Reader Response: Math and Irrelevant Teaching vs Need for Multi-Sensory Teaching

A Reader Response for the Article, “Illuminating the Beauty, Humanity, Intrigue in Mathematics,” posted by Peter Pappas on November 29th.

Link: http://www.peterpappas.com/2011/11/illuminated-mathematics-students-find-beauty-humanity-intrigue.html

As I read, ““Everyone, open your books to chapter 7 section 2 as we will be learning how to factor degree 3 polynomials.”

I can imagine this statement being said, in some fashion, within the vast majority of high school math classrooms across our seemingly broken educational system. Almost all of us have at some point taught something that was completely irrelevant to the lives of our students. And we knew it!”

I want to immediately take issue more than back up the argument. I do believe the system is broken, but primarily because of the economy, lack of parental support and null/lack of identity and care of students. They don’t understand their place in the world and don’t care to learn. They were not supported growing up in so many ways (including and especially educationally), don’t know how to get back on track and due to a lack of discipline over the course of their life would prefer the easy way out. China is successful where we are not because they easily counter these sentiments in ways both familial and governmental.”

Everything we learn in school is not always applicable immediately, later in life and may never in a million years be relevant. It is however important in this way. It teaches us to question, it teaches us to use previous knowledge in all situations, to be SKEPTICAL. It teaches us PATIENCE. We learn these things because we don’t know what we are going up against and may need to know, even when they were not things needed to be known by our friends, family and strangers which tell us otherwise. Irrelevant learning is seen in hindsight. As I teach certain concepts I don’t always have the answer as to how students will need to utilize it in the future, but don’t want to rob them of the opportunity of not teaching those concepts. If I had never been taught everything I thought was worthless for myself and for students I would not be in the position I am now. Every day I have a greater understanding for important concepts in math, as well as for concepts in daily life and application. A student asked me once why he needed to find the slope for a graph he was looking at when he would never need to do that in real life. I had the option of making up a reason, but instead said, “I’m not sure, but will get back to you.” In another class that year I realized that there was no way I could explain a Pre Cal concept regarding minimums and maximums related to profit for companies without the understanding of slopes because the idea of tangents related back to that concept and was necessary for finding these critical points on the graphs. Needless to say I now answer in a varying number of ways, “I will get back to you,” “Here’s how you may need it in college/higher math”, “Critical thinking depends greatly on this...”


The article rings true as I read:

“Deep vs. Wide
There was a study published recently in Science Education (2009) that made a comparison between teachers who “sprinted” to cover all of the standards with teachers who slowed down and went deeper into the material. The students who “sprinted” ended up scoring higher on the standardized test due to covering more material. But the students who learned through the slower, in-depth approach earned higher grades in their college classes.”

This is a huge concern for me and is another hard thing to balance in education.

I understand the article was intended to show that we need multi-media, 21st Century, DIVERSE ways for teaching students and I WHOLE-HEARTEDLY agree. I push forward with the innovative ways for teaching students I know will be beneficial if we all (teachers and administration) get on board and on the same page. Meaning, we  figure out how to integrate it correctly and collaboratively. But every once in a while I picture a stagnant, an army-like, robotic-like Chinese classroom which by high school listens well and can cooperate with the explorative learning environment which we wish to create; through that our success would be as high as the Chinese. Unfortunately it may be at the risk of the creativity and innovation attributed to Americans.

Free College: Berea

Hard Times Inspire Ky. College Students To Action

by NOAH ADAMS

If you prefer to listen to the story, go to this link and click play next to "listen to the story" as shown in the box below the link: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142889056/hard-times-inspire-ky-college-students-to-action

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Sophomore Emily Nugent is among Berea College's 1,600 students who receive free tuition. On average, Berea's students come from families with household incomes of about $25,000.

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November 29, 2011

Part of a monthlong series

NPR's Hard Times series features stories of economic hardship and also stories of hope. We asked for ideas from listeners, and Emily Nugent of Berea College in Kentucky responded, writing: "With a student body composed entirely of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, Berea students know about the challenges Americans are facing." Noah Adams went in search of Emily and the Berea College story.

This school was started six years before the Civil War. It was to be both integrated and coeducational. And the poor students became part of the mission. The small college town, Berea, is right at the edge of the Bluegrass region. There's a rise of mountains to the east. It's where Appalachia begins.

By 1931, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins was able to say Berea was in a "different class."

"It does what no other college can do; what it does must be done," he said.

This year, the Washington Monthly ranking of 100 liberal arts colleges has Berea at No. 1.

