Sarah Tully, EdSource

Instructor Estela Guzman, eye, points to math problems as teachers My Lu and Tricia Cummings look on during a professional development session in Santa Ana Unified Schoolhouse District on June 25, 2015.

Sarah Tully, EdSource

Teacher Estela Guzman, center, points to math problems as teachers My Lu and Tricia Cummings expect on during a professional development session in Santa Ana Unified Schoolhouse District on June 25, 2015.

School's out for summer – although possibly not, if your job is to teach the Mutual Cadre Land Standards.

Interviews with officials in half dozen large California school districts and a major charter school system have plant that several hundred of their teachers take signed up for – and in many cases by now already completed – summer professional evolution programs provided at their schools to help them transition to the new standards.

EdSource Today is tracking how the six districts – Fresno Unified, San Jose Unified, Elk Grove Unified, Garden Grove Unified, Visalia Unified and Santa Ana Unified – and the Aspire Public Schools charter organisation are implementing the Common Core State Standards in California.

The summer learning opportunities are meant to accost a major challenge facing districts throughout California: making sure their teachers are fairly prepared to help students conform to the new, more rigorous standards in mathematics, literacy and English language arts.

The district-provided classes add to Common Core-focused educational programs that have been recruiting thousands of teachers from all over the state. These include a one-twenty-four hours, multi-site teachers' summit, co-sponsored by organizations including the national nonprofit New Teacher Center and the California Section of Educational activity, that is expected to concenter upwardly to xx,000 educators, and a two-twenty-four hours Thou-12 "summer establish" in Indian Wells, California, on July xix-20. Additionally, from August 4-6 at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association Arts Initiative will offer a three-day plan chosen "Inventiveness at the Cadre," featuring newly developed professional learning projects that link the visual and performing arts with the Common Core standards.

Kristen Soares, president of the Association of Contained California Colleges and Universities, said she was encouraged past both what she said was an unusual number of instructor teaching programs and the eagerness with which teachers are signing upwardly for them. "We're seeing a combination of resource, demand and want," she said.

The districts' summer programs range from two-hour workshops to intensive five-mean solar day workshops focused mainly on helping students learn to meet the standards' new requirement that they be able to explain their reasoning in mathematics classes. In four of the districts surveyed, programs accept been funded past philanthropies that support the Mutual Cadre.

Uncommon math in Santa Ana

Among the six districts and Aspire, the 56,000-student Santa Ana Unified School District, California's sixth-largest schoolhouse district, is offer some of the most extensive summertime programs focused on the Common Core. These include two 5-solar day workshops focused on the new math standards for tertiary- and 6th-grade teachers. The classes are taught by instructors from the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative, based in Morgan Hill, Calif., which provides professional development in mathematics instruction throughout the state.

The math workshops accept been sponsored in office by a $6 meg, five-twelvemonth grant from the South.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, which through its Math in Mutual initiative has given similar grants for Mutual Cadre professional development in Thou-eight math to nine other school districts. These include two districts existence tracked by EdSource Today: Elk Grove Unified, near Sacramento, and Garden Grove Unified, in Orange Canton.

In Santa Ana, math teachers have been paid on average $897 to attend the summer workshops. The district'due south banana superintendent, Michelle Rodriguez, said 280 teachers were quick to register for the two summer sessions, afterward which they will be given follow-upwards training and demonstration lessons during the school year through another professional development organization, the Irvine Math Project.

During a grade at the starting time of the workshops, held in tardily June at Santa Ana's Spurgeon Intermediate School, simple schoolhouse mathematics teachers learned strategies to coax students to explain how they get in at answers to math problems. A key goal in Mutual Cadre math is to go students to figure out solutions to problems in multiple ways and then explain their thinking, rather than simply memorizing formulas.

Trainers suggested that teachers use phrases such as "Tell me more," and "Good endeavour," even if the initial answer is incorrect.

"Information technology's a big shift," said 3rd-course teacher Tricia Cummings, one of the participants. "Students are not used to orally explaining their answers."

The classroom walls were covered with posters that teachers had produced over the previous 3 days, illustrating various ways to answer math issues, such as with words, pictures, and graphs. 1 of the posters, for instance, showed unlike ways to calculate the amount of ingredients required in a recipe co-ordinate to how many people it would serve.

"What I've gotten out of this is how to talk about math with my kids," Cummings said. "Information technology's fabricated me more than excited."

