Reflections from the End
Looking Back:
- The shift from a full LSC project to a teacher leadership project proved to be wise and successful. We carried out project activities during 1998 and 1999, and also in 2000 during a one-year, no-cost extension.
- In Fall 2000 we applied for a four-year NSF Teacher Retention and Renewal grant, rather than an LSC grant, under the guidelines to "build cadres of science and mathematics teachers who can act as change agents responsible for implementing standards-based SMT programs... ." This NSF initiative also focuses on leadership and educational change.
- In Fall 2001 we received the TRR grant for our current project entitled, "The Upper Midwest LEADERS-in-Math Project: Preparing Leaders for Education and Professional Development in the Effort to Renew School Mathematics."
- The LEADERS-in-Math project is a high school mathematics professional leadership-development program. The project will facilitate systemic reform in the teaching of mathematics in the target school districts, provide leadership training for master teachers identified as outstanding in previous NSF Teacher Enhancement Projects, and engage school supervisors and college mathematics educators in professional development and leadership activities with project staff and high school teachers of reformed mathematics curricula.
- The LEADERS-in-Math project will involve 256 teachers from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, along with 16 master teachers, 8 collegiate mathematics educators, and 8 district or regional mathematics curriculum supervisors.
Significant Challenges:
- Participation in academic year activities -- We found it very challenging to get full participation in our academic year activities. This included school-based activities such as peer observation, and also attendance at academic year meetings. For meetings, we tried in-person meetings, which tended to be smaller but more lively, and two-way-video remote meetings, which had larger attendance but were less effective.
- Getting beyond the nuts and bolts -- It was difficult to move teachers beyond a focus on the nuts and bolts of teaching the new curriculum day to day. For example, we struggled to achieve a focus on the bigger picture and on student learning (e.g., by analyzing student work).
- Teacher turnover -- In many districts, teacher turnover was a problem in that just when reform was getting established with veteran teachers, the old teachers would move and new teachers, who had not participated in professional development, became the ones responsible for implementing reform.
|
