Genesis of Project SEED
History
William Johntz, the founder of Project SEED, was a man with a vision for education. With a background in both advanced mathematics and psychology, Johntz wanted to make all students successful, particularly those who might be struggling against poverty, racism or other prejudices of society. While researching this idea at Berkeley High School, William Johntz realized that many of the high school students were burdened with a history of school failure experiences that decreased their academic self-confidence, which in turn resulted in poor performance. Countering poor performance with traditional remediation simply exposed children to the same experiences at which they had already failed. In order to head off this destructive cycle, Johntz decided to provide students with positive learning experiences rather than focus on traditional remediation. He developed an approach that presented a curriculum of advanced mathematics using a highly interactive teaching method and used this successfully with his high school students. Hoping for even more impact with younger students who had fewer failure experiences, Johntz used his interactive approach to teach advanced algebra and conceptually oriented college level mathematics to students in a nearby elementary school during his lunch hour.
The results of his experiment were astonishing! Even though these elementary students had previously tested at or below the national average, they quickly grasped the concepts Johntz taught. By the end of the semester, both high school and elementary level students had mastered advanced algebra concepts, and the elementary students, in particular, had improved in other courses. The foundations for a love of learning and of mathematics were set in place.
Growth
This genesis of the Project SEED program spread as Johntz and the colleagues he had gathered from the university and reasearch community, began to teach more and more students. For almost 40 years, the program has taken root and grown in school districts across the nation.
Project SEED now reaches hundreds of teachers and thousands of students every year in cities including Dallas, Detroit,
Indianapolis,
Milwaukee,
the Philadelphia Area, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Project SEED is supported by school districts, corporations, foundations, and communities which see the need to increase students' academic success, critical thinking skills and mathematical ability in order to improve students' chances of future success. The vision of one man, William Johntz, is now shared by Project SEED specialists working in programs in urban areas across the country.
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