New Teachers Into the Fold at Brentano

There are several new faces in the Innovations project this year. While some teachers are in their third year of the five-year project, others are just getting their first experiences with planning conversations, observations, and reflections.  Logan Square’s Brentano Math and Science Academy is an example of a school that is seeing fresh coaching cycles playing out in the classrooms.

Changes in personnel are not unusual as schools grow and transform, and the Innovations project is committed to inducting new teachers into the program. A main goal of the project is to foster a more collaborative environment between teachers at schools, so maintaining this level of acceptance is extremely important. Besides that, teachers in a new environment might find the ideas and strategies that the Collaborative provides especially beneficial.

Brentano has several new teachers.  First-grade teacher Nicole Sandoval, third-grade teacher Brittany Williams, and kindergarten teacher Marybel Cortes (who recently switched from teaching fourth grade) are all new members this year.

Last month they all worked on a lesson with coach Lisa Ferguson in which students worked to find multiple ways to make the same number on individual rekenreks. The amount of discussion that took place might be surprising to some considering the subject at hand. For example, when at the end of her lesson, Ms. Cortes encouraged her kindergarteners to try to find faster ways of solving the problem and they discussed the advantages of counting by twos and fives.

“If you move it like this,” one student observed, pushing five red beads from one side of the rekenrek to the other, “it won’t take such a long time.” Being able to articulate this type of thinking so early on is encouraging to see.

Brentano Elementary is taking other steps to further strengthen their community of teachers. Administrators organized a book club for interested teachers, to take place December 19th, centered around Cathy Fosnot’s Young Mathematicians at Work. The book describes how children think about math and provides teaching ideas that are in tune with their cognition. As new teachers joining the project collaborate with veteran teachers of Innovations, finding opportunities within the schools to discuss concepts and strategies can help foster new perspectives that are exciting to witness.