New England Regional Center

Spring 2004

IMP has begun to make in-roads into New Hampshire. Natalie Frazier of Keene High School conducted a standing-room only IMP workshop at the regional NCTM conference. By request, Natalie also led a workshop for Nashua School District math teachers. And she earned rave reviews from her workshop at the IMPACT center at the University of New Hampshire.

Inspired by the National IMP Leadership meeting, Kevin Sawyer, Nancy Burns, and Bill Blatner will organize and conduct a follow-up workshop for New England teachers who have completed all four years of IMP training.

Spring 2003

Congratulations to New England IMP’s three new nationally certified teachers: William Blatner, South Hadley High School, Massachusetts; Sharon Hessney, Milton High School, Massachusetts; and Kevin Sawyer, Silver Lake Regional High School, Massachusetts.

Bill Blatner commented, “For National Board Teacher Certification, teachers submit four portfolio entries, two of which include videotaped segments from the classroom. The process asks teachers to document evidence of students engaged in problem solving, working in cooperative group settings, and using technology. In this respect, I didn’t have to make up anything for my portfolio. Much of what the board is looking for is what we do every day in IMP. I held back on showing my students how to solve systems using matrices and videotaped them struggling to translate the theory into a calculator procedure. They did most of the work! I made extensive use of student portfolios for my entry focusing on assessment. My best portfolio entry related to professional development and making connections with the community. The four-year IMP training model, through which I have passed and now teach to other teachers, comprised about half of that entry. My work to establish IMP at South Hadley High School, including publication of the parent brochure, family math nights, and other community outreach, made up the other half of the entry. It is affirming that the work we all do as IMP teacher leaders is recognized by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.”

Sharon Hessney offered, “The emphasis of the extensive national certification process was like one big IMP class—studentcentered teaching and self-reflection. It is not surprising that my highest score was on my IMP class. And, now I have produced a 15-minute IMP video for presentations.”

“Achieving National Board Certification is a significant milestone in my career as a mathematics educator,” noted Kevin Sawyer. ?I credit the Interactive Mathematics Program curriculum, in part, for my readiness for such an endeavor. Teaching IMP exposed me to the mathematical content needed for success on the written assessment portion of the National Board Certification process. I felt especially comfortable with topics in discrete mathematics and probability and statistics, having trained for and taught such units as Pennant Fever, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Pollster’s Dilemma. Also, adopting the pedagogy that goes along with teaching such an interactive curriculum made it easy to reflect on my teaching practice, which is what National Board Certification is really all about.

“I have grown tremendously as a learner, teacher, and teacher leader through my involvement with IMP,” Sawyer continued. “I am frequently called upon to conduct teacher-training workshops for my district and for local schools and colleges. Just last week at Bridgewater State College, I conducted a workshop for middle and high school teachers on the use of graphing calculator technology. IMP gave me my foundation in this area by making graphing calculators a necessary tool for teaching the curriculum. I have high expectations for my students, and in earning this certification I am showing my students that I also have high expectations for myself”.

Fall 2002

Cambridge, along with a number of other communities in the Boston area, began using IMP about eight years ago. Since then, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) has undergone considerable changes. Five people have held the title of principal during that time and the position is currently unfilled for next year. The school structure has changed from a comprehensive school serving the entire community into five small schools that are moving towards a self-contained team-based approach to teaching and learning. Paul Lyons, master recruiter and mentor for many who took the “IMP plunge,” and whom many of you know as a co-director of the New England Regional Center, retired from his position as chair of the math department in Cambridge during those years as well.

Amid all these changes, IMP prospers at CRLS through the dedication of the teachers, the conviction they have that IMP is an important alternative to the standard high school math curriculum, and the evidence that they see on a daily basis that it is profoundly effective. Each year IMP graduates from CRLS go to highly competitive schools and universities, including MIT this year.

