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Annual Report Overviews
Reconceptualizing Mathematics Teaching Annual Overview
RECONCEPTUALIZING MATHEMATICS TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In May of 1999, this project's year one report summarized participation in professional development activities across District 2 with a list of our accomplishments. This report includes that data and an up to date overview of our continuing efforts toward building capacity and sustainability and enhancing content and pedagogical knowledge of mathematics teaching and learning. District 2 first offered Marilyn Burns' Math Solutions I, II, and then Course III as early as 1989. Many teachers throughout the district had participated in I and II prior to this grant. In year one of this grant we were able to provide 86 new teachers with the summer workshop experiences in Math Solutions I and II. This represented 2,580 hours of professional development. Summer 1999 also included week long training for teachers and administrators implementing the elementary curriculum TERC: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. 68 teachers attended which translates into 2,040 hours of professional development. Two staff developers attended the Rutgers University Leadership in Mathematics Institute with another two attending the Developing Mathematical Ideas. These courses represent 180 hours of professional development. Mathematics in the City is a two week long institute offered through the City University of New York. Many of our staff developers have previously attended this two-week institute that is followed by a 6 credit graduate course offered through the City College. Math in the City remains a prerequisite for our teacher leaders. 37 students participated in summer 1999, which represents 2,220 hours of professional development. 30 students continued Math in the City in both the fall and winter semesters. This course work constitutes an additional 2,250 hours of professional development. We also continued to offer mathematics courses through Bank Street College of Education; the Integrated Mathematics Courses enrolled 46 teachers across two courses. This added another 860 hours of professional development. In January 1999, and then continuing immediately at the close of the school year, Dr. Nicholas Branca of San Diego State University offered a special version of Math Solutions II titled Algebraic Thinking. 40 teachers attended representing 1,200 hours of professional development. Over the year 1998-1999, 26 full day workshops were offered: 17 of these were dedicated to implementing TERC for elementary school teachers and 6 were dedicated to implementing the Connected Mathematics Project for middle school teachers. One workshop was devoted to fifth and sixth grade teachers and two days were dedicated to Special Educators. Overall 889 teachers participated in these full day workshops, which represents 5,334 hours of professional development. Collaboration Site visits involved 41 elementary school teachers and represents 492 hours of professional development. In May we inaugurated the first middle school collaboration site visit and 12 teachers participated which added another 72 hours of professional development time. In Year One we also initiated a series of three Joint Staff Developers' Meetings. At these times District staff along with staff developers from the mathematics, science and literacy initiatives met in discussions which targeted synchronicity and further identified ways to integrate reading and writing strategies in the mathematics classroom. There were nine Principals' Conferences over this first year. Half of each of three meetings was devoted to Mathematics. At all other meetings at least two hours were math oriented allowing principals to meet together as well as in elementary and middle school breakout sessions respectively. Principals of all 46 District 2 schools attend these meetings. This represents 966 additional hours of professional development activities. In Year One 158 teachers and Heads of Schools participated in cluster meetings representing 474 hours of professional development. Teacher Leaders attended 18 half-day training sessions on alternate Fridays at the Math Office. Teacher leaders have therefore participated in over 1,674 hours of professional development. We also provided 21 Parent Math Nights across the district. In addition two Community School Board meetings were devoted to Mathematics and the New Standards. Several hundred parents and interested community members attended these evenings. Staff developers served all but 4 district schools during year one. The 15 math staff developers provided 25,200 hours of one-to-one site based coaching. In May 1999 we used the chart shown on the following page to provide a unique visual perspective of the work we had accomplished during Year One. At the end of this report we will compare our accomplishments thus far in year two. YEAR ONE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES DISTRICT 2, NEW YORK CITY
