Excited About Math - the Fort Bend Best Practices Summit 2015
  

Cathy Seeley spoke to a sold-out conference of Fort Bend County math teachers, and left them with a lot to think about.

She spoke to hundreds of educators from Fort Bend ISD, Lamar CISD, Stafford MSD, and Needville ISD with one recurring message: “math should make sense.” 

- Teachers should constantly ask students if their calculations and estimations make sense.

​- Moreover, students should ask themselves if the answers they have reached make sense.

Dr. Seeley is a past President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and current Senior Fellow at the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas-Austin.  A popular presenter across the United States, Seeley has authored several books on math teaching and learning, including Faster Isn’t Smarter.

The occasion was the 2012 Best Practices in Math Summit sponsored by the Fort Bend P-16 Regional Council.  The Council is a group of business, non-profit, and education representatives that has been working with All Kids Alliance to evolve a “cradle-to-career, collective impact” approach to improving education across the county.  A previous Best Practices Summit – equally successful – took place in 2013 and featured nationally acclaimed mathematics guru, Greg Tang.

The 2015 Summit ended with two rounds of break-out sessions where teachers and math specialists from Fort Bend county’s four school districts and community colleges shared classroom lessons, curricula, and other approaches to teaching.  Two sessions featured the work of the 5th Grade Math Collaborative, a continuous improvement network that is introducing a package of school-level supports for math learning across the county.  The Collaborative is sponsored by the Fort Bend P-16 Regional Council and facilitated by All Kids Alliance.