John Dewey (1938) wrote, “There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.” While the three learning cycles are very different, there is a common thread: consistency in structure and the use of explicitly taught language. Both the fourth grade and second grade change ideas involve a consistent change in structure: daily academic warm ups, and a weekly plan for math workshop. As I dive deeper into the problem, I’m wondering if progressive schools, such as ours, and the greater network we belong to, has swung so far away from “traditional math” in the name of deeper learning, that it is negatively influencing our students. These change ideas have shown me that it is possible to make connections to tradition academic language and algorithms students need to know for test such as the SBAC, without sacrifciing active math engagement (Boaler 2017).  I don’t think that tradition-looking math problems is what we need to fear, but instead, how the use of those problems can potentially create passive learners. In the fourth and second grade classrooms, teachers were still engaging in student-led instruction, such as CGI, while teaching students to crucial academic language and problem types. I find it interesting that all of the problems used in the change ideas implemented in our improvement work, are math problems one would see in a traditional classroom. For example, while the use of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is not regarded as a traditional method, the problems students are tackling (the use of academic and testing language) with this strategy look a lot like “test prep” questions seen in classrooms across the county. However, as Dewey stated, it is not the math problem itself that needs to be progressive, but rather the student-led pedagogy our teachers are using to tackle those problems. Instead of fearing the use of math language and problems that might look too “traditional”, I’ve learned that a focus on active student engagement in mathematics trumps any content our students are exposed to.