View Hard Times road trip in a larger map

The school has 1,600 students, most of them from southern Appalachia, but there's someone here from every state. And at Berea, their tuition is free — all four years are paid for through the college's $931 million endowment. It might be the only way these students could go to college. On average, they come from families with household incomes of about $25,000.

Emily Nugent, a sophomore at Berea, is a political science major from Lapeer, Mich. She recalls coming with her mother for her first visit to the campus.

"I finished my tour, and my mom turned to me and said, 'If you choose this school or any school, I want you to be as proud of what you're doing as these students seem to be. I don't care what school you choose, but this is the only one I've seen where people seem to love what they're doing,' " Nugent remembers.

economy

Interactive Map: The Economy Where You Live

Tony Choi, a senior majoring in Spanish and political science from Bergen County, N.J., came to this country from South Korea. After four years at Berea, he graduates next month. Soon he'll go to San Francisco and walk across America to call attention to the plight of immigrants.

"Especially in these hard times, I feel that people are placing blame on the other people who look a little different from everyone else. I've lived in this country for more than half my life, and I'm still undocumented," Choi says. "I feel that Berea has empowered me to go back to my own community, which is the immigrant community, and try to find ways I can fill my role in."

In October, about 40 Berea students rode a bus to New York City for the Occupy Wall Street rallies. Senior Kurstin Jones, from Cincinnati, was with them.

"I'm a person of color. We have been poor ever since we got here. Unvoluntarily. Ever since the Great Recession of '08, people of color have seen Depression-era unemployment, like double digits in certain parts of the country," Jones says.

The Berea students in New York wanted to stand in support of the newly poor. Some of their families have known poverty for decades — especially deep in the mountain coal fields.

EnlargeCourtesy of Berea College

A historical sign on the Berea College campus in Kentucky.

Freshman Charla Hamilton is from Pikeville, Ky. "My dad is disabled. He doesn't work. My mother has a teaching degree but is unable to find a job, and then my parents divorced. I was living with my mother. We had no income coming in at all. Zero," Hamilton says.

Hamilton hopes to go back to eastern Kentucky with a degree in forensic psychology and be a counselor in the prison system.

And Sam Gleaves, a Berea sophomore, knows he is going home to Wytheville, Va., with his guitar and banjo. He's an Appalachian studies major. He wants to teach music at home and to help organize.

"Well, I think people underestimate the power of music to foster community," Gleaves says. "I want the youth coming up through the high school that I went to and living in the community I grew up in to have an expanded idea of what it means to be young and what it means to be Appalachian, in particular gay and lesbian youth and youth of color. I want the youth to feel welcome to embrace their heritage in the fullest way, where they're not only living as who they are, but they're speaking as who they are."

Art in Science

Here is a cool article you might be able to appreciate, you may find the original here:
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/health/entries/2011/02/01/art_helps_medical_students_enh.html?cxntfid=blogs_salud

Art helps medical students enhance powers of observation

By Mary Ann Roser | Tuesday, February 1, 2011, 11:39 AM

Can looking at art help future doctors and nurses do a better job with patients?

Officials at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio say the answer is yes. They have teamed up with the McNay Art Museum in the Alamo City to offer Art Rounds, a three-week workshop this winter aimed at training future doctors and nurses to look carefully at an artwork and “avoid being misguided by assumptions.”

A study of the program, now in its second year, showed that the students had a marked improvement in their “visual observation and communication skills, which can lead to improved patient care,” said a news release from the school.

What a patient says about their condition and the way they appear can be very different. Medical professionals sometimes must rely on subtle clues to assess what’s wrong.

“Much like in medicine, the issues we find in artwork may be more complex than they first seem,” said Rose Glennon, senior museum educator. “When a student says they think the subject of a painting feels a certain way, we ask them to tell us what they see that makes them think that. Different people see and notice different things.”

The workshop encourages students to be more comfortable with ambiguity and avoid jumping to conclusions, officials said.

“Medicine has become increasingly reliant on test results and technology so that patients become nothing more than a set of lab values on a computer screen,” said Craig Klugman, assistant director and professor of medical humanities at the university’s Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics. “We need to train physicians to actually see the patient as a whole, rather than reducing the patient to a particular organ, tissue, or lab result.”

For some students, Art Rounds marked their first visit ever to a museum.

Blogs Tips and Tricks #7: Creating Additional Blogs

Making new blogs is important once you have established your first. Reasons include: 1) you have more than one class content, 2) you have different types of students, 3) you have different age levels 4) need I say more about all the things you do and want to show off?! Here is a video which should help set up a new class blog and website for all the stretching you do: