Under a grant from the New Hampshire State Department of Education, Plymouth State University has formed a partnership with 12 school districts, the North Country Educational Services (NCES) and the Southeastern Regional Education Services (SERESC) to help schools improve mathematics education.
The grant aids teachers from Bedford, Epping, Franklin, Laconia, Lincoln-Woodstock, Merrimack Valley, Nashua, Newfound Regional, Salem, Shaker Regional, Timberlane and Winnisquam school districts to become “Highly Qualified Teachers” (HQT) in middle school mathematics education as defined by the state of New Hampshire according to the No Child Left Behind Act.
More than 90 teachers attended three intensive, two-week institutes on campus this summer and received three graduate credits. The session featured number systems and number theory, algebra and geometry and measurements.
This past summer, Dr. Scott Evans, of the Harvard School of Public Health, presented the seminar “What Do Biostatisticians Do?” and Dr. Dennis Machnik and Sally Jensen, of the PSU science department, presented the seminar “Mathematics and Astronomy.” Both the courses and the seminars were paid for by the grant.
This fall, PSU offered a video-conference course on statistics and probability, with additional sessions in Gorham at NCES and in Bedford at SERESC. Sixty teachers will participate tuition-free under the grant. A second video-conference course on pre-calculus and calculus ideas for middle school teachers is scheduled for next spring.
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