By Kathryn Kubena and Daniel Marin

We are both Rice undergraduates studying Statistics and earning Secondary Mathematics Teacher Certification. Every summer RUSMP hires 4-5 Rice undergraduates passionate about math and education as research and office assistants, so naturally we found them. As preservice teachers, we’ve had the privilege to assist RUSMP in their Summer Campus Program and witness effective and innovative teaching from the master teachers.

The field of mathematics is broad and offers a wide range of career and research opportunities, some being more technical and independent than others. Teaching mathematics provides an avenue for mathematicians to apply a different kind of skill set. In a modern public high school classroom, teachers may interact with about 6 periods of 35+ students, presenting, facilitating, and adapting to the circumstances of the day. A teacher is on his feet, addressing various students and creating individualized explanations to whatever problem they run into. These unique solutions and explanations are one component of student-centered environments, where students build concepts and connections. The daily variety and frequent meaningful social contact, attract both of us to become math educators. Like most young adults, we want to have a grand effect on the lives of others, and teaching allows your positive influence to domino from you to your students to their families to their communities.

While we may seem overconfident (and we probably are), our expectations for success in the classroom are grounded in the knowledge and impeccable training from the Rice Teacher Education program. The program, now celebrating it’s 50th anniversary, trains undergraduate Rice students to attain a 7th-12th teacher certification after learning from several master teachers and serving as a student teacher for their entire senior year. Like ours, the program’s philosophy emphasizes student-centered learning, from activities to discussions. That kind of instruction allows students to build up the concepts for themselves, giving us as teachers the opportunity to witness the “Eureka!” or “Aha!” moments.

Like Cathy Seeley, colloquium speaker at RUSMP’s Summer Campus Program, said in her new book Smarter Than We Think, “increasing student motivation lies… in [students] tackling challenging tasks where they can grapple with important mathematics.”

To us, that sounds exciting! We’re preservice teachers, having yet to calm a group of 35 sixteen year olds, accommodate for 5 different learners at the same time, create a socially relevant problem for tomorrow’s lesson, or even have an activity that just glides over every student’s head, so we may be misunderstanding our anxiety as excitement. But we’re confident that working in a dynamic environment and seeing students grow from our interactions will be worth it.

About the authors:

Function Carnival is an interactive, educational game by Desmos which helps students understand and create functions. The game includes three activities that depict animated real-life scenarios featuring a canon man and a roller coaster which users must then recreate by drawing an appropriate graph. For example, the first task is to “Draw a graph of Cannon Man’s height vs. time.”  Each activity has a drawing and a writing section that helps students grasp the concept of functions, an idea which is vital for Algebra students to master in order to succeed in higher level math courses.

Functions have never been my forte, but Function Carnival makes understanding them easy, even intuitive by asking users to model real-world situations with graphs.  Through each exercise, students’ graphing skills become stronger and they are more able to understand what each dip and curve on the function represents by drawing out their models step-by-step and correcting any errors. The writing portions of the activities put the graphs into perspective by encouraging students to analyze already given functions and to either correct them or explain a concept that they demonstrate. Using this module was like learning functions all over again, only better, this time in a way that stuck. Writing down the ideas forming in their heads helps students not only with memorization, but with comprehension of those ideas.

Teachers have the option of choosing between the Basic Carnival (for algebra students) and Advanced Carnival (for calculus students).  Within the Advanced Carnival which I completed, there was a section depicting a velocity vs. time graph.  The graph had both positive and  negative velocity, so that the challenge was to apply the concept of acceleration instead of speed to my interpretation.

 Despite its functionality (pardon the pun), the activities are complex and a bit difficult to get the hang of at first so that the activity definitely needs teacher guidance.  I don’t think this is an activity that should be assigned for independent practice for students.  Also, the program also does not offer immediate feedback on the writing portions.  However, the teacher is able to view all student responses – both the graphs and the written responses – so that she or he is able to give feedback to individual students.  This video shows what the teacher would see on his/her screen as the students complete the graphs.

