Building Powerful Linear Functions Workshop
Building Powerful Linear Functions Workshop
Algebra Teachers, are you ready to. . .
âś” finally understand linear functions?
âś” give your students confidence?
âś” nix rote-memorized procedures?
Algebra Teachers, are you ready to. . .
âś” finally understand linear functions?
âś” give your students confidence?
âś” nix rote-memorized procedures?
Participants in the Live Workshop
“The best thing today was grappling with math I already knew, or thought I knew.”
"I really enjoyed how engaged we were as participants that are also teachers. If adults who know the content are participating as students, it shows promise that students can be engaged as well.”
“I enjoyed the activities and challenges we faced as students.”
Participants in the Live Workshop
“The best thing today was grappling with math I already knew, or thought I knew.”
"I really enjoyed how engaged we were as participants that are also teachers. If adults who know the content are participating as students, it shows promise that students can be engaged as well.”
“I enjoyed the activities and challenges we faced as students.”
Ready to conquer linear functions?
We got you.
This workshop is everything you need. 7 modules, 7 weeks, a powerful transformation to make a REAL impact for your students.
"If you have even one student in your class that struggles with math, then take a Pam Harris workshop."
-Christopher Peterson, West High School, CA
Ready to conquer linear functions?
We got you.
This workshop is everything you need. 7 modules, 7 weeks, a powerful transformation to make a REAL impact for your students.
"If you have even one student in your class that struggles with math, then take a Pam Harris workshop."
-Christopher Peterson, West High School, CA
From Participants of the Live Workshop
Should I take this workshop?
Will this help me as a teacher?
Denise is walking away with tons of ideas about how to help students better understand math.
Will taking this workshop help me help my students?
Rebekah says, “I didn't know all of the answers... but sitting with that discomfort and actually growing myself felt really powerful.
As a Calculus teacher, should I take this workshop?
Christine worked as a software engineer and loves Pam's approach to teaching math as solving real problems—just like engineers solve real problems.
Joseph teaches AP Calculus and says he learned a lot about interpreting slope to take back to his classroom.
Is this PD really worth it?
Lavell had only good things to say.
"The best PD I've ever had... relevant... revolutionary... this is what we need."
From Participants of the Live Workshop
From Participants of the Live Workshop
Should I take this workshop?
Denise is walking away with tons of ideas about how to help students better understand math.
Will this help me as a teacher?
Rebekah says, “I didn't know all of the answers... but sitting with that discomfort and actually growing myself felt really powerful.”
Will taking this workshop help me help my students?
Christine worked as a software engineer and loves Pam's approach to teaching math as solving real problems—just like engineers solve real problems.
As a Calculus teacher, should I take this workshop?
Joseph teaches AP Calculus and says he learned a lot about interpreting slope to take back to his classroom.
Is this PD really worth it?
Lavell had only good things to say.
"The best PD I've ever had... relevant... revolutionary... this is what we need."
A 7-week deep dive into Linear Functions
Learn:
- the 3 big ideas of linear functions and how to develop them
- the most important models for linear functions, the order to use, and their purposes
- how to develop functional reasoning for powerful linear functions
Runs September 23, 2025 - January 12, 2026. That is 7 weeks of content  with 9 additional weeks access. All for $347!
A 7-week deep dive into Linear Functions
Learn all about:
- the 3 big ideas of linear functions and how to develop them
- the most important models for linear functions, the order to use, and their purposes
- how to develop functional reasoning, for powerful linear functions
Runs February 6, 2024 - May 27, 2024.
That is 7 weeks of content with 9 additional weeks access. All for $347!
What is in the Workshop?
Module 1: Introduction: Linear Functions
What is in the Workshop?
Module 1: Introduction: Linear Functions
What Will I Learn?
- What "Math is Figure-Out-Able" means, what is real math, and what it means to mathematize
- What it means to be a mentor to young mathematicians
- A sequence of Tasks to introduce linear functions to students
- The three big ideas of linear functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the why, the background, and the context that sets the stage for the rest of the workshop, so that you can implement lessons that draw back on student experience and support sense making.
___________________________________________________
Module 2: Connecting to Prior Knowledge: Recursion
What Will I Learn?
- A simple model for recursion
- Three student tasks to connect recursion to functions
- Models for building the connection of recursion to relation
- How to use technology to support connecting recursion to functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to connect recursive situations to tables, graphs, and equations, deeply making sense of individual data points, rates of change, and contexts.
It's not about multiple representations, but the connections between the representations that develop robust learning and deep understanding. Students need to be fluid with individual data points in their various representations in order to generalize and reason about the entire context, to reason about the function.
___________________________________________________
Module 3: Building Relation and Function
What Will I Learn?
- How to represent real world data by writing equations of a line from graphs and tables
- Additional contexts to help students solidify the big ideas in linear functions
- How to use Problem Strings to further the learning
- How to get students using technology to support understanding
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to be able to not only think about individual data points discretely, but also reason about them in a continuous function. They need to be able to use the available data to find the relations and model it for all data points.
___________________________________________________
Module 4: Preparing to Generalize
What Will I Learn?
- Three strategies for writing the equation of a line
- Contexts to continue to expand student understanding
- A Problem String to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
As students get ready to generalize, they need to explore more contexts as they decide what always works and what works only sometimes.
Students need to understand rate in a broader way than just slope in order to deeply make sense of how functions behave over time.
___________________________________________________
Module 5: Generalizing: The Equation of a Line
What Will I Learn?
- What it means to teach with a function-based approach to algebra
- Specific student tasks that support generalizing the equation of a line
- Problem Strings to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the cincher module. All the linear ideas students have been messing around with need to become clear in their minds. We draw back on student experiences and newly developed intuition to connect with what has been traditionally taught as formulas and step-by-step procedures.
Students emerge from these tasks reasoning about linear functions, connecting multiple representations, and making sense of rates of change, starting point, and direction.
___________________________________________________
Module 6: Sequencing Tasks for Student Success
What Will I Learn?
- Rich tasks to develop concepts
- How to structure and facilitate a Math Congress to further the math
- Problem Strings to introduce and solidify strategies, models, and concepts
- How sequences of lessons can maximize learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This workshop explores a carefully crafted sequence of tasks that support all students, allowing entry and access to the learning, while simultaneously upping the ante for continued growth.
It is not reasonable to expect teachers to be expert curriculum writers. Instead, your job is to be discerning when choosing instructional tasks that support all learners.
___________________________________________________
Module 7: High-leverage Teacher Moves
What Will I Learn?
- High-leverage teacher moves to encourage student sense making
- Teacher moves that support equity and access
- Teacher moves to differentiate — to support and challenge all learners
- How to support meaningful discourse to facilitate learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Teaching in a way that allows all students to learn and grow is not a trivial task. There are purposeful moves teachers can make that promote class discussion and mathematical dialogue, position all students as sense makers, and build a culture of curiosity and empowerment.
In this module, you’ll learn the high-level teacher moves that make the learning happen like a pro.
___________________________________________________
Live Q&A Sessions With Pam
During the workshop you will have the opportunity to submit questions to Pam for her to answer during two live Q&A sessions. The sessions will be recorded and you will have access to them.
What is in the Workshop?
Module 1: Introduction: Linear Functions
What is in the Workshop?
Module 1: Introduction: Linear Functions
What Will I Learn?
- What "Math is Figure-Out-Able" means, what is real math, and what it means to mathematize
- What it means to be a mentor to young mathematicians
- A sequence of Tasks to introduce linear functions to students
- The three big ideas of linear functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the why, the background, and the context that sets the stage for the rest of the workshop, so that you can implement lessons that draw back on student experience and support sense making.
_____________________
Module 2: Connecting to Prior Knowledge: Recursion
What Will I Learn?
- A simple model for recursion
- Three student tasks to connect recursion to functions
- Models for building the connection of recursion to relation
- How to use technology to support connecting recursion to functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to connect recursive situations to tables, graphs, and equations, deeply making sense of individual data points, rates of change, and contexts.
It's not about multiple representations, but the connections between the representations that develop robust learning and deep understanding. Students need to be fluid with individual data points in their various representations in order to generalize and reason about the entire context, to reason about the function.
_____________________
Module 3: Building Relation and Function
What Will I Learn?
- How to represent real world data by writing equations of a line from graphs and tables
- Additional contexts to help students solidify the big ideas in linear functions
- How to use Problem Strings to further the learning
- How to get students using technology to support understanding
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to be able to not only think about individual data points discretely, but also reason about them in a continuous function. They need to be able to use the available data to find the relations and model it for all data points.
_____________________
Module 4: Preparing to Generalize
What Will I Learn?
- Three strategies for writing the equation of a line
- Contexts to continue to expand student understanding
- A Problem String to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
As students get ready to generalize, they need to explore more contexts as they decide what always works and what works only sometimes.
Students need to understand rate in a broader way than just slope in order to deeply make sense of how functions behave over time.
_____________________
Module 5: Generalizing: The Equation of a Line
What Will I Learn?
- What it means to teach with a function-based approach to algebra
- Specific student tasks that support generalizing the equation of a line
- Problem Strings to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the cincher module. All the linear ideas students have been messing around with need to become clear in their minds. We draw back on student experiences and newly developed intuition to connect with what has been traditionally taught as formulas and step-by-step procedures.
Students emerge from these tasks reasoning about linear functions, connecting multiple representations, and making sense of rates of change, starting point, and direction.
_____________________
Module 6: Sequencing Tasks for Student Success
What Will I Learn?
- Rich tasks to develop concepts
- How to structure and facilitate a Math Congress to further the math
- Problem Strings to introduce and solidify strategies, models, and concepts
- How sequences of lessons can maximize learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This workshop explores a carefully crafted sequence of tasks that support all students, allowing entry and access to the learning, while simultaneously upping the ante for continued growth.
It is not reasonable to expect teachers to be expert curriculum writers. Instead, your job is to be discerning when choosing instructional tasks that support all learners.
_____________________
Module 7: High-leverage Teacher Moves
What Will I Learn?
- High-leverage teacher moves to encourage student sense making
- Teacher moves that support equity and access
- Teacher moves to differentiate — to support and challenge all learners
- How to support meaningful discourse to facilitate learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Teaching in a way that allows all students to learn and grow is not a trivial task. There are purposeful moves teachers can make that promote class discussion and mathematical dialogue, position all students as sense makers, and build a culture of curiosity and empowerment.
In this module, you’ll learn the high-level teacher moves that make the learning happen like a pro.
_____________________
Live Q&A Sessions With Pam
During the workshop you will have the opportunity to submit questions to Pam for her to answer during two live Q&A sessions. The sessions will be recorded and you will have access to them.
Registration opens September 3, 2025
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Workshop starts September 23, 2025
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Registration opens
January 19, 2024
As a Participant
You will experience instructional tasks so that you can build intuition in your students.
You will follow a sequence of tasks designed to give all students access so that you can help students build reasoning about functions based on their experiences and what they are naturally thinking.
You will extend the learning to more complicated contexts so that you can strengthen students' reasoning.
You will engage in problem solving so that you can parse out the thinking needed to solve problems while reasoning about functions.
You will learn actionable strategies while engaging in the instructional routine called Problem Strings so that you can develop students' sense of linear functions and build specific mathematical strategies.
You will study three lesson types so that you can to learn to introduce, construct, and solidify reasoning about functions.
You will analyze expert teacher moves so that you can energize your classroom and keep students engaged in sense making.
I’m Pam Harris and I empower teachers to be the teacher they want to be.
______________________________________________________
I have been working with educators for over 20 years as a classroom teacher, university instructor, and teacher trainer as well as writing books and creating resources for teachers.
As a beginner teacher, I worked hard to make lessons understandable and interesting but I didn’t realize how much I relied on rote memorization and repeating procedures until I immersed myself in math research. This fundamentally changed the way I do and teach mathematics so that teachers and students reason mathematically, not mimic like robots.
Get on the Waitlist so you don't miss out!
If you've heard enough and you're ready to dive in, then click below and we'll keep you updated on when registration opens!
The workshop costs $347, which is less than the registration cost for many large conferences and also way more convenient.
How Does The Workshop Compare?
Learn more about how to earn credits through University of Massachusetts Global.
Take the Workshop on Any Device
My Guarantees
âś” If you complete my workshop and do not learn anything that you can use in your classroom, email me at [email protected]Â within 10 business days of the workshop ending and I will give you a full refund.
✔ You will feel very supported because there are live Q&A sessions to ask questions, bonus videos and materials, as well as optional activities.
✔ I estimate an average of 2-3 hours of work each week for this seven-week workshop. You will have access to the workshop content for 16 weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How does it compare to a math conference?
Math conferences can be hit or miss, depending on the presenters you see. In the best case scenario, you see many great presenters, but when you only spend 60 to 90 minutes with them, you rarely leave with enough experience to comfortably implement what you learned. In the worst case scenario, you see many mediocre presenters with disconnected topics and it can feel like a big waste of time.
In contrast, my workshop is an extended experience that is cohesive and coherent with specific topics. This workshop focuses on linear functions. In the course we will therefore explore lesson types, models, and high-leverage teacher moves that will help students leverage their reasoning to construct the big ideas of linear functions.
How does your workshop compare to an online university professional development course?
Because this workshop is offered online with 7 weeks of content available for 16 weeks, you have lots of flexibility in where and when to work on it.
There are both big picture ideas to chew on and lots of activities you can implement right away in your math class.
What are the start and end dates of this workshop?
Registration opens Wednesday, September 3, 2025 at 7:00 AM CDT and ends Friday, September 19, 2025 at 7:00 PM CDT.
The workshop begins on September 23, 2025 and ends on January 12, 2026. That includes 7 weeks of content with 9 additional weeks access.
