2022 or 2023. It includes a certificate signed by former President Biden, an invitation to attend the awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. and $10,000 from the National Science Foundation. Johnson joins us to talk about her achievement and the joy she gets from teaching math to 1st graders.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross. Earlier this month, elementary school teacher Stephanie Johnson was sitting with her mentor when she got an email. It said she was one of the recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. There was some screaming and hugging, because it just so happened that her mentor had nominated her for the award. It is considered the highest honor a K-12 educator can get for teaching science, technology, engineering or math. Stephanie Johnson teaches first grade at Pine Ridge Elementary School in Bend, and she joins us now. Stephanie, welcome to Think Out Loud and congratulations.
Stephanie Johnson: Oh, thank you so much and thank you for having me.
Norcross: We should name your mentor. Who is she?
Johnson: Kerry Morton – she is absolutely fabulous and has progressed me through my mathematics teaching for the last, oh gosh, like 16 years.
Norcross: What did it mean for you to have her right there with you when you got the news?
Johnson: Oh, it meant everything, because we have worked together through many classrooms, and hundreds of students, and with peers. This is really such an honor, and to be nominated by her and receive the award next to her was the best thing that could have happened.
Norcross: Did you know that she had nominated you?
Johnson: Yes, that’s part of the process, nominating, and then we go through the application process. We worked together closely to complete that, as well.
Norcross: I know that there’s going to be an award ceremony coming up in Washington, D.C. Are you planning to go?
Johnson: Yeah, I get to go with my family – my mom and dad, and my kiddo.
Norcross: How would you describe your approach to teaching math to 1st graders?
Johnson: I would say that it’s very Socratic, that I feel like my job as a math teacher is not a “stand and deliver” professor but experiential and hands-on, and posing problems [that] students have the ability to solve in ways that make sense to them, using manipulatives and strategies that work best for who they are and where they’re at right now in their math skills.
Norcross: You used a couple of terms here that I think we should probably draw out. One is Socratic, which is basically, we learn with our mouths open, we learn by being involved in the process. How does that work for 1st graders who are like … 6?
Johnson: Well, the best thing about 1st graders is they have no filter. They’re always ready to share and they like to get dirty with their ideas. They don’t care if they’re correct or if I’m completely finished with an idea before I throw it out to the rest of the class. And that’s what makes it fun, because then they kind of lead each other on, “well, does that make sense,” or, “well, maybe that doesn’t make sense,” based on other things that we’ve done. I guess that’s what makes math with 1st graders one, entertaining, and two, it’s really fun because they’re not afraid to share their thinking.
Norcross: Yeah, that’s great, but I can see how it could also be hard because their chaotic brains don’t have filters. How do you keep them on task?
Johnson: We use structures for talking with their partners and talking with the class. We use private thinking time. They all know that we initially start problems off with them getting to think about their own thinking and how they want to share their thinking with a partner. Then they get to talk with their partner about their thinking, then they share with each other, and then are able to ask each other clarifying questions about each other’s thinking. While they’re doing that, I get to listen to their thinking and walk around the room. Then I’ll end up bringing forward three or four ideas from students and those students get to share them with the rest of the class. And we base moving forward on the skills based on their ideas and strategies that they’ve come up with to solve the problem.
Norcross: You also said that you use what you call “manipulatives” to get the kids to work on these problems together. What does that mean?
Johnson: Well, that could be whiteboards, and they’re working on their own whiteboards to solve problems with pictures or numbers, equations. They could be using cubes or blocks. They could be using “ten frames” to help them build and think about numbers and what’s happening with the numbers. Are numbers getting smaller, are numbers getting bigger? They have all of these tools that they’ve learned to use with the mathematics to help them think about the math, and then they get to share their ideas with their partners and how they solve it.
Norcross: It sounds so much more collaborative than I remember. The kids are working together. Why is that important?
Johnson: I would say, one, it helps … When you’re the one talking about the math, you’re the one learning. So I think what it does is, it solidifies students' own thinking about how they’re processing, how to solve problems, and they’re getting to really practice strategies that make sense to them. And then, when they get to see other students' ideas or other students’ strategies, they get to decide, “Will those work for me as well?”
I find it’s essential now to be collaborative as a mathematician. You would look at mathematicians in colleges and mathematicians in the workforce, they’re not working in isolation, they’re working with each other. And that starts now.
Norcross: How was your experience with math instruction when you were in elementary school, and how’s it different from the way you teach?
