The Math for America San Diego Noyce Master Teaching Fellows Program (MfA SD Noyce MTF) encompasses a comprehensive leadership program designed to develop key qualities of teacher-leaders: teaching, learning, leading, and influencing. The program is offered through a collaboration between the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Math for America (MfA) San Diego, with the goal of developing 12 teacher leaders in mathematics to help transform mathematics teaching and learning in high needs schools in the San Diego area. These collaborating institutions are part of an on-going partnership, the MfA SD, in which they are joined by two other universities (California State University San Marcos and San Diego State University); three school districts (the Escondido Union High School, Oceanside Unified, and San Diego Unified); and the San Diego County Office of Education. The MfA SD partnership also operates a Noyce Teaching Fellows (TF) program, allowing for synergistic interactions between new teachers (TFs) and the emerging teacher leaders (MTFs), and for leveraging of existing support systems. The national network of MfA is another essential partner whose contributions include a common, electronic fellowship application process, collaboration in the development of evaluative mechanisms, and enhanced fund-raising, as evidenced by the matching funds being provided to this project by MfA national.
Broader Impacts. The MfA SD Noyce MTF Program aims to transform mathematics education in high-need districts by helping teacher leaders to become powerful change agents in their respective spheres of influence. While 12 teachers and their students and colleagues are the direct recipients of this program, the influence of these MTFs extends well beyond the participant group and will do so for much longer than the grant period. The development of the infrastructure which supports this program and the enthusiastic involvement of the three partner districts and the San Diego County Office of Education is ensuring that the Program impacts thousands of students in the region.
Intellectual Merit. The MfA SD is a cohesive collection of interrelated and integrated academic, professional, and social support systems that unites a collection of faculty, well-regarded teacher education programs, strong but under-funded public school districts, and local philanthropists. There is a commonality in purpose and an intellectual glue that bonds their components and adheres the participating professors, fellows, teachers, and administrators. Their shared philosophy is guided by two fundamental questions: 1) what is the mathematics that should be taught in school; and 2) how should it be taught? The intellectual merit of the MfA Noyce MTF SD program lies in the continual restatement of those questions and the reevaluation of the answers by the mathematics and education communities. The program's goals of developing teacher leaders in and for mathematics and developing the infrastructure to sustain these efforts are practical, but they are informed at every stage by these fundamental questions of mathematics teaching and learning.
