Transition Mathematics Project

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Terry Bergeson	David Lippman
Stuart Boersma & Michael Lundin	Laura Moore-Mueller
Ilana Horn	Dan Teague
Susan Hudson Hull	Ruth Tsu
Kurt Kreith

 

For more than 40 years, Terry Bergeson has worked to ensure public school students achieve an education that truly prepares them for life beyond the classroom. An advocate of teachers, educators and others within the public school system, Dr. Bergeson has continued to focus on what is best for students, and has worked tirelessly to build partnerships between legislators, educators, and parents and community leaders.

In 1993, Dr. Bergeson was appointed executive director of the Washington State Commission on Student Learning. As executive director, Dr. Bergeson was charged with developing statewide standards for students, as well as a series of tests students must pass prior to graduation. She served as executive director until 1996, when she ran for and was elected as state superintendent of public instruction. She took office in January 1997.

Dr. Bergeson was elected to her third term of office in 2004. She continues her pledge to transform the teaching profession in Washington state, and to ensure all students achieve a diploma that prepares them for success in the 21st century.

Session Description:

The State of Math Standards in Washington State

 

Stuart Boersma is Professor of Mathematics, Chair, Central Washington University and author of  "A Mathematician's Look at Foucault's Pendulum", a calculus-based analysis of the apparent rotation of a pendulum as the earth rotates under it.

 

 

Partnering with Stuart is his colleague, Michael Lundin, Associate Professor of Math at Central Washington University and a member of the original TMP Development Team.

 

 

Session Description:

Reorganizing with Dignity: A Personal TMP Mapping Adventure

Standards, and pedagogy, and content… Oh my!  It’s a
jungle out there!   Come join us as we prepare curriculum maps to help
guide us though the math class topography we all find ourselves journeying through. You and your colleagues will create concept maps for a specific class you are teaching next year.  We will use these maps to help separate significant from trivial information, to stimulate conversation between curriculum content and pedagogical practice, and to uncover the many connections between the mathematical topics we teach.

These maps will lead to a curricular outline for your course so please be prepared to work on a specific course you are teaching next year and bring the textbook you will be using.

Ilana Horn is Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education in the College of Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her work arises out of a concern about the underperformance of American secondary students in school mathematics. Her research centers on ways to make rigorous mathematics accessible to students, particularly those who have historically been disenfranchised in our educational system.

One line of her research seeks to specify the practices of ambitious and equitable teaching. She raises the question, what exactly do teachers need to do to effectively teach their students? She’s found that identifying these practices is not enough and that teachers need support in incorporating these into their classrooms. A second line of Dr. Horn’s work inquires into preservice and inservice teacher learning, with an eye toward making teacher education at both levels more effective for teachers and their students.

For more on Dr. Horn and her work, please visit: http://depts.washington.edu/coe/programs/ci/profiles/horn.html.

Session Description:

Teacher Collaborations around Mathematics:The role of teacher community in the advancement of professional knowledge

From the one-roomed schoolhouse to Hollywood's teacher heroes saving urban students, Americans often glorify and romanticize teachers working in isolation. Paradoxically, research consistently points to the significance of teacher collectives in raising the achievement of all students, particularly in challenging subjects like mathematics. In this talk, I examine the ways that teacher communities serve to advance teachers' professional knowledge. 

 

  Susan Hudson Hull is the Director of Mathematics for the Charles A. Dana Center. Dr. Hull has led Dana Center mathematics’ initiatives for ten years, working with state and national leaders as well as with districts and teachers, and has led the development of many resources and publications for implementation of state mathematics standards.

Though based in Texas, Dr. Hull plays an important role in Washington state, especially since the start of the Transition Math Project where she’s been a resource expert at our math institutes. And currently, she is part of the Dana Center’s leadership team that’s assisting the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the mathematics standards revision process.

She is project director for Ensuring Teacher Quality: Algebra I and Algebra II, an initiative from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Education Agency, and co-project director for Supporting and Strengthening Standards-based Mathematics Teacher Preparation.

She also provides technical assistance to mathematics teachers in Texas and nationally and works with Dana Center mathematics leader networks, including the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network.

Session Description:

Washington Standards in Transition:   What are the implications for me?

This session will help you explore the new WA high school standards and the implications for learning, teaching (and supporting teaching), and college readiness.  The Dana Center worked intensively with WA educators and outside consultants to develop the performance expectations as well as comments and examples for both a traditional and an integrated high school sequence.  Susan (and members of the Standards Revision Team) will lead discussions and a work session to help you get a better sense of the content and implications. 

Advanced Mathematical Decision-Making: An Alternative for Post-Algebra II

This session will present the work of a Dana Center-sponsored group to develop a fourth year of mathematics as an alternative to Precalculus.  We will discuss the set of expectations, and a proposed set of resources that will be developed over the next year.  Achieve has developed a rubric for high quality fourth year capstone courses that I will also share.

 

  Kurt Kreith has had a special interest in the teaching of mathematics for all of his professional career. He has authored two books with his emeritus colleague, Gulbank Chakerian. One of these, titled Iterative Algebra and Dynamic Modeling, takes the teaching of algebra into the computer age. A student version which can be used as a class textbook, is “Teaching Mathematics Using Technology.”

More recently, Dr. Kreith has helped develop a Davis campus summer program for motivated, academically talented high school students. Called COSMOS, this program is one of three sites of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science. It is generally patterned after the European/International schools for special studies and, more specifically, after the state-funded California State Summer School for the Arts. Students completing grades 8 through 12 are eligible to apply to this program. Those selected are among the brightest and most motivated students across the state who wish to learn advanced mathematics and science and prepare for careers in these areas.

