Category: Partnership

Jefferson City’s first STEM school partners with ISP to become STEMcapable

Roller coasters are fun, but for safety’s sake, they must be designed, built and maintained by mechanical engineers. It’s a STEM career path that Adrianna Koty has enjoyed discussing recently with the fifth graders in her class at Thorpe Gordon STEM Academy in Jefferson City, Missouri. “Giving students real-world problems to solve and think about […]

ISP Showcase elevates ambitious, equitable math teaching with district partners

Creating environments that invite all students to engage confidently with ambitious mathematical learning is an aim best achieved working in tandem with peer professionals who want the same thing for their students. After three years of deep exploration into the most impactful ways to implement equitable math instruction, teachers, administrators and math coaches from Mehlville, […]

Extending an early invitation to math confidence with coaching and partnership

What things do you need to open up a restaurant? That depends on who you ask. If you’re consulting a room full of three-year-olds, you might be surprised to learn that menus, dishes, even food, are not top of mind. Dawn Pulsipher, a longtime studio teacher at Julia Goldstein Early Childhood Education Center (JG) recently […]

Coaching for equity

It’s fair to say that Bryant Baker’s relationship with math has evolved.  In high school and college, he resisted advanced math classes and found himself turned off by teachers with an old school mentality. In short, he didn’t like math. Today, he’s teaching it (along with science) to sixth graders at Bernard Middle School and […]

When encouraged to lead, teachers lean into what they know best: their students

Brittany Stephens was on the lookout for an old-fashioned rotary phone over the summer.  No stranger to kindergarteners or the classroom, Stephens is confident that having the clunky relic on hand will help kindergarten students in her classroom grasp the concepts of then and now.  “Being encouraged to think creatively and find the tools I […]

New partnership empowers principals to ‘dream big’ (Links to an external site)

SLPS Principal Redesign Fellows leverage existing strengths to improve outcomes Boost ninth-grade reading scores by two years at Vashon High School.   Introduce play- and project-based lessons at Shenandoah Elementary.  Improve assessments at Roosevelt High School. The principals at these schools and four others are poised to achieve big goals after participating in the inaugural cohort […]

Creating time and space for collaborative school change

Mistakes are easy to make, and often hard to accept, but sixth grader Valeria Rodriguez is getting more comfortable knowing she’s not always going to have the right answer. “When I was younger, making mistakes made me a little anxious because I thought I did something wrong,” says Valeria. “But now I know that if […]

Champion for equitable education, May honored with Ethic of Service Award

May leads Institute for School Partnership, leader in STEM education and teacher development You may not know her name, but the superintendent of your child’s school district certainly does.  For decades, Victoria May, executive director of the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis, has worked with local educators to create high-quality, equitable education […]

Local partnerships re-envision math instruction

Successful completion of algebra 1 is the gatekeeper to higher-level math and is required for virtually any education beyond high school. That makes math education an equity issue. A  2019 article in the Journal for Research and Mathematics Education states, “It’s well documented that Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented in eighth-grade algebra courses. As […]