October 15, 2009

Many thanks to the many Schmitz Park families who joined us earlier this week to discuss the proposed Student Assignment Plan with School Board member Steve Sundquist. As it always does, our community engaged thoughtfully and constructively with this complex issue. If you were unable to join us, please look elsewhere in this Bulletin for a summary of the feedback collected plus general information about the plan.

As important as this process is for our city as a whole and for Schmitz Park families, I'm also pleased to say that the issue has not gotten us off our game, that every teacher at Schmitz Park is as focused on good instruction as ever. Today, I want to talk about math!

Math instruction remains a primary focus for us this year, which is the second year of our full-school implementation of the Singapore Math curriculum. In grades three through five, our math blocks have been up and running now for nearly a month. What's exciting to me about this program is the way it enables us to mix students and share students among all three teachers at each grade level (the two homeroom teachers plus Mrs. Storlie, our math specialist). On Fridays, students come back together in their homerooms for a math lesson that has been planned collaboratively by all three teachers, and this allows everyone to refocus on the core curriculum for the week. Educators these days talk a lot about “deprivatizing” our practice, opening up our classrooms for the purpose of sharing our practice, collaborating on our vision of good instruction, and sharing our responsibility for student learning. This is exactly what is required in order to tackle a complex, ambitious curriculum like Singapore Math and wrap our minds around the learning needs of each student. This is how Schmitz Park is thinking outside the box to rise to this critical challenge.

In the primary grades (K-2), one important focus for teacher collaboration has been on developing students' “mental math” skills. These are the skills that train students with strategies that enable them to “do it in their head.” It starts with building a strong knowledge or “number sense” of the number 10, all the different ways to get to 10. With this knowledge, students can begin to add and subtract larger numbers by finding the 10s. For example, in first grade students can see to add 8+6 by knowing that adding two will get them up to ten, so breaking that 6 into 2+4 leaves them with 10+4, so 14. In turn, second graders will soon be applying these same skills to adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers.

These brief examples are just to boast a little about the tremendous intentionality that Schmitz Park teachers are bringing to math instruction through the implementation of the Singapore Math curriculum. As we gear up for lots of fun activities this fall, these are the key academic foundations that will sustain our work through the year.

—Gerrit

Meet the Principal:

Gerrit Kischner has been the principal of Schmitz Park Elementary since 2008. Prior to joining the Schmitz Park team, Gerrit served for four years as the assistant principal at TOPS K-8 School in Seattle. His twelve-year career teaching social studies and language arts began in community education projects in Salvador, Brazil, and ranged from Turner Middle School in Philadelphia Public Schools, RJ Grey Jr. High in Acton, Massachusetts, and the International School Manila. In 1996, he returned to his hometown Seattle to teach 9th grade Pacific Rim Studies and founded a nationally-awarded culminating project program (CAPstone: Citizen Action Project) at Kamiakin Jr. High in the Lake Washington School District. He is a graduate of Garfield High School (Seattle), Swarthmore College, and the Danforth Program for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington.

Publications:

"Shaping Global Classrooms" (with Nancy Bacon) Educational Leadership, October 2002 » Read Document

"Democracy in India: a curriculum for grades 8-10," World Affairs Council, Seattle (2003) » Read Document

Co-author, "Teaching the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child." In O'Donnell, Daniel. Children are People Too. Anvil Press/UNESCO: Manila (Philippines), 1996.