Some of you have asked how the MAPPS Program at Hohokam, Johnson, Lawrence, Maldonado, and Miller was funded.  Here’s a brief summary.  Most of the support came from Title I funds.  The major part of these funds was used to pay stipends to the facilitator/teachers and to pay for their training.  Other support came from TUSD’s Family Support which provided mini-course childcare and some of the meals served before each mini-course session.  TUSD’s Native American Studies Department also provided meals.  TUSD’s Meaningful Access provided the English-Spanish interpreters.  Support from outside the District came from the Institute for Mathematics and Education (IM&E), which provided food for the training sessions, a meal preceding one mini-course, and parent incentives for the mini-courses.  The incentives were canvas bags (printed with the TUSD, the Yaqui Tribe, and the MAPPS Center logos) and 100 raffle prizes handed out over the eight week course.   IM&E is housed in the Mathematics Department at the University of Arizona.

David

I am not quite sure what all is in Obama’s education stimulus package. Does anyone know whether there are any funds in his package targeted for parent programs?

Mary

Recently I have had the opportunity for the first time to facilitate MAPPS training as a video conference here at the University of Arizona with a group of teachers from Griffin, GA. This session was on developing fractions, decimals and percent concepts using colored tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, and tangrams.  Although the teachers said they enjoyed the session and activities I felt there was a missing piece to the training as I wasn’t there to visually see them work with the manipulatives. Additionally it was difficult to hear their conversations while they were working in their groups as well as getting them to participate in whole group discussions when otherwise it wouldn’t have been a problem if I was actually present in the room. Is there any one that has experience in video conferencing with the type of facilitating I experienced?  I would love to hear from you and any pointers you may have to offer.

Mary

This is a place where we’ll tell you stories about the impact on parents of participation in MAPPS activities, on their school-age children, and on their families.  We’ll tell you stories about the impact of MAPPS on schools where MAPPS activities take place.  We’ll tell you about the impact on teachers who facilitate  Math for Parents Workshops and Math for Parents Mini-Courses.  We’ll keep you up-dated on upcoming MAPPS training around the country — and let you know how recent training workshops went.  We’ll try to let you know about current research on parents learning mathematics — especially those items that catch our attention.  Of course, we want to hear from you!   Let us know what you think about our activities.  If you don’t see it here but would like to hear about it, let us know that, too.  Ask us questions.  Let us know what you think of this blog — we’re new at blogging.

Mary and David