New MTEP working group shoots for the moon

by Kathy Jaqua, Lisa Amick, Maria Campitelli, Jo’el Johanson, Alyson Lischka, Margaret Mohr Schroeder, Katrina Rothrock, and Gina Wilson, MTEP 2.0 STRETCH Working Group

STRETCHing to support early-career math teachers

What started as a question during a September 2023 MTEP PHUN Workshop—Is there space for a first-year teacher institute?—has grown into something truly inspiring.

Fast forward to 2025, and the answer is a resounding YES. That idea has blossomed into STRETCH: Supporting the Retention of Early Career Teachers of Mathematics, now an official MTEP 2.0 Working Group.

Read on to learn about the journey of how one big question turned into a collaborative, growing, and action-oriented community.

From brainstorm to blueprint

After the initial workshop conversation, a group of participants committed to reconnecting at the February 2024 MTEP Conference. Fourteen participants from nine MTEP teams came together to share what was working in their efforts to support new teachers—and where they were still stretching.

From that energy emerged several ideas: sharing resources (STRETCH materials), a NIC-cast, a shared PDSA cycle, and an ambitious moonshot—a cross-institution Summer Bridge Institute for recent graduates. STRETCH was born from that momentum, and by Summer 2024, a planning team of eight educators from across the MTEP network was hard at work.

Launching the work: PDSA cycles, professional learning and community

During the 2024-25 academic year, STRETCH hosted five virtual sessions plus two fall focus groups. Participants included preservice teachers, cooperating teachers, early career teachers, and math teacher educators. Each session had two goals:

1. Collaborative Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) work: Participants developed and discussed PDSA cycles focused on their own classroom-based problems of practice.
   
2. Targeted professional development sessions: Presenters offered timely sessions on topics participants said they needed most.

• Assessment tools like MCOP2 (Lisa Amick)
  
• Using AI to plan effectively (Margaret Mohr-Schroeder)
  
• Effective classroom questioning (Gina Wilson)

• Understanding school systems
  
• Effective classroom routines
  
• Building classroom community
  
• Professional communication
  
• Work-life balance
  
• Inquiry-based teaching