The Ounce of Prevention 2012 Annual Report

12
What’s it like to get “mathematized”
13
Teachers, family-support staff and program
leaders at Educare spent a year getting
“mathematized” in order to help each other—and
the children and families they serve—see that
math is all around us, no matter where you live.
“For us, mathematizing is about helping
children see math in a way that is meaningful
and important to them,” said Mary Hynes-Berry,
faculty member, Erikson Institute Early Math
Collaborative. “It’s helping children learn to
love and get excited about math because it’s at
the very root of human problem-solving.”
Disparities in math proficiency are a troubling
and entrenched component of the academic
achievement gap afflicting low-income children.
Even at Educare—one of the most effective
program models for narrowing that gap—
early evidence from a study tracking Educare
graduates and families into K–12 schools
showed children were not as “math-ready”
as they needed to be.
The Early Math Initiative project started at the
Ounce with funding from the Louis R. Lurie
Foundation and the CME Group Foundation, and
it capitalizes on shared professional-development
goals and expertise found at the Erikson Institute,
a leading early childhood education graduate
program and long-time partner of the Ounce.
As part of the mathematizing experience,
teachers changed their attitudes about math
as they learned to experience math concepts
from a child’s perspective, refined lesson plans,
created activities to help children articulate
math concepts, tested new strategies for
teaching math and evaluated those approaches.
Having outside advisers act as sounding boards,
classroom observers and collaborators is at
the heart of Erikson’s math training for teachers.
Educare proved an ideal lab for Erikson’s
approach, as reflective coaching—or real-time
research and development—is embedded in the
program model through our master teachers.
“Keeping mathematics at the top of the
education policy agenda ensures that our
children are prepared for the demands of
a global, competitive market,” Howard Siegel,
chairman of the CME Group Foundation, said.
“Providing young children with high-quality
math instruction helps address long-term
inequities in education outcomes.”
A series of math events hosted by Educare
provided parents with practical guidance and
inexpensive activities to boost their children’s
learning—an idea that soon will be shared
with other early learning providers. Already,
the CME Group Foundation is underwriting
Educare’s development of a guidebook to
provide to other Head Start family-support
coordinators and staff so they can engage the
families they work with around math learning.
Educare and the Erikson Institute next plan
to collaborate to learn more about how infants
discover and experience math in the world
around them. That information will yield
teaching strategies that help parents and
teachers lay an even stronger foundation for
mathematizing a new generation of children,
starting at birth.
ADDING IT ALL UP:
IMPROVING MATH
INSTRUCTION
A child’s ability to master basic math skills can often
predict his chances for succeeding in school better than
his reading and social-emotional skills. Children are
born with natural math abilities, but the school and home
environments needed to fully nurture those skills often
are sorely lacking, particularly for low-income children.
US students’ math-proficiency ratings are plummeting
compared to those in other developed nations, but a
partnership between the Ounce and the Erikson Institute
is generating creative ideas for strengthening the math
knowledge and teaching skills of birth-to-five educators.
Those teachers can, in turn, spark enthusiasm about
numeracy starting with the very youngest children, so
that they start elementary school confident, eager and
ready to take on the challenges of math.
Ounce of Prevention Fund: 2012 Annual Report