Join the club: here's how one district blazed a trail to excellence by spurring teacher excitement for a new, non-traditional math program.

Why settle for ordinary, when you can shine? In 1996-1997, Indian River School District in Selbyville, Del., hit the state average for third- and fifth-grade math scores. It would have been easy for educators to accept the scores as deserved. After all, the district lies in Sussex County, which reflects the state's average level of lower-income families (about 40 percent). But administrators chose not to excuse it. They chose to change it.

Superintendent Lois Hobbs began the process of selecting and piloting new math programs. Hobbs doesn't like "to shove things from the top down," so she tried several widely varied approaches--from traditional to radical--to see which one would work best.

In a district of only 7,500 students, teachers have a lot of input on program adoption, and Hobbs wanted as close to a consensus as possible. After a year, there was no clear winner, but the selection went to a vote, and the district adopted the non-traditional Math Trailblazers (Kendall/Hunt Publishing) program.

Some teachers were uncomfortable with the program, saying they preferred a traditional approach. And what if this new-fangled thing didn't work, they asked? Hobbs recognized that, if the teachers aren't behind a program, its chances of success would be pretty much zero. Fortunately, she had an ace up her sleeve: Jan Parsons. Parsons came on board as an elementary math specialist. Her mission: make this program work.

Growing Leaders

With experience as an elementary school teacher, Parsons first task was to choose other teachers to become lead teachers. It was not easy.

Most elementary school teachers don't go into elementary education to become math teachers, and many are already working extra hours. Fortunately, Parson's enthusiasm was contagious. The meager financial incentive wasn't as big an offender as it might have been.

Some of the reluctance had to do with the program itself. Trailblazers is based on the assumption that math is best learned through the active solving of real problems. That means less pencils and worksheets, and more blocks, charts and strings. The students work in groups, and are encouraged to question and explore. This kind of hands-on activity (with its accompanying noise) is difficult for some teachers. Evaluators who visit the classrooms can also be put off by the apparent chaos.

But Trailblazers was developed by researchers. What its creators at the Institute of Math and Science Education at the University of Illinois discovered is that kids learn by doing, and through ties to real-life experiences.

Fifteen lead teachers from the elementary school attended training in Chicago, and Parsons met with them one evening a month to address any needs or concerns. The lead teachers then held training sessions for the other teachers in their grade who were trying out the program. In its first year, the program wasn't mandatory.

Parsons modeled the program for any teacher needing a little boost, with Hobbs pointing her toward potential problem areas. The job has been more than trouble-shooting. It has been a proactive attempt to spread the math program throughout the district. And it has worked. The goal of having two lead teachers per school, each in a different grade level (one to continue the basics, one to do problem-solving), has been met. Both lead teachers assist other teachers in their classrooms, working across the district within that grade level.

Squelching Math Jitters 

"I am not a math person," says lead teacher Debby Grace as she gets up to speak to a group of elementary math teachers attending the district's monthly "Math Club." That's when "everyone in the room sighs in relief. They recognize themselves," she explains.

A fifth-grade teacher, Grace was not the most enthusiastic early adopter of Trailblazers, but you'd never know it now. Being asked to re-learn math as an adult can be intimidating. But Grace feels the investment in time is "so worth it" when she watches the students learn. "I wish I had been taught this way--I would've understood [math] so much better," she says.

Math Club is part of the necessary time investment. Teachers meet to discuss problems they might be having in understanding a lesson plan or in teaching a particular concept. Lead teachers walk them through the lessons, as well as help them learn the standards and how to pace lessons so they don't run right over the students one day and then dawdle along the next. One meeting was devoted to simply teaching a particular lesson so the teachers could see it in action for themselves.

They learn how to write better lesson plans, get monthly updates on what's coming and share what has worked for other teachers in the last month. It's a way for new teachers to feel that everyone is in the same boat, and for veteran teachers to hone their skills and pass them along. New teachers have someone to lean on, to ask questions of, and veteran teachers can work on target areas from the state tests. It's about reaching everyone's comfort level, and about communicating an enthusiasm for the learning process that can't be conveyed as effectively any other way.

Lois Hobbs says she believes in the interactive process. "If you just go and listen to someone, the ideas might be great but you probably won't implement them," she says. But with a role model who then proceeds to show you how, ideas can take root.

