Connecting the university to inner-city secondary school mathematics

Primus: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Jun 2002 by Case, Robert

The changes summarized above arose over time and developed in an evolutionary process over half-a-dozen years. The key period was 1994-- 97, during the time of the previously mentioned grant from the National Science Foundation which Northeastern's Mathematics Department had secured, based on its proposal that the University be designated "a regional center of calculus reform". A novel feature of the proposal was that in it Northeastern's role as a center of calculus reform was not limited to the teaching of college calculus but included a secondary school dimension. It was this secondary school portion of the grant-and about a third of funding for the grant, close to $100,000 for a multi-year project, was designated for this-that concentrated on building a model for introducing reform calculus courses in those Boston high schools which up to now offered no calculus whatever.

The NSF proposal was formed around one idea: create a model to change the system, and thereby open access to large numbers of students. Rather than help to educate this or that student (the "pull-out" model), form a collaborative enterprise that would have the effect of increasing the mathematics capacity of the system and therefore of the schools.

THE FIRST CALCULUS CLASS: HYDE PARK HIGH SCHOOL, 1995

The project was designed so as to be implemented in steps, as follows. During 1994-5, a pilot reform precalculus course would be offered at just one school, Hyde Park High School, where there was strong support from the Assistant Headmaster (this assistant headmaster had been a mathematics teacher, and an Associate Teacher in the earlier after-school courses offered in 1992, which indicates the kind of network that had formed over time). Therefore, the first year of the grant was focused on precalculus in just one school. The idea was to gradually build a base, including introduction of reform features, with the group of students which included the first calculus students in the following year. This was a foundation-building step to promote the organic introduction of calculus into a school which did not have a tradition of offering calculus.

In the second year, the priority was the construction of a prototype calculus course at Hyde Park (an additional activity was the dissemination of precalculus to a group of schools newly entering the program; similarly, in the third year of the grant, calculus would be spread to these schools). Building the calculus course (and of course its auxiliary precalculus course) at Hyde Park High School therefore was the font and intellectual focus of the entire project.

The school designated one of its experienced mathematics teachers, Joanne Saluti-who was also a participant in the reform calculus seminar for Boston teachers-as the instructor of the two-year sequence: precalculus in 1994-5, and then the prototypical calculus course to follow it in 1995-- 6. The school made the commitment to begin offering calculus in 1995-6 with a well-below-normal class size of seven. The number of students of the 1994-5 precalculus had been double that, but not surprisingly, several of these students in precalculus were graduating seniors. (As time progressed, the numbers of students enrolling in calculus in the schools entering the project continued to grow from such small beginnings, to the point where one school, South Boston High, regularly has nearly thirty students in calculus and another, Snowden High-and this is exceptional-actually has two sections of calculus this year [2001-2]). The administration at Hyde Park High also provided additional preparation time for the new course by releasing Ms. Saluti from the corridor and lunch-room tasks which many of the teachers perform. In addition to the instructor and the students, the "team" at Hyde Park consisted of a university "coach" and an undergraduate mentor for the students. The coach is a veteran faculty member with a history of outreach activities; the NSF grant funded his involvement in the form of release-time from a portion of his usual teaching at Northeastern University. The Mentor, Cassandre, was a mathematics major at Northeastern and a senior. Her family is of Haitian origin, as are those of many of the students at Hyde Park High School.