On Our Way!

My colleague, Shaheen, and I met with the principal and assistant principal at one of our district's elementary schools yesterday afternoon.  We wanted to discuss with her the possibility of meeting with all of her teachers when we return from Christmas break.  It was so exciting to meet and collaborate and to discover that we are on the same page and have the same goals for math education in our district!  When we do meet with her staff our main focus will be to just get everyone fired up about becoming part of the solution.  We want to make sure that elementary teachers realize how important they are to our math program and that any changes we try to make to the program will have a greater impact the earlier they are implemented in a child's math education.  This means that those K-2 teachers, the ones who don't currently have a standardized test to measure student achievement, are going to play a key roll in our evolution!  We discussed ways to recognize these teachers - having seniors write letters of appreciation to their elementary teachers, recognizing elementary teachers at graduation, even having the elementary teachers sit with the graduates during the graduation ceremony!  We also want to encourage communication between teachers at all grade levels so that we're not constantly "re-inventing the wheel" when it comes to figuring out what works for specific students or groups of students.  We want us all to feel the weight of what we're trying to accomplish.  When a student succeeds, we want EVERYONE to celebrate that success, and when a student fails, we want EVERYONE to be involved in coming up with ways to help that student.  It's a lofty goal, but one that we believe is completely attainable.  We just need to get buy in from everyone involved - administration, teachers, parents, and students.  It's so exciting to feel like we're finally moving towards making real change!