McAllen PD3

Welcome to the website for the McAllen PD³ Project.

Park City Math Institute (PCMI) received a 3-year Math Science Partnership Initiative grant from the National Science Foundation.

“Totaling some $5.5 million over three years, the funding provides for an expanded Secondary School Teachers Program in the summer and for the design and implementation of a comprehensive in-year program of teacher professional development in three school districts in the United States: Cincinnati (Ohio), McAllen (Texas), and Seattle (Washington). The in-year program is known as PD³, which stands for "PCMI and Districts Partner to Design Professional Development." In each district, the PCMI three-fold model of 1) continuing to do mathematics, 2) analyzing practice, and 3) becoming a resources to one's peers, will be tailored and implemented as the official professional development program for math teachers in selected middle and high schools in each district. Teachers and administrators from each of the three school districts will participate fully in designing professional development offerings that, based PCMI's three-fold model, will be unique to the needs of their own teachers and curriculum. PCMI's was the only Institute Prototype award given in the Math Science Partnership program's 2003 cohort of grants.”

Texas State University goal as a subawardee in this grant is to support and enhance the McAllen ISD mathematics program and the Park City Math Institute (PCMI) in developing teacher leaders, and to assist McAllen in developing a teacher led, self-sustaining learning community among the math teachers that takes full advantage of the teacher-leaders who are trained at PCMI. This program seamlessly weaves together Texas State University Mathworks summer math camps, teacher led professional development for the district, and PCMI activities. Texas State support is focused on the middle schools, with a goal of involving all of the math teachers in grades 6-8 at Morris and Deleon Middle Schools. These model programs can then be replicated at the other 4 middle schools—Travis, Brown, Lincoln, and Cathey. If successful, this could be a model for how to use teacher leaders to provide an exciting, new, cost-effective model for K-12 professional development in mathematics that is self-sustaining. Moreover, this model provides a continuous feedback loop to university faculty that will also allow the university to more effectively train future teachers.