The Exxon Education Foundation/NCTM Annual Meeting of K-3 Mathematics Specialist Teacher-Leaders will celebrate its eleventh anniversary when representatives from Foundation-supported projects and other friends of the Foundation come together between September 16-19 at Exxon's corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas.
Featuring presenters Nicholas Branca on Friday, Pat Wasley on Saturday, and Glenda Lappan on Sunday morning, the conference promises to provide valuable and unique opportunities for learning, sharing, and networking.
Breakout sessions led by the following individuals will give meeting attendees opportunities for discussion on the topics listed: Joan Akers, assessment records; Bob Speiser and Chuck Walter, conducting interviews with children; Bob Callahan, a mathematics specialist as a visiting teaching professor; and Bonnie Tank, the role of evaluation in creating whole school communities. The conference schedule has been arranged so that everyone will be able to attend all four breakout sessions.
The two pre-sessions scheduled to begin at 2 PM on Thursday afternoon will offer participants a chance to engage in conversations about pre-service education or about the DMI (Developing Mathematical Ideas) Institute. Those discussions will be led by Chuck Walter from Brigham Young University, UT, and Cathy Allen from Bellevue, WA, respectively. Please note that the pre-sessions will be held in the meeting rooms at the Summerfield Suites Hotel, not at Exxon's corporate headquarters.
Gracing These PagesScattered throughout this issue are photos forwarded by Pat Hess from summer leadership sessions hosted by the Developing Mathematical Ideas (DMI) Institute (see Intersection, February 1999). Many Exxon project participants traveled to Mount Holyoke College in July to attend these one- and two-week professional development sessions.
Thanks, Pat! Ed.
A grant has been awarded by the National Science Foundation to the Mathematics Education Collaborative (MEC), a non-profit organization founded in Ferndale, WA by Ruth Parker and Patty Lofgren last year.(See Intersection, July/August 1998 and March/April 1999.) The grant funds MEC to work with parents and the public and to study the impact of public engagement on mathematics reform efforts. Over the next five years, MEC will be working extensively in Longmont, CO and Portland, OR and also with ten of Bonnie Tank's teacher-leaders in San Francisco, CA. In addition, MEC will provide support with public engagement to other Local Systemic Change projects throughout the country on a needs-basis and as time permits.
Ruth writes: "We're thrilled to
have the opportunity to do this work. We'll be working with
wonderful folks, and I view this as an incredible learning
opportunity! We not only have an amazing advisory board but also
a very strong research and evaluation team, and we're committed
to capturing and telling the stories through research as they
unfold. I'll look forward to continued collaboration with all of
you as we move forward."
You can contact Ruth at mec@pacificrim.net or by phone at (360)384-1749. She adds that a Web Site will be up and running in the near future.
Congratulations!
Many thanks to Jean Moon for writing the review below. Anyone else reading anything you'd like to review? Ed.
I am an admirer of Ted Sizer, a fan. So when I discovered his most recent book, done in concert with his wife Nancy Faust Sizer (Beacon Press, 1999), I was quite pleased. My anticipation did not go unrewarded. This small book contains some critical challenges to those of us who worry about the moral principles that shape education policy, the status of teaching, and the quality of educational experiences for all children. The Sizers, pulling from their many years as educators, have taken on a daunting task—to reveal in the routines and rituals of schools how beliefs, assumptions, and fears too often shape the experiences of children and teachers. The context of this book is high school, but the lessons to be gathered are universal and grade-less.
What I found to be the book's core premise was this: All schools can be thought of as communities in formation. To that end, the Sizer's write, "Institutions can bear witness, in good and bad times. That is, they can model certain kinds of behavior. The persistent question is, of course, which behaviors, which values, which qualities are to be modeled. . . . Some reduce it to an enumeration of desirable, but most undesirable behaviors—No cheating. No fighting. No littering. No rudeness. No raucousness." But are these the sorts of behaviors that most ably define a formation process?
