The Algebra Project at Berkeley High
During tonight's Board meeting, Matt Bremer, Berkeley High School Math Department Chair, presented information about Revitalizing Algebra (REAL). Revitalizing Algebra was instituted after four Berkeley High School teachers (Matt Bremer, Steve Harmon, Gen Kogure and George Palen) took courses at San Francisco State. The courses were designed to deal with three aspects in today's academic mathematics programs:
- underachieveing students,
- the lack of math teachers in education, and
- the connection between university and high school math programs.
Based on that course and subsequent collaboration, REAL was instituted and made possible by funds from a National Science Foundation grant. Under REAL, the four teachers mentioned above will lead seminars for 12 math teachers that currently teach Algebra 1/IMP 1 level. These 12 teachers will attend a seminar one period a day (in lieu of teaching a class) about educational issues. During the seminar, teachers will participate in activities such as reading research articles and discussing them together, doing mathematics together, creating interesting problems and sharing the problems' effectiveness with students, reviewing student work as a group, and interviewing panels of students and parents to get feedback on what they see happening. They will try to create a culture within the department where staff is not only collaborating, but reflecting on the process as well as creating an atmosphere where students are more engaged.
Further, participants will be expected to attend the seminar every day, try out new ideas, examine and reflect on their practice, keep a journal, take risks, and keep an open mind. As mentioned above, innovation and collaboration are the main goals of the seminar as they prepare to revitalize the teaching of mathematics to:
- Move from an algorithmic approach to a more in-depth approach,
- Improve the quality, but not the quantity of problems students work on,
- Make thinking, discussing and presenting central to the classroom experience.
Bremer concluded that even though there is a reformed mathematics curriculum, teachers are trying to build on student intuition and have students think out problems on their own. Student success has to do with the students believing they can do a good job. The focus of this approach is learning, not testing. Teachers start out building a feeling that this is going to be fun, that the teacher believes in students and that students can believe in themselves. Building a community is an essential part of the success of this program. Board members were invited to attend and join in the seminars. Board and community input will help the program be successful.