 As an added bonus, the program offers a do-it-yourself bonus challenge at the very end to reinforce the students’ knowledge which is “On a blank piece of paper, create your own graph.  Label the y-axis.  Draw the graph.  Then write the story it describes.”  The challenge is a great way for students to apply what they learned in the activities to a scenario of their own creation, both sparking their creativity and prompting them to concrete the knowledge they gained. All in all, Function Carnival gets a five star rating from me.  While I still wish my algebra teacher had introduced it to me back in eighth grade, I’m nevertheless glad to be recommending this fantastic program to you.

Rice professor, Steve Cox claimed he’s a little bit selfish as we talked about his outreach program called Worthing Rice Apprentice Program or WRAP. His program evolved from a previous Rice project that connected Rice professors and students with HISD students via web conferences. After joining the effort, Dr. Cox quickly came to the conclusion that “nothing beats face-to-face contact,” and that he “really wants to be part of the students’ joy of discovery. I want to see the ‘Eureka’ moments face to face. I want to slap them on the back or receive a hug rather than receiving reviews that someone learned a lot…I’m kinda selfish that way.”

For more than 10 years, WRAP has been offering a hands-on introduction and integration of mathematics, biology, electronics, and computer programming as students learn about how the brain learns. Dr. Cox is on sabbatical this year so we recently chatted via Skype about his program.  Listen as he discusses the goals of his program and view photos of the Worthing apprentices and Rice undergraduate and graduate mentors.

Dr. Cox concludes the video with what he tells his Worthing apprentices, that most of their jobs are going to require if not a STEM degree, the ability to interact with people with STEM degrees. His program is trying to create a somewhat different mindset among this community, “to get them to become creators, not just users of others’ technologies.”

Another reason Dr. Cox initiated this program was to get Rice undergraduate students involved in community outreach.  Zachary Kilpatrick, one of the first Rice undergraduate mentors of WRAP, is now an assistant professor at the University of Houston (UH) and has been instrumental in starting the UH outreach program, CHAMP (Cougars and Hope Academy Mathematics Program). Current mentor and Rice upperclassman, Sarah Schwettmann, has been involved with WRAP since being a freshman.  She’s learned that “the relationships you build with the apprentices hugely determine how transformative the learning experience is for both the mentors and the high school students.”  She also treasures the community that WRAP has built through academics and education.

WRAP is undergoing transitions and is now called the Rice BrainSTEM program.  For various reasons, the program took a break this past fall and is resuming at KIPP Sunnyside High School located a couple miles away from Worthing High School.  It is Dr. Cox’s hope that his program can work with both schools in the future.  Learn more about Rice BrainSTEM here.

Thank you, Professor Cox, for taking time to share your fantastic program with the RUSMP community.

I recently sat down with Professor Mark Tomforde, Associate Professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Houston, and talked with him about his outreach program called CHAMP that he began this past fall.  CHAMP is an acronym that stands for Cougars and Hope Academy Mathematics Program.  Hope Academy is a charter school in HISD located in the historic Third Ward and serves at-risk high school students.  Photo of participating students is below.

Dr. Tomforde was inspired by and modeled his program after the Worthing Rice Apprentice Program or WRAP, an outreach program for Worthing High School students directed by Rice Professor, Steve Cox.  After Tomforde found out about WRAP, he contacted Professor Cox and was invited to come to Rice to observe a WRAP session. Tomforde also received very valuable advice from the Rice professor including, “be very patient as the program develops” and “if you can affect just a couple students, that is a huge success.”

The goals of both programs include exposing young people, especially those from underrepresented groups, to interesting topics in mathematics and sciences as well as encouraging them to attend college and perhaps major in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) field.  During one of the WRAP sessions this past fall, the students visited the computer lab of Rice Professor James McLurkin.  A photo of the visit is below:

Rice University Professor Richard Tapia, RUSMP friend and champion of underrepresented groups in mathematics and the sciences, has argued that underrepresentation does not endanger the health of the discipline, that the health of mathematics is fine.  However, he does strongly believe that having such a large part of the US population not engaged in the practice of the mathematical sciences does endanger the health of the nation.

