Project SEED

Project SEED is a mathematics education program which worked in urban school districts across the United States. Project SEED is a nonprofit organization that worked in partnership with school districts, universities, foundations, and corporations to teach advanced mathematics to elementary and middle school students as a supplement to their regular math instruction. Project SEED also provides professional development for classroom teachers. Founded in 1963 by William F. Johntz, its primary goal is to use mathematics to increase the educational options of low-achieving, at-risk students.

The model is to hire people with a high appreciation and love for mathematics, for example, mathematicians, engineers, and physicists to be trained to teach. They are pre-trained in the program to teach Socratically, that is, only by asking questions of the students, rarely ever making statements, and even more rarely, validating or rejecting any answers given. A unique set of hand/arm signals are taught for use by the students constantly throughout the 45 min. lesson to wave their agreement, disagreement, uncertainty, desire to ask a question, partial agreement or desire to amend, or to signal a high five to each answer given by a student to the instructor's leading question. Lessons were lively, rapid paced at times. The signals allow students to support each other, while giving the instructor a way to gauge who's understood, who hasn't got it yet, and even, who is not paying much attention. Various signals also supported classroom management. The classroom atmosphere is one of utmost respect for the inquiry process and students' participation. No student ever feels put down; when their fellow students respectfully disagreed, one is invited to state their case, and the whole class each individually would use whatever signal indicated whether they agreed or disagreed. Logic, detection of patterns, drawing a picture of the problem, and many more reasoning skills were taught. The curriculum addresses primarily algebra and some calculus—math topics with which their regular classroom teacher is often not well versed. Changing the expectations of the students' teachers, parents and family after they witnessed the students' mental abilities to understand and articulate many truths of mathematics, elevated their expectations for the students' academic abilities generating a more positive environment for their academic success.