Assistant Professor Laura Bitto teaches the ‘why’ in math education
Math class often gets a bad rap, as Assistant Professor of Education Laura Albaugh Bitto ’04 is well aware. Bitto, a math teacher educator, is working to change this, and recently gained support in her mission with a yearlong fellowship from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators.
Laura Albaugh Bitto ’04, assistant professor of Education, is the first to admit that math class gets a bad rap. And she says it’s usually due to misconceptions about math born from lessons that reduce the subject to the lowest common denominator.
“When we look at math as just a set of rules and formulas, it takes away the beauty and connectedness that it really has,” she says. At McDaniel, she helps future teachers learn ways to better teach it, taking math class from a reluctant requirement to a delightful enterprise.
Bitto is the sole mathematics teacher educator at McDaniel, guiding undergraduates who plan to one day teach math in K-12 schools. She’s clear-eyed about the challenges math teachers face in the classroom, teaching a subject that can sometimes induce anxiety in even the most dedicated students.
“People usually want to go into math teaching because they either loved math class or they hated it and struggled, and they don’t want that to be somebody else’s experience,” Bitto says.
“Every single person has the power to think mathematically, and I love to help other people unlock that." — Laura Bitto
She says that some approaches to math teaching remove opportunity for discovery and reasoning, making it painful for students that can’t quite get the formulas to “work.” Some students also miss out on occasions to deeply engage with math in equitable, effective ways if ambitious mathematics instruction isn’t practiced.
“Some lessons say ‘Don’t ask why, just invert and multiply,’ but really, please ask why! There are always reasons why, and they make a ton of sense,” Bitto says.
Her own journey as an educator began with a desire to show others that there’s no such thing as a math gene.
“Every single person has the power to think mathematically,” she says. “And I love to help other people unlock that, or at least not be afraid of it. To reduce their anxiety and get them to think, ‘I am a mathematical thinker, I’m a mathematician.’ I like to figure out how I can help people get to that in their identity.”
Though she’s always loved math herself, she aims to help future math teachers at McDaniel explore the most empathetic ways to teach mathematics. And to best do that, she’s connecting with other math teacher educators through a prestigious national fellowship program.
Standing Out as a Math Teacher Educator
Bitto is one of only 18 fellows in the 2024-25 Service, Teaching, & Research (STaR) Program from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE). AMTE is the largest professional organization devoted to the improvement of mathematics teacher education. The STaR program supports early career faculty in navigating common challenges in developing leadership, teaching, and service skills.
It has been a long-time hope of Bitto’s to participate in the STaR program for the community it provides. Typically, she doesn’t meet many math teacher educators day-to-day.
A 2004 McDaniel alum, Bitto majored in Mathematics and minored in Elementary Education (at the time, McDaniel didn’t yet offer the Education major). It was a rare academic combination, she says, that set her apart from the other up-and-coming teachers.
Post-graduation, she taught elementary math, then earned a K-8 Mathematics Specialist master’s degree in 2009 from the College of William and Mary. As a mathematics specialist, she assisted K-12 educators to develop their mathematical teaching practices. At the time, Bitto says, math specialists were a new role in school systems, and she was among the first educators with a degree for it.
Throughout her career, she often encountered the same dread for math among her teaching peers as she has seen in students.
"I want everybody to love math as much as I do, so, how can I help other people see it actually isn't scary?” — Laura Bitto
“Even my elementary teaching peers didn't love math,” she says. “And I'm like, ‘How do you not love math? I love math.’ I had empathy for them, that it was a point of stress. I want everybody to love math as much as I do, so, how can I help other people see it actually isn't scary?”
The next leap in her career was to become a teacher educator to start helping the next generation of educators feel confident teaching math. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Planning, and Leadership with a focus on Mathematics Education from the College of William and Mary.
As a math teacher educator for undergraduate students, she now teaches future teachers to make math class a welcoming, engaging space for K-12 students.
Finding Community in the Field of Math Teacher Education
In June, Bitto attended a summer institute in Park City, Utah, to connect with her STaR cohort. It was filled with lightbulb moments, whenever she connected with others on topics that mutually matter to them.
She found she wasn’t alone in her interest in the “5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions” (Anticipating, Monitoring, Selecting, Sequencing, and Connecting). She found that fellow educators face common challenges in teaching with that framework, and they can work together to solve them.
“My biggest takeaway from the fellowship is the power of relationships for me and the math teacher educator community, and how much my own math teacher identity grows and thrives when I have these interconnected experiences with other math teacher educators,” Bitto says.
"My biggest takeaway from the fellowship is the power of relationships for me and the math teacher educator community." — Laura Bitto
This fall, she’s participating in two virtual groups with other STaR fellows, one focused on pedagogy — specifically using the “5 Practices” — and the other on research.
“I synergize my teaching and research,” she says. “At McDaniel, teaching is the most important part of our job, so to be a scholar as well, I like to integrate research.”
Bitto will attend the Annual AMTE Conference this spring, where she will be presenting on “An Online Adjunct’s Search for Belonging to Mathematics Teacher Education,” a chapter she co-authored for an upcoming book titled “Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Intimate Scholarship: Being, Knowing, and Ethics.”
Her chapter was inspired by her previous experiences seeking belonging as an online adjunct instructor, wanting to ameliorate the sense of isolation online teaching and learning can cause for instructors and students alike. “It’s a reflection of my past teaching experiences and the kinds of things that helped me grow in my own identity as a math teacher educator,” she says.
The benefits of Bitto’s STaR fellowship extend beyond her own professional development; it’s an opportunity to improve her teaching and support her students on their journeys to teaching math with empathy, understanding, and enthusiasm.
“Our educational framework here at McDaniel is to grow knowledgeable, caring, reflective practitioners,” she says. “So, if we’re asking our students to be that kind of person, we should be that, too. Being a teacher involves a lot of reflection on how we grow and learn. We’re aware of ourselves and the people around us, and we always try to be better.”
Did You Know?
McDaniel offers an Elementary Math Instructional Leader Certificate, designed for practicing Elementary or Early Childhood educators seeking to develop their knowledge and skills in mathematical content, pedagogy, and leadership specific to the elementary setting.
