Program trains Appalachian math and science teachers to help their colleagues help students

When students in some Appalachian school districts return to classes in a few days, they will find teachers armed with new tools to help them better learn science and mathematics. Last month, 35 teachers from Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia attended a week-long program on "new classroom techniques and content, then having them return to their rural districts to provide support to their colleagues" teaching science and math, and thus help pupils too, writes Sean Cavanagh of Education Week.

"That teacher-to-teacher connection, supporters of such programs say, provides educators working in rural, often impoverished districts with steady, on-site help in the subjects that vex many of them the most," Cavanagh writes, quoting Ron Atwood, an administrator of the program: "There are simply too many math and science teachers who need assistance of one kind or another, and too few people in higher education to help them meet their needs," so "We're trying to grow our own."

Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Cavanagh that schools are unable to recruit enough math and science teachers to keep up with departures from the field. "High school officials report that math teaching vacancies are the hardest to fill among all academic-content areas, and that physical- and life-science jobs are not far behind," Cavanagh reports.

The program is part of the Appalachian Math Science Partnership, a University of Kentucky project that received a $22 million National Science Foundation grant to improve math and science education in the three states and eliminate the achievement gap in science and math between students in the region and the rest of the nation. NSF made smaller grants to some other rural areas and continues to support them, Cavanagh reports. "Officials working on those projects issued a report last month showing improved test scores in districts that sent teachers through the training, gains supporters believe are partly attributable to math and science instruction that rural teachers are passing on to their colleagues."

Sandra L. Godbey, a curriculum coach in Casey County, Kentucky, who attended the program in Clinton, Tenn., told Cavanagh that many elementary school teachers "don’t understand the appropriate vocabulary, or the ‘why’ of the math. They just know the algorithm." (Read more)