|
Original Goals
PRIME-TEAM (Promoting Excellence in Iowa Mathematics Education through Teacher Enhancement and Exemplary Instructional Materials) was a two-year high school mathematics teacher leadership and curriculum implementation project for 57 lead teachers in twenty-one Iowa schools/districts. How did such a short project with so few teachers end up in the LSC program, and did it succeed? Please read on.
Original Vision:
- Build upon and extend 12 years of previous professional development projects focused on leadership and curriculum reform.
- Move from "generic" NCTM standards-based professional development to "curriculum-based professional development." In particular, focus on professional development based on selected exemplary instructional materials the Core-Plus Mathematics Project high school mathematics curriculum.
- Evolve from our immediately preceding MIME project, involving 16 teachers who first began to teach Core-Plus in Iowa in 1997, to a five-year Local Systemic Change project involving 245 Iowa teachers.
First Reality Check:
- Before submitting the final proposal, it became clear that it was not possible to grow fifteen-fold in our next project, from 16 teacher-leaders teaching a new, innovative, comprehensive, reform-based high school mathematics curriculum to systemic implementation of that curriculum by 245 teachers.
- Many districts in Iowa were ready and enthusiastic to jump into comprehensive curriculum renewal beginning with implementation by a few teacher-leaders, but no large districts were ready to implement systemically district-wide with all teachers.
Revised Vision:
- Our proposal changed from a five-year full LSC project with 245 teachers to a two-year Teacher Leadership project with 65 teachers. (Nevertheless we were kept in the LSC cohort because of the initial and subsequent plans to carry out an LSC project.)
- The goal was for the 65 teachers involved in the project to become leaders in both comprehensive curriculum reform and local educational change.
- Toward the end of the project we planned to propose a full LSC project that would build upon, extend, and systemically implement the exemplary reform begun in the Teacher Leadership project.
|
