Welcome to MathPLC! This is a professional learning community designed to support and enrich elementary math teachers. We have also included a Parent Blog to provide information on how to help your child with math at home
As teachers, we have a great responsibility and such an opportunity to make a difference in the lives we touch everyday. Part of that responsibility is to be the best at what we do. We're not talking about the best in terms of state test results. We are talking about what needs to happen every day to make sure we are teaching math with the meaning that fosters deep understanding and allows our students to be flexible and sophisticated thinkers. If we do that, the state test will take care of itself.
Our hope is to share research-based approaches to the way we teach math and how we incorporate that into best teaching practices. This website will not be full of worksheets that have been “cutesyed-up” with graphics to make them look and feel more palatable. This website will not provide you with tricks and rhymes for you to teach so that students can remember a math procedure. What this website will provide is a different, maybe a new way to think about your math teaching philosophy, how to be a facilitator-of-learning as opposed to a filler-of-empty-vessels. We will look at ways to bring meaning to math through real-world problem solving, differentiate instruction without diminishing expectations of learning, and how to provide a student friendly context for understanding and retaining complex math concepts.
This site also provides a forum board for you to talk with other teachers about the challenges and successes you experience in your classrooms. Pose questions, offer solutions, encourage each other. Too often teachers are isolated in their classrooms and are unable to get the support they need without feeling as though they are compromising their job security or their professionalism. This is a safe place for you to share pedagogy, to question your practices, and develop professional relationships.
You make a difference in young people’s lives. You are the determining factor in the future math careers of the students in your charge. No matter what time of the year you visit MathPLC.com, our aim is to help you feel that first-day-of-the-year enthusiasm, everyday. Be happy, teach well, and teach math with meaning.