Calvin Professor Uses Grants to Inspire Math Teachers

Calvin College mathematics professor Jan Koop recently received her seventh Improving Teacher Quality Grant from the State of Michigan.

With nearly $1.7 million in funding from the state over the past decade, Koop has worked to improve the way mathematics is taught in 21  elementary schools, through more than 300 teachers, in the Grand Rapids, Mich. area.

“All the research shows that sustained professional development is the way to make a change,” said Koop, who is dedicated to working with teachers and schools for the entire 18-month grant period—something teachers have appreciated over the years.

“I think it [the lengthy investment] made it a cut above most of the others [professional development opportunities],” said Carole Stefan, a third grade teacher at Godfrey-Lee elementary school in Wyoming, Mich., who went through the program back in 2007.

“The instructors came in and saw what we were doing, not to evaluate, but to provide feedback, to look at what we were doing, to see what they could share with someone else, to share with us. It was ongoing.”

Koop’s commitment goes beyond the time she spends with the teachers to include the well-researched approach she takes. She empowers teachers to dig beyond the numbers and facts to discover deeper understandings of mathematical concepts.

And with the state of Michigan adopting new academic standards for mathematics recently, Koop says it is ever more important for teachers to take a more inquiry-based approach to teaching math.

“Students need to be able to make a good argument, use academic vocabulary, look for repeated reasoning,” said Koop. “We are now getting students to conceptually understand math. We’ve learned from being in classrooms that we had to figure out [in some cases] how to use outdated materials to get good inquiry going. The content has not changed, but the methods have.”

The training includes two weeklong workshops held in consecutive summers and a total of six days of instruction during the school year. The teachers also receive in-school coaching in their classrooms and have opportunities to join book clubs and grade-level planning groups.

Koop says the goal of these grants is to help educators be more successful in their classrooms by empowering them to prepare lesson plans that promote student engagement, by encouraging them to take a big picture approach by moving beyond simply working off checklists to helping students understand concepts more broadly, and through instilling in them confidence to try new things in the classroom.