As a self-professed mathematics zealot, Judy Kysh faces a seemingly impossible mission: converting masses of math-phobic schoolchildren and their teachers into enthusiastic problem solvers. But she succeeds. Her colleagues say she has been a revolutionary force for nearly two decades, converting hundreds of math teachers into born-again math learners. And they in turn have improved the chances of thousands of students for getting into universities. In 1982 Kysh was hired by a committee, including math professor Tom Sallee, as director of UC Davis' newly formed Northern California Mathematics Project, which is now part of the Division of Education's Center for Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools. Kysh's job was to develop programs to improve the teaching and learning of math for K-12 teachers. In 1989 Sallee, Elaine Kasimatis, associate mathematics professor at California State University, Sacramento, and Kysh proposed ideas for four yearlong courses to better prepare more students for college math. As the teachers who field-tested the courses talked with other teachers, word spread so rapidly that demand for the materials outstripped the project's ability to disseminate them. In a creative response, the three public educators formed a private nonprofit corporation to provide workshops for teachers and to publish the materials through what they called the College Preparatory Mathematics Program. While developing "Algebra I," the first of the program's four courses, they decided to focus on just a few "big ideas" that everyone agreed on. (This method of having students concentrating on six to eight core threads for each course is also practiced by teachers in countries with high student scores in recent international math tests.) More than 60 secondary math teachers contributed to the writing of the College Preparatory Mathematics Program, and many more have led the inservice workshops. This program, which was started with only $1.2 million in grant funding, has now been used by well over a million students. Kysh and Sallee say similar projects typically require $10 to $20 million to fund. 0 0 0 Sallee, calling Kysh one of the "unsung heroes" of the campus, recalls, "When we applied for money, Judy took over, willing to jump in and write, and she's very good at it. It never ceases to amaze me how much she gets done. When we were creating the first course, she would thoroughly analyze five chapters overnight while the rest of us each did two." In 1999 the self-sustaining program, which has thrived and spread from teacher to teacher, was designated as exemplary by the U.S. Department of Education. Jon Sandoval, Division of Education interim director, cites College Preparatory Mathematics as "an excellent example of a collaboration between the division and an academic department." By adapting the latest research in how students learn, the group created a new curriculum that has made radical changes in the way math is taught in a large number of California high schools, Sandoval maintains. As might be expected, a focus of every math institute is having teachers solve problems themselves. Kysh has found that when teachers have the opportunity to do the math and explain their reasoning to each other, all gain new understanding of mathematics-and some for the first time realize that they are capable math learners. "If you are able to think," Kysh explains, "you can deal with these problems. Some elementary teachers' solutions are more elegant-clearer-because high-school teachers tend to use algebra, and for these particular problems, algebra may not be the best tool. "Teachers who were formerly math-phobic realize they are capable problem solvers-and that math makes sense. It's not just a bunch of arbitrary rules." 0 0 0 Current state testing emphasizes multiple-choice tests, which Kysh believes show what students don't know instead of what they know. She sees the big push for test preparation as an exercise in paste-on knowledge, which occurs when a teacher assumes students can't do anything until told how. "I visualize pasting little sticky notes all over kids' heads-too bad they fall off so easily," she says. One of numerous teachers eager to praise Kysh's methods, Kay Garcia of Fairfield High, says using the institute's methods greatly improved her students' success rate and prepared her to meet the rigorous standards to become the first National Board Certified Teacher in her local area. Kysh, Garcia notes, observed classes, answered questions at parents' night and fielded teachers' questions by phone. To keep current, Kysh taught algebra classes in Woodland and Sacramento. Amy Kari, a K-5 math specialist at Rio Vista Elementary School in Bay Point near Pittsburg, says she and other teachers, working with Kysh, "revisited algebra in a successful way. We teachers are less anxious if we like math. "A few years ago, students were becoming math-phobic by third grade but now they say math is their favorite subject." Kysh has dealt with students' math anxiety by getting children one by one to realize that they can understand math. "Once you get kids engaged enough to be successful in their own reasoning," she says, "it's addicting-success builds on success." 0 0 0 Kysh has taught math since the 1960s. Inspired by her grandmother's 1902 degree in the subject from UC Berkeley-"I felt if she could do it, I could," she recalls-she earned her bachelor's and later her master's in math from her grandmother's alma mater. Kysh taught high-school math in Marin County and in Oakland, where she and her fellow teachers developed ways to engage different kinds of learners. By the '70s Kysh had the kind of classroom that she now advocates, including the student group work "with students doing the thinking, talking to each other about their work, and understanding the mathematics they are learning." She is a firm believer that teaching means guiding students as they reason their way to understanding. "Just giving instructions and telling answers doesn't work unless they've asked the question. The teacher's job is to get the student to have the question," she says. For her recent doctorate, Kysh analyzed student talk during group work in "Algebra I" classrooms. She found that the noisy, belligerent talk of an apparently off-task group forced the students in that group to articulate their thoughts and make mathematical arguments. They were actually working at a higher level than another, serious group that worked quietly and completely on-task. She also found that stronger students respond in complete sentences. It makes a case for teachers to ask better questions to force students to do the thinking and articulate the ideas and remember them instead of just supplying a word and not comprehending the relationship, Kysh notes. Her findings further her mission of making math accessible to a much larger group of students and teachers. "We would all be a lot better off," she says, "if more people knew more mathematics. For example, we wouldn't be so easily hoodwinked by bad uses of statistics. "Math is a great brain stimulant. After you've struggled with a problem and finally solved it, something must be released in the brain that gives great pleasure. It has to be good for you."