Ideally, the Sizers write, a school community must find a reasonable way of being, a moral way of being, between the needs of the collective whole and the needs of the individual; between an overall framework for moral order and individual autonomy; between the voluntary nature of the partnership connecting adults and students, and the community equilibrium brought about by some kind of unifying culture. The Sizers comment on looking at the results of these tensions.
"To find the core of a school, don't look at its rulebook or even its mission statement. Look at the way the people in it spend their time—how they relate to each other, how they tangle with ideas. Look for the contradictions between words and practice, with the fewer the better. Try to estimate the frequency and the honesty of its deliberations. Though it will always want to spruce up for visitors, its hour by hour functioning is what is important. Judge the school not on what it says but on how it keeps."
Nested, then, in and around the delicate balance between how it keeps community and individual autonomy, the Sizers have identified six principled activities that can serve to document a school's ongoing formation as a community. These activities are not principled goals, but processes that operate as "engines" to help move us toward the kind of community most of us seek and the culture that will sustain it. These are the activities: modeling, grappling, bluffing, sorting, sharing, and fearing. I will take a closer look at the process of sorting.
Anyone who has been a student remembers all the formal and informal rituals associated with sorting. Students are sorted by achievement levels. Students are sorted by chronological age. Students can be sorted as a result of race. Students are sorted on the basis of the extracurricular activities in which they participate. Students are sorted on the basis of governmental requirements. Students are sorted on the basis of award-receiving. This list can be a long one. Sorting at these levels comes from an historic expectation for order and place, i.e., schools run best when students and teachers know and find their "place" in the "order of things."
Where is the moral principle in the sorting process? It is in coming to recognize the underlying routines and rituals that exclude, rather than include, that ignore, rather than embrace. It is in coming to honor the process of making reasons for sorting public and holding those reasons up for intense scrutiny. It is coming to balance the need for order with the need for recognizing and encouraging individual talents among all students. It is not that sorting in and of itself is bad, it is the unexamined human motivation behind the sorting that becomes harmful.
On the point of harming, the Sizer's
comment, "A sorting system which is flexible and reasonably
respectful of people's wishes is essential. The trick is always
to make the deliberate sorting as thoughtful as possible, harming
as few people as possible, This takes care, time, flexibility,
and patience and, because of that, it is expensive." They
continue, "How a school sorts teaches its students about
discrimination and discriminating choices, about the gains and
costs of attitudes ascribed and roads taken or not taken. . . . A
school must not be forced to pit its students against each other.
And, to the fullest extent possible, the school should openly,
respectfully, and persistently refuse to be a party to the kind
of discrimination which can bring permanent and unnecessary harm
to any member of its community."
Perhaps what engaged me most in my reading was the ability of the Sizers to take such time-honored practices like sorting and turn them a bit on their moral ear. This turning process was enlightening and thought-provoking. While it may all sound a bit idealistic, in point of fact, I don't think it is at all. Many schools in this country are fractured communities, hardly places where children, teachers, or administrators are going to succeed. The Sizer's book has much to offer those who want to seriously rethink the nature of schools as communities.
Bob Witte recently shared this news on EXXONTNT about a recent publication from Marilyn Burns. I have a copy. Would anyone like do an in-depth review for Intersection? Please contact me and I'll mail it to you. Ed.
Marilyn Burns' Math Solutions Publications has just released Leading the Way, Principals and Superintendents Look at Math Instruction (Sausalito, CA: Math Solutions Publications, 1999, $14.95). In this 120-page book, six principals and superintendents share their strategies, beliefs, and experiences in leading math reform in their schools. Five of the six chapters are from school districts with active Exxon K-3 Math Specialist projects: Bellevue, WA; New York, NY; Tucson, AZ (two chapters); and San Francisco, CA. Bob wrote, "My initial reading finds persuasive stories that reveal the complexity, hard work, and successes of these efforts." To order call 1-800-868-9092 or visit the Web Site at www. mathsolutions.com.
Thanks to Pat Hess for recommending this article and the one that follows. Ed.
