❝Is this from your math teacher cohort?❞
by Jaime Walton • May 2026
⏱ 6 min read
It was state testing season in Collinsville, when math class usually turns into review drills and nerves. Not in Jacquelyn Morgans’ fifth-grade room. There, the timer was set for ten minutes, and every student held a whiteboard with a mystery number taped to it. Guess your number, trade your board, grab another from the stack. How many can you get before time runs out?
The game came from Exponential Growth Math Professional Development , facilitated by Dr. Martha Parrott at Northeastern State University, like so many other activities her students have come to love. They can now tell when a lesson comes from the Exponential Growth toolkit, and they’ve started asking.
“Every time I pull out something new or introduce them to a new game, their first question is, ‘Is this from your math teacher cohort?'” Morgans says. “When I tell them it is, the whole room fills with excitement, because they know it will be something they love.”
❝By the time students reach fifth grade, many have already decided whether they're 'good' at math.❞
The significance of their enthusiasm is deeper than it may first appear, as Morgans explains, “They’re intimidated by it. They focus only on getting the answers right. They hesitate to take risks, and they give up when the work gets challenging.”
By fifth grade, a child’s math story and beliefs in themselves are already written. Morgans’ classroom is where that story gets rewritten. Her classroom is one of hundreds behind the numbers in TRSA’s 2025–26 Professional Development Data Highlights report.
Leaning in instead of leaning back
When asked what’s changed, Morgans describes a room that would be unrecognizable to her students’ younger selves.
“It looks like students leaning in instead of leaning back,” she says. “They’re gathered around whiteboards, using manipulatives, comparing strategies. They’re talking to each other instead of waiting for me to tell them if they’re right. You’ll hear things like, ‘Wait — I did it a different way.’ And you should see how proud they are when they get it.”
Her students have even adopted the cohort’s vocabulary. “They’ve learned that productive struggle is where the real lessons happen,” she says. “They embrace it instead of shying away.” The phrase came from her cohort, and now it belongs to a room full of ten-year-olds
That transformation is reflected in this year’s professional development data. In hundreds of open-ended survey responses, educators across Oklahoma described the same shift away from worksheets and rote procedures, and toward discussion, risk-taking, and hands-on problem-solving.
The gap between “attended” and “changed”
Teachers have every reason to be skeptical of professional development. Morgans was.
“Before Exponential Growth, a lot of PD felt disconnected from what I actually needed,” she says. “I would leave with ideas, but not many I could realistically use the next day. It often made me question whether the time away from my students was worth it.”
Morgans’ own survey responses show why, in real time.
NOVEMBER
“I will be going into fractions next week and will use everything we learned tonight.”
Learning on a one-week delay
MARCH
“We actually completed one [activity] Monday after attending Saturday’s PD.”
Saturday’s PD, Monday’s Lesson
Her experience is the pattern, not the exception. Of educators who rated their STEM teaching knowledge lowest going in, 96.7% finished above the midpoint. Veteran teachers, the sternest judges of PD, rendered the same verdict.
❝One of the best PDs I have ever attended, and with 33 years in education, I have attended a lot.❞
The finish line that wasn’t
Morgans completed the 3rd–5th grade math cohort this Spring — what she assumed was the finish line.
“By what I thought would be my final year, I realized I wasn’t ready for the cohort to end,” she says. “Every session with Dr. Parrott and the other educators gave me practical, research-based strategies that immediately improved my teaching.”
So when TRSA launched a new cohort this year, built to extend that learning and meet educator demand for geometry, she signed up. “I can’t wait for year four,” she wrote this spring. “It’s truly my favorite PD that I’ve ever attended.”
As a former special education teacher, Morgans especially values that the cohort’s tasks reach everyone. She describes them as “high-quality math tasks that engage every learner while still challenging advanced students.” And the impact compounds. She teaches 130 students a day, and the books, manipulatives, and games gifted to every cohort teacher will keep serving Collinsville classrooms for years after the sessions end.
Her decision to return is echoed in TRSA’s retention numbers across all PD. This year, 90% of eligible educators re-applied for year-long programs, and 16 educators graduated the full three-year Exponential Growth pathway.
100%
CALLED IT WORTH THEIR TIME
90%
RE-APPLIED FOR YEAR TWO
16
THREE-YEAR GRADUATES
Why it matters beyond one classroom
Oklahoma’s teacher shortage is usually described with numbers such as vacancies, emergency certifications, and exits. However, retention begins in a quieter place, rooted in whether teachers still feel connected to the reasons they started teaching.
"It's reminded me why I became a teacher in the first place — to help kids realize they're capable of more than they think."
“Being surrounded by educators who are passionate about improving their practice has encouraged me to keep growing right alongside my students. Learning never stops,” shared Morgan.
She’s not alone in that renewed passion. “As an Oklahoma teacher, it’s easy to get discouraged — but WE are great teachers,” another educator wrote after a SENSEsational Science session this Spring. “Thank you for pouring into us and helping us feel and BE great, so we can provide Oklahoma students with the same rich learning.”
That’s what this year’s data adds up to. A percentage point is really a fifth-grader saying “Wait — I did it a different way.” A retention rate is really a teacher realizing she wasn’t ready to stop learning. A promise that “STEM is everyone” is really kept in classrooms by a former special education teacher making sure it’s true, 130 students at a time. And the most important metric of the year might be the one no survey captures: a classroom full of Collinsville kids, leaning in.
$167 gives a teacher a complete PD experience
On average, that covers every session of a TRSA program — plus the books, games, and materials that stay in their classroom for years. Give a full experience, or part of one.