Doug McGlathery, an MIT alum who has taught in Cambridge for over 20 years, recently completed his eighth year of teaching IMP. “It’s hard to remember having a passion for teaching math before IMP. I had plenty of enthusiasm, and I do remember enjoying the roll of being ‘the great explainer’ and seeing the occasional light bulb go off for kids. But all too often I was only connecting with a small fraction of the students in my classroom. I came to think that for the most part I was asking kids to walk an imaginary line that for many of them didn’t go anywhere. IMP was the first curriculum I used which was broad, integrated, and sensible as a four-year strategy for teaching kids math that fits together and has meaningful contexts.”

Doug has received a number of visitors in his classroom recently. “Various administrators (including a principal or two), parents, observers from small school organizations, visiting teachers from Japan—it seems folks are very interested in seeing IMP classes. The feedback I get is that people are very impressed with the way the class is run. I tell them that the structure really comes from the curriculum. In the conversations we have in the small school settings, I find that I can be a resource to teachers in other disciplines about facilitating group work and managing heterogeneous classrooms. There is an important coalescence that is beginning to happen in these learning communities and IMP is a significant part of it.”

There are challenges. “We need to work at giving IMP a higher profile in Cambridge. We need to reach out to parents, guidance counselors, and 8th grade teachers, and invite more administrators to learn about the program so that it can continue to grow and prosper.”

No more imaginary line to nowhere.

Spring 2002

During the past nine years, the New England Regional Center has trained 275 teachers in 40 schools. One of the most successful implementations has been at Brattleboro High School in Brattleboro, Vermont. Emily Goldsmith, Kevan O’Donnell, Mary Kmet-Campbell, and Gene Whitney have developed a solid program that is held in high esteem by the students, teachers, administrators, and parents.

Brattleboro High School uses a semester block schedule. This has allowed them to divide the four-year IMP curriculum into five different courses. Years 1 and 2 are taught in grades nine and ten, but in grades eleven and twelve, students often double up on IMP classes and take one course in each semester. Many IMP students take Calculus in their senior year.

When asked to explain the reason for IMP’s success at her school, Emily said, “Each of us regularly works at making the program a success. We are always marketing the program to the administration, the students, and the parents.” One of their marketing devices is a parents’ newsletter that Emily writes. She produces a welcoming newsletter for the Year 1 parents in the fall and another newsletter for all parents in the spring.

The most recent edition of the newsletter includes a collage of pictures of all the IMP classes. One of the pictures in this collage depicts students who have completed the High Dive unit. Each of them is wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon of the Ferris wheel and cart on the front. On the back of the shirt is the equation that is used to solve the unit problem.

Each spring, Emily takes her students to the junior high school to recruit new IMP students. The students answer questions and proudly show off the IMP collage and the T-shirts that they have earned. In just a few years, some of these eighth grade students will be earning their own High Dive T-Shirts.

Fall 2001

The New England Regional Center wishes to share a letter written to IMP™ from a high school IMP teacher in Massachusetts:

IMP is awesome. Despite what obstacles have been placed in your path, it has been worth it. At Milton High School this June, 31 awesome mathematicians graduated from IMP. They knew they had done something remarkable. And, I felt exhilarated that I had led the charge. We were all so impressed with what we learned, how we worked together, how we could present our ideas, and how we made it to the finish line. (The “we” in all cases includes me.) We were not a particularly special group— public ex-urban school, special ed to honors, spatial and symbolic, under-funded and hardly appreciated, bombarded with statewide testing, etc., etc. To paraphrase Mao, “The 100-mile journey starts with the first step.” “If you don’t start, you’ll never finish.” We had faith, and it paid off big time in understanding of math—and ourselves.

About the obstacles. Keep fighting. I do locally. It’s worth it. Having made it to the finish, I know IMP “works.” IMP is what sucked me into teaching. And having to teach skills will make me leave.

