The field of adult numeracy lost a champion on January 25th when Mary Jane Schmitt passed away at the age of 67. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=mary-jane-schmitt&pid=174046043.
Mary Jane dedicated herself to math learning and teaching that was meaning-based. She broke the long tradition of silent math classrooms where students completed worksheets rather than puzzle over, describe and reason about mathematical or real life situations with others. She did this in her math classes at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, and later through curriculum and professional development work in Massachusetts, and then nationally and internationally.
In the late1980’s, working in the Massachusetts Department of Education, Mary Jane was the architect of Massachusetts’ System for Adult Basic Education Support, which, strives to be a highly creative practitioner-led professional development effort.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published its new Standards in the late 1980’s, and this call to action fueled Mary Jane’s efforts to transform adult numeracy and mathematics. She convened the Massachusetts ABE Math Team and had all 20 practitioners in professional development sessions, learning how subtraction could be pictured with tiles. From 2000-2005, along with a committed team at TERC, she developed and published the EMPower curriculum. Such accomplishments would have been a respectable legacy, but she worked another eight years on professional development in statewide initiatives, first through the Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy (TIAN) Project, then through the Adult Numeracy Initiative (ANI), now a nationally recognized and popular adult numeracy professional development initiative. Because of her insistence on a serious commitment to professional development for adult educators, almost all of us have been touched directly or felt the ripple effects of Mary Jane’s efforts.
Mary Jane surrounded herself with people with a strong work ethic. No slacker herself, she refused to do a workshop with anything less than a valise or two of manipulatives and handouts. Even when her commitment to hands-on learning took its toll, meant driving the baggage through New York traffic and climbing endless stairs with it in old New York school buildings, she was undaunted. She thought adult ed teachers and learners were worth it. Anywhere adult education was of secondary importance in policy or funding, Mary Jane was a tireless advocate. In adult education, where numeracy was an unacknowledged step-sister of literacy, Mary Jane spoke out. Now it’s up to us. Up to us to insist that adult numeracy continue to be taken seriously in discussions of priorities and policy within adult education. It’s up to us to remind those overseeing education more broadly that learning doesn’t stop with a high school or college degree; adults deserve high quality lifelong learning options. It’s up to us to support each other as we make our classrooms and informal learning settings spaces for meaningful mathematical teaching and learning, by participating in the Adult Numeracy Network (ANN) or by making time and space in other venues to learn from each other.
Comments
Martha,
Thank you for your posting. Mary Jane Schmitt forever changed me as an instructor. Her influence help me to change so that I could become a better instructor to my learners. Her loss is a tragedy to the field and she will be missed. I am going to share a memory of our first encounter, Mary Jane had come to Kansas as part of the Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy (TIAN) innovative. She was to be our trainer for this year long endeavor. Being new to adult education, I was excited to participate in any math training because I loved math it was my chosen field of study in college. I remember her infectious smile and laughter as I would struggle with the math in this training. After all, I knew mathematics; I had studied higher-level math at the university so why was I struggling with how to show visually how to multiply two fractions? It was her passion about needing to have multiple strategies and a context for the math content when teaching adult learners that forever changed me. Later in life, I knew her as my colleague – someone who would still push my thinking and give me problems to mull over to help push me even further. I am going to miss Mary Jane but she is still impacting the field through me and others that she has touched, too.
I want to invite others to share their stories of Mary Jane Schmitt to honor this lovely lady whose passion, dedication, and love of math instruction has helped many adult learners achieve their academic goals by forever changing the instructors in the field.
Brooke
The last time I commented on this list was for similar sad circumstances when another amazing adult numeracy person, Myrna Manly passed away. To hear of Mary Jane's death was equally as sad. Like with Myrna, I was extremely fortunate to meet the talented and effervescent Mary Jane in 1998 in Halifax, Canada at the first meeting of the numeracy expert group for what became the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALLS), and this too was the start of another strong professional and personal friendship, even via long distance from where I am based in Australia. We maintained some intermittent email contact over the last few years, and the last time we caught up face-to-face was in Boston in June 2010 when I was there for work on PISA. We had our usual fun and positive night out together, not only reminiscing of past wonderful times together, but talking of families, and of course plotting ways about how to still make a difference in the teaching and learning of math, particularly for adult learners.
There are too many particular memories I would love to share about Mary Jane. But very strong in my memory are the times we stayed with each other - in Boston on a couple of occasions and then once I was privileged to have her stay with me and my family here DownUnder in Melbourne. My now grown up kids remember her (who wouldn't!) - one commented yesterday that she made the most wonderful vegetarian soup, not something I had remembered (obviously another skill she had!). On another occasion, my partner and I had a very memorable long evening in Boston at her house - MJ first took us out shopping for live lobsters and a number of varying other courses and a small group of us went back to her place, and with some neighbours cooked all the food and drank way much too much Australian (and other) wines. Then we wandered down the street later that night to listen to live music in a local bar. It was a very boisterous and fun night - and most likely a lot of the conversations was still around adult literacy and numeracy education, such was her passion and interests.
We collaborated not only on the ALLS work, but on other professional activities and conversations. One of the most rewarding for me was in co-authoring with her a long article for a NCSALL/Jossey Bass on numeracy in ABE. That meant a lot of sharing, discussions and very close collaborations. Like with Myrna, we saw issues about adult numeracy in very similar ways.
I have missed those conversations and contacts, and probably as with many of you who knew MJ, you will be regretting not keeping in closer touch with her. I do.
Memory of Mary Jane, her influences and friendship, and her inspiration, will remain with me for the rest of my life. MJ's contributions to adult numeracy education will certainly remain valued and her influences continue to be significant to not only the education sector in the US but also to education in other countries such as Australia.
My condolences to Mary Jane's family and to her friends and close colleagues.