Math Night Lights

One of the best sessions I attended at the OSPI January Conference last week focused on math. But it wasn’t about student WASL scores or the new math standards or even math curriculum suggestions. No one argued and no one bantered about whose district was doing what. Instead we were posed with a simple question: Double 38.

 

The focus of the session was how to connect with parents at community math nights—a topic which is becoming a crucial element to math education as Washington parents struggle to help their children in times of transitioning standards, teaching strategies and expectations.

 

A recent Skagit Valley Herald article did a nice job summing up the issue: “Times have changed and so have the approaches to teaching math. No longer do most educators expect students to find the solutions the same way as we did in that pre-algebra class. Creative problem solving that was once frowned upon by teachers is encouraged and some parents find themselves lost when it comes to helping their students complete the required homework assignments. That’s where community math nights enter the scene.”

 

Mentally, I broke the two 38s down into 30+30=60 and 8+8=16 and added the two sums to make 76. I figured, how many other ways can there be? The answer to my question, I found, while surrounded by more than 50 teachers was, “Tons.”

 

Steve DePaul, the session’s presenter and past-OSPI math education expert, did a wonderful job teaching teachers how to reassure and create consensus among parents around their child’s math learning. After asking about 15 participants how they came up with their answers, he received nearly 15 different methods—all based on valid mathematical reasoning.

 

"New math, old math or somewhere in between, we all learned our own tailored tricks to find the answer and no one used a single sheet of paper," noted DePaul at the end of the exercise. Maybe there is truth in the old adage, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”—or multiply a fraction.

 

“[Math nights] are a win-win situation for the entire community,” wrote the Herald. “If students are getting both the preparation at school and the support with homework at home, they are more likely to be successful in other areas of their education. For many of us, math was an intimidating class that didn’t have to be.”

 

Later in the session, we counted beans with letters, instead of numbers, to simulate how confusing it can be for a kindergartener to initially count and learn written language at the same time. The empathy for confusion in the room was tangible—a feeling that is often missed at many math forums—and it gave me hope that, with enough patience and understanding, students really can get the instruction necessary from math teachers and the help they need from their parents.