"Recipes for School Success: An Interview with Dorothy Rich" by Mark F.Goldberg in the June 1999 Kappan is a good article to read and to save for information. Dorothy Rich began in the early 1960's to construct "recipes," and to develop modest ideas using paper cartons, tables, lamps, chairs, electric bills, and other paraphernalia of daily home life to help children learn what they need to learn to have success in school.
After a decade of developing these
"recipes," Dorothy categorized them into concepts she
called MegaSkills. "MegaSkills are the values, the
attitudes, and the behaviors that determine success in school and
on the job," Dorothy states. These skills that emerged over
the years were: Confidence, Motivation, Effort, Responsibility,
Initiative, Perseverance, Caring, Teamwork, Common Sense, Problem
Solving, and Focus. It was around these eleven MegaSkills that
Rich organized her book, MegaSkills (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1998, $14.00).
Here's are two examples of the recipes. To teach a youngster responsibility, called "My Special Place," a simple box is put at the front door. This is where the child, assisted by a parent if necessary, places everything he or she will need for school in the morning. A tool used to teach confidence is the telephone. Activities are done to help the child become confident in dialing numbers, dialing grandma, reading left to right, and using the telephone to get information.
If you want to learn more about the MegaSkills program write to Dorothy Rich, President, Home and School Institute, MegaSkills Center, 1500 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20005; phone (202) 466-3633. Also visit www.MegaSkillsHSI.org.
The article Pat Hess recommends is "A Tactic for Educating Parents" by Diane Briars. It appeared in the January 1999 issue of The School Administrator. It begins:
"Parents clearly play an important, influential role in mathematics reform. Our experiences in Pittsburgh (and those of other districts) dramatically illustrate the need to provide substantial information to parents as well as the consequences when they are not kept informed. How can we enlist parents as allies rather than opponents to reform?"
The author gives four suggestions. Because of space constraints, they are summarized here, but in the article she elaborates on each one. They are:
The article ends on an optimistic note: "Most parents are positive about standards-based reform once they understand it, see it works and recognize they have a productive role to play." Contact Pat or yours truly for a copy of complete article. Ed.
Bob Witte forwarded news of this Web Site announced on the NeXT listserv. Thanks, Bob. Ed.
Francis Edward Su in the Mathematics Department at Harvey Mudd College, CA, has a web site of "Fun Facts!" archived at www.math.hm c.edu/funfacts/.
In his posting on the listserv Francis wrote: "For several years now, I have been starting off each calculus class with a five-minute mathematical 'Fun Fact.' The point was to show students (mostly non-majors) that there is a lot more to math than just calculus, and that math can be fun! I've collected nearly a hundred of these 'Fun Facts' over the years and when I moved to Harvey Mudd College, my colleagues joined in. I start off each lecture with one, as a way to warm up the class. Every class I've ever tried them in has loved them. Many of those students decided to take other math courses because of the 'Fun Facts.'"
If you visit, you'll find a link to pull up random facts, a search engine, and a submission form for contributing your own fun facts. Check it out!
The National Alliance of State Science and Mathematics Coalitions (NASSMC) offers a free on-line briefing service featuring news from a wide variety of national publications that is of interest to educators. Funded through a grant from the National Security Agency, this service is free to those wishing to subscribe. Please send an e-mail with your request to rkansky@nassmc.org.
As the trees lose their leaves, why don't you find a loose-leaf notebook and jot down an article for Intersection?
Always welcome are essays on that timeless topic, "What did you do on your summer vacation?" Please consider sharing with your colleagues your summer experiences with fascinating books, impressive speakers, engaging workshops, enlightening travel. Since this newsletter is all about learning from one another, please contribute. Thanks to all those who did so for this issue.
Please send articles by Monday, September 27 to Jean Ehnebuske, 105 Hideaway Cove, Georgetown, TX 78628; phone, (512)869-1580; fax, (512)869-8477; e-mail, jehne@ibm.net.
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