Urban Programs
The Urban Programs are school-based programs with RUSMP Support Teachers interacting with mathematics teachers and their
students in a given school. The Urban Programs are driven by a central premise -- that effective professional development
is best implemented over a full year period with students and teachers at targeted schools. This ensures that adequate
time, attention, and support are invested to make teaching
and learning meet the needs of all students in the school.
The Urban Programs deliver to the entire mathematics faculty
of a school a model for teaching mathematics that supports
the NCTM Standards. The Urban Programs foster substantive
change in mathematical content, practices, and strategies
that continues long after RUSMP's intervention.
The Urban Programs include four-week summer school sessions.
School and district administrators coordinate facilities,
transportation, selection of students, and staffing of teachers.
RUSMP personnel assist in designing curriculum and assessment,
and select RUSMP Support Teachers. Support Teachers are
highly qualified to provide support activities for the teaching
staff at a given school. This staff development component
involves creating a curriculum incorporating the use of
student-centered group activities, calculators, computers,
manipulatives, mathematics projects, and alternative assessment
techniques. The primary emphasis of the programs is to improve,
expand, and deepen all mathematics teachers' content and
pedagogical knowledge and to ensure that this knowledge
is transferred to classroom practices.