Chapter 11: Supporting Curriculum Implementation Through Its Ups and Downs

The story of curriculum implementation likely involves as many different themes as there are types of teachers. As teachers, we live in that real world of students and classrooms, not the world of theory. From my own personal experience, the process of implementing new instructional materials was all of these things: exciting, challenging, frustrating, rewarding, worrisome, scary, and often downright thrilling! In this chapter, I relate the implementation of MATHThematics (Billstein & Williamson, 1999a) in a school district I identify as Lakewood. In describing the process, I outline my role as a district consultant and share the challenges and issues raised by teachers I worked with, as they lived their own “stories.”