WOOD COUNTY TEACHER SELECTED FOR WVU MOUNTAINEER MATHEMATICS MASTER TEACHER FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
PARKERSBURG – Wood County Schools is pleased to announce that Sara Klesel, a mathematics teacher at Parkersburg South High School, has been selected as a “Mountaineer Mathematics Master Teachers (M3T) Noyce Fellow,” as part of a $3 million grant to West Virginia University (WVU) from the National Science Foundation’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, supported by additional grants from the West Virginia Department of Education. Klesel is one of 19 M3T Noyce Fellows in the first cohort participating in the project, representing 17 counties across West Virginia.
“It’s an honor to be part of the M3T project. I am excited about the work we are doing, and hope it impacts student learning and teacher leadership in mathematics across the state,” said Klesel.
The M3T project builds on previous efforts to support secondary mathematics teacher leadership and instructional improvement across West Virginia, which started in Pocahontas County about a decade ago. Over the next five years, fellows will work with M3T project leads, Dr. Matthew Campbell, assistant professor of mathematics education at WVU, and Joanna Burt-Kinderman, instructional coach for Pocahontas County Schools, who was recognized in 2019 by Education Week as a “Leader to Learn From,” as well as a team of other mathematics and mathematics education faculty at WVU.
“We have a unique and powerful opportunity to work with these outstanding mathematics teachers across West Virginia over the next five years,” said Campbell. “Our state’s teachers should be at the center of improving mathematics teaching and learning and, with this cohort of fellows, we will work to understand how to make that possible.”
M3T Noyce Fellows must continue to serve in their role as a middle or high school mathematics teacher as part of their commitment to the program. Fellows will work as a network to identify and solve specific problems in their own classrooms and share that learning. In time, they will also lead similar improvement efforts with teachers in their local school or district context. By the end of the project, fellows will be supported to mentor other emerging teacher leaders across the state.
“Math teachers’ problems, solutions and perspectives are too often locked in their classrooms, where no one can learn from or with them,” said Burt-Kinderman. “M3T fellows will link problems of teaching and learning to potential solutions across the state and nation and, as we learn to improve, we are excited for teachers across the state to learn with us.”
Since they began their work with the project this fall, fellows have met regularly to build their improvement network, attended national conferences virtually, and collaborated with the West Virginia Department of Education on the development of materials for educators across the state. In the spring, fellows will begin a process of developing, testing, and refining possible solutions to problems they have identified in their mathematics classrooms.
“Sara Klesel is a prime example of the wonderful and dedicated teachers we have working for our students every day in Wood County Schools,” said Will Hosaflook, superintendent of Wood County Schools. “We are proud of her accomplishments and honored to have a teacher of her caliber serving our students.”
The M3T program will be accepting applications for a second cohort of fellows in Spring 2021, with a goal to support at least 40 fellows total.