This initiative provided 45,612 hours of professional development activities in Year One. We learned a great deal from these efforts towards transforming the processes and outcomes of mathematics education through leveraged and sustained support. At the end of year one there was consensus that teachers would now need differentiated opportunities to build content knowledge, refine their beliefs about teaching and learning, learn to use assessments more effectively in order to change core practice and thus transform teaching and learning of mathematics. The remainder of this report will document our informed efforts since Spring 1999 to provide opportunities for continued discussion, reflection, and collaboration which lie at the heart of developing the communities of practitioners who will sustain and expand this mathematics initiative. In the summer of 1999 we once again had teachers and staff developers who wished to attend the Rutgers University Leadership Program in Discrete Mathematics and Developing Mathematical Ideas also known as DMI. Four individuals participated in summer 1999 again adding 180 professional development hours. We expanded the teacher leader component of this initiative. We enrolled 40 new teachers in the prerequisite two-week Math in the City Summer Institute. 31 of these teachers have also just completed an additional 30 hours of course work in Math in the City, Fall, 1999. These teachers will continue this work beginning winter 2000 with an additional 30 hours of course work. In summer 1999 we offered two levels of TERC training and 116 teachers attended these sessions. Level 1 is a five-day training and Level 2 is three days totaling 3,072 hours of professional development activities. Math Solutions I enrolled 8 new teachers and Math Solutions II enrolled 34. Both of these courses take place over five full days. The combined Math Solutions provide 1,260 hours of professional development. In year two we have provided 8 full day workshops for teachers of the elementary school curriculum (TERC) and 7 full day workshops for middle school teachers (CMP). These 15 were differentiated to include grade specific, unit specific and thematic workshops. In addition 6 after-school workshops focused on "Smart Test Prep" have been scheduled. Teachers who attend are paid at training rate; two of these were held in November and December, with the remaining four scheduled through April 2000. And we are not done yet! The middle school teachers still have another 10 full day workshops to choose from this winter and spring; there are 7 such workshops ahead for elementary school teachers. 592 teachers have participated to date in another 3,160 hours of professional development. This fall there were two cycles of collaboration site visits for elementary school teachers and one such cycle at the middle school level. The participation by 72 teachers resulted in 756 hours of professional development. This winter a third school is being added to the elementary school collaboration sites. Two more middle school collaboration site visits are scheduled for winter and spring. This year we are adding an additional component to the collaborative model: visiting teachers will participate in the actual planning process for these collaboration site visits. This will be accomplished by providing training rate for after school planning time for all stakeholders on the afternoon prior to the visit. We are very excited about this innovation. We have had one formal cluster meeting this fall. 14 teachers attended; this represents 84 professional development hours. In late fall 1999 we launched several mini-clusters or study groups. 9 schools are also involved in mini-clusters; these study groups usually meet twice a month and have thematic or grade level focus. These study groups are one of the components of our differentiated approach to professional development. We are able to pay participating teachers training rate for this after school work. There are 18 scheduled meetings for teacher leaders in Year Two; thus far 7 meetings held have been attended almost regularly by all 44 teacher leaders totaling 837 hours of professional development. Staff developers, teachers leaders and teachers have worked together to present 20 parent math nights. In February 2000 ten middle school teachers will be attending a Connected Mathematics Project Conference at Michigan State University. In Year Two, we expect to continue to offer CMP and TERC Summer Institutes as well as Math in the City. Interested teachers will attend DMI and Rutgers. Teacher leaders have begun to collaborate as co-presenters at almost all workshops. This also is the second summer in which our own staff developers design and implement the Summer TERC training. The following chart compares our progress since the beginning of this grant:
where we are now: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES DISTRICT 2, NEW YORK CITY
This initiative provided 45,612 hours of professional development activities in Year One. The initiative has provided an additional 24,173 hours so far this year! We are piloting Arise at several sites in District 2; and we have provided 5 full day training sessions for teachers and administrators. District 2 has chosen long and short term planning for its focus this year. This comes after several years' focus on the Principles of Learning. All of our work as staff developers has been framed around this issue with particular emphasis in all of the workshops offered. We have continued to develop effective coaching strategies using Content-focused Coaching as our lens. At mid-point in year two we are asking very serious questions about both teachers' practice and students' understanding after teachers' participation in these professional development opportunities. Certainly the results from much of this work are impossible to quantify on a chart. A great deal of time invested in less formal professional development activities must also by its very nature go underreported. Even as we compile the data for this report we recognize the necessity to begin in earnest more definitive ways in which to measure the effectiveness of our approach to reconceptualizing mathematics teaching and learning. With this in mind we are presently investigating with our co-evaluators how we might more efficiently utilize collected data by positing new questions alongside what we know about teachers and their classroom practice both from observations and standardized assessments of their students. These components we hope will assist us in the design of an instrument with which we could better assess the effectiveness of the professional development opportunities presented on our charts. We will be able to discuss this in more detail in our next report.
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