After a full day of teaching, some 35 educators settled in Wednesday for a three-hour lesson in a room at the Santa Maria-Bonita School District office.
The group of elementary and middle-school teachers sat at tables with others from their school, ready to absorb a lesson aimed at improving student mathematics skills.
Cal Poly Professor Kate Riley took her spot at the front of the make-shift classroom to begin the second of several teacher workshops made possible through a $250,000, one-year grant from the federal Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) program.
The grant allows Cal Poly and Santa Maria-Bonita to partner and prepare for the new California Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, which were developed to establish consistent and clear education standards for English-language arts and mathematics.
The goal is to better prepare students for success in college, career and a competitive global economy.
Fifth- through eighth-grade teachers who volunteered in Santa Maria-Bonita - picked partially because it is a "high-needs" district - are getting a jump start learning standards that don't launch until fall 2014.
"It's really above and beyond," Riley said of the teachers' commitment to 40 hours of learning and another 40 hours next summer.
Wednesday's lesson started with a focus on the meaning of fractions.
Simple enough, but teachers quickly discovered that, like their students, a lot of them were using different processes to come up with a correct answer.
"Your students are going to reason about the problems in many different ways," Riley said, referencing practice problems from a Powerpoint presentation. "I want you to do this with your students.
"As we go on through the year, we're all going to be wrong. You need to work outside your book."
Some teachers scrawled notes on workshop handouts while others enthusiastically explained how they determined what would be four-fifths of a piece of paper.
Stephanie Miller, director of curriculum and instruction for Santa Maria-Bonita, sat in on the workshop.
"It's really the teachers that make the difference," Miller said. "Our scores reflect that."
A number of teachers were brushing up on their skills, like Joy Snyder and Magda Eaker, both sixth-grade teachers at Adam Elementary who have been in the profession about 20 years.
"Doctors have to go through their" training, Snyder said, noting that she and Eaker went through a similar workshop a couple years ago. "You kind of feed off each other."
Arellanes Elementary teacher Kim Carey falls into a different category.
"I'm new," said Carey, who has two years of experience teaching a fifth- and sixth-grade combo class. "So I really need this. You have to be able to explain it."
The next workshop will be in January, when teachers from different generations will continue preparing to educate future generations.
Source:
santamariatimes.com
The group of elementary and middle-school teachers sat at tables with others from their school, ready to absorb a lesson aimed at improving student mathematics skills.
Cal Poly Professor Kate Riley took her spot at the front of the make-shift classroom to begin the second of several teacher workshops made possible through a $250,000, one-year grant from the federal Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) program.
The grant allows Cal Poly and Santa Maria-Bonita to partner and prepare for the new California Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, which were developed to establish consistent and clear education standards for English-language arts and mathematics.
The goal is to better prepare students for success in college, career and a competitive global economy.
Fifth- through eighth-grade teachers who volunteered in Santa Maria-Bonita - picked partially because it is a "high-needs" district - are getting a jump start learning standards that don't launch until fall 2014.
"It's really above and beyond," Riley said of the teachers' commitment to 40 hours of learning and another 40 hours next summer.
Wednesday's lesson started with a focus on the meaning of fractions.
Simple enough, but teachers quickly discovered that, like their students, a lot of them were using different processes to come up with a correct answer.
"Your students are going to reason about the problems in many different ways," Riley said, referencing practice problems from a Powerpoint presentation. "I want you to do this with your students.
"As we go on through the year, we're all going to be wrong. You need to work outside your book."
Some teachers scrawled notes on workshop handouts while others enthusiastically explained how they determined what would be four-fifths of a piece of paper.
Stephanie Miller, director of curriculum and instruction for Santa Maria-Bonita, sat in on the workshop.
"It's really the teachers that make the difference," Miller said. "Our scores reflect that."
A number of teachers were brushing up on their skills, like Joy Snyder and Magda Eaker, both sixth-grade teachers at Adam Elementary who have been in the profession about 20 years.
"Doctors have to go through their" training, Snyder said, noting that she and Eaker went through a similar workshop a couple years ago. "You kind of feed off each other."
Arellanes Elementary teacher Kim Carey falls into a different category.
"I'm new," said Carey, who has two years of experience teaching a fifth- and sixth-grade combo class. "So I really need this. You have to be able to explain it."
The next workshop will be in January, when teachers from different generations will continue preparing to educate future generations.
Source:
santamariatimes.com
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