The AIU’s Math & Science Collaborative offers robust personalized professional learning for mathematics and science teachers and school leaders. Built on research and delivered by experts, these offerings will prepare teachers to develop students as mathematical and scientific thinkers.
Mathematics Events for 2026-27
Use the tabs below to navigate math course offerings by category:
Mathematics Educators
Implementing a Keystone Algebra I Course
Do you struggle with finding curricular materials aligned perfectly with the Keystone Algebra I assessment anchors?
Do you need Algebra I resources that are novel, engaging, and support students’ unfinished learning from prior years?
If so, join us to get access to a carefully sequenced set of materials for Algebra I aligned to the Keystone Algebra I Assessment Anchors. These materials include tasks from open-source resources such Illustrative Mathematics, Amplify Desmos math, and Math Medic.
Throughout our three days together, we will engage in several of the tasks together as well as discuss how to implement them effectively with a diverse population of learners. These materials could be utilized as a primary Algebra I course or as resources to use in a remediation course.
Meeting Dates:
- October 8 | 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- October 20 | 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- November 12 | 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Price: $450/participant. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: Algebra I teachers
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Building Thinking Classrooms: Part 1
Do your students lack confidence and/or motivation to do mathematics?
Are your students content to wait for the right answer from the teacher?
Do your students lack perseverance when the answer is not immediately obvious?
If so, come learn how to Build a Thinking Classroom. A thinking student is an engaged student!
Built on 14 key practices teased out over 15 years of research, it’s a way of teaching that gets students up on their feet, collaborating and thinking through challenging problems on a daily basis.
Part 1 of Building a Thinking Classroom for K-12 will dig into the first 11 chapters of the book including the foundational changes to the classroom such as using thinking tasks, random groups and vertical non-permanent surfaces. We will also delve into supporting students during thinking tasks by how we question students, give hints and extensions, and build student autonomy. Finally, we will focus on lesson closure including consolidating student thinking, note taking, and managing “homework”.
All teachers will receive a copy of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, 14 Teaching Practices for Enhanced Learning as part of their registration fee.
Meeting Dates:
- September 29 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- November 9 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- December 10 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Price: $450/participant. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: K-12 educators and leaders
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Building Thinking Classrooms: Part 2
Part 2 of Building Thinking Classroom for K-12 will dig deeper into the 14 practices and effective implementation strategies. This is not for novices or anyone new to BTC. You must be a K-12 educator or leader who has completed BTC: Part 1 OR you have read the book and are actively attempting to implement the first three toolkits.
Come engage in a professional learning community to learn more about a thinking classroom and collaborate with peers to share ideas and implementation strategies. A thinking student is an engaged student!
Built on 14 key practices teased out over 15 years of research, it’s a way of teaching that gets students up on their feet, collaborating and thinking through challenging problems on a daily basis.
A thinking classroom looks very different from a typical classroom. Students are working in groups rather than individually, they are standing rather than sitting, and the furniture is arranged so as to defront the room. Closer inspection will reveal that the teacher is giving instructions verbally, is answering fewer questions, and has drastically altered the way they give “homework.”
Part 2 focuses on the fine tuning implementation of the first eleven practices and delving into the assessment practices from the following chapters:
- Chapter 12: What We Choose to Evaluate in a Thinking Classroom
- Chapter 13: How We Use Formative Assessment in a Thinking Classroom
- Chapter 14: How We Grade in a Thinking Classroom
All participants are expected to bring their own copy of Building Thinking Classroom in Mathematics, 14 Teaching Practices for Enhanced Learning.
Meeting Dates:
- January 20 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- February 10 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- March 10 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Price: $450/participant. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: K-12 educators and leaders who have completed BTC: Part 1 OR you have read the book and are actively attempting to implement the first three toolkits.
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Mastering Online Math Tools for PSSA and Keystone Success
Is your school ready for the online PSSA and Keystone exams? Ensure your students excel with our comprehensive training.
Join us for an interactive workshop:
- Online Tools Exploration: Discover the online tools available for PSSA and Keystone exams and learn how to prepare your students for success.
- Strategies for Student Perseverance: Discuss with fellow educators how to foster perseverance in students, especially on open-ended and constructed response items.
- Integrating Tools into Ongoing Instruction: Brainstorm ways to incorporate similar tools into your daily teaching to optimize student preparation.
Hands-on Handscoring Review in the afternoon:
- Delve into the life cycle of a PSSA or Keystone exam item
- Engage in handscoring with newly released student responses
Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your students' testing experience and performance!
