Paul Brinkley has taught at Lawrenceville Elementary for five years, and each summer he spends several days learning some new perspectives on how to teach math.

“Sometimes teaching gets old,” he said. “This kind of puts a spice into what we teach.”

Brinkley spoke on Thursday outside a classroom at Jenkins Elementary, where he worked with fifth-graders at the 14th math institute hosted each summer by Gwinnett County Public Schools. The eight-day professional learning program that ended Thursday offered new tips and strategies for teachers, some 700 of them, and about 1,500 students from kindergarten through eighth grade at 15 schools.

Last week, the district trained master trainers and cluster trainers on research-based instructional practices, and this week, they took what they learned and brought it to other teachers and modeled instruction, with students coaching teacher participants along the way.