The View from the Classroom:
Testimony to the House Science Committee

The House Committee on Science U.S.House of Representatives
March 20, 2002

Statement of Susan Doehlert Kielb, Mathematics and Life Science teacher at Tappan Middle School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Awardee, The 2001 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching on K-12th Grade Math and Science Education


Thank you Chairman Boehlert and Ranking Member Hall for inviting me to speak here today before the Science Committee.

My name is Susan Kielb. I teach seventh grade mathematics and life science at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am very pleased and proud to be here in Washington this week to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

I never thought that I would ever be a teacher of mathematics. I struggled with math in school, and took the minimum mathematics coursework in high school. Then I discovered that I needed mathematics to pursue my love for biology, so in college I had to start from scratch. I was lucky to have wonderful and patient professors. I went on to graduate school in wildlife management, where I learned and used a lot of statistical tools. When the mathematics had a practical use for me it made a lot more sense. Learning computer programming also helped me improve my skills in organizing, sequencing, and problem solving.

My first career was in biology and I loved it. After several years, a series of life changes made it clear to me that I wanted to move on and become a teacher. I thought I would be more employable if I had certification to teach mathematics as well as science, and since I had enough math credits I had "mathematics" added to my teaching certificate.

My first permanent teaching assignment was seventh grade life science and math, and I found myself in a classroom without a clue of how to successfully teach mathematics. Needless to say, things improved for me. I still believe that mathematics is incredibly challenging to teach, as a mathematician's reasoning is powered by the understanding of underlying concepts and skills. I find this reasoning process fascinating, and I love being able to connect mathematical thinking with science on a regular basis at the seventh grade level. Now almost every math problem we do has a real-life context, and is interesting and useful.

What are the major problems that limit the performance of students and teachers, and what do you feel is the single, most important step that the federal government should take to improve K-12th grade math and science education?

I have the luxury of working as a teacher in a school where many things are going well. When a teacher feels supported and valued, when kids come to school ready to learn, and when the classroom where they meet is safe, solid, and well equipped, there is no limit to where they can go in learning. In fact, when those basic needs for learning are met we all can have the energy to dream and go much farther than the outside world would imagine.

Teaching is great fun for me. I thoroughly enjoy every one of the young people with whom I spend my days. It is not an easy job, as all of the teachers receiving this award know well. A teacher's daily responsibilities outside of actual student contact time are more than enough to keep a person fully employed. Lesson planning and actual teaching are practically luxuries in themselves compared to the mountains of other tasks. We need to equip teachers so that these obstacles to good quality reflection and planning for teaching are not insurmountable.

The big drive to annually test students across the country is not where our federal dollars should be going. If you sit down with many of those students who bubble in the wrong "answer" on a standardized test and listen to their reasoning in interpreting and choosing answers, you will soon come to see the weakness of these measures.

We live in a culture of rich diversity. In what I see as good mathematics teaching we encourage collaboration and sharing of multiple lines of reasoning to solve the same problem. In our culture, whether we adults like it or not, rote memorization is no longer the single critical skill needed for success. This is simply because information is at our fingertips.

Brilliance in problem-solving and reasoning is not measurable in multiple choice questions. Testing and preparing students for tests is taking away valuable learning time when we should be preparing our students for a world where they need to critically assess great masses of information and make choices based on their analysis.

Where could that money go? Pursue top graduates in college mathematics and science fields and award them grants to spend a semester as an intern with a master teacher. Then financially support them to pursue teacher certification in a graduate program. We need to pull in people who are strong in their fields, but it is absolutely necessary for them to observe what good teaching can look like before placing them in a classroom on their own. Shortcuts in preparing teachers for the classroom will not work.

Based on the involvement you have had with federal math and science education programs or funding opportunities, what are the most important and effective components of these programs?

Once good teachers are in the classroom, we need for them to have the success it takes to want to stay. Beginning teaching was the hardest thing I ever did. With a challenge like this, federal dollars seem well placed in good professional development.

