Mathematics Improvement Initiative

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This is a three year project aimed at the elementary and junior high school teachers in six Appalachian counties of northeast Mississippi. The project involves administrators, supervisors, coordinators, and teachers from 52 schools representing 14 rural school districts. The administrators receive the equivalent of three full days of orientation and instruction to give them familiarity with the trust, scope, and expectations of the project. Some of these activities are funded from external sources. During the first summer the supervisors are involved in over 100 hours of workshop experiences to enable them to prepare their own workshops for teachers in their districts. The participants are to establish a mathematics resource center and laboratory in each of the 52 elementary and junior high schools in which they will conduct inservice sessions that extend the workshop to other teachers at their schools. Also, there is a component involving parents as well as business and industrial leaders in the communities. The second and third summers of the project place emphasis on developing master teachers who are to serve as resource personnel at the targeted schools. The mathematics content of the courses is a blend between skill building and problem solving and covers the main topic areas in the school program. There are, for example, sessions underlying arithmetic topics as well as geometry and pre-algebra. The pedagogical component includes sessions on diagnosis, remediation, and methods of materials development. Follow-up activities during each of the intermediate years have the staff helping the leaders and master teachers conducting staff development sessions for other teachers in the districts. These activities take place primarily in the resource centers.