RPM Grant Work at North Seattle
RPM Grant Work 2010-2012
In January of 2010, some of the members of the North Seattle Community College math department met together to formulate a plan for the Rethinking Pre-College
Math Grant, money provided by the Gates foundation to help 6 community colleges around the state work on making changes to their developmental
math sequence. Shortly thereafter North Seattle discovered that they were one of the schools that had been awarded a grant. For the next two years,
we have embarked on a sequence of professional development and collaborative work which has been at times draining, but ultimately very interesting.
It has been interesting to see the change in our thinking about the possibilities around developmental math. It remains an area of diverse problems and
challenges (in eduspeak, these are "opportunitites"). Without a doubt one of the most successful features of our work at North Seattle has been our
implementation of a biweekly meeting called "reflection Friday." Basically, we just created some space in which we can talk about teaching and learning.
This has been very well received and my hope is that it will continue after the grant finishes. Other areas of work were/are classroom assessment
techniques, classroom exchanges, cohorts, common core finals (pre/post assessment of foundational skills) and link classes, hard
(obligatory like Deanna Li and Elizabeth Goulet's environmental science and intermediate algebra) and soft
(optional links such as 2 credit supplemental classes).
In my mind the biggest call to arms has been around reflective practices (though this may reflect a particular emphasis in my own teaching).
We will get better results through asking our students to be reflective learners (well, not just asking, but giving them opportunities to develop those
skills) and most importantly by being reflective ourselves about what practices work best. "Best practices" is another hot phrase in eduspeak but how we
go about knowing what best practices look like is not an easy task. No report or study is going to settle issues of pedagogy and delivery. The choices
instructors and institutions in general make will always be a question for inquiry, investigation, discussion and refinement. In my view, this is the most
challenging problem that faces institutions and instructors - how do we build a structure for asking intelligent questions in an informative and
instructive way so that we improve and implement practices that help all (if that's possible) our students succeed in their mathematical goals.
That's no easy task and is totally dependent on the faculty present in an institution collaboratively and actively engaging in the question of "best practices."
