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Meet Brendan Lee

Brendan’s journey began in a high school gym, not a math classroom. As a physical education teacher, he experienced firsthand the challenges of working within a system where students often arrived already disengaged. After a few years and a brief detour into running a café, Brendan found himself back in the classroom—but this time, teaching year four students. The transition was humbling and eye-opening.

“I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,” Brendan admits. While his qualifications allowed the move, the reality of teaching younger students, across multiple subjects, revealed the depth of knowledge and adaptability required—especially when it came to building foundational math understanding.

This experience became the spark that led Brendan to dive deep into evidence-based practice. With a renewed sense of purpose, he started blogging about his learning journey, eventually building a platform that now includes consulting, presenting, and hosting the Knowledge for Teachers podcast.

One of the standout features of Brendan’s work is his clear, approachable infographics that tackle education myths and offer practical alternatives. In the interview, Heather and Brendan discuss why simply sharing research isn’t enough: “Teachers need more than just the information—they need to know what that looks like in the classroom.”

Brendan emphasizes the importance of making research actionable. That’s why he focuses on concrete strategies rather than abstract theory, helping teachers connect the dots between what the research says and what they do every day with students.

Check out the Myths here: Do This, Not This

Myth #1: Students Learn Best by Discovering Everything Themselves

One of the most persistent myths in education is the idea that students learn better when they “discover” knowledge on their own through open-ended problem solving and group work. In theory, it sounds ideal—collaborative, student-centered, and full of rich discussion, but as Brendan Lee points out in our conversation, this romanticized view often falls short in practice.

Students, especially those with learning difficulties like dyscalculia, need explicit instruction and scaffolding to build foundational understanding. Throwing them into discovery tasks without the proper tools, structure, or prior knowledge often leads to confusion, frustration, and a false sense that they’re “just not good at math.”

Brendan shares a powerful analogy: even adults, when faced with complex tasks without guidance, tend to give up quickly. The same is true for children—but they don’t always have the self-awareness or language to express that. Instead, they might disengage, act out, or adopt ineffective strategies that create long-term misconceptions.

Rather than expecting students to construct meaning from thin air, we must:

Myth #2: If You Show It Once, They’ve Learned It

 
This is one of the biggest traps teachers fall into—assuming that because they’ve shown something once, students have learned it. As Brendan Lee explains, there’s a massive difference between performance and learning.

When a student can replicate a skill immediately after a teacher models it, that’s a sign of performance in the moment—not necessarily long-term retention. Without deliberate practice, spaced repetition, and ongoing checks for understanding, that information often never makes it to long-term memory.

Brendan draws from cognitive science to frame this misunderstanding. He emphasizes that teachers need to move beyond “I showed them, they did it, done.” True learning requires:

Myth #3 — If students respond with correct answers during guided practice, then they understand it

🔍 Why It’s a Myth:

Myth #4: The Academic Language in Math Is Too Complex

One myth in math education is the belief that math vocabulary is too difficult for students to grasp—especially for those who are younger or have learning differences. This assumption leads many well-meaning educators to simplify or avoid academic terms altogether. But here’s the truth: our students are not only capable of learning this vocabulary—they need it in order to fully access mathematical concepts.

Why the Myth Persists

This myth often comes from a place of compassion. We see our students struggle with language, especially those with dyslexia or other learning challenges, and we instinctively want to lighten the load. So, instead of teaching terms like commutative property, denominator, or perimeter, we replace them with vague descriptions or skip them altogether.

What we may not realize is that we’re unintentionally robbing our students of the language they need to think mathematically, talk mathematically, and eventually—write and reason mathematically.

Why Vocabulary Is the Learning

Language and math are deeply intertwined. Math isn’t just numbers and symbols—it’s a structured language with precise vocabulary. If a student doesn’t understand the term difference, how can they interpret a word problem that asks them to “find the difference between two quantities”? If they’ve never encountered perimeter, how can they follow directions to calculate the length around a shape?

Teaching vocabulary is teaching math. When we leave out the language, we’re leaving out part of the content.

Can Students Really Handle These Terms?

Yes, they can. Students learn incredibly complex vocabulary in other areas of life all the time. Just look at the words they use when they talk about Pokémon, Minecraft, anime, or the latest YouTube trend. They throw around terms like “Charizard,” “Netherite,” and “Skibidi Toilet” with perfect pronunciation and deep conceptual understanding. If they can learn these, they can absolutely learn terms like numerator and equivalent.

As Heather puts it:
“If kids can say ‘skibidi fortnite,’ they can learn math vocabulary.”

It’s not about capability—it’s about access, repetition, and relevance.

How to Teach Academic Language in Math

Many teachers who have already embraced the Science of Reading will find that the same strategies apply beautifully to math vocabulary. Here’s how:

Myth #5: Once a Concept Has Been Taught, Students Can Apply It in Any Setting

This myth is one of the most frustrating for both teachers and students. You teach a concept—carefully, clearly, even enthusiastically—and students seem to understand. But then, a week later, they completely freeze when the same concept appears in a slightly different form. Why does this happen?

The problem lies in the false belief that teaching equals transfer.

Understanding the Learning Process

The truth is, just because a student can perform a skill in one setting doesn’t mean they can immediately apply it in another. This is why the Instructional Hierarchy is such a valuable framework. It reminds us that learning happens in stages—acquisition, fluency, generalization, and adaptation. Students don’t leap from learning a concept to applying it across contexts. They need structured support and time to get there.

Application is one of the last stages of learning—not the first.

The Role of Fluency in Application

A major barrier to application is the lack of fluency. If students are still slowly working through basic facts or relying on concrete tools like counters or drawings, their working memory is already overloaded. When presented with a novel word problem or a slightly reworded prompt, they just don’t have the cognitive space left to make sense of it.

This is why building fluency—through explicit instruction, daily review, and retrieval practice—is so important. When basic facts and procedures become automatic, students can focus on the problem at hand rather than getting stuck on the foundational pieces.

Generalization Doesn’t Happen by Accident

One of the most overlooked pieces of instruction is helping students generalize what they’ve learned. Often, teachers are surprised when students can solve a vertical subtraction problem, but get stumped when the exact same problem is laid out horizontally.

This doesn’t mean students haven’t learned—it means they haven’t generalized.

And generalization, like fluency, doesn’t happen through exposure alone. It requires: