What makes Derek Jones a different type of math teacher
If you’ve been struggling to teach your youngsters a love for math, you’re not alone. However, there is a growing emphasis on hands-on math learning, including board and card games, and one local educator is at the forefront and being honoured for his work.
Derek Jones is a standout Math Facilitator at St. Mary’s School. His work has been so beneficial for students that he received a Recognition of Excellence from the board during their November 18, 2025 meeting. Jones uses a variety of High-Impact Instructional Practices to address the lingering effects of online learning, as well as small-group instruction and other methods to tailor his lessons to student needs. Outside of the classroom, he recommends parents and caregivers get students involved in their daily use of numbers and math, as well as playing board games to covertly teach kids a bit of mathematics in a fun way.
“My job is to impact student learning through High-Impact Instructional Practices. That’s really getting on the ground level and working with teachers,” said Jones.
“It can be things as simple as building addition strategies, understanding place value all the way down to number recognition and counting, really trying to rebuild those, those core math strengths and math skills and foundations of math that didn’t happen during COVID. COVID really did a number on these students, and we certainly did our best to provide online instruction, but it’s just not the same as being in a classroom face-to-face with students.”
With the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones’s dedication to breaking down concepts and engaging students with mathematics remains steadfast.
“I largely withdraw students and really focus on those high-impact strategies,” Jones said.
“The largest group I’m working with for math right now is four, and I typically take two to four students at a time and really try to give what the classroom teacher might not. We’ve got classes of nearly 30 students for a classroom teacher, and maybe one EA. To provide such specific, tailored and repetitive strategies to students for their foundational skills – it just can’t always happen at the classroom level. That’s where I come in and take what might be the highest need group, or the most vulnerable students. I come in to really hit home on the basics and the core foundation.”
Jones has a number of different tools that bhe brings to students to help them better understand their numbers, or to find new ways of looking at them. Some of the tools he has relied on include traditional dry-erade whiteboards, but there are some that even adults might not even be familiar with.
“We will use something called a rekenrek, which is sort of like an abacus,” Jones said.
“It’s a counting tool. It’s something as simple as learning to count with a mnemonic. They’re counting is set to music, is set to a beat. All those things might not be disruptive in the class, but they will require the specific attention of a teacher, which they might not be able to give amongst 30 other students. I can pause with these students and give them what they need outside of the classroom.”
Essentially, Jones is the teacher who gives students extra attention to math learning and tailors instruction accordingly. He pauses when needed and repeats lessons and concepts in order to really give students a fighting chance to get their heads around a sometimes difficult subject.
“I act between the board and classroom teachers. I’m sort of that middle man or middle person,” said Jones. “We tend to have more students who are struggling than are flying ahead in the curriculum.”
If parents or caregivers want to get involved in student success in learning math, Jones suggests including their children in daily uses of math.
“We need to know numbers, right? Even just keeping a rough tally of grocery shopping at the store,” said Jones.
“My daughter is in Grade 4 right now, and she’s starting to learn fractions. That translates into decimals, understanding that and related to percentages off, or to money or to parts of a whole. Math is the subject that’s resisted the most and creates the most not tension, but it creates the most friction. There are certainly students who enjoy math, but it has that reputation. We take for granted assumed knowledge as adults in our everyday lives, right? Sharing that and making it more than obvious what you’re doing, or whether it be whatever you’re doing on your phone, on a calendar, for budgeting or shopping, all those things, make it obvious to students why numbers matter. Anytime that you show how you use math as a parent in your everyday life, it really has buy-in from students.”
Although adults largely take understanding of math concepts for granted, making math real helps students make real sense of it. However, Jones said that’s not the only way to foster a positive attitude in learning mathematics.
“Card games are huge in kindergarten for learning numbers,” Jones said.
“Board games are also excellent for dice rolling and understanding numbers on a board. Something like Snakes and Ladders playing Go Fish. ‘Got any eights?’ There is number recognition in that, right? Card games are an excellent way to have fun with numbers at home, and board games as well. Battleship is an excellent one for grid placement. It’s a Cartesian plane. It also helps to recognize algebra, too, by putting letters and numbers together. It puts variables together with numbers and helps to understand position on a coordinate plane.
“Whether it be counting money in Monopoly, rolling dice, understanding spaces on a square, or making pairs of numbers, the learning is one that they don’t know specifically that you’re teaching them,” Jones continued.
“They don’t see it as learning. They’re not being taught; they’re playing a game. It’s also fun because it’s not coming in as a traditional sit-at-your-desk and crunch numbers lesson.”
