PAESMT
Oregon Award Recipient 2006-'07
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Tammy RasmussenFullerton IV Elementary School, Roseburg, Oregon |
Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching
Established by Congress in 1983, the annual presidential awards program identifies highly
qualified mathematics and science teachers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto
Rico, the U.S. Territories, and the U.S. Department of Defense Schools. This year’s recipients—
recommended for the award by a panel of leading mathematicians, scientists, and educators are
7th-12th grade teachers. This year's winner is Tammy Rasmussen.
Tammy Rasmussen has always been a Roseburg girl and she has a lot to share with her colleagues. Her initial interest in becoming a teacher began in England, where she spent a year as an exchange student in 1987. She was in an all-girls boarding school and found herself homesick, so her teacher sent her to work with the five-year-old girls. It was then that she found her love for working with children. Upon returning to Oregon she enrolled at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. She then transferred to Western Oregon State University where she received her diploma in 1993. She is a lifelong learner and is currently pursuing her master’s degree. She is involved in the OMLI project (Oregon Math Leadership Institute), which works to improve the content knowledge of teachers related to math instruction. Within the OMLI project she has developed her math content knowledge through classes in Discrete Mathematics, Probability and Statistics, Spherical Geometry and Number. She feels that others may think this is a waste of time for a kindergarten teacher, but says of herself:
“I am a student of Math and feel strongly that every teacher who teaches Math must
understand the concepts they are teaching. Many of the concepts in Discrete
Mathematics involved questions about patterning, groups of sets, and problem solving.
These are kindergarten concepts.
“As a teacher of math at any level, we must continue to be students of the subject. We
must know where we are, where we have been, and where we are going. I believe that is
what I do best and is at the heart of my teaching.”
Her school has partnered with the George Lucas Foundation to create a video highlighting the math instruction and integrated approach Fullerton IV Elementary School has implemented. Their video was highlighted at the National Math Symposium at the Skywalker Ranch in October 2005. The video can be viewed at www.edutopia.org. Professionally, Tammy has worked to co-author a grant from the Schools of Distinction. Fullerton school was awarded the Math Achievement award in 2005 and she traveled to Washington D.C. to accept this distinction. The featured lesson in Tammy’s PAEMST application was built around the Algebraic Relationships strand. Students already had the ability to notice how two objects are the same or different and could apply that concept to another object. Building on that prior knowledge, students were asked to sort objects that were the same or different. Patterning has been used daily in the classroom with calendar markers, counting bears, unifi x cubes and even children’s snacks. To make the lesson applicable to real life, children were given multiple opportunities to identify similarities and differences with a set of four pictures of different types of butterflies. Later they were asked to color them symmetrically. Students worked in whole groups, small differentiated groups, and independently. The use of a document camera was pivotal in this lesson. The lesson concluded by organizing the data that was collected.
Tammy gives credit to her instructional assistant as well as to the many
parents who volunteer in her classroom. The effective use of other adults has been a dynamic part of my teaching. All of the adults in the classroom know how to adjust instruction for the different understanding that students bring with them to school.
Tammy gives praise to her husband, Tim, for his patience and support. They have two children, Gabriel (9) and Dalton (6), the latter being her student last year in Kindergarten. This year she will be an instructional coach for the Roseburg School district and will be
providing demonstration lessons, peer coaching, and show how data drives instruction in the classroom.
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