GK-12: UW Grad Students Working with Local Schools

As many of you are aware, these are stirring times in K-12 mathematics education. The pressures are great and so is some of the progress. One notable characteristic is that the richer the mathematics that is being tried, the heavier the demands are on the teachers who are doing the trying. With that in mind, the NSF instituted GK-12 Projects, which take graduate students into elementary school classrooms to support teachers who are working with strong new curricula. Here at the University of Washington we are in the fourth year of such a GK-12 Project, run by Professor Loyce Adams of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Dr. Ginger Warfield of the Mathematics Department. Our first GK-12 grant was funded for three years, from 2001 to 2004, and we recently received a second grant, $2M for the five year period 2004-2009. This year fourteen UW graduate students, including two from the Mathematics Department, are going to three central area schools. The Project supports the graduate students with a seminar, a peer community and some mentor-time. It supports the teachers with the classroom presence and planning time of a person on whose mathematical expertise they can rely, and with some workshops. And it supports the students of Leschi, Thurgood Marshall, and Emerson Schools by giving them their own private mathematician whom by and large they adore!

Ginger Warfield