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According to March issue of Scientific American, kids should start learning about science in kindergarten, something they don’t do nearly enough. With all that teachers need to teach their students, it can seem a daunting task to add introducing children to science to the list. In addition, many early childhood educators may feel inadequately prepared to teach science. So is there a solution? Is there a way to introduce a science curriculum into the kindergarten classroom without cutting back on other, equally important subjects?
A high school teacher who created an online “annual report” in video form, tracking his activities in 2009 by the numbers, did a little more than show us yet another way to make a video go viral.
He reminded us teachers are people too.
Before you say “uh, duh,” let’s look at the stories that get people outraged. Continue reading »
Hey, ladies, are you bad at math? Know who might be to blame? Mrs. Rutledge, your second-grade teacher, because she was bad at math too!
(A nice break for your mother, who is to blame for all of your other shortcomings.)
A new study shows female teachers who are scared of math teach their girl students to fear it as well. The result? A gender gap.
The study looked at elementary school teachers — specifically females — who said they struggle with math and have math anxiety. Researchers found such teachers were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are more skilled in language.
They passed on this belief to their female students. Continue reading »
A Philadelphia area middle school teacher thought he was motivating students by putting funny clip art from Google Images onto his math worksheets.
But when he chose an image of a toothless black man in a straw hat and suspenders over top of the misspelled words, “NO WA!!!!”, one parent cried racism.
When my daughter informed she would be not be homeschooling after all, one of the many little sighs of relief I exhaled was that I wouldn’t have to teach her algebra, or even addition.
As a bright kid, I was always “gifted” at math, but that didn’t mean I liked it. By the time I hit high school, I’d gotten the message that being good with numbers wasn’t cool for a girl, so I shirked it. When it came time to go to college, I chose a school that did not require any math classes.
Now my stepson is 15, and I can’t even read his math homework, let alone help him solve it.
Happily, I saved my kids from a lifetime of math cluelessness by marrying a professional nerd who teaches math and physics at a university. In our house, he is the math department.
When Lisa Belkin broached this topic over on Motherlode, commenters pointed out the gender disparity between men and women around math. Lisa’s family, like mine, is headed by a math averse mom and a math friendly dad.
I’m trying to do more math for the girls’ sake. I want my girls to grow up knowing women can do just as much math as men. But let’s be real: I can pull this off now because the oldest one is 5. She is hard at work learning to count to 100. When she starts bringing home differential equations, she is going straight to Daddy.
Two recent studies show that most American parents are a lot like me when it comes to math homework: clueless and uncomfortable. One commissioned by Intel shows that parents feel more equipped to talk about sex and drugs with their kids than math and science. Another, by Sylvan Learning, found that more than 6 out of 10 parents are not confident that they can solve their kids’ math homework in middle and high school.
Those jitters about math homework translate to kids, who start to feel nervous about the subject themselves. Math is increasingly important for higher education and professional fields, but most adults rate it as the most challenging subject taught in school.
For good reason. Less than 40% of eight and fourth graders are “proficient” or better at grade-level math skills. Clearly our kids could use some help with their math homework.
Do you help your kids with their homework? Does the thought of having to go through high school algebra again give you the shivers? If we can’t help our kids learn math, who can?
Photo: tracy_the_astonishing
A seemingly ever-increasing population, hooked on iPods, cellphones, and GPS systems, with big-screen televisions in every room, along with the requisite complement of DVD players, DVR’s, and video game systems, uses a lot of power — and that demand is only going to grow. The three R’s — reduce, reuse, and recycle — can only go so far in assuaging the need for energy. Clearly, we are going to continue to need to develop new ways of generating power. What those ways will be are anyone’s guess, but where the ideas will come from is clear — from the scientists of the future. That’s why Michelle Obama wants states to improve science and mathematics education.
Continue reading »
Most of our kids may be able to read and write a-okay but they are apparently lagging in their all important math and science studies. This week the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated that American kids are falling behind in those areas and may not be able to compete globally.
The National Center for Education Statistics did a comparison of 15-year-old students here and abroad and found that American kids ranked below average in both math and science. In their math studies, the kids came in at the bottom quarter of the report. In all, the scores haven’t fallen but they have remained stagnant with other countries scores getting better. Continue reading »
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