In another classroom, vith-form math teachers talked about means to help the district'south many English-language learners.

After the training, one of the teachers, Nikolina Petrova, said she had learned that using unfamiliar words such as "factor" or "quotient" could arrive the way of English language learners' ability to grasp math concepts, whereas using simpler language, like "interruption into smaller numbers" might help them sympathise. Learning the formal terms for the concepts could come up after that.

In what Rodriguez said was the commune'south single mandatory summertime program, Santa Ana has contracted with the Buck Establish for Educational activity, based in Novato, California, to train 100 new teachers in project-based learning, an increasingly popular, mostly easily-on method. Proponents say the approach is well-suited to run into Common Core standards that await students to amend their collaboration, advice, and critical-thinking skills. Rodriguez said the teachers had agreed to nourish the program when they were hired.

Most of Santa Ana Unified's professional person development for teachers has been offered over the summer, Rodriguez said, to reduce the time that teachers spend out of the classroom during the schoolhouse year to attend such programs. The district is one of many in California that has reported recent difficulties in finding well-qualified substitute teachers, due to a dwindling supply of teachers in the state.

A boost in summer preparation

The ii other district beneficiaries of Bechtel grants are likewise offering extensive summer programs for their teachers. Garden Grove Unified, which with 46,500  students is the xith-largest commune in California, has also been providing Common Core grooming in mathematics and English language arts during two ii-week "summer institutes" for K-8 teachers. In these sessions, teachers have been collaborating to program lessons aligned to the new state standards and then delivering them to students enrolled in summer school.

The Garden Grove district is likewise offering an optional "Super Week," open up to all of its teachers, in late August, merely before the get-go of the school year.  The classes, lasting two to seven hours each, include a refresher course in "foundational skills" geared to the standards, a course in "Dialogue, Debate and Soapbox," to assist teachers improve students' communication skills, and a workshop titled "Got iPad? Now What?" for teachers seeking to be more comfortable with new information technology.

Elk Grove Unified is the fifth-largest district in California, with 61,000 students. It is offering more than a dozen Common Core-focused professional development workshops throughout the summer, lasting a couple hours to two days each, and taught past district program specialists on Mutual Cadre math, English, and social sciences. Topics include new strategies for math instruction, guidance on how to integrate technology into the curriculum, and "21st Century Literacy" – a term that as defined past the National Council of Teachers of English language includes the capacities to manage new information technologies, including multimedia texts, and to collaborate with others to pose and solve issues. The commune's teachers are contractually obligated to attend one professional development course per year, but are eligible for payment if they take more than i.

The Fresno Unified School Commune is some other major beneficiary of educational philanthropy, having received a $5.1 1000000 grant in 2022 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant was specifically intended to support professional evolution, and some of information technology will pay for 5 days of "curriculum camps" tied to the Common Core for English, math and social studies teachers pedagogy grades seven to 9. Fresno is as well providing 10 half-day sessions this summertime to familiarize teachers with the district'south new Common Core math materials, and will additionally offering training in the standards at thirty of its simple school sites, one to five days before the school year begins.

The Aspire Public Schools system, which operates 35 schools in California, is besides offering summer Common Cadre-focused classes for teachers, with two-day mandatory "Common Cadre Institutes" in two of the organization'southward main regions: the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Central Valley. The programs are tailored to teachers of K-5 English, Thou-five math, and 6-12 science, math, and humanities, and amid other goals aim to familiarize teachers with new curriculum materials and assessments. Every bit part of the training, science teachers will be offered a survey of the Next Generation Science Standards.

Two of the six districts surveyed past EdSource Today – San Jose Unified and Visalia Unified – completed their summertime professional training in June. San Jose'south principal offerings were week-long sessions for K-five teachers focused on reading and math instruction tied to the Common Core. In Visalia, in the San Joaquin Valley, the school commune provided two-day math workshops for Yard-6 teachers. It also offered a two-day workshop on writing, geared to the new standards, for K-6 teachers.

Uniting the school districts and other providers of summertime professional development is a great involvement in ensuring the success of the new Common Core standards, said Soares, at the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. "And that'due south a really expert thing," she said, "given their importance to our students and our state."

EdSource reporter Sarah Tully contributed to this report.

EdSource Today'due south coverage of the Mutual Core is supported by philanthropies including the Gates and Bechtel foundations, both of which are mentioned in this story. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.

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