Meeting Dates: January 28 | 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Price: Free
Audience: Grades 3 - Algebra I educators and leaders
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Effective Teaching Practices in High School Mathematics
Led by Dr. Melissa Boston, Professor of Mathematics at Duquesne University. Join us at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit to learn about why it is important and how to help students engage in productive math talk to make sense of important mathematical content at the high school level.
This 3.5-day session will focus on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) “Effective Teaching Practices,” featured in the book “Taking Action in Grades 9-12 Mathematics.” We will explore how high school mathematics lessons can incorporate “tasks and talk” that:
- promote thinking, reasoning, and problem solving,
- increase student engagement and perseverance, and
- prompt students to build procedural fluency from a conceptual understanding of essential procedures in high school mathematics.
Price: $525/person. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: Secondary mathematics teachers, coaches, and interventionists in grades 8-12.
When: In-person at the AIU
- January 14 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- February 17 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- March 11 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- Virtual Synchronous: April 8, 2027 8:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Where: In-person at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit & Virtual Synchronous
Act 48 hours will be awarded pending approval by PDE for those who attend all sessions and complete related assignments.
Developing Fluency with Addition and Subtraction
According to NCTM's position paper on procedural fluency, "procedural fluency is the ability to apply procedures efficiently, flexibly, and accurately; to transfer procedures to different problems and contexts; to build or modify procedures from other procedures; and to recognize when one strategy or procedure is more appropriate to apply than another."
This course will focus on the four declarations in this position paper, including:
- Conceptual understanding must precede and coincide with instruction on procedures.
- Procedural fluency requires having a repertoire of strategies.
- Basic facts should be taught using number relationships and reasoning strategies, not memorization.
- Assessing must attend to fluency components and the learner.
Price: $450/person. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: Mathematics teachers, coaches, and interventionists
When:
- October 1 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- November 20 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- January 8 | 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Where: In-person at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit
Act 48 hours will be awarded pending approval by PDE for those who attend all sessions and complete related assignments.
Developing Fluency with Multiplication and Division
According to NCTM's position paper on procedural fluency, "procedural fluency is the ability to apply procedures efficiently, flexibly, and accurately; to transfer procedures to different problems and contexts; to build or modify procedures from other procedures; and to recognize when one strategy or procedure is more appropriate to apply than another."
This course will focus on the four declarations in this position paper, including:
- Conceptual understanding must precede and coincide with instruction on procedures.
- Procedural fluency requires having a repertoire of strategies.
- Basic facts should be taught using number relationships and reasoning strategies, not memorization.
- Assessing must attend to fluency components and the learner.
Price: $450/person. Administrators may attend with the teacher(s) from their district/building at no additional cost.
Audience: Mathematics teachers, coaches, and interventionists
When:
- October 13 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- December 17 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- February 9 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Where: In-person at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit
Act 48 hours will be awarded pending approval by PDE for those who attend all sessions and complete related assignments.
youcubed Data Science Curriculum Series (Led by Stanford University)
Data Science experts from Stanford University will be at the AIU to engage secondary teachers in the youcubed Data Science Curriculum.
Does your district plan to implement a data science course at the high school level?
If so, join faculty from Stanford University to learn about the youcubed Data Science Curriculum. All curriculum resources are open source and freely available to districts.
Dates: Jan 21 and 22, 2027 at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit followed by 2.5 virtual days on Feb 22, March 8, and April 6.
Time: 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Audience: Secondary Mathematics/Computer Science teachers
Cost: Discounted rate of $300 due to generous funding from the Arconic Foundation.
Join the youcubed curriculum writing team for an interactive professional learning experience designed to prepare high school educators to teach Explorations in Data Science(opens in new tab), youcubed’s free, project-based high school data science curriculum.
Throughout the workshop, you will experience the curriculum as both a learner and a teacher, exploring the big ideas, investigations, projects, and technology embedded across all eight units. Whether you are planning to teach the full course or incorporate individual units and investigations into an existing course, you will leave with practical resources, experience, and strategies you can use with students.
During the workshop, you will:
- Experience project-based data science learning. Explore investigations in which students ask meaningful questions, work with real data, create visualizations and models, make data-based arguments, and communicate their findings. Each unit is organized around an engaging context and culminates in a student product or project.
- Learn how students work like data scientists. Explore the data science process of asking questions, gathering and organizing data, modeling, analyzing and synthesizing, and communicating findings.
- Explore data ethics throughout the curriculum. Consider how issues such as bias, representation, causality, uncertainty, and the ethical use of data are woven into students’ data science learning.
- Gain hands-on experience with data science technology. Work with the web-based technology tools used throughout the course for data exploration, visualization, modeling, and introductory programming, and learn how they are incorporated into classroom investigations.