Dr. Kreith also serves as statewide co-director of the California Mathematics Project, an in-service program for teachers which is part of the California Subject Matter Projects funded through the Office of the President.

In addition to being a featured presenter at each of the past TMP Summer Institutes, Dr. Kreith is now a national consultant to the Washington state mathematics standards revision process.

Session Description:

Rethinking Calculus In the Time of Computers

Since the traditional Algebra II is heavily geared toward preparing students for the traditional calculus course, such an alternative course might be guided by a re-examination of the traditional calculus and a vision of what else is worth doing in the time of computers.

Two basic themes in calculus are optimization and "rules for change" (aka known as differential equations).  Last year TMP's planning dealt a lot with optimization and "operations research."  My focus for this year would be on rules for change in the context of "discrete dynamical systems" and difference equations.

 

  David Lippman has been teaching mathematics at Pierce College for seven years. He created WAMAP.org in 2006 to fill the need for an easy to use, freely available assessment and course management system that addressed the specialized needs of mathematics instruction.

Session Description:

Web-based Math Assessment and Instructional Support

Would you like to be able to give your students unlimited practice without a lot of prep work and without having to grade it?  Or would you like a source of practice problems illustrating the College Readiness Standards?  WAMAP.org is a free online assessment tool that you can use to support your classes with unlimited online practice, self-graded assessments, and practice problems tied to the College Readiness Standards.  Come learn what’s new, what others are doing with WAMAP, and how you can use WAMAP in your classes, or to provide automated assessment support to your TMP project.  Also find out about online practice materials for the upcoming College Readiness Math Test.

 

  Laura Moore-Mueller is Director of the TMP partner Project TIME and received a BS in Mathematics and Philosophy from University of Puget Sound and an MS in mathematics from Oregon State University. Laura has taught at GRCC for 20 years, actively pursuing reform calculus and pre-calculus for the past 17 years. Increasing communication with local school districts has been a passion for her for over 10 years. Laura’s motto: think student, and then decide.

Session Description:

Web-based Math Assessment and Instructional Support

Participants will be introduced to several engaging mathematical activities included in a new course for high school seniors that is intended as a rigorous alternative to the pre-calculus track. Attendees will see how non-traditional topics, aligned to the TMP Math Standards can be used to help students be college- and work-ready.

 

  Dan Teague has taught mathematics since 1982 and holds a Ph.D. in mathematics education from North Carolina State University. He is a co-author of two texts on calculus and precalculus. Teague has served on the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the National Research Center's (NRC) Committee on Programs for Advanced Study of Math and Science in American High Schools, the Commission on the Future of the Standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the AP® Statistics Test Development Committee, and the U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Education. He was the governor-at-large for Secondary Teachers of the Mathematics Association of America (MAA), the first chair of the MAA Special Interest Group on Teaching Advanced High School Mathematics, and has just been elected second vice-president of the MAA.

Session Description:

Mathematical Modeling in the High School Curriculum

Mathematical Modeling is an attempt to describe some part of the real world in simple mathematical terms.  For students, mathematical modeling offers the opportunity to use their mathematical knowledge creatively to gain some insight into the situation being modeled.   For teachers, mathematical modeling gives an inviting way to introduce important new mathematical topics and challenging opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and deepen understanding.   During this session, participants will engage in several modeling tasks that can be used in a variety of courses and discuss the cost and value gained by including modeling in the classroom. 

 

 Ruth Tsu has taught mathematics in secondary schools in Malaysia and in California. Under her leadership as Mathematics Department Chair at San Lorenzo High School in northern California, the teachers began an examination of students' lack of success in learning mathematics. They learned about Complex Instruction and the work of Elizabeth Cohen at Stanford University. This work became central to the many changes teachers made in how they worked together as a department and also in their work with students:

• detracking mathematics classes and coming to value heterogeneous classes,
• creating a climate of respect for the learning of every student,
• provideing students with skills to achieve high quality group discourse, creating regular and ongoing opportunities for students to talk and work together on rich problems,
• holding high expectations for all students, and recognizing and
• recognizing and treating classroom issues of status - the underlying peer dynamic that prevents equitable interaction and limits learning.

These changes resulted in improved learning and achievement for all students.

After moving to Washington, Ruth taught mathematics methods courses at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She has presented numerous workshops and provided coaching to practicing teachers nationwide, supporting research-based mathematics instruction. The focus of her work continues to enable teachers to learn the principles and strategies developed by Cohen, as well as practices developed by the teachers with whom she has worked to implement Complex Instruction in the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Ruth was an associate of Teachers Development Group for three years and also consulted for Marilyn Burns Education Association. She currently lives in Hood River, OR, and is working as an independent consultant with a commitment to issues of equity and to building capacity within communities of practice.

Session I Description:

Focus on what it means to be smart in mathematics and the issue of status – the underlying peer dynamic that prevents equitable interaction and limits learning.
In this session participants will consider how our thinking about smartness, our questioning of students, and the mathematical tasks we give our students impact the opportunities students have to show how they are smart.

Explore the issue of status:

• What status is
• How status emerges when students work in small groups
• Learn strategies to address status issues

Session II Description:

Experience talking and working together equitably
In this session participants will engage in a group-worthy task in which all are expected to participate fully.  After completing the task, we will debrief:

• The mathematical content in the task
• The factors that led to the interaction among groupmates including
  • What the teacher did prior to the task
    How the teacher intervened during the task
    What groupmates did in support of the learning all others in the group
  • What the teacher did following the task