Letter to the DCPS Educators: From Chancellor Rhee

In the letter that Chancellor Rhee addressed to the teachers last March 13, 2009, she mentioned about her contract negotiations with George Parker, WTU president and Randi Weingarten, AFT president. She said that she had high hopes that the contract would be respectful of teachers, good for children, and supportive of our reform efforts that reflects the ideas of resources, professional development, student discipline, evaluation, and compensation.

I was delighted when she mentioned about her highlights which included differentiating professional development trainings. I remembered the email that I sent to the Jefferson staff during the first advisory of the school year where I was informing them of my differentiated professional development trainings. I decided to differentiate my trainings because I noticed that our teachers had different needs in terms of trainings. I saw that some of them had expertise in some trainings that I offered and some were still learning. I had to send them a list of twenty topics that I thought I could confidently use to train them. I offered to stay after school every Thursday and Friday. I could say that differentiated professional development trainings really worked because teachers started coming to me and asked for assistance in the area that they needed.

Chancellor Rhee's idea of differentiated professional development trainings would make a difference in the way how teachers work for students' high achievement.
Let us maximize the opportunity when it comes.

Connected Math Workshop on Saturday (March 7, 2009)

Teachers are now experts in teaching middle school Math. As I was watching and listening to our participants' group presentations last Saturday, I confirmed to myself that professional development of teachers is really an important key to students' achievement. I saw how our participants improved their instruction from our day one to day three workshop.

During each day of our workshops, we include content knowledge, pedagogy of teaching, and the use of technology in our agenda. Our morning sessions focus on the content knowledge depending on the current Math standards. Then our afternoon sessions have pedagogy, brief constructed response and Accelerated Math activity.

On the third day, teachers did a very good job in their presentation. They showed expertise in the topics that they presented, including the Math content knowledge, pedagogy, and the use of calculator. They shared how they implemented their learning in their classroom instructions. These teachers have become experts in teaching middle school Math.
I encourage that more teachers take the great opportunities of professional development, especially in Math content knowledge and pedagogy.

Day 1: Agenda (January 24, 2009)
............I. Overview of Connected Math Program
............II. Lesson Modelling
............III. Group Collaboration/CMP Investigations
............IV. Group Presentation
.............V. Closing/Reflective Summary

Day 2: Agenda (February 7, 2009)
............I. Content Knowledge with Calculator Activities
................A. Using Intercepts
................B. Investigating Slope
................C. The Slope of a Line
................D. Writing Linear Equations
.............II. Math Stations (Group Collaboration)
.............III. Group Presentations
.............IV. CMP Games
.............V. BCR Activity/ Bell Work
.............VI. CMP Investigations/Math Stations
.............V. Group Presentations
.............VI. Accelerated Math/Exit Pass
.............VII. Closing/Reflective Summary

Day 3: Agenda (March 7, 2009)
.............I. Math Content Knowledge with Calculator Activities
.................A. Stem and Leaf Plot
.................B. Line Plot
.................C. Bar Graph
.................D. Scatter Plot
............II. CMP Investigations/Math Stations
............III. Group Presentations with Calculator Activities
............IV. BCR Workshop
.................A. Scoring Ground Rules
.................B. Bias in Scoring
.................C. Group Collaboration
.................D. Group Presentations/ DCBAS C BCR items
.............V. Closing/Reflective Summary

From the Director: MATH DEPARTMENT

To all,

If you missed the last “LIVE” WebEX Training, you missed a great session. However, it is back again. Join the Department of Mathematics and Texas Instruments “LIVE” from any location with internet access and receive additional training and support on integrating graphing technology in your classroom. We’d love to have you join us on the following days:

****Audience*************************Date**********Time***********Session
Middle School Math---March 17, 2009--6:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M.-Middle School
---------------------------------------------------------------- with Cabri Jr.

High School Math-----March 19, 2009--6:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M.--High School with
-------------------------------------------Inequality Graphing on the TI-84 Plus

Middle School Math---March 30, 2009--6:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M.--Middle School
–--------- Probability, Mean/Median/Mode, Histograms, Box-and-Whisker Plots

High School Math-----April 1, 2009-----6:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M.--High School
-----Trig – Triangle Relationships between the Unit Circle and Sine/Cosine Waves


Click Here To Register!!!
Upon registration, you will receive the required documents to ensure your computer has the proper settings.


Sincerely,

Simeon Sanders
Director of Mathematics
District of Columbia Public Schools
825 N. Capitol Street NE, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20002
Office: (202) 442-5599/Fax: (202) 442-5602

DCPS Core Belief #1
We believe that all children, regardless of background or circumstance, can achieve at the highest levels.

Accelerated Math

Embedding technology in the classroom instruction is really powerful. The Accelerated Math Program is a technology software that our teachers have been embedding in their classroom teaching. It is an academic intervention targeting the instructional needs of striving students. It goes with a scanner that provides instant result for students' work. It makes the students more engaged and eager to accomplish their work. It gives students a sense of ownership of their work which makes them feel accountable for their task performance and learning.
We conducted series of Accelerated Math Trainings for DCPS teachers last November 10th, 12th, and 13th of 2008 at McKinley Technology SHS.

Connected Math Workshop on Saturday

This coming Saturday, March 7, 2009, I am going to co-facilitate a Connected Math Program (CMP) workshop for DCPS middle school Math teachers. This workshop is just one of the series that the DCPS Math Department has been sponsoring. There will be CMP investigations and calculator activities which will be interactively performed by teachers participants. In the afternoon session, teachers will have a BCR collaboration using the DC BAS C BCR items.

BCR Collaboration

The learning is more effective when there is a collaboration among the learners. This morning, our Math Department had a collaborative planning meeting. Our main task was to create anchors for our brief constructed response (BCR) grading.
The teachers grouped themselves by grade level, answered the DC BAS C BCR items, compared their answers, collaborated, and agreed on the requirements of a score 3, basing on the district wide scoring guide. They copied their anchors on the chart papers as a preparation for their grading on Monday.
This process of collaboration helped our teachers a lot because they could express their own thinking and could share their expertise with each other, as well as learned from each other's ideas.
I saw how the teachers brainstormed and taught each other which reminded me of my BCR class students. I could really say how collaboration was very powerful not only among students but also among teachers. I even took their pictures which I will upload later.
I am sure that the learning takes place more effectively in every collaborative learning.

For Professional Developers and Teachers: Values and Clarity Build Classroom Language

In the article by V a l e r i e V o n F r a n k, I agree with the qoutation by Robert Quinn(in Sparks, 2001), " What we teach kids is not just subjects, but how to live." I believe that being an intelligent teacher does not necessarilly mean being an effective teacher. A teacher could have all the credentials but if he does not know how to manage his class, learning will be hard to achieve.
In the email-publication of NSDC , we can read Values and Clarity Build Classroom Language plus a lot of interesting ideas for us to grab for our students' achievement.