This has been by far one of the most exciting years in our journey to making sure all our students have access to an excellent math education which I define by classrooms of students experiencing NCTM’s Mathematical Practices on their own problem solving and explorations on a regular basis.

Only 10 percent of our students arrive in our building on track (by anyone’s definition) to pursue higher level math. Over a 3 year journey, we have successfully tripled the number of students who will have the option of taking Calculus as part of their high school career.

The most interesting part for me is that the journey has had very little to do with curriculum, lesson planning or even the quality of our math teachers. Our success has been found in growing communities of learners who walk together and encourage one another toward success. We define success as growing in their learning and being able to demonstrate their thinking. We are defining success as students reaching out to their peers to tutor and encourage. We are defining success as every student knowing that there is a community of adults ready to push them and challenge them to their best even though there will be any number of hurdles in the way. We have defined success as no teacher ever giving up on a student and no student ever thinking they can’t get started no matter how tough the journey has been for them – academically, socially and or emotionally.

I look forward to sharing the successes, challenges and lessons we seek to still learn as we have seen our students success. It has been an exciting and amazing journey with the Class of 2017!