PROGRAM MISSION AND PHILOSOPHY
With federal funds provided under the Adult Education Act (AEA), the New York State Department of Workforce Preparation and Continuing Education has established a network of ten Regional Adult Educator Staff Development Consortia designed to deliver comprehensive and diversified staff development to adult educators across the state. Along with providing accessible, consistent, and timely programs for professional growth, a major goal of the Consortia network has been to develop turn-key trainers from among the various categories of adult education practitioners in the state. In the spring of 1997, as direct result of this effort, and under the leadership of the Director of the Central New York Staff Development Consortium and the State Education Department, seven teacher-trainers were selected from the up-state and Long Island Consortia to develop and present numeracy Workshops for teacher/trainers and teachers of adult education in their regions. These Workshops have been designed to provide adult educators with instructional activities which help implement the New York State Standards, the skills and competencies identified in the SCANS (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills). They also are planned to aid adult educators in understanding the implications of the research done by the Adult Numeracy Practitioners Network (ANPN) that was reported in their publication, A Framework for Adult Numeracy Standards: The Mathematical Skills and Abilities Adults Need to be Equipped for the Future, by providing actual classroom applications of its principles. The workshops, titled Meaningful Activities That Help", bring to teacher/trainers and practitioners "hands on" practical instructional activities designed to help teacher, as well as student, make the connections between: math concepts and operations, math and the world of work, and textbook math and math in daily life.
Among the numeracy workshops objectives are to assist participant in:
understanding a sensible order and sequence of topics related to number sense;
developing specific strategies to facilitate numeracy learning for a variety of learners;
exploring the use of tools for teaching number sense, including calculators and manipulatives, estimating, recognizing patterns;
reviewing basic concepts of number operations as a basis for helping teachers link new math learning to previous learning and teaching concepts before rules.
These workshops have been well received and evaluations have bean extremely positive. However, the training (as a result of the distances and finances involved) has one obvious flaw, the lack of the availability of the follow-up necessary to maintain participant initiative and willingness- on their own- to develop and implement additional educational practices and activities suggested by the training or to receive necessary additional assistance from workshop trainers. This Web page is designed help with such follow-up and to assist teacher trainers and teachers in implementing techniques and strategies by providing practical lesson activities and materials for mathematics instruction that will augment and support the objectives of the state-wide numeracy workshops.