Next year, my students go off to numerous universities, some to even study engineering, computer science, math (yes!!!), and everything else. I go back to revisit Orchards, etc. (Did you realize that students don’t get the reference to pop culture, but they did enjoy Movie Night when they watched Bonnie and Clyde and the Marx Brothers for Alice?)

Thank you Dan, Diane, Lynne, and Sherry from me and my crew.

Sharon Hessney
Milton High School, Milton, MA

Spring 2001

IMP teachers expand their influence by becoming involved in many professional activities beyond their own schools. More than 25 New England IMP teachers assist or co-lead the training workshops both during the summer and during the academic year. Nancy Burns, of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, is working with the Noyce Foundation project as a coach for middle school teachers implementing the Connected Math Project in urban systems. As a coach she spends four days a week in a school, supporting teachers by planning, co-teaching, reflecting on progress, and providing whatever other supports are needed.

John Bookston, of Brookline High School, is engaged this year in a similar project in the Boston Public Schools. Bill Blatner, of South Hadley High School, was asked to do a presentation for his School Committee. He asked a student to present a problem from The Overland Trail. In response to the superintendent's question as to what was good about IMP, she said, “It’s harder. The problems really make you think.”

Kevan O’Donnell and Emily Goldsmith were invited to give a 20-minute talk at the Rotary Club in Brattleboro, VT. They brought a student with them, who capped off their well-received presentation with a statement that IMP does much more than just math.... You learn about your own thinking and communication skills. She said she will always be grateful to Marcus Dunkalot and others she has “met” this year for the role they play in her life. Priscilla Burbank-Schmitt, of Brookline High School, is Massachusetts’ Math Teacher of the Year. Perhaps she will get a chance to tell us all about the new President when she goes to Washington.

Fall 2000

Janie Malloy of U-32 High School, Montpellier, Vermont, Cathy Capalbo of Narragansett High School in Rhode Island and Bill Blatner of South Hadley High School in western Massachusetts represented the New England region at the IMP National TOPS (teacher-leaders) conference in Sausalito, CA in February. Working with Tara Haller of Durango High School in Colorado, Blatner planned an “IMP Math Expo” and, on returning to Massachusetts, implemented the plan.

IMP 1, 2, and 3 students prepared and then presented their solutions to a series of problems before a packed house of parents, teachers and administrators from South Hadley and surrounding schools as well as educators from nearby Smith College and Mount Holyoke College. The problems came from The Overland Trail, Cookies, and Meadows or Malls? units and highlighted IMP’s development of algebraic and graphical reasoning, as well as the complexity of the problems tackled by IMP students through the first three years of the program. Fifteen students participated in the presentations using posters, overhead transparencies and a TI-83 overhead calculator. A panel of teachers and IMP students then fielded questions about the program from the audience.

In a letter to Blatner, education professor Sam Intrator of Smith College wrote, “Your students embodied all those adjectives we like to throw around: intellectually vital, confident, engrossed, and most impressively, deeply appreciative of the opportunity to be involved in the program . . . It’s rare to see a program so rooted in constructivist principles be so thoughtful and rigorous in content as well.” Congratulations to all who helped make this night a success!

The New England regional family of schools and teachers using IMP continues to grow. We now have 39 schools supported by the New England Regional Center with over 275 teachers attending IMP workshops this year. More schools attended the summer 2000 workshops. Many teachers who represent the first generation of trainees are beginning to lead workshops as training moves out across the region.

Spring 1999

The New England Regional Center is in its fifth year of operation. We began with three schools and nine teachers and now we have 33 school and 147 teachers. This year, Burrillville became the first Rhode Island school to implement the Interactive Mathematics Program. Present plans have five new schools adopting IMP in September 1999. Wellesley and Needham will implement IMP at the eighth grade level.

Our first students graduated in June 1998 and many of them are enrolled in colleges all over the country. We are getting positive feedback from them on their college experiences. Our graduates are telling us that IMP prepared them well for their college math courses.

