TeacherDrivenChange

Algebra Project at Allison Elementary School

 

                                                  “Math literacy is the key to 21^st century citizenship.”

We are so excited to bring the opportunity of The Algebra Project to Allison School and Twin Rivers Unified School District.  The Algebra Project was founded in 1982 by a Harlem-born and Harvard-educated Civil Rights’ leader, Dr. Robert P. Moses through the use of his MacArthur Fellowship award. Over the past two decades, AP grew from teaching math in one school in Cambridge,  MA, to more than 200 middle schools across the country by the late 1990s, developing successful models of whole-school and community change.  Now it has expanded into the elementary school.

AP’s unique approach to school reform intentionally develops sustainable, student-centered models by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities, particularly the historically underserved population. Since 2000, we have continued to provide the context in which students, schools, parents and communities maximize local resources and take ownership of their own community building and mathematics education reform efforts, which now include high school as well as middle grade initiatives. We have built a strong coalition between Allison School, California Teachers Association, The Institute for Teaching, UC Davis, Sacramento Valley Organizing Community, California State University Sacramento and Twin Rivers Unified School District.

The civil rights work in the 1960s culminated in the national response to protect a fundamental right: the right to vote. Our current work seeks a national response to establish a fundamental right: the right of every child to a quality public school education.

We are excited to bring the Algebra Project to Allison School in the Twin Rivers Unified School District.  We have been working on this for the past two years.  We have attended trainings, meetings and conferences in order to bring this innovative approach to math to the Allison School Community.

 

Our program begins with two Family Math Nights in April and May of 2009.  For the Fall of 2009, we will have field trips, daily activities and an after school component.  (The after school piece will be like an “academy” and will run for six weeks).  We will also have another after school academy in Spring  09 also lasting six weeks.  We will be imbedding the pedagogy of The Algebra Project throughout our math lessons during the regular school day as well.  The Family Math Nights will also continue throughout the 09-10 school year.

 

 

Thank you to the IFT and the dedicated funding from CTA members, which has enabled this project to grow from a dream to a real start at community based change through teacher driven reform.  Through the work of Wendy Gallimore and Danalynn Zacharias and the support of the above mentioned stakeholders, the Allison School community will produce students who are ready to attend college and truly become participating citizens in our democracy.

 

 

The next Family Math Night will be at Allison School on May 20, 2009.

Is a Longer School Day, Year Coming?

President Obama’s Secretary of Education wants a longer school day and year.  Suggesting that our schools need to be more competitive, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believes the solution to school dropouts and the achievement gap is to lengthen the school day and year.  Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won't finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank. For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said. While the initiative to lengthen the day and year will certainly be debated the major question to be determined will be how much input classroom teachers will have in the overall discussion.  Equally important to any effort to change our schools will be to see if the Obama Administration plans to include teachers in the conversation.  Clearly, any effort to improve our schools, regardless of their merits will only be successful if classroom teachers play a critical role. 

Early Childhood Education Alliance: Change From the Ground-Up

The Early Childhood Education Alliance (ECEA) is driven by two key factors: (1) That classroom teachers must be directly involved in the school change process and (2) That school change should be based on what’s working in our schools and not deficits.  Click here for more information.

 

ECEA Introductory Webinar: This one-hour webinar provides an introduction to using strength-based practices in schools and an overview of the Early Childhood Education Alliance Project. This webinar is being offered at three different times at no cost to participants. Click here to find out more information and register.

 

ECEA Online Positive Strengths-Based Course: This free three-week course includes more in-depth knowledge and training of strengths-based change processes, how these processes can be applied to education, and the role of these processes in the Early Childhood Education Alliance. It also provides hands-on experience to enable teacher-student-family driven change in schools.  The course is designed to be on-demand, meaning that the materials are available online 24/7 to accommodate your schedule, with an additional one-hour weekly Online Meeting with the course leaders.  Click here to find out more information and register.

CTA-IFT Inspires Positive Deviance

Don’t let the inspiration fade away. That was the message of a Merced High School student at the conclusion of a one-day Positive Deviance Workshop sponsored by the CTA Institute for Teaching. Several Merced students, teachers, and administrators were among those attending the event earlier this month, which was designed to explore how positive deviance can help reduce the dropout rate.Download PD Presentation- CTA.ppt (20475.0K)

 

The Positive Deviance approach suggests that it is possible to find successful solutions to problems right now before all of the underlying causes are addressed and that the best solutions to community problems come from the within the community meaning the best solutions to school reform come from within the school, rather than from the top down or the outside in. There must be real ownership of the solutions rather than merely buy-in. The group of 14 from Merced as well as local association leaders from San Jose, Pomona, San Juan, Sacramento, Coachella Valley, Moreno Valley, Elk Grove, and Rancho Cucamonga worked to design solutions unique to their own communities. Positive Deviance works to allow teachers to emphasize talents over weaknesses to create a learning environment that supports and encourages every student to do their best.