The Exeter Mathematics Institute (EMI) consists of one-week workshops offered during the summer at no cost to selected urban school districts. The EMI program has been in existence since 1992, and has a tradition of continued partnership with several urban school districts. EMI presently offers courses at the Fort Worth Independent School District, the DeKalb County School District outside of Atlanta the Phoenix Union High School District, and the Dallas Independent School District. In addition EMI has previously worked with Dade County School District and Chicago Public School District. EMI encourages the participation of smaller school districts in close proximity to the primary school district. This cooperative model has been very successful in the Fort Worth area.
The instructors for these workshops are members of the mathematics department of the Phillips Exeter Academy. Exeter is an independent, coeducational boarding school of approximately 1000 students in grades 9-12. Founded in 1781, Exeter is located in southeastern New Hampshire.
All salaries and expenses for the workshops are funded by The Sherman Fairchild Foundation. The only costs of the program to the school districts are stipends to the participating teachers enrolled in the workshops. In addition, the district is responsible for making an appropriate workshop site available, photocopying handouts, and providing access to computers and graphing calculators.
Our goal is simply to help improve the mathematics education delivered to students in urban public schools. We believe that certain principles of quality mathematics education apply whether one is teaching a class of high achieving students or a class of less able students. These principles include:
Besides the fact that EMI is virtually free of cost to participating districts, the most important difference in the EMI program is that the individual districts help determine the curriculum for the workshop week. Each district knows best what areas are most needed for their teachers. The director of EMI works closely with district administrators during the winter prior to the workshop to determine what courses and what content areas will be emphasized. Every district's workshop is uniquely designed according to their needs and wishes. Therefore, the EMI workshop for Fort Worth may be considerably different than the one in Dekalb County, GA. There will certainly be common themes and philosophy, but the content areas emphasized may differ greatly. In the summer of 1999, the emphasis in Dallas is on Algebra I and specifically the linear and quadratic functions. In Phoenix, two of the three courses being offered involve statistics, data analysis, and probability. These will be very different workshops, but hopefully both will accomplish the goal of helping the participating teachers improve in their teaching of mathematics in the classroom. EMI is committed to being flexible and responsible to the needs of the districts participating in the program.
The EMI workshop typically runs from Monday through Friday of a selected week during the summer vacation period. Monday through Thursday are designed to each have six hours of instructional time, while Friday is typically a shortened day with three to four hours of contact time. Depending on the number of planned participants, EMI will staff the workshop with anywhere from three to five instructors. The desired ratio for each EMI class is 12:1, so approximately 36 participants are expected for a three-instructor workshop. Each instructor will teach a course that is designed according to the content and area emphasis determined during the previous winter. Participating teachers pre-select their course preferences and are assigned to two courses for the week. The larger the participant pool, the greater the number of instructors, and therefore the more variety in course offerings. Although this is a basic model used for many EMI workshops, EMI remains committed to being flexible and designing a week most helpful to the participants. For instance, during the summer of 1999, a course emphasizing topics from pre-calculus and calculus was designed for the Fort Worth week in which participants spent their entire week in that one course.
EMI is committed to helping improve mathematics instruction in the classroom for students in urban school districts. If you are interested in learning more about the program, please contact either the director of the program or the foundation's primary consultant at the addresses and phone numbers listed below.
| Mr. Eric Bergofsky - Director, EMI |
Mr. Irwin Kaufman Sherman Fairchild Foundation 8224 Paseo Vista Dr. Las Vegas, NV 89128 702-242-8280 702-242-8281 (fax) prime5@ix.netcom.com |