The State of Massachusetts has initiated a statewide testing program in all subjects at the fourth, eighth, and tenth grades. Students are required to pass this test before they can graduate from high school. The mathematics test has many open response questions which require a lot of thinking and writing about mathematics. Initial reports from our schools show that our students did very well on this test.

Four years ago in Cambridge, one of the questions asked of co-director Paul Lyons at the first parents' information night for prospective IMP students was, "If my daughter signs up for IMP, can she take calculus in her senior year?" Paul explained it was possible to take calculus in the fourth year. Well, four years later, Cambridge has two students enrolled in AP calculus and they are among the top students in the class. One of the students wrote the following in her "Mathematical Autobiography" after seven weeks in AP calculus.

"...In ninth grade, I entered the Interactive Mathematics Program and it changed how I will see math for the rest of my life. ...I know that I learned more about math, writing about math, and thinking about math than I ever did in nine years of elementary school, and than I think would have in three years of traditional math classes. My confidence in math increased maybe even exponentially in the IMP environment.... It seems tedious, but three years later, I know not only most of the same math my friends learned and I know where it all came from.... I'm convinced that if I had entered a traditional math classroom in ninth grade, I would still be the same math student I was in elementary school: discouraged, frustrated and pessimistic. IMP taught me to accept math in its most abstract forms; as a result, I can now think about, write about, and question math with complete clarity....When I made my decision to leave IMP this year in exchange for AP calculus, it was a choice I made only because I knew that I was well prepared for the math world beyond Room A101. I wanted to see just how far my IMP education could take me, and so far I couldn't be more pleased. It's exciting to be in a new math class with different students and a new teacher, and it's also rewarding to know that IMP seems to have passed a test even more important than the SAT's."

Fall 1999

The New England regional center is pleased to announce receipt of awards by two wonderful teachers in our IMP family. Kudos and warm wishes to these two fabulous teachers!

Carla Oblas was selected in June for the Excellence in Teaching Award from Boston's Northeastern University—an extremely prestigious honor from such a huge university. Carla is the PI on the New England IMP grant, manages Balfour Academy, a school-year and summer academic program for inner city youth, and still has time to teach at the University. The particular class for which she was cited is called "Interactive Mathematics."

IMP teacher JoAnn Vana from North Country Union High School in Vermont has been selected to receive the state's Presidential Award for Excellence in Secondary Mathematics Teaching. She reports: "I used my experiences with the IMP program, complete with student work and pictures from my Year 1 and half of my Year 2 curricula...."

Our Regional Center had quite a busy summer. We led a series of four Year 1 workshops, including our first in Vermont and western Massachusetts, introducing almost 130 teachers to IMP. In addition we held a total of five workshops in Years 2–4.

As our NSF grant comes to an end, we are directing more of our attention to leadership training. We held a well-attended leadership retreat for New England teachers in the spring. We are thankful to the Center for Enhancement of Science and Mathematics Education for funding our lead teachers to continue their training by co-leading many of our summer and follow-up workshops.

Spring 1998

IMP is now being implemented in 30 schools in New England-including our first high school in Maine-with over 100 teachers teaching IMP classes. We have started analyzing last spring's SAT data in our three focus schools, and the results look good. At Arlington High, Brookline High, and Silver Lake in Massachusetts, the IMP students outperformed non-IMP students. Also, Carver High School, which started IMP last year, reports that it administered the Terra Nova test to its IMP students and to matched groups of non-IMP ninth graders and the IMP students outperformed the non-IMP students in every strand.

Our first graduates are receiving early acceptances from the Universities of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts; Providence College; Wesleyan University; Union College; Cornell University; Emanuel College; and Babson College. In his early admissions interview at Providence, a Silver Lake student explained IMP and was told "that's exactly what we are trying to do with our math curriculum." An exchange student from Germany in IMP Year 3 at Arlington is delighted to find such a good fit for his year of study in the U.S.