- Explore approaches to collaborative and individual learning. Experience activities designed for whole-class discussion, small-group collaboration, and individual investigation, with structures built into the lesson plans to support each.
- Plan for flexibility in your classroom. Learn ways to adapt the curriculum to your students, schedule, and course structure, including using individual units or investigations rather than the entire course.
Most importantly, you will learn directly from the authors and curriculum writers of Explorations in Data Science, who will share the thinking behind the course, classroom implementation strategies, and lessons learned from its development and use.
Participants will leave with greater confidence teaching data science, additional supporting resources for implementing the curriculum, and access to our community message board, where educators who have participated in youcubed data science professional learning can ask questions, share ideas and resources, and connect with others teaching the course.
Mathematics Leaders
Math Coaches/Administrators Network
The Math Coaches/Leaders Network, a free network, is a professional learning community that brings together math coaches and leaders to learn from and with each other, exploring and sharing successful strategies that actively engage students in the content and practices of the PA Core Standards for Mathematics.
Meeting Dates:
- September 24 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- December 18 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- March 12 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Price: Free
Audience: Mathematics coaches and leaders
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Act 45 Course - School Leadership in Mathematics - Part 1
The School Leadership in Mathematics Workshop is designed to enhance the ability of principals, curriculum directors, instructional coaches, department chairs, other school leaders to support high-quality mathematics teaching and learning and mathematics professional development efforts in their schools.
Specifically, the purposes of the School Leadership Workshop are:
- To build capacity of instructional leaders to support standards-based mathematics teaching and learning and mathematics professional development efforts in their schools.
- To provide a focus for classroom observations and conversations between teachers and instructional leaders based on aspects of mathematics teaching and learning known to support students’ understanding of mathematics and mathematical achievement.
- To enable school leaders to communicate the purpose, intent, focus, and importance of standards-based mathematics teaching and learning and mathematics professional development efforts to other instructional leaders, parents, and members of the school community.
- To review or obtain research-based knowledge of effective mathematics pedagogy that school leaders can share in discussions with teachers, other leaders, and parents.
The workshop consists of four sessions to be attended by principals and other school leaders, accompanied by a mathematics lead teacher, coach, or department chair from their school.
Act 45 hours will be awarded pending approval by PDE for those who attend all sessions and complete related assignments.
- Session 1: Supporting Effective Mathematical Tasks and Curriculum | January 12: 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- Session 2: Effective Classroom Observations: Focus on Task Implementation | February 23 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
- Session 3-Part 1: Effective Classroom Observations: Focus on Classroom Talk and Student Engagement | March 18 Virtual Synchronous | 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Session 3-Part 2: Effective Classroom Observations: Focus on Classroom Talk and Student Engagement | April 15 Virtual Synchronous | 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Price: $600* (High-needs/low resourced schools - MAY participate at a reduced cost PENDING the approval of grant funding. To verify if your school district /school meets the PDE definition of High-needs, check here)
Audience: Principals or other school leaders, accompanied by a mathematics lead teacher, coach, or department chair from their school.
Location: Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 E. Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Act 45 Course - School Leadership in Mathematics - Part 2
Prerequisite: To participate in this PL, you must have completed School Leadership in Mathematics, Part 1 during the 2024-’25 or 2025-’26 school year.
Participants will continue to develop and expand their capacity for ambitious mathematics instruction in their schools. Building off the professional learning experiences in Part 1, participants will:
- Create a trajectory of continuous, sustained PL activities for teachers, with a focus on ambitious mathematics instruction, using resources shared within the first leadership workshop (e.g., NCTM Principles to Actions Toolkit, MSMT IQA book, 5-Practices in Practice).
- Conduct classroom walkthroughs and provide constructive feedback aligned with NCTM effective teaching practices, using the ALW framework shared in Mathematics Leadership- Part 1.
- Building critical mass- engage a team of at least four teachers as ”early implementers” using the IQA book and connections to practice activities.
Part 2 will provide opportunities to debrief across schools, share ideas, share what works (or does not work) within each school context.
Meeting Dates: September 22, 2026, December 15, 2026, February 2, 2027
All sessions will be virtual from 8:30 AM – 12:00 PM. In addition to the virtual dates, we will join you on two classroom walk-throughs.
Price: $375* (High-needs/low resourced schools - MAY participate at a reduced cost PENDING the approval of grant funding. To verify if your school district /school meets the PDE definition of High-needs, check here)
Audience: Mathematics coaches and administrators
Location: Virtual and within your school district for walkthroughs