Which grade levels are this workshop intended for?
This workshop is for anyone who teaches algebra 1, what leads into it, and what comes after. That said, it is directly for 8th grade and high school teachers, although 7th grade teachers would find it useful as well.
Anyone who works as a leader, instructional coach, PD facilitator, or trainer will also find this workshop useful.
What technical requirements are there?
This is an online workshop, so you need to have an Internet-connected device and feel comfortable browsing websites. Most devices including computers, tablets (such as iPads), and phones should have no problem using the site.
You will need to have the ability to watch videos—some school districts block websites that play videos. If you can see the video at the top of this page, you're probably going to be fine.
Please ensure that emails from [email protected] are being received and not going to your SPAM folder.
If none of those options allow you to receive emails from [email protected], then please email [email protected] and we will work to resolve the issue.
Is there a flyer I can download and print?
Yes. Download the flyer here and feel free to share it with others.
Registering for the workshop
What if I can't get approval to register before the registration deadline?
For starters, start asking them now! If you start now, you might be able to get your approval before the next registration period which starts Friday, May 14 at 7:00 AM CST. Here is an executive summary that you can present to them.Â
If you're still waiting for approval after the two-week registration window then email [email protected] about your situation and let's see if we can find a way to make this work.
I'm interested in your workshop, but I can't afford it. Is there something you can do?
I want this workshop to be accessible to everyone. So, please email me at [email protected], explain your situation, and we'll see what we can work out.
What happens right after I register?
You should receive two emails shortly after you register. One email will be a confirmation of your registration. Another email will be from me and will have all the information you'll need to get started. At the bottom of that email will be a button you can click to get started.
You can always find the workshop by logging in on the Mathisfigureoutable.com homepage and going to the My Content tab. There you will find the workshop and any other content linked to your account.
Can I pay with a purchase order?
Of course! It's a two step process.
Step 1: Gather the names and emails of all teachers being paid for with the purchase order. Send that information to [email protected]. Please format it as follows: First name Last name, Email ([email protected])
Step 2: Fill out this Purchase Order Request Form.
We'll take it from there!
Need help requesting funding from your school?
Use this template in Google Drive or contact [email protected] for a PDF version.
The workshop experience
What role does Pam have in this workshop?
This is not a workshop where you never hear from the instructor after you sign up. In addition to sending out weekly emails about what to expect, my team and I will be very engaged on the message board and interact with posted questions and comments. Please email support@
Are your workshop videos closed captioned? Transcripts?
Yes, all videos used in this workshop have closed captions entered by hand.
In addition to closed captioning, transcripts are available for download.
Do I have to be online at a specific time for this workshop?
No. This workshop is set up so that you can do it at any time of the day or night.
How much time will this workshop take each week?
Workshop participants can spend an average of about 3.5 hours per module. There are seven modules over the seven-week workshop. Some modules, especially modules 1 and 2, require more time than others. However, remember that even though the workshop is seven weeks, you have access to the content for sixteen weeks.
What homework or extra assignments are there?
While there are no homework or extra assignments associated with this workshop, I provide several things to try in your class. We explore these tasks in terms of how you experience them, how students experience them, and how teachers facilitate them. There is a message board you can interact with others on. There are no papers, reports, essays, or other written documents you must do as a part of this workshop.
When do the live Q&As take place?
The first Q&A takes place around the time that module 7 is released and another is held near the end of the workshop. You can add your questions to the "Live Q&As with Pam" section. I will endeavor to answer as many of these questions as I can during the scheduled workshop Q&As.
Dates, times, and information about how to join the live Q&As will be provided in your workshop specific emails and inside the "Live Q&As with Pam" module.
After the workshop ends
Can I earn a Professional Development Unit (PDU) for this workshop?
Yes! We are partnered with University of Massachusetts Global so you can earn 1 to 4 Graduate Level Professional Development Units. In order to earn PDU's, you need to apply for admission to University of Massachusetts Global, pay $80 per PDU, complete the online workshop, and complete the university's assignments.
Go to the Pam Harris Consulting partnership page, then click on Register Now to get started. Choose EDTU 9136 to register for Building Powerful Linear Functions.
Please check with your school or district to determine whether these credits are accepted. Note that these credits require additional fees ($80 per credit) and follow-up assignments.
Can I get a certificate of participation?
Yes. After you complete all the lessons and the workshop feedback form, you will receive an electronic certificate of participation via email. If you need specific information on your certificate of participation, just email [email protected] and explain what you need to have added.
What is your refund policy?
If you complete my workshop and do not learn anything that you can use in your classroom, email me at [email protected] within 10 business days of the workshop ending and I will give you a full refund.