Photograph by Matthew O'Shea

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Rational Numbers

By Stefene Russell

“It doesn’t help to be a talking box in front of a classroom,” says Chris Moody, president of the Math Educators of Greater St. Louis and statistics teacher at Clayton High School. “Research bears this out—you have to get the kids involved.” Although that was a no-duh for the generations of kids who napped through algebra lectures, the philosophy of experiential math education has taken hold only in the past 10 years or so.

Locally, Rockwood, Parkway, Francis Howell and Clayton excel consistently in the teaching of math.

Francis Howell uses a program developed at the University of Missouri–Columbia that emphasizes experiential learning, teacher development and close student-teacher collaboration.

Clayton uses Core-Plus (developed at the University of Michigan) and for the past three years has been one of the three top-scoring public schools for Missouri Assessment Program math scores, earning commendations from the state. Math-department chair Curtis James credits Core-Plus’ “integrated” approach: Freshmen begin with “a couple of algebra-focused units, one geometry unit, one discrete mathematics unit and two statistics units. The next year, they’ll see some more algebra, and the geometry will extend quite a bit. The chapters are focused from a context. For instance, in our integrated Math II course, we start by trying to figure out the path of a diver. That leads us into quadratic equations—we learn the math that’s needed in that context.”

Core-Plus does have a textbook, and James says that lectures are still crucial. But today’s math texts, Moody says, are radically different from what teachers were using a decade ago: “Now publishers send these giant packets, and they have CD-ROMs and websites dedicated to that book, and they come with technology-based worksheets and multicultural-based worksheets, just a big slew of things to try and grab as many kids as you can.”

Moody is always looking for his own tricks to make math real: “I find websites that have interactive applets kids can use to see the effects of changing variables. We do hands-on experiments in class, checking hypothesis tests—we just got done making sure that M&Ms is telling the truth about their dispersion of colors.”

James says educators have had to change with the times; the “talking box” isn’t going to satisfy kids who grew up with Xboxes and Wi-Fi.

“If you did nothing but a very traditional lecture without context or motivation—” he begins, then stops himself, chuckling. “Well, I don’t like to sit through those kinds of classes, either.”