Episode 10: Content Developer Kate Nowak Talks Comprehensive Math Curriculum

In this episode, Kristina interviews Kate Nowak who is the Director K-12 Curriculum Strategy with Illustrative Mathematics. Illustrative Mathematics was one of the first comprehensive OER math series made available to anyone and everyone. Their 6-8 math curriculum has seen great success in schools across the country, and they are working on expanding into high school math, as well as elementary math. All of this work has taken several years to pull together, so I wanted to talk with Kate about how it came to be and how Illustrative continues to grow their offerings.

Kristina's main takeaway from this interview is how Illustrative Mathematics decided to offer their content for free and then provide high-quality professional learning to accompany the materials versus the traditional model where districts pay for the curriculum and may get some professional learning thrown in on the side. I look forward to seeing the new math content from this organization to support solid math instruction.