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Math Empowered facilitators working with a group of teachers around a table
About Math Empowered

Teachers thinking together, so students think for themselves.

We are a collaborative team of educators committed to empowering teachers, leaders, and students. We bring curiosity, collaboration, and a deep respect for the learning process as we work alongside teachers and leaders to support student thinking and mathematical sense-making.

01 / What guides us

Our Core Values

Six commitments that shape every routine, task, and coaching conversation we bring into a classroom. Click a value to open its illustration.

02 / Who we are

Our Team

We are a collaborative team of educators committed to empowering teachers, leaders, and students. We bring curiosity, collaboration, and a deep respect for the learning process as we work alongside teachers and leaders to support student thinking and mathematical sense-making.

Portrait of Karolyn Wurster

Karolyn Wurster

Founder

Karolyn Wurster taught middle and high school mathematics in Sacramento, California and Concord, New Hampshire. Since 2011, she has trained and supported pre-service and professional math teachers in grades K-12. She has consulted for UnboundEd, the Breakthrough Collaborative, Leading Educators, and Generation Teach. Karolyn currently works with New Hampshire school districts. Karolyn earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics Education and her Master of Education from the University of New Hampshire. She earned her Master of Science in Education Leadership and received her license as a K-12 principal from Western Governors University.

Portrait of Beth Wheeler

Beth Wheeler

Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction Specialist

Beth Wheeler taught as a classroom teacher for 18 years at both the elementary and middle school levels, after which she worked as the district-wide mathematics instructional coach for the Nashua School District serving 12 elementary schools. She earned Bachelors of Science in both Elementary Education (K-8) and Sociology from Keene State College. In 2023 Beth was nominated for the President's Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Prior to joining the Math Empowered team Beth was part of the Math Empowered statewide coaches' cohort, and is excited to continue supporting teachers statewide as they implement the Math Empowered instructional practices.

Portrait of Katie Ames

Katie Ames

Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction Specialist

Katie brings a decade of experience teaching fifth and sixth grade, with a strong focus on cultivating deep mathematical thinking and problem solving. She is driven by a commitment to reflective practice, continually seeking ways to improve learning experiences for both students and educators. She holds a Master's degree in Education from the University of New Hampshire and partnered with Math Empowered as a classroom teacher before joining the team. In her current role, Katie designs and develops innovative instructional materials, coaches educators to strengthen math instruction, and supports the integration of technology to enhance teaching and learning.

03 / How we teach

Our Instructional Approach

Every cohort, kit, and digital tool we make is built around the same four routines, used every day, inside the curriculum your district has already adopted. Together they move a classroom from Teacher-Start to Student-Start learning, where students do the noticing, the reasoning, and the proving. This is the work, whichever rung you choose.

  • Routine 1

    Math Talks

    Notice and wonder, out loud, before the lesson begins. Every voice gets into the mathematics, including the students who have learned to stay quiet.

  • Routine 2

    Partner Sorts

    Randomized partners, a set of cards, and one question that cannot be answered without defending a choice. Visible daily pairing lowers the social risk and raises how many students talk.

  • Routine 3

    DARE-ing Application Problems™

    Discuss, Agree, Record, Edit. Protected minutes on one real application problem, every day, where the reasoning is the product and the answer is the byproduct.

  • Routine 4

    Thinking Pathway Tasks and Proof Games

    Building fluency through collaboration and proof: students work through tasks, catch mistakes together, and play games where a move only counts once it is justified. Speed becomes the byproduct of understanding.

Curious how this would look in your classrooms?

Schedule a consultation
04 / Our Reach

Educators from 34 New Hampshire districts have learned with us.

Math Empowered grows one classroom at a time. A teacher joins a cohort, tries a Math Talk on a Tuesday, and tells the teacher across the hall. Over the years that has added up to educators from 34 districts across New Hampshire, from the Seacoast to the North Country, along with a national partnership that carries the same routines into summer classrooms in five states.

These are the districts our participants come from, not districts under contract. Educators enroll individually, as grade-level teams, and sometimes as whole buildings. A district on this list may have sent one teacher or forty.

  • Allenstown
  • Alton
  • Barrington
  • Bow
  • Brentwood
  • Chichester
  • Concord
  • Deerfield
  • Dunbarton
  • East Kingston
  • Epsom
  • Exeter
  • Gilford
  • Governor Wentworth Regional
  • Haverhill Cooperative
  • Hill
  • Hooksett
  • Hopkinton
  • Inter-Lakes Cooperative
  • Laconia
  • Littleton
  • Middleton
  • Moultonborough
  • Nashua
  • Newfields
  • Newfound Area
  • Oyster River Cooperative
  • Pembroke
  • Pittsfield
  • Seabrook
  • Shaker Regional
  • Warren
  • White Mountains Regional
  • Winnisquam Regional

New Hampshire school districts and SAUs, listed alphabetically. If your district belongs on this list and is not here yet, tell us and we will add it.

Beyond New Hampshire: our partnership with Generation Teach

Generation Teach runs summer STEAM academies where high school and undergraduate teaching fellows lead real classrooms with coaching alongside them. Math Empowered provides the summer Instructional Approach Kits their math classrooms run on, along with implementation support for the educators using them, across every Generation Teach site.

It is the same daily work we bring to a New Hampshire cohort, in a setting where the teachers are learning to teach at the same time their students are learning to reason. Math Talks, Sorts, and daily problems built so that a first-time teacher can open the kit and run the routine on day one.

  • Sacramento, California
  • Aurora, Colorado
  • Denver, Colorado
  • Howard County, Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Rhode Island

Generation Teach is a national AmeriCorps service program and has co-created summer learning communities since 2014.