GALION — Mid-Ohio Educational Service Center provides tiered instruction and support to districts through the Teaching and Learning department. For the 2019-2020 school year, Galion City Schools has been partnering with Mid-Ohio to improve math instruction for the entire district.
Leanna Ferreira, Mid-Ohio ESC Gifted Services Consultant and also Galion’s consultant for this initiative, said, “The district had established a district-wide goal for better math instruction in alignment with their implementation of a new curriculum in grades 6-12 and the search for a new math curriculum in grades PK-5.”
The middle and high school staff spent a significant amount of time creating a yearlong curriculum map of implementing the new curriculum while focusing on the essential thinking required of students through a deeper analysis of the standards.
“I observed and experienced a willingness from the staff to embrace the philosophies and ideas behind the math standards as they take an honest and reflective look at their classroom strategies and practices,” said Ferreira. “Specifically, many of the Primary and intermediate teachers had begun to implement Math Talks in their classrooms prior to the building closures [in March] and as we continued in our learning, many of the teachers spent time making connections between the new learning and their new practice of math talk.”
Since the initiative started at the beginning of the school year, teachers were working with Mid-Ohio approximately once a month prior to the building closures in March of this year due to COVID-19 and adjustments had to be made.
“When the building closures occurred, we had to redesign how we were going to meet the originally planned in-person trainings,” explained Ferreira. “This resulted in me taking the content I would have presented in person and instead designing several Google Classrooms, allowing the content to be contained in an online format so that teachers could still interact with the content.
In addition, we went from meeting about once a month for a half or full day to meeting once a week for about 30 minutes. The fact that the district, and especially teachers, maintained this work even during the move to remote instruction shows their true dedication to their students’ learning needs!”
Interested districts can find out more about the Teaching and Learning Tiers of Support at www.moesc.net. Anyone with questions about registration can contact Lynn Meister, Director of Teaching and Learning, at 419-571-2128 or emailing at [email protected]