I asked Dr. Tomforde if he thought that having a more diverse group of mathematicians would benefit the field of mathematics.  Here is his response:

He also shared with me the most recent newsletter from the Math Alliance, an organization whose goal is to make sure that every underrepresented or underserved American student with the talent and the ambition has the opportunity to earn a doctoral degree in a mathematical science.  The first paragraph of the newsletter summarized one of the talks given at the 2013 Field of Dreams Conference hosted by the Math Alliance.  The speaker, Kathryn Chaloner explained that:

“the philosophical differences in how we interpret probability and gave a historical and mathematical perspective on Bayesian Statistics. Her talk did this by focusing on 3 key mathematicians, Thomas Bayes, Leonard Jimmie Savage, and David Harold Blackwell. Each of these 3 mathematicians made important original contributions that could be described as “out of the box” thinking, going against the cultural norms of mathematics at the time. Each of these 3 mathematicians were also excluded in some way from the educational system in which they lived: one because of his religion, one because of his disability and one because of his race.”  

Dr. Chaloner’s slides are available here.

Thus, Tomforde believes that those from underrepresented groups can offer insights into mathematics that would otherwise be missed much like jazz in music.

In addition, he discussed what he learned from and about his students.

Thanks to Professor Tomforde for sharing his thoughts with RUSMP!

Learn more about WRAP at http://www.caam.rice.edu/~cox/wrap/, and  read more about the CHAMP program at http://math.uh.edu/champ/.

Recently Susan Troutman, RUSMP Associate Director for Secondary Programs, attended the Houston A+ Challenge talk given by Finnish educator, Dr. Pasi Sahlberg.  She immensely enjoyed listening to him speak, and so shared the following with us:

View slides from Sahlberg’s presentation
Listen to an interview with Sahlberg by KUHF radio’s Laura Isensee
Read a synposis of the event

Why are educators and policy-makers around the globe so interested in the Finnish way?

The Finnish education system has dominated international rankings for a decade.  In addition, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world. “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education.” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.  Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States. (From http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html?c=y&page=1)

Dr. Sahlberg shared with the audience in Houston that the Finnish way of education focuses on collaboration instead of competition, personalization instead of standardization, trust-based responsibility instead of test-based accountability, and equity instead of school choice.

Read more at his blog.  I was especially intrigued by his post, “What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?”  Although the entry is long, it is worthwhile to read in entirety.

He claims that the following three beliefs of the impact of teacher effectiveness that seem to prevail in many under-performing nations are fallacies and explains why:

• “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”
• “The most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” 
• “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”.

Then he suggests lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, and urges us to reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.  Below are excerpts from his post:

“First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities.”

“Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.”

“Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.”

Read his entire post here.

This post is written by Marsha Parris, a mathematics teacher in the RUSMP network.

I have always wanted to live overseas and have been on the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS) list for a few years.  One of my co-workers told me about Teach Away, a recruiting agency for teachers seeking employment abroad.  I submitted an application last fall, and then interviewed in Phoenix in March of this year.  I was offered a math teaching position in Abu Dhabi, the capital of United Arab Emirates (UAE).  I then started the process of getting all my documents ready in order to leave in August.

I left Houston on August 19 and arrived in Abu Dhabi at 1:50am on the 21st.  The Abu Dhabi Department of Education Council gave teachers from abroad a half a week to get our bearings, and then we proceeded to orientation.  At orientation we were given our teaching assignments.  I am going to be working in the western region in a town called Ghayathi at an all girls’ school, grades 6-12.

This is the first year in this country that there will be English-licensed teachers in the secondary grades.  This is also the first year that female instructors will teach in secondary all boys’ schools.  This country has been undergoing tremendous education reform for the past four to five years.  During our orientation, I met teachers from all over the world. The range of ages of the teachers is from mid-twenties to early fifties; there are teachers who have taught only three years and those who have just recently retired!

The training facilitators were from New Zealand, England, and Scotland.  We spent most of our time just getting on the same page with our vocabulary.  For example, we will use the term “learning outcome” instead of “objective.”  We discussed differentiation, assessments, and the curriculum.  I am teaching sixth-grade math this year, and am excited that I will be able to spend six weeks developing number fluency!  All tests are scored using rubrics, which is a tad scary since I will have about 150 students. Thanks goodness I will be able to set up my iPad with a spreadsheet to keep track of all the data I am to collect.

Teach Away is looking for teachers who are flexible (not the “sage on the stage”), looking for adventure, and able to deal with a very laid back lifestyle.

I am excited about this opportunity and feel blessed to be part of this program.

Marsha Parris