Johnson: I feel like it’s changed a lot. I think we know a lot more as math teachers now, and about strategies and structures that work best for students. I think when I was young, it was a lot of timed assessments and things like, “you’ve got to memorize your facts and get these done as fast as you can,” and not a lot of collaboration. A lot of individual work around math problem-solving.
I think there’s been some research around timed assessments and how they’re more assessing short-term memory, rather than showing that students have strategies for problem solving. We know that strategies for problem solving will carry us into our everyday lives, more so than just having automaticity in our facts.
Norcross: You know, this really resonates with me because I remember getting that with math – there is a problem and there is a right answer, and there are many ways to arrive at the right answer. But I didn’t get that until high school geometry; and the idea that you could take a kid and give them that method of thinking through a problem and collaborating with someone in order to do it, that’s very different than the way I was raised.
Johnson: Yeah, and very different than how I was raised, as well.
Norcross: My first grade teacher was one person who did all the things, and I never thought of her as a specialist. I mean, do you have a class that you teach all the things to, but you’re just especially good at math?
Johnson: Yes, I teach all the subjects, and then math is my passion.
Norcross: Why?
Johnson: I think because I didn’t have the best or most positive math identity growing up. I never saw myself as a mathematician. It definitely wasn’t encouraged. I was always put in these basic-level math classes and told, “you’re not really a mathematician,” until I got into college and I was learning how to teach mathematics. And then I got into Bend-La Pine. Kerry Morton took me under her wing and was like, “No, we’re all mathematicians and this is how we’re all mathematicians.”
And I don’t ever want students to ever feel like I did, where it was like, “Oh gosh, no, not math! I just can’t do it today.” I want them to come into math class going, “I’m a mathematician. I’m a problem solver and I’m ready for this. I can take this on.”
Norcross: Are there kids in your class for whom this method just does not work?
Johnson: No.
Norcross: Why do you think that is?
Johnson: I think it’s because every student feels valued for what they bring to a math lesson. Because there is brilliance in each of them, and my job is to bring that out and foster it in front of their peers. And they feel proud, they feel challenged and they know that it’s OK to have this feeling of disequilibrium. It just means that we’re learning.
Norcross: Stephanie, you started your career teaching kids with special needs. I’m wondering how that experience shapes your approach to teaching math now?
Johnson: It offered me the opportunity to think about math instruction in a different way. And that’s where I started going, “Oh, this is my job, to have these students bring forth the strengths that they have, so that I can teach them and move their thinking forward in these skills.” Because they’re coming in at all different levels and they’re coming in with all different knowledge. How can we use that together, to learn how to add, to learn how to subtract, to learn new strategies together? So I think that’s where I learned a lot about differentiation and having to leave some old ideas about, “there’s only one way to solve a problem,” behind.
Norcross: What are the challenges to teaching 1st graders math that are perhaps different today than they were when you first started teaching?
Johnson: I think now, kiddos come into math classes still having that feeling that they need to have the right answer. And that “fast thinking” is valued. So really getting them to slow down and deeply discuss their thinking, rather than,”Oh, I know 2 + 3 is 5, and I have the answer and I just know it.” How could you prove that to me? So getting them to really think about, well, I could add 3 and then 2 more, or I know that 2 + 2 is 4, so I add 1 more and then I have 5. I think that’s the biggest challenge right now. Maybe it’s because of screens and instant gratification, or maybe that’s just a societal thing that we have here in the U.S. But really getting them to slow their thinking down and describe their strategies that they’re using.
Norcross: Do you think that approach of slowing down and really thinking through the material can be applied to other disciplines as well, like art, English or writing?
Johnson: Well, a lot of it comes into planning and thinking about your thinking. So, we talk about metacognition – “I’m gonna think about my thinking right now.” And I also think that helps in relationships with your family or with partners in the future, and I think it’s a lifelong skill.
Norcross: This is your 17th year teaching first grade. What motivates you or sparks your passion to keep doing it?
Johnson: Every day is different. I don’t ever sit down, and I love that. I love how things change. I love listening to students thinking. I love making connections with families. Being at the same school for so long, I’ve gotten to know the community and I live in the community. I just feel like I get to make a real positive impact in these kids' lives, and hopefully that will follow them through their entire education.
Norcross: Stephanie Johnson, thank you so much and congratulations.
Johnson: Thank you so much.
Norcross: Stephanie Johnson is a first grade teacher at Pine Ridge Elementary School in Bend. She is one of the recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
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