Friday, April 22, 2005; Noon-1pm Sc N321

Speaker: Tom Roby, Associate Professor
Department of Math & CS, CSUEB

Since the summer of 2000, the Alameda County Collaborative for Learning and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) has run professional development (PD) institutes for public K-12 teachers in the East San Francisco Bay Area. Originally funded largely by the state, in ACCLAIM's peak two years it served over 350 teachers in summer institutes lasting 8-14 days, with school year followup. This made it one of the largest math content PD programs in the state. The program survived the summer of 2004 entirely on funds available through school districts on a "fee for service" basis, serving 325 teachers in 1-week institutes.

In this talk we will explain how ACCLAIM worked, some of the challenges we faced, and what components went into making it sufficiently successful that it could survive after state funding dried up. Many difficulties arose in creating and continuing a collaboration between Cal State Hayward, the Alameda County Office of Education, and local districts; some were exacerbated by the politically-charged atmosphere of California educational politics.