CIIA's Karen Casto to leave WWU to teach math and science in middle school

Karen Casto remembers one particular assignment she gave her Western Washington University students back in the winter of 2003. And she should. That assignment, and the results of it, would play a pivotal role in a decision that would later change her life.

She was teaching a First-year Interest Group at the time, a course cluster combining mathematics and American history. She wanted to get to know her students, see where they were coming from. So she asked each of them to jot down an experience relating to math.

“They could be good experiences or bad,” Casto says. “Just something memorable.”

The results, she says, were remarkable.

“Ninety-five percent of them were horrible stories, awful stories, of really bad experiences,” Casto says. “Most of the negativity was regarding instruction, and most of the stories took place in middle school.”

Suddenly, it was clear to Casto that students who fall behind in math start doing so in middle school. If she wanted to reach those students, if she wanted to reverse that trend, she was going to have to step into a middle school with them.

And she will. On July 18, Casto will drive south with her two sons, leaving Bellingham for a new life as a middle school teacher somewhere in the hot and muggy South.

But more on that later.

Casto is the director of the Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment at Western Washington University. Her job, as the name of the office implies, is to promote innovation in teaching and to serve as a resource for faculty members looking to change the ways they reach students.

The assessment piece is new for the center; it was added earlier this year after the Office of Institutional Assessment, Research and Testing was closed. For that piece, Casto helps faculty members assess how effective they are in the classroom. It actually dovetails nicely with the instructional innovation function of the center, Casto says.

“The first step in improvement is knowing where you are in your effectiveness,” she says.

Back when she first arrived at Western, Casto was part of an ad hoc task force to develop special programs for first-year students that would help to mitigate issues that tend to arise among young college students making the transition from high school.

The First-year Interest Group, or FIG, program arose out of those discussions, and Casto was tagged to teach a FIG seminar. In 2003, she created a course cluster comprising Math 102, History 104 and a special seminar class that combined the two. Casto used as inspiration for the class a book by Robert Moses, the 1960s civil rights leader and architect of 1964’s “freedom summer.” She named the cluster “Radical Equations,” after Moses’ 2001 book “Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project,” and Casto and her students spent time discussing the book and the importance of mathematics in American history.

When she learned that The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education was sponsoring a conference and bringing in Robert Moses as a speaker, she knew she had to attend with her students. So, the group trekked to Seattle to make a presentation about the class at the conference.

“(Robert Moses) came to our presentation, and we had a conversation with him afterward,” Casto says. “It was just amazing!”

Moses founded the Algebra Project in 1982 as a way to help improve the math and science education of youth throughout the United States. In his book, Moses likened the need for improved math and science education to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“In today’s world, economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy,” Moses wrote in “Radical Equations.” “I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961.”

Flash forward to January 2010, when President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address, mentioned the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s one of several state-approved programs in Texas, Casto says, that take people with math and science content knowledge and help them become teachers, with the hope that they’ll become influences in the lives of students.

Hearing that, it didn’t take Casto long to make up her mind. Before she knew it, she was putting in her notice and preparing to leave Western and her students here for a new life amid pre-teens struggling to learn math and science.

“This is work that makes a difference, and that I can do, and that I can do now,” she says. “I can make a difference there in the classroom, I can stop – at least with my students – their math stories from being negative stories.”

Again, Casto, who began working at WWU in 1998, remembers that FIG course and the transforming power it had in her life.

“I hadn’t really thought of being a teacher until I came to Western and found how much I like it,” she says.

Casto is going to miss Western, she says. A lot. But this opportunity was just too good to pass up, and by leaving to teach middle school kids she’ll be doing something she feels she was destined to do.

“Math and science have always been a favorite of mine,” she says. “At least half of my undergraduate credits are in math and science.”

And now she’ll get the chance to put that training to good use, and to join a movement begun by a hero of hers during the 1960s.

“I thought it would be kind of neat to tie up that ribbon,” Casto says.

Casto plans to join a training program as soon as she gets to Texas, and she could be teaching in a middle school somewhere in as little as a year.

But before she leaves, she has other important work to attend to. Casto has a contract to write a high school psychology textbook, a project she began with her husband, John Dworetzky, before he passed away.

Dworetzky, a psychologist, wrote college textbooks, and he and his wife had a contract to adapt one of them for high school.

The book, coincidentally enough, is slated to be up for adoption by the Texas school system while Casto will be there, giving her the opportunity to watch the process up close.

Karen Casto's last day at WWU will be June 18.

Left to right: Western Washington University students Kayce Nakamura, Nao Matsumoto, Thea Monday, Robert Moses, Jessica Evans, Stephen Bonnell and FIG seminar instructor Karen Casto pose for a photo at the Washington Center conference in February 2003. Ph
Western Washington University students chat with Robert Moses after their presentation at the Washington Center conference in February 2003. Photo courtesy of Karen Casto
Western Washington University students chat with Robert Moses after their presentation at the Washington Center conference in February 2003. Photo courtesy of Karen Casto