Teaching a Teacher to Fish

A big part of Indian River's success is due to its teachers. Many had to take an initial leap of faith, by committing time to Math Club and preparing the program's in-depth lessons. Parsons gives her lead teachers enough knowledge and authority so she can say to them, "you do it now," and have confidence that they can indeed carry out their math lessons. "I believe these teachers can be leaders, and they are," she says.

Second-grade teacher Ruth Schiffano, who participated in the selection of Trailblazers, was a natural choice as a lead teacher. She admits that she worried that the program was too foreign and difficult to "sell" to other teachers.

At first, the lead teachers were one step ahead of the teachers they were teaching. Even after five years, Schiffano says, "I still read every lesson before I teach it."

She credits the success of the program partly to the program's quality and partly to the teachers who teach it. Spending an hour-and-a-half every day on math--and making sure that she herself is prepared--is a huge investment in time. But it pays off. Students get the "why" behind concepts like regrouping or fractions, Schiffano says, "At least several times a year, I blink back tears. Oh, my God, they get it."

Seeing the lights go on when a student takes hold of an idea is a powerful motivator, even for teachers who don't choose to take on the task of becoming a lead teacher. Nancy Chamberlin was using a successful research-based program to teach math to her special education students, but realized she might be getting into a rut. She experimented with the Trailblazers curriculum by pulling out bits and pieces of it that she felt would work for her kids. She then assisted in a mixed classroom of regular students and special education kids, teaching the program to the entire class.

Chamberlain found that Trailblazers stimulated "out-of-the-box reasoning," and that her special ed students benefited especially from the way the program encourages dialogue. The kids worked in teams, and everyone learned together without too much overt "special" handling of the special ed students. She knew something was going right when she started receiving compliments from the mainstream students: "Thanks for making math fun," and "I look forward to math class."

Specialize and Disseminate

Having a designated math specialist in a district is not a new concept. A lead teacher is like a pinch hitter, says Johnny Lott, president of the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics and professor of mathematics education at the University of Montana. Pinch hitters are experts you can put into a difficult situation to produce results.

The key to a successful program is sustained professional development. It isn't enough to tell a teacher what they must teach; teachers need to be well-supported. While a one-shot deal may be good for introducing a program or idea, that kind of stand-alone development doesn't work in the long run.

Lott says one way to achieve teacher training is to use the model of Japanese lesson study, where teachers plan lessons together and critique each other's presentation of the lessons. This gives teachers a chance to talk about any of their own misunderstandings about the lesson and to compare their interpretation with their colleagues.

This kind of collaboration is only one way to accomplish teacher training. The model is not math-specific. It would work for any discipline. Lott says that if you have a system designed to push people forward, you get results.

Do the Math

Indian River has invested in a program that really pushed its teachers. The results show. The students who were in kindergarten and first grade in 1997 are the ones setting achievement records in 2002. Instead of accepting a label of "average," Indian River has posted scores that are No. 1 in the state for third- and fifth-grade math.

And Lois Hobbs recently received a 2002 Leadership for Learning Award from the American Association of School Administrators for excellence in professional development. Jan Parsons is "on loan" from the district to work for the University of Delaware's Math and Science Education Research Center, bringing nine other Delaware districts into the Math Trailblazers program.

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RELATED ARTICLE: Show me the money.

No new program comes cheap. Indian River School District administrators and elementary math specialist Jan Parsons had to get creative with funding to make the Trailblazers program happen.

Superintendent Lois Hobbs used state discretionary funds, as well as bits of money from other areas, to pay Parsons' salary. Parsons wrote a grant initially for the new lead teachers to get a stipend to attend Math Club ($15 per hour) and $500 for equipment. As she learned what was required and how much work it was to be a lead teacher, she wrote successive and more effective grants, getting more money for teacher stipends and materials. She received an initial University of Delaware grant for $25,000, an award that has increased each year as the program is implemented in other districts.

Hobbs used district funds to cover such things as snacks for Math Club and mileage money for Parsons, making it possible for her to travel to other schools. Further grant money paid for assessment conference attendance and an annual dinner meeting to celebrate all the hard work.

She understands that most districts, hers included, might not have the money to afford to take a teacher out of the classroom and have them roam from school to school. But with the right attitude and a lot of perseverance, a district can cobble together the funds to get something rolling, she says. "The success of a program breeds more grant money, so once it gets going with a little funding from one place, some from another, the program takes on a life of its own."

Elizabeth Crane, [e-mail], is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.