Who We Are

We are a collaborative team of math and special educators, working to enable teachers and administrators to make middle school mathematics more accessible to a wide range of students, particularly those with special needs.

Staff

Fred Gross, M.Ed., Co-Principal Investigator
Fred Gross, a managing project director at EDC since 2001, serves as PI on the Addressing Accessibility in Mathematics project. He directed the development of student centered math lessons and led a development team in the creation of online courses for PBS Teacherline and the US Department of Defense schools. He was the K-8 mathematics curriculum coordinator for the Sudbury, MA school district for 10 years and has taught K-12 mathematics for 17 years. He has organized courses and workshops on instructional practices and led a study group for special educators and math teachers on how to support students with special needs in learning mathematics. In addition, he was the Mathematics and Equity Specialist at the Regional Alliance at TERC and is a trained Anti-Racism instructor for Empowering Multicultural Initiatives. He is author of several articles and The Power of Numbers: A Mathematics Curriculum in a Social Studies Context.

Amy Brodesky, M.Ed., Principal Investigator
Amy Brodesky has been the project director for the Addressing Accessibility in Mathematics project since it began in 2000. She has extensive experience developing mathematics education materials, including Mathscape middle school mathematics curriculum units and online courses for PBS Teacherline. She is co-author of Digging into Data with TinkerPlots, a book of data analysis lessons for the middle grades. During the past 22 years at EDC, she has designed and led a variety of professional development programs, including workshops and summer institutes for school districts. She also developed educational software for the "Exploring Measurement, Time, and Money" Series for grades K-6 for IBM.

Anna McTigue, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate
Anna McTigue has been on the Accessibility in Mathematics project since 2002. She has over twenty years of experience working in special education as a teacher educator, administrator and special education teacher in urban school districts. She worked as a teacher and administrator in the Boston Public Schools for 10 years, and taught and supervised pre-service teachers of special education, mathematics, and science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). She received her doctoral degree from UWM in Urban Education with a focus on special education, English Language Learners, and cultural diversity. At EDC Anna has been responsible for development of professional development materials and courses, which involve the collaboration of regular and special educators in course work and study groups to ensure that middle grades students with disabilities and those who are ELLs fully participate in the mathematics curriculum. Research activities have included formative development of programs and qualitative research.

Emily Fagan, Senior Curriculum Design Associate
Emily Fagan has developed online and print curriculum, professional development, and evaluation materials in mathematics for seven years. She was Project Director of the MathScape Curriculum Center, a project funded by the National Science Foundation to support schools, districts, and teachers implementing new math materials. She also directed the revision of MathScape: Seeing and Thinking Mathematically, funded by Glencoe-McGraw Hill. Prior to joining EDC, Emily taught high school and middle school mathematics for nine years in inclusion classrooms in Philadelphia and Massachusetts. She was a mentor teacher and member of the Massachusetts Faculty of the Coalition of Essential Schools. She has long been interested in innovation and accessibility in mathematics education.

Cheryl Tobey, Mathematics Education Specialist
Cheryl Tobey’s work focuses on diagnostic and formative assessment practices and the development of materials and professional development for math educators. Tobey is a Mathematics Specialist for two projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)—Formative Assessment in the Mathematics Classroom: Engaging Teachers and Students (FACETS); and Differentiated Professional Development: Building Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching Struggling Students (DPD)—as well as the Eliciting Mathematical Misconceptions (EM2) study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). From 2001- 2008, Tobey was Senior Program Director for Mathematics at the nonprofit Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) where she directed multiple NSF and Title IIA State Mathematics and Science Partnership projects each in the area of mathematics education. Before joining MMSA in 2001, Tobey was a high school and middle school mathematics educator for 10 years.

Michelle Raymond, Technology Specialist
Michelle Raymond is a Technology Specialist for the Learning and Teaching division at EDC. As a technology specialist, she has vast experience in IT management, executive level administrative support and extensive web site development.

| ©2003-2012 Education Development Center, Inc. All rights reserved.
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. ESI-9911831. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.