There are other ways of learning...
SummerMath for Teachers
Mount Holyoke College
Virginia
Bastable and Jill Bodner Lester, Directors
SummerMath for Teachers (SMT) is an inservice teacher education program established at Mount Holyoke College in 1983. Originally designed to offer summer institutes to secondary school mathematics teachers, the program has expanded to include two-week summer programs for teachers of grades K-8 and academic year courses and seminars in mathematics education for teachers and administrators. In addition, SMT is a site for educational research through multi-year programs funded by the National Science Foundation.
The success of SMT lies in its commitment to support
teachers as they examine how learning takes place, to provide opportunities
for teachers to become aware of their own abilities as mathematical thinkers, and to help teachers develop teaching behaviors and classroom environments
which focus on developing the mathematical ideas of their students. While SummerMath for Teachers pre-dates both the NCTM Standards documents and the
Massachusetts Initiative Project PALMS Curriculum Frameworks, we find ourselves
in agreement with the vision of mathematics education proposed in these documents.
SMT offers a variety of courses and seminars for teachers of all grade levels
and seminars for school administrators. While some of these programs have
been content based, some have been research based, and some have been case
based, all SMT projects share the following three goals:
to give teachers the opportunity to investigate the mathematical ideas that are embedded in the curriculum that they currently teach.
The power of SMT programs is contained in the way
these goals are totally integrated. Teachers are not told how to teach.
They have
the opportunity to experience learning in a environment which supports
the development of conceptual understanding, then reflect on their own
experiences
in the
course, and finally consider the implications of their experiences for
their own classrooms.
In summary, for well over twenty years, SMT has been offering programs
in mathematics education for inservice teachers. Through summer institutes,
academic year
courses and seminars for both teachers and administrators, and multi-year
programs which integrate teacher development and educational research
efforts,
hundreds of teachers have worked to modify the way they teach mathematics
in their own classrooms. Further, many of these teachers have taken
on new
roles as teacher educators working to encourage other colleagues in their
schools and districts to consider a variety of teaching strategies,
to develop a view of the
study
of mathematics as inquiry into ideas, and to implement a pedagogy based
on student thinking and discourse. SMT serves as a resource for past
and
current participants who are committed to sharing their vision with
colleagues.
SummerMath for Teachers hosts the Mathematics Leadership Program (MLP)
www.edc.org/MLP.