- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 2050676
- First Name Kellie
- Last Name Evans
- Registration Faculty/Administrator/Other
- Discipline Mathematics
- Role Co-PI
- Presenters
Kellie Evans, Emily Mallory, Anthony Lopez, California State University, Northridge
Need
Due to the dire teacher shortage in the greater Los Angeles area (and beyond) and our Noyce Team’s experiences with past Noyce and other Science Education programs, our project’s focus includes recruiting, preparing, advising, and retaining STEM majors to teach in high-need school districts. Scholars have described their experience in our Noyce community as “life-changing.” They greatly appreciate the shared interests and incredible current knowledge of community members who represent all stages of teaching. Noyce Scholar quotes follow.“This is such a great and amazing experience. I love the people, very comfortable and friendly. Had lots of information and helpful tips and tricks for teaching.”“I have felt incredibly supported by the Noyce program and recommend this program to any STEM undergraduate that I know.”“I am very thankful for this community.”“We focus on many new and fun topics at each meeting thanks to the ideas of the leaders.”
Research Questions
Based on our Noyce Team’s decades of work with prospective and current STEM teachers and experiences with past Noyce projects, local schools, and STEM Departments in university settings, our goals for the CSUN Noyce Community are to: Have a strong support system for future and new STEM teachers from when they start as Interns through their first year of teaching (and beyond). Have strategies for dealing with in-person and remote classroom management. Support future teachers to be confident in their decision to become great STEM teachers in high-need school districts. Support future teachers’ learning new technology that enhances STEM teaching and learning. Our identified Project Objectives are to: Introduce 30 potential undergraduates to the possibility of teaching through our Noyce3 Intern program. Provide 45 funding-year scholarships. Prepare ~27 STEM scholars to teach in high need schools. Guide scholars to employment in high need schools. Support Noyce alumni teachers to fulfill 2 year teaching commitment per year of support. Support 36 novice teachers who are Noyce alumni in their first year of teaching. Facilitate 40 virtual lesson study teams with Noyce scholars and their mentor teachers.
Approach
Our project’s framework includes a collaborative team of faculty, early and ongoing engagement in teaching, and professional development and community building opportunities. A key framework is to recruit undergraduates to participate in the Noyce program early as “Noyce Interns”. They receive a small stipend and have no commitment to teach. These early experiences help students decide if teaching is the right direction for them. Most of our Noyce Interns have gone on to become Noyce Scholars and those who haven’t appreciated the experience, which allowed them to explore teaching paths and earn a little funding with no strings attached.Noyce Scholars in their first year teaching full-time are encouraged to stay in the program because new teachers often find the first year to be challenging. We have found that some new teachers don’t know how to reach out or wait too long and become too overwhelmed to reach out. Having first-year teachers in Noyce provides our team an organic way to check-in with them to ensure they get the support they need. Interns and Scholars reflect CSUN’s student population, which includes a large number of first generation college students and has more than 50% Latinx and Hispanic students. Each Scholar and Intern is assigned a Noyce Alum as a Mentor and the entire group, of Interns, Scholars, First-Year Teachers, Mentors, Teachers in Residence and project PIs, meets monthly to discuss an assigned reading, how everyone is doing, challenges and successes. We also have a “Show and Tell” which has included first-year teachers and mentors sharing photos (or a livestream via Zoom) and discussion about their classroom setups, lesson plans that went well (or not), technology tips, discussions about difficult classroom management scenarios, how to deal with students inappropriately using Smartphones during class, and other topics.Scholars are exposed to professional development opportunities through local, regional, and national conferences such as the California Mathematics Council-South Conference, the California Association of Science Educations Meeting, the Western Regional Noyce Conference, the Noyce Summit, and our own GeoGebra Summer Institute. Scholars and Interns also assist in community building outreach events such as CSUN’s Pi Day Celebration where hundreds of local K-12 students come to campus to participate in hands-on STEM activities and enjoy pie prepared by CSUN’s Marilyn Magaram Center. The event is spearheaded by our Noyce co-PIs and requires a significant amount of planning and execution. Our Noyce Scholars design and run activities and network with local teachers and STEM professionals. They also celebrate during an evening portion of the event with a broader CSUN community of students, faculty, staff and administrators.
Outcomes
During PY3 (Spring and Fall 2023), we reviewed applications (26), interviewed qualified applicants (24), and admitted our new Scholars (10) and Interns (9) into our Noyce community. The new Noyce Scholars include five in the credential program and five undergraduates. All of the Noyce Interns are undergraduates. The Intern program is going particularly well. Of the 20 students we have accepted as Noyce Interns, three are still in the program, 10 have become scholars while four have gone into teaching without becoming scholars. The other three former Interns decided that teaching is not the direction they want to go. They made this decision after learning about teaching and were able to walk away without paying any money back. This is exactly what we hoped would be the outcome of the Intern program. We continue to bring new people into our Noyce Program as both Interns and Scholars. At the midpoint in the program we had involved 20 students as Interns (10 have since become Scholars) and 20 students who started as Scholars. Given the severe shortages of STEM teachers in Los Angeles, this is a critical impact. We are on track with recruitment efforts. As of Spring 2024, we have supported 31 scholars, 23 interns, 5 mentor teacher alums, and 2 alum teachers in residence. We had a record number of applicants for Fall 2024 and expect to make offers soon. The job market has been great, with Noyce Scholars getting multiple job offers and being able to switch schools to find the best fit. Budget cuts are beginning to hit local districts; how the current Credential holders fare in their job searches will be telling. Our GeoGebra Summer Institute has been popular, filling and with a long waitlist Summer 2023 and full with a waitlist this summer. Participants are enthusiastic about using GeoGebra in their teaching and to explore mathematics.
Broader Impacts
New this year is a Math Teacher Circle (MTC), run by co-PI Kellie Evans in collaboration with Tania Lopez, Math Department Chair of Northridge Academy High School, which is a public school on the CSUN campus. Each month math teachers, graduate and teacher credential students, undergraduate math majors, Noyce Scholar and Interns, and other math enthusiasts are invited to participate in an evening of math (and free dinner!). We use resources from the Math Circle Network (https://mathcircles.org) and develop our own to provide a supportive environment for current and prospective educators to experience the joy, certainty, and challenges of mathematics and, along the way, to build meaningful partnerships with one another and with us. We aim for the Math Teacher Circle to encourage math majors to consider teaching as a career and to give current teachers ideas they can use in their classrooms and support to stay in the profession. The MTC has allowed for networking opportunities for all participants and better connections between CSUN’s Math Department and local teachers as well as the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM), which hosts the Math Circle Network. The MTC has also led to additional Noyce applicants.
