Voices From the Field - From an EMT Facilitators Perspective
Throughout the past 14 years, I have been engaged in professional development related to best practice in mathematics education. As a consulting teacher for mathematics, my greatest challenge over the past 7 years, has been in finding ways to effectively (and convincingly) share my learning with colleagues who have not had the same professional development experiences. Early Mathematical Thinking is just what I needed! It is a shared professional development experience based in research and connected to teaching practice. As an EMT participant, I have gained additional knowledge about best practice related to numeracy concepts and skills. As an EMT facilitator, I now have the tools and materials to share what I have learned in a succinct and engaging way. In addition, EMT has provided my colleagues and me with an assessment screening kit to help us identify students’ numeracy strengths and areas to be strengthened.

- K-8 Math Specialist

My participation in Early Mathematical Thinking has been invaluable in giving me the knowledge and resources to help my students become better mathematicians. From the screening and interview tools to the research and articles to Leslie’s expertise of the content and developmental levels of students, every aspect of the training has given me food for thought. The screenings and interviews were great tools with which to ascertain which students may be at risk in the area of math, and gave me, as the RTI specialist, an idea of what I should focus on with those students. Equally important was just listening to Leslie ‘talk math’. I learned about things I didn’t even know I didn’t know about. Due to everything I’ve learned as part of Early Mathematical Thinking I’ve begun modeling lessons in 1st grade and 2nd grade classrooms this fall, and teachers responses have been positive (not a small accomplishment in my district), and they are actually implementing many of the learnings/ideas from EMT.

-RTI Support K-2