Forum bridges gap for teachers and students
Groups brainstorm solutions to prepare high school kids for college math
Dan Warn
Issue date:
2/13/08
Section:
Features
A panel of Olympic College math students gathered together at a forum sponsored by the Olympic Peninsula Transition Math Project on Feb. 5 to inform professors and high school math instructors how to improve their teaching methods.
The forum discussed math students that are getting lost in translation between high school math experiences and admittance into the college classroom.
For people like forum panelists Lori Chase and Melissa Snider, the high school system failed to motivate them into realizing that math was a valuable tool for the future.
Chase spent more than 15 years after high school trying to get by without math, but in the end she found that many jobs wouldn't hire her because she did not know any math.
Snider actually tried to go to college the first time, but dropped out after she felt disconnected from many of her classes.
Both of these women said they believe their transitions between high school and college math should have been smoother. Now, both of them are enrolled at OC taking math classes and through the forum, are doing what they can to help instructors make the transitions of other students go more smoothly.
Mike Dodge, OC math instructor and moderator of the forum, said many students don't see the benefit of math in their lives and slip under the radar in high school, making it hard to undergo a good transition into college.
Moments after the event began everyone separated into groups. Together, the groups worked through a sort of math icebreaker to get them doing math together in a way that generated a rich experience for all.
When the forum began, Chase thanked the Transition Math Project for showing her, through the "rich math exercise," that math might not be as scary as she thought it was. Chase said that math "doesn't click very well" with her, but after seeing people have fun with it, her perspective is beginning to change and she is starting to expect positive outcomes from her college classes.
Other students, like Maloupu Williamson, have already found math to be an enriching pass time.
The forum discussed math students that are getting lost in translation between high school math experiences and admittance into the college classroom.
For people like forum panelists Lori Chase and Melissa Snider, the high school system failed to motivate them into realizing that math was a valuable tool for the future.
Chase spent more than 15 years after high school trying to get by without math, but in the end she found that many jobs wouldn't hire her because she did not know any math.
Snider actually tried to go to college the first time, but dropped out after she felt disconnected from many of her classes.
Both of these women said they believe their transitions between high school and college math should have been smoother. Now, both of them are enrolled at OC taking math classes and through the forum, are doing what they can to help instructors make the transitions of other students go more smoothly.
Mike Dodge, OC math instructor and moderator of the forum, said many students don't see the benefit of math in their lives and slip under the radar in high school, making it hard to undergo a good transition into college.
Moments after the event began everyone separated into groups. Together, the groups worked through a sort of math icebreaker to get them doing math together in a way that generated a rich experience for all.
When the forum began, Chase thanked the Transition Math Project for showing her, through the "rich math exercise," that math might not be as scary as she thought it was. Chase said that math "doesn't click very well" with her, but after seeing people have fun with it, her perspective is beginning to change and she is starting to expect positive outcomes from her college classes.
Other students, like Maloupu Williamson, have already found math to be an enriching pass time.
Be the first to comment on this story