I just finished a year-long study of the math Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with the elementary teachers in my district as we developed our new curriculum. I provided professional development, workshops, opportunities to attend conferences, and time for collaboration. We learned, we studied, we stressed, and we developed a solid, rigorous, and authentic curriculum. The year was coming to a close, and we searched and we searched and searched some more for resources to support the quality work we had developed and the instruction we were ready to deliver. Every text we opened, every program we explored, every option we uncovered fell short. We made the difficult decision not to purchase anything knowing that this would place extreme pressure on our teachers to develop quality materials and resources each and every day.
We had been lurking on the Engage NY website, and we were impressed with what we saw. Highly trained mathematicians and teachers were working side by side to develop high quality, aligned math units and lessons. We desperately wanted to be a part of that collaborative work. Lurking transitioned to phone call after phone call, and finally Eureka! We were introduced to the professional development coordinator from www.commoncore.org, Sandra Elliott, or Elliott as she is called. Elliott welcomed us to the table for training and provided an opportunity for us to purchase the same resources developed and used through the Engage NY project. For districts outside New York, these materials are known as Eureka! Math.
We poured over the pdf releases. We shared the documents with our teachers. We tried the lessons. We needed more training. Elliott welcomed us to the table again; however, it would require a trip to Yuma, Arizona. Hot, distant, Yuma could not have been further away; however, the district serving 10,000 students had also decided to adopt the aptly named Eureka! I couldn't control my enthusiasm. Before I knew it, several other districts were interested as well, one of which even opted to take the cross-country trek along side us.
The university conference room was packed with teachers from across the Yuma District as well as other interested "lurkers" from Illinois, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Douglas, Arizona and the full resources had not even gone public yet. Why the excitement? Training was not about a program, but about shifts in mathematical instruction, embedding practices into instruction, and using models. Strategies were immediately presented that could be used the first day of school with students. The problems were authentic, the learning was visual and kinesthetic, and the learning was fun. As a curriculum director, I would not be with the students teaching, coaching, facilitating and debriefing on a daily basis, and I found myself feeling envious of the teachers sitting next to me. I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be a math teacher. I wanted to return to the classroom and watch the faces of students as the look of discovery crossed their faces. I wanted to be a teacher in a classroom where students thought math was fun, and asked for more. I wanted to experience students solving higher-order problems, creating solutions, collaborating with their peers, and debriefing and owning their learning.
Since, I will not return to my district as a math teacher, I will return to train my teachers to use these materials and I will celebrate the successes of their students with them. I will visit the classrooms often to see practice in action. So, maybe I will not grow up to be a math teacher after all, but I will be there to support them along their amazing work!
We had been lurking on the Engage NY website, and we were impressed with what we saw. Highly trained mathematicians and teachers were working side by side to develop high quality, aligned math units and lessons. We desperately wanted to be a part of that collaborative work. Lurking transitioned to phone call after phone call, and finally Eureka! We were introduced to the professional development coordinator from www.commoncore.org, Sandra Elliott, or Elliott as she is called. Elliott welcomed us to the table for training and provided an opportunity for us to purchase the same resources developed and used through the Engage NY project. For districts outside New York, these materials are known as Eureka! Math.
We poured over the pdf releases. We shared the documents with our teachers. We tried the lessons. We needed more training. Elliott welcomed us to the table again; however, it would require a trip to Yuma, Arizona. Hot, distant, Yuma could not have been further away; however, the district serving 10,000 students had also decided to adopt the aptly named Eureka! I couldn't control my enthusiasm. Before I knew it, several other districts were interested as well, one of which even opted to take the cross-country trek along side us.
The university conference room was packed with teachers from across the Yuma District as well as other interested "lurkers" from Illinois, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Douglas, Arizona and the full resources had not even gone public yet. Why the excitement? Training was not about a program, but about shifts in mathematical instruction, embedding practices into instruction, and using models. Strategies were immediately presented that could be used the first day of school with students. The problems were authentic, the learning was visual and kinesthetic, and the learning was fun. As a curriculum director, I would not be with the students teaching, coaching, facilitating and debriefing on a daily basis, and I found myself feeling envious of the teachers sitting next to me. I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be a math teacher. I wanted to return to the classroom and watch the faces of students as the look of discovery crossed their faces. I wanted to be a teacher in a classroom where students thought math was fun, and asked for more. I wanted to experience students solving higher-order problems, creating solutions, collaborating with their peers, and debriefing and owning their learning.
Since, I will not return to my district as a math teacher, I will return to train my teachers to use these materials and I will celebrate the successes of their students with them. I will visit the classrooms often to see practice in action. So, maybe I will not grow up to be a math teacher after all, but I will be there to support them along their amazing work!
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