Reimagining HS Math

I am available to offer the workshop at another time and place, and I can tailor it to the needs of your department -- if this is of interest, please get in touch with me.

Community

Workshop attendees: if you would like to share a comment, a question, a link, or some resources with me or the other participants in this workshop, please go to this page on my Math Education Blog.

Time and Place

Thursday-Friday 20-21 June 2013 (SF)

9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Center for Innovative Teaching

Urban School of San Francisco

Content

In this two-day workshop, we will rethink every aspect of a high school math program:

- Pedagogy: How can we do better than the I-explain-you-practice model, in order to reach a broader range of students, and to help them develop their ability to make sense of what they are learning? How do we balance discovery and instruction?

- Learning tools: How can we use technology support these changes, and move our program to become more visual, more interactive, and more creative? How can manipulatives simultaneously help us increase both access and depth?

- Curriculum: How can we escape the tyranny of the textbook, and develop our program by moving, removing, and adding topics in order to reflect the needs of our particular students? What electives can we introduce to get off the freeway to calculus and bring to students the variety and richness of mathematics?

- Assessment: How can we complement tests and quizzes with additional approaches that reveal different strengths and weaknesses? How can we give feedback to students based on our learning priorities rather than just on the now-obsolete emphasis on accuracy and speed?

- And finally: How do all these ideas play out if you teach in the long period? How do they affect our ability to work with heterogeneous classes? (All classes are heterogenous!) How do we navigate the pressure towards limitless acceleration? How do we surmount the obstacles in the way of progress?

For these changes to take root, it is essential for the department (or parts of it) to work collaboratively, to share successes and challenges, and to take this on as a step-by-step, gradual, and permanent project. This is what we have been doing for 25 years at the Urban School of San Francisco, and we are happy to share what we have learned. Bring your colleagues, your questions, and your ideas!