Greetings and welcome to our project showcase! We are wrapping up our first year in this 5-year project preparing, supporting, and retaining Elementary Mathematics Specialists in high-needs urban schools. In this first year, our Master Teaching Fellows have completed the first 2 university courses towards their K-5 Mathematics Endorsement as well as their Teacher Support and Coaching Endorsement. Fellows are also engaging in monthly Professional Learning Communities where we have been digging deeply into identity, equity, and mathematics for young learners. Next year, fellows will complete the remaining university courses and continue PLCs, and we will then follow their trajectory as teacher leaders for the remaining 3 years of the project. We are having a blast with these amazing teachers!

Thank you for visiting our video, and we'd love your feedback, specifically on ways to deepen our partnership with our non-profit after school tutoring program Corners Outreach, as well as ways to explicitly address issues of identity and developing positive mathematics identities into the elementary classroom. 

Thank you, and enjoy the showcase this week!

This is great, Dr. Myers! Corners Outreach is grateful for our partnership. We look forward to being an asset alongside GSU to provide STEM equity within urban schools!

Well done! What a great partnership and excellent opportunity to focus on math!

It sounds like by picking one grade band and subject, you have managed to focus your efforts well and elementary mathematics is definitely an area that impacts all students. If I am understanding correctly (and please correct me if I am not), these are elementary certified teachers already who are returning for coursework leading to a math endorsement.  Based on that, were they selected due to an interest in mathematics or just elementary educators in general?  Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the introduction to the program in its first year. I especially appreciate the intentional inclusion of Corners Outreach as a critical partner along with the school districting in advancing the goals of the equity-centered mathematics teaching and learning. I'd love to know more, in that context, about the existing "teacher and school partners" that Travis mentions in and how, if at all, that has woven into first year project implementation. I'd love be interested in hearing about how, if at all, COVID-19 has affected the start to this project. Has it delayed aspects? Sparked creative spaces that weren't part of original conception?

Excited to see where this project moves over the next several years!

Cathy

The educators in this video elevate student perseverance.  Since we know competence precedes confidence, I'd like to hear more about the strategies teachers use (and possibly learn in this program) help them to coach students more effectively to competence so that they can persevere in productive struggle. 

Thank you for your comment, Jill. The teachers are learning both content and pedagogy in the math courses, so they are building their own conceptual understanding while learning and studying about the application in the elementary mathematics classroom. So they experience some of that productive struggle themselves in this process. Additionally, we teach them some of the following strategies to elevate student perseverance and promote confidence: 

Elicit responses by probing, paraphrasing, checking for understanding, and extending to provide challenge
Prompt to explore more than one strategy – push to keep trying new ways
Collaborate with peers to share ideas and explore new strategies
Demonstrate/show work using various modalities
Provide language supports
Build positive learning community so students feel safe to take risks

Thank you Dr. Myers and team for showcasing such an impactful project! I really enjoyed hearing about the student-centered learning approach to mathematics. I believe that this approach allows for students to make organic connections between their personal experiences and learning. Best wishes as you embark upon the next 4 years of your research project!

I loved seeing the individual attention to the students in the video. You are promoting such a student-centered approach- I'm looking forward to learning more about this project!

Thank you for sharing your wonderful program with us.  I love the idea of helping students see themselves as mathematicians.  I work in science education and many of our student programs are aimed at helping students see themselves as scientists.  It's so important to model future careers to youth when they are young.  Have you seen an uptick in interest as math as a possible future profession in your student participants?

Hello Bess. This year I approached professions in math in a different light with the students. I began by having them identify the professions they were interested in, and then finding ways that math is important to that profession. It had great results! Also, a few of the students began to realize that they were more interested in professions in the field of mathematics.