Monthly webinars were attended by all Regional Math Support Teachers throughout the state, Regional Math Coordinators and other invited guests. These webinars proved to be a powerful motivator for all participants.

Lessons learned through MSP webinars

  • As presenters we  found that the MSPnet webinar platform allowed for far more interactive and engaging sessions than we would have thought possible.
  • By posting a prompt and asking participants to wait 5 minutes until they post, we brought all participants’ voices to the conversation. Nearly 30 minutes were then spent with everyone reading the ‘chat’ replies and responding to each other’s posts. This was a wonderful way to engage all RMSTs and RMCs in having web-based conversations about changes, challenges and breakthroughs happening in their classrooms.
  • We found it relatively easy to pose even messy complex math problems for the group to consider in a webinar format, and found the ‘chat’ to be a good mode where RMSTs and RMCs pose hypotheses, questions and hunches. We had a habit of posing problems that are substantial enough that they are unlikely to be solved during the webinar. RMSTs noted repeatedly how they love taking the problems they’re hooked on in the webinars back to their classrooms.

We turned some of the teaching sessions of the webinars over to selected RMSTs who provided very well received information.

The webinars were all recorded and archived so those few who were unable to attend live could watch the webinars at their own convenience.

All webinars were held on Thursday evenings from 6:30-8:30 pm. We expected to find this to be a difficult time to engage teachers in reflective work around their teaching, but found that we all left refocused and energized.