Coaching and Professional Development, developing skills for instructors

Coaching and professional development has become an integral ingredient to both instructor success and the success of their students. With math being a primary marker of students success rates in both secondary school and higher education, it’s integral that teachers are not only well versed on the material they’re presenting but also understand different teaching pedagogies and have a wide breadth of research at their disposal.

With higher math achievement comes higher success rates in both secondary school and higher education. Therefore, organizations like MathPOWER and the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative have created professional development programs aimed at improving instructors' ability to teach complicated math concepts to students and improve their critical thinking skills.

During these programs teachers are connected with a coach who works individually with them on building lesson-plans, developing a scoring methodology, engaging in demonstration lessons and providing resources for teachers that further their ability to impart skills to their students.

Overall these programs aim to strengthen the teacher’s role as a math instructor. In order to see higher student achievement in mathematics it is understood that the instruction itself needs to be improved. Professional development provides exactly this sort of training by offering workshops, individual instruction and on-site monitoring in an effort to first strengthen the teachers confidence and ability to teach math and in the process bolster student’s performance in mathematics.

For more information on the MathPOWER Professional Development program, email Laurie Speranzo.