The Reading Clinic yesterday launched a programme to help teachers meet the needs of students with learning difficulties in mathematics.

Entitled "Mathematics and Learning Differences: Professional Development for Educators'', the pilot programme will see three top US educators visit the Island to share their knowledge in the area with participants from the Island's private schools and the Family Learning Centre.

The programme will include a three-day intensive training workshop next month run by Dr. Patricia Willott of Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts.

The workshop will be held on November 12, 13, and 14 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It will be followed by 15 periodic sessions, from November 18 through April 28, aimed at helping participants increase the following: Understanding of the concepts regarding students' individual differences; Recognition of factors influencing students' performance; and The "comfort level'' in using a range of instructional strategies in the classroom.

A second 12-hour workshop on "Problem-Solving and Strategy Instruction'' will be held on May 7 and 8 under the guidance of Dr. Lynn Meltzer, Director of Assessment and Research at the Institute for Learning and Development in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and Director of Education at the same institution, Dr. Bethani Roditi.

The programme will culminate in late May after three more sessions.

Supervisor of the programme, Dr. Julie Dustan, explained that she devised the programme after a needs assessment by the Clinic showed that mathematics was the most common unaddressed area of students' academic needs.

However, she pointed out that the clinic was not trying to evaluate the educators.

"What they put in is what they get out,'' Dr. Dunstan said.

But she added that participants will receive plenty of assistance.

In addition to keeping process journals to evaluate which strategies taught in the programme work, they will have individual consultation sessions for four hours with Dr. Dunstan.

"I will work with them on whatever they feel will be beneficial,'' she said.

Participants will also receive a questionnaire that looks at understanding key terms, a questionnaire about instructional strategies, and a mathematics strategy notebook at the end of the course.

"Hopefully that will ensure there is some carry on from what they have learned,'' Dr. Dunstan said.

Those who complete the programme can also earn three Masters level credits at Wheelock.

But Dr. Dunstan said the key benefits of such a programme were to give educators the skills and confidence in coping with learning differences; to offer quality education to students with learning differences; and to prevent social implications of learning difficulties which can include delinquency, substance abuse, and "unreached potential''.

A committee of private schools selected ten teachers to participate in the programme designed for 16 participants, Dr. Dunstan said. There will be one representative from the Family Learning Centre and spaces were offered to teachers in public schools. But so far the Clinic has not received a response.

Therefore, five spaces are left. But Dr. Dunstan said those who were still interested in signing up will need to make a deposit for the $750 course and provide the Clinic with a resume or curriculum vitae and a scope of their mathematics curriculum as soon as possible.