Being on the margins :(

 I've been following the development of math OER and there's a neat one called Illustrative Math.   It is not only open, but the activities tend to have a lot of solid concept-building in them as well as the procedural regular stuff.   Some people are even making lessons using geogebra and desmos to go with the lessons.  

  Imagine my happiness when I was allowed to join the "review team" for the high school math they're working on... and that they were planning on including lessons for the NCTM-recommended "extra hour support" class that struggling students would benefit from.   

   There wasn't much to review... what they had was brief reviews of pre-requisite procedures for the lessons.   they said they were going to do more with it later... so I commented on what was there and suggested that these learners -- given an extra chunk of instructional time -- could benefit from more intensive concept development.   So, rather than just review the procedures for exponents, I suggested lessons that developed the exponent concepts.   

   We got the response to our reviews and ... the support wasn't even mentioned.   I emailed and inquired, and it seems that might not get funded so they haven't invested any more resources into it. 

    Hey, it's not as if we have a problem w/ numeracy in theUS, right? 

    I wish I were more than one little voice from the margins... 

Comments

Those voices on the margins matter even when they're not listened to.  It does stink when you don't get a response, but keep voicing!  Could you provide a link to the Illustrative Math materials?

 I clicked to check the link and saw their claim to have "advanced" support for ELL and disabilities.   It's more advanced than ... ignoring them, but no, it's not "advanced."   In all the lessons I saw, it amounted to suggesting things like graphic organizers -- not providing examples of them, or anything... I had said that in that "extra hour" that teachers could actually use *different* (e.g. concrete-representational-abstract) approaches instead of procedural review, and I linked to an example).   

     I wish I knew the right people to 'tag,' because I think tying the very visual geogebra to the lessons in structured, systematic ways could change lots of peoples lives for the better. It would take people who know how to do geogebra (I'm trying but it's very quirky -- like PHotoshop except without a million people posting tutorial videos on YouTube...)   and people who know from concrete-to-abstract development progressions.... and time...