In my case, Eisenhower grants supported extensive professional development in our district's move to a reform mathematics curriculum. I knew that the way we were teaching math was not effective for most students. The new approach rang true to my personal beliefs about learning. The professional development support took me through training before and during our adoption of the Connected Mathematics curriculum. It then continued, allowing us teachers from across the district to meet, share, reflect, and tweak our practices. These meetings always felt good and gave us new tools and energy to take back to our classrooms.

In Ann Arbor one of our middle schools was chosen to be a part of the TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) soon after we went through this training, and their results support my belief in the success of this approach. This "Michigan Invitational Group" rated quite well in comparison to other school districts across the U.S., as well as compared to other countries. (Scores: U.S.-502; Michigan-517 (top state in U.S.); Michigan Invitational Group-532;)

Closer to home, district data on our state assessment (MEAP) indicate that these changes are helping to finally reduce the gap in achievement between African American and Caucasian students. At the same time, our district averages in mathematics are going up significantly.

At the time I did not think much about how the Eisenhower grant brought us that professional development, but I can see the difference now that the funding is gone. We have lost not only that extra professional sharing time, but we are even losing our district curriculum leaders in math and science. These people orchestrated a great collaboration between our teachers and our local universities. This collaboration brought out the best in so many of us teachers.

It would be wonderful if the National Science Foundation could in some way pick up where the Eisenhower grants left us off. I fear especially for new teachers and how we will manage to keep the good ones. Every year teaching assignments change and new teachers come in. The efforts to keep the good teachers, both new and experienced, must be ongoing with continuing professional development.

What elements of your pre-service or in-service training have been most helpful in meeting the daily demands of working with students, developing innovative classroom strategies, and delivering content-rich instruction to students of all levels and abilities?

I had good quality practical pre-service training at Eastern Michigan University. Eastern also offers continuing education courses for teachers that are very useful. I found the one week intensive "Methods for Teaching Mathematics" courses to be the most useful.

I see my most valuable in-service training as falling into one of these four categories:

1. Content (already discussed in connection with Eisenhower grant).

2. Communication and meeting the needs of students, parents, and teachers. I believe that this part of my professional development has been absolutely essential in allowing me to put all of the other pieces into place effectively. Our school improvement funds have supported training in effective communication and much more through the William Glasser Institute, Kagan Cooperative Learning workshops, and GESA (Generating Expectations for Student Achievement: An Equitable Approach to Educational Excellence) training. I use the processes I learned in these workshops every single day. When I am dissatisfied with the progress of a lesson, I can draw from skills from this training, and turn things around for the better.

3. Technology "How to." Workshops in one application of one software tool are incredibly useful to teachers. More of these are available online now, but nothing beats getting people together to try it out in a safe setting. Intensive training with one tool works best for me. Then I can take my skills back to my own curriculum and think of ways to make the tool work for me. Teachers need resource people to provide ongoing training and support in using technology.

4. Vision. An important part of my personal professional development has to be feeding my yearning for a vision of where I want to go. At a recent technology conference, an attendee in a movie-making presentation said, "You have to do what you can with what you've got until you can get what you want." Exposure to the outside world makes all the difference for a teacher to see what could be done, to help make a vision for how to get there. Teachers rarely get to attend conferences, but inevitably those who do will bring back new ideas and energy.

Our district also hosts book discussion groups as another means of sharing new ideas in education. Interacting with graduate students and faculty from the University of Michigan provides me with a connection to current trends in education research. I provide them with a reality base, and a place to test their ideas. This is enriching for all of us.

I also took part in the wonderfully innovative UMGIRL program, where seventh grade girls spend two weeks of their summer working with University of Michigan graduate students and actual social science data sets and statistical tools to investigate real-life questions.

For the past four years I have been meeting monthly with a group of technology-using educators from around the southeast corner of the state of Michigan. We call ourselves "21st Century Teachers". We spend the evening talking about, and demonstrating what we are doing with technology. Sometimes we visit interesting web sites, learn to use new gadgets and software, or help each other problem- solve.

I have moved from just being a sponge in this group to where I bring ideas and products of my own to share. I look forward to these meetings each month and draw a lot of energy from the group. The 21st Century Teachers group has helped push my personal vision and practice further than I previously thought I could reach.

Once again, Thank you Chairman Boehlert, and Ranking Member Hall for having this hearing and inviting me to testify.

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