AGENDA
5:00 Origins of Math Education Labs & Introduction to the Evening’s Program
Gail Richardson, Best Practices Colloquia Director
NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
5:15 Using Sketchpad to Explore Representations of Slope
Daniel Scher, Curriculum Developer
KCP Technologies
5: 45 “Sketchpad” Math Lab at M.S. 131—Introduced by Gail Richardson
Mafa Edwards, Math Coach
Cheryl Schafer, Mathematics Lead Teacher
M.S. 131, Sun Yat Sen Middle School
6:10 The CASTLE Model: A Journey Through Fractions —Introduced by Gail
Richardson
Mauricière de Govia, Principal
Nancy Harris, Assistant Principal
Trevor Buckley, Teacher
Johanna J ones , Teacher
Kelly Randolph, Teacher
Collaborative Academy of Science, Technology, and Language Arts Education Middle
School
6:45 Discussion
7:00 Closing
Refreshments & Conversation
PRESENTERS
Trevor Buckley, a 6th grade math teacher at CASTLE Middle School, is a
New York City
Teaching Fellow (Cohort 8). In his third year of teaching, he also attends the
childhood
mathematics program at CUNY – Brooklyn College. He has a B.A. in journalism from
the
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.
Mauricière de Govia, principal of the Collaborative Academy of Science,
Technology, and
Language Arts Education (CASTLE) Middle School, has been a teacher in NYC public
schools
for eight years with a concent ration in English and history. A first-year
graduate of the NYC
Leadership Academy, she has successfully phased out Junior High School 56—a
corrective
action school—and co-directed its restructuring as a new small school dedicated
to exemplary
learning for children of the Lower East Side. Although she has never considered
herself to be a
"math person" she believes that every subject area has it own story. Along with
the CASTLE
math team, she has begun a journey of helping students understand math through
the study of
math language, math literacy, and mathematical thinking.
Mafa Edwards is a Region 9 math coach at M.S. 131 in Chinatown and P.S.
43 in the South
Bronx. For the past two years , she was an elementary math coach at two schools
in District 1
on the Lower East Side. Prior to that she taught 6th and 7th grade math at I.S.
162 in the South
Bronx. She was a classroom and cluster teacher at a Dual Language elementary
school on the
Upper West Side for eight years. She has presented city -wide math standards
workshops for
parent coordinators, previewed the revised state math standards for Region 9,
and helped set
the state assessment guide lines . Also, she has evaluated math academic
intervention materials
for the DOE and previewed curricular materials for the publisher. She has a B.A.
in sociology
and an M.A. in secondary education from Austin College.
Nancy Harris is a co-founder and Assistant Principal of CASTLE Middle
School, which is in its
first year of operation as an independent public school. As CASTLE’s Teacher
Director, she is
responsible for running the school on a day-to-day basis. She began her career
as a 5th and 6th
grade teacher at P.S. 110 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She works with all
subject areas
and is especially fascinated by mathematical problem- solving activities of
children.
Johanna Jones, a 6th grade special education
teacher at CASTLE Middle School, is a New
York City Teaching Fellow (Cohort 11), who works in a collaborative
team-teaching setting, with
a class of 21 students, covering math, social studies, science, and English
language arts. She
began her career two years ago at J.H.S. 56 in NYC, with a self-contained
classroom of twelve
7th and 8th graders. She is a Certified Entrepreneurship Teacher with the
National Foundation
for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
Kelly Randolph, a special education teacher at CASTLE, is in her 4th year
as a New York City
Teaching Fellow. She is actively participating with others on the CASTLE math
team in
researching best practices in math instruction and is especially committed to
helping her
students talk mathematics with confidence.
Gail Richardson, Research Scholar at The Steinhardt School of Education,
NYU, directs the
NYU Gateway Math Education Best Practices Colloquia. Before joining NYU, she was
director
of the nonprofit Best Practices in Education, where she organized mathematics
education
initiatives based on US-Russian and US-Eastern European collaborations. Her
previous
experience includes program director of the French-American Foundation. She has
taught at
The City College of New York and the American University in Rome. She holds a
B.A. in English
literature from Cornell University, an M.A in Law and Diplomacy from The
Fletcher School, and
a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin.
Cheryl Schafer is the mathematics lead teacher at M.S. 131. Prior to this
she worked as a math
coach for region 9. Her work in professional development has been both
region-wide and
school-based. She has been involved with Japanese Lesson Study for several years
and was
part of a panel that presented on this topic at the NCTM pre-conference in Las
Vegas in 2002.
She holds a B.A. from Hofstra University and an M.S. from CUNY – Brooklyn
College. She is
currently co-teaching, with Professor Zhonghong Jiang, a mathematics modeling
class in the
Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU Steinhardt.
Daniel Scher is a curriculum developer for KCP Technologies. He is the
lead author and sketch
de signer of grade 3-5 activities for the Sketchpad for Young Learners project.
Previously, Daniel
was program director of Best Practices in Education, where he specialized in
educational
techno logy applications and the adaptation of a Russian mathematics curriculum
for first and
second graders. He investigated the epistemology and mathematics of dynamic
geometry while
a researcher at Education Development Center. He is the author of Exploring
Conic Sections
with The Geometer's Sketchpad and a co-author of Exploring Precalculus with The
Geometer's
Sketchpad, both published by Key Curriculum Press.
