Make Math Happen
Make Math Happen (formerly known as PD for the SOUL) is the podcast for educators ready to move with intention and teach with impact. Hosted by math coach and equity-focused educator Laneshia Boone, each episode bridges practice and purpose to help you design instruction that centers students, builds capacity, and makes learning stick—especially for those pushed to the margins.
Every week, you’ll get strategies that work in real classrooms, grounded reflections that challenge the status quo, and conversations with educators who are making bold moves in math education. From planning with purpose to using charts that anchor learning, from building strong routines to disrupting expired rules, this podcast is where meaningful math instruction comes to life.
You’ll walk away with ready-to-use tools, fresh insight, and the confidence to make every lesson count.
Because when we move with care, plan with clarity, and teach with courage, we make math happen.
Episodes
55 episodes
Modeling Math: What is a Function
Linear functions are major work in middle school mathematics, but before students can graph slope or write equations, they must understand what a function truly represents.In this episode, we trace the vertical development of functional ...
Connecting Math: Where Relationships Meet Functions
How proportional reasoning prepares students for modelingOver the past three months, we’ve built something intentional.Geometry helped students see structure.Number systems helped them understand magnitude.Ratios he...
Connecting Math: Making Proportional Reasoning Visible
Rates, Tables, Tape Diagrams, and the Coordinate PlaneRatios are relationships. But proportional reasoning is what happens when students learn to use those relationships to solve problems.In this episode, we move f...
Connecting Math: Comparing Quantities
Before students can work flexibly with ratios, they must be able to answer a more fundamental question: What exactly are we comparing, and why?In this episode, we zoom in on the core comparison structures that sit beneath ratios...
Connecting Math: Understanding Ratios as Relationships, Not Numbers
Why ratios are about how quantities move togetherThis episode launches our Connecting Math series by reframing ratios as relationships rather than calculations. Instead of treating ratios as fractions or procedures to mem...
Understanding Math: Number Sense That Transfers
How strong number reasoning prepares students for ratios and algebraThroughout January, we’ve explored rational numbers, negative numbers, distance, value, fractions, decimals, and division. On the surface, it may seem like this m...
Understanding Math: Fractions, Decimals, and Meaning
Building understanding instead of teaching tricksMany students reach middle school able to perform fraction and decimal procedures without truly understanding what those numbers represent. In this episode, we slow down and reconne...
Understanding Math: Negative Numbers, Distance, and Value
Strategies that clarify the number line for every learnerNegative numbers are often taught through rules that don’t stick. In this episode, we return to meaning.We explore how students have been reasoning about space, direc...
Understanding Math: Making Sense of Rational Numbers
When students struggle with fractions, decimals, and integers, it’s often assumed they’re missing skills. In reality, they’re missing understanding.This episode opens our Understanding Math series by focusing on how students mak...
Seeing Math: Similarity and Scale
This episode closes our geometry focus by showing how similarity and scale serve as the bridge into ratios, proportions, and later functions. We explore what makes figures similar, how scale factor represents a preserved relationship rather tha...
Seeing Math: Area, Surface Area, and Volume
This episode continues our Season 4 focus on making connections across mathematical domains and across grade levels. My goal over the coming months is to spark deeper conversations about instruction, sequencing, and sense-making, and to support...
Seeing Math: Angles, Lines, and Movement
Helping students make sense of transformations and symmetryGeometry becomes powerful when students can see how shapes move, change, and relate. In this episode, we explore angles, lines, and the three core transformations—translat...
Seeing Math: Why Geometry Should Start the Story
Spatial reasoning is the heartbeat of middle school mathematics. In this episode, we explore how seeing patterns, shapes, movement, and structure primes students for success across every domain they’ll encounter this year. You’ll learn why geom...
Season Finale: Closing One Chapter, Opening Another
This special episode closes out the month and reflects on the entire journey of this podcast. Four years ago, this show launched as PD for the Soul with a simple mission: to give teachers bite-sized, meaningful professional development...
The Closure: Bringing the Learning Full Circle
The last five minutes of class might be the most powerful. In this final episode of the instructional framework series, Laneshia breaks down the Closure portion of the lesson: the moment where big ideas get consolidated, strategies are n...
The Instruct: Building Thinkers, Not Answer-Getters
Last week, we broke down the Instruct phase — how to plan lessons like a chef curating a recipe, balancing tasks, facilitation, and engagement to make learning stick.This week, I’m serving up the next course: what Instruct
The Recipe for Instruction: Tasks, Facilitation, and Engagement That Stick
Every strong math lesson has a recipe — the right balance of tasks, facilitation, and engagement that brings learning to life.In this episode, Laneshia walks you through the Instruct portion of the lesson cycle like a mas...
Pre-Teaching: Zooming Out to Zoom In
Before you ever step into a lesson, your planning determines how far students can go. In this episode, Laneshia breaks down what it means to zoom out to zoom in—strategically mapping upcoming units, identifying potential roadblocks, and ...
Activate the Lesson: Setting the Stage for High Expectations
Before students ever dive into a new concept, the Activate portion of your lesson determines whether they’re truly ready to think. In this episode, Laneshia models what an intentional Activate sounds like—from synthesizing a spiral war...
The Weight of our Beliefs
Six weeks into the school year, the cracks start to show — the fatigue, the frustration, and the quiet slide into low expectations. In this episode of Make Math Happen, Laneshia gets real about the dangerous drift toward deficit thinki...
The Weight of the Work
In this episode of Make Math Happen, I get real about the weight of the work we do as educators. From the progress my team has made in planning, to the hard truths about classroom management, to the reflection that leadership demands—I...
Your Educational Landscape
What does your educational landscape look like, and what role do you play in it?In this episode, I share what I’ve been noticing in classrooms just three weeks into the school year: disengagement. Students with heads down, hesitant to pa...
Math Moves that Matter: Building Capacity One Lesson at a Time
In this conversation with Toni Hardy, we dig into what it really means to build capacity in math classrooms—one intentional move at a time. Toni shares how small, purposeful shifts in lesson planning and delivery create long-term impact for stu...
Organized for Impact
Organization isn’t about perfection—it’s about impact. In this episode of Make Math Happen, Laneshia breaks down three truths every educator needs to hear: don’t put off what can be done today, stop making things harder than they need ...
Making Thinking Visible with Anchor Charts
Anchor charts aren’t just classroom décor—they’re tools for making learning visible, guiding students toward deep understanding, and accelerating achievement. In this episode of Make Math Happen, Laneshia connects anchor chart planning to resea...