Our rapid growth coupled with several retirements are creating vacancies for IMP-able math teachers throughout the region. Any candidates can contact us at (617) 373-2328.

Fall 1998

June marked the first graduating class of IMP students from high schools associated with the New England Regional Center. The graduates were accepted into many competitive colleges. In fact, one college even told students at their interviews that they were looking for students with the type of mathematics background that IMP provides.

We also graduated our first class of lead teachers who went through all four years of workshops. Congratulations to Marie Miller, Richie Romao, and Gwen Bright of Wilbur Cross High School; to Paula Sennett and Kevin Sawyer of Silver Lake Regional High School; to Mary Hogan and Carol Martignetti-Boswell of Arlington High School; to Paul Lyons of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School; to Terry Nowak and Priscilla Burbank-Schmitt of Brookline High School; and to Benadette Manning of Fenway Middle College High School.

The New England schools have begun to look at their standardized test scores and the IMP students are doing better than the non-IMP students on SATs and the Terra Nova test. In addition, the Brookline High IMP students did overwhelmingly better than non-IMP students on a problem-solving exam. Many parents of our graduating class wrote about what a positive experience IMP has been for their children.

Spring 1997

The New England Region started with three schools in 1994, at Arlington, Brookline, and Silver Lake Regional High Schools in Massachusetts.

Supported by a National Science Foundation Local Systemic Initiative grant for Teacher Enhancement, IMP will be implemented at schools in the following districts:

Massachusetts: Worcester, Cambridge, Carver, Boston, Hull, Lawrence, Milton, Needham, Wachusetts Region, Lynn, Fall River, Wareham, and Beverly, as well as the Parker and City On The Hill charter schools and Brimmer and May, a CES private school Connecticut: New Haven Vermont: North Country Union, Champlain Valley Union, U32, West, and Lake Region Union

Tales Tell It Best

With our pilot schools now in their third year, some of the many stories we have to tell include these:

• A self-defined math-o-phobe has become an enthusiast who brags about his math accomplishment!
• A non-IMP student asked her homeroom teacher for a name for the meeting point of the 3 perpendicular-bisectors of a triangle. IMP classmates announced, "It's the sprinkler!"
• A special needs student-identified as having a severe learning disability-scored 1160 on PSAT's, to the amazement of her parents, who said they'd hoped for 750!
• The mother of a sophomore non-IMP student asked his counselor if he would be less well-prepared for college.
• IMP students from the Fenway Middle College High School-a CES school in Boston-gave a presentation to math teachers at another Boston school.
• The 1996 class valedictorian at a New Haven high school was an IMP student.

Fall 1997

The New England Regional Center (NERC) has grown from three IMP high schools in 1994–95 to 31 schools this year. There are now 115 teachers involved in teaching and training, including 63 new teachers who began teaching IMP Year 1 this fall. Each IMP teacher in the region receives one week of summer training and five release days during the school year. NERC received a National Science Foundation Local Systemic Change grant which gives continued funding for this kind of support for up to 250 teachers through the year 2000. The original focus schools are starting Year 4 of IMP and many IMP seniors are electing AP Statistics along with Year 4.

Interest in the region is growing as student teachers and interns from local colleges are requesting IMP classrooms. Students from Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, Boston College, and other schools have participated in NERC training with their supervising teachers. One of our Harvard interns, David Bookston, an enthusiastic IMP team member at Brookline High, was hired to teach full time this year at Needham High-one of our IMP high schools. David's proud father, a Brookline math teacher, participated in IMP Year 1 training this summer, as well.

Mary Hogan, a NERC co-director, spoke about reform mathematics and IMP on the National Public Radio talk show, The Connection. Mary teaches IMP at Arlington High School and also teaches a math program at Boston College for adults using several IMP units. One of her Boston College students called to proudly announce that she was the mother of an IMP freshman at The Brimmer and May School, an independent school in Brookline. The IMP family is well and growing in New England.

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