Joel Tepper
+PLUS+ Director, LAEP
LAUSD
Professional Links with Urban Schools (+PLUS+) is a teacher leadership network. It strives to enhance mathematics teachers' knowledge about and their ability to improve how students learn mathematics.
By giving K-12 mathematics teachers responsibility for their own professional development, incorporating district and national standards, and helping teachers implement new classroom curricula and assessments, +PLUS+ teachers are bringing schools to the leading edge of mathematics instruction.
With the support of LAEP, +PLUS+ activities are directed by a Project/Academic Director and four teachers serving as +PLUS+ regional satellite coordinators.
The coordinators plan and implement the annual Fall and Spring workshop series, which serve as the primary professional development vehicles for +PLUS+ teachers, and organize a series of classroom demonstrations throughout the Los Angeles area. Coordinators attend workshops and conferences, sharing what they have learned with other +PLUS+ schools.
The +PLUS+ Teachers Council, composed of teachers from +PLUS+ schools, designs workshops, sponsors classroom demonstrations, and plans the program's annual conference. The Council also assists in the annual selection of winners of the Jaime Escalante Awards, which bestow cash prizes on outstanding Los Angeles area math teachers.
The Project Director and regional satellite coordinators all work collaboratively with the Los Angeles Systemic Initiative (LA-SI) to make systemic reform a reality.
Working in collaboration with teachers from the Target Science and Humanitas teachers networks, +PLUS+ teachers have also played a leading role in helping schools make school-wide improvements in teaching and learning.
Joining with these forward thinking schools, +PLUS+ teachers have provided peer coaching, consulting, and teaching demonstrations for teachers seeking to improve their instructional abilities and knowledge of mathematics content.
As a critical building block in the Los Angeles Math/Science Coalition's SMART Initiative to achieve systemic mathematics education reform in Los Angeles County, PLUS training serves as a major source of professional development for teachers.
+PLUS+ can also serve as a professional development resource for schools seeking to implement the systemic reforms proposed by LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now).
+PLUS+ includes more than 850 teachers in 50 math departments throughout the Los Angeles, Inglewood, Long Beach, and El Monte Union High school districts and upwards of 400 teachers in 200 schools participating independently.
+PLUS+ teachers attend our Fall/Spring workshops, as well as conferences and workshops at the local, state, and national level, and they are active in the California Math Council, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Urban Mathematics Collaborative. Building on its network of K-12 schools in Los Angeles, +PLUS+ will focus on district- and complex/cluster-wide professional development during 1996/97 to further assist in the implementation of systemic Mathematics reform.
