"P" In-service courses are high quality, convenient, low-cost alternatives to traditionally offered college courses for teachers and secretaries that may be applied toward salary differential requirements and NYS 175 hour PD requirement. To register for a "P" In-service course, please click here and follow the link to The After-School Professional Development Program.

Individuals wishing to attend specific sessions without registering for p-credits should register here.

Getting a New Perspective: Geometric and Visual Thinking in Expected and Unexpected Contexts

This course will explore a variety of geometries in order to increase awareness of what geometry is, and ways it can be incorporated in the classroom. Each class period will feature a presentation on a geometric topic, and then participants will be given the opportunity to engage with this mathematics through interesting problems, discussions, and some related classroom-based explorations.

This course has four main goals:

1. To expose participants to some new mathematics.
2. To give participants substantial time to do mathematics.
3. To give participants time to experience a problem-based pedagogy. This pedagogy emphasizes working in a small group and communicating one's ideas in a variety of ways. As such, it is a pedagogy, that teachers can use to differentiate instruction with their own students.
4. To give participants time and a supportive community in which to reflect on their experiences with goals 1 through 3 in relation to their classroom practice.
   
   The sequencing of the course meetings over a period of months will build a community of teachers, several for whom it will be their first time teaching geometry, and who, with facilitation from the workshop leaders, will support one another in their development as geometry teachers.
   
   The content of this course was carefully chosen to be consistent with recommendations made in Perspective on the Teaching of Geometry for the 21st Century (An ICMI Study), NCTM's Principals and Standards, and NY State's Learning Standards for Mathematics. It is also consistent with recommendations made by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which recently issued its final report.