Ypsi High Election, 2008!

This week was very fun! In response to the historical election, I decided to create an activity for the students to teach them about the voting process and relate it to math. Fortunately, my teacher gave me virtually the whole hour to do the exercise in most hours, so I wasn't crunched for time, and I was very pleased with how things went.

The exercise went something like this. I created a couple of overheads for an interactive presentation of how the United States uses the electoral college system and went into detail about how electoral votes are calculated and different rules between states that are of importance to the voting population. I then taught them how to calculate electoral votes given the population data. I also introduced some of the positive and negative things about the electoral system and asked them their opinions on it. I was impressed to see that the students had been keeping up with the election and had an interest in current events.

After explaining to them the basic principles involved with the electoral college, I split the class into groups, or "states." Some states had a large number of students while some states had only two or three students. I helped them calculate a theoretical number of electoral votes they would get using the United States current system, but the number was based on the population of the classroom. Then they were to come up with a name for their "state" and write their respective electoral votes on the board for the rest of the class to see. Then, I had them check whether or not each group's electoral votes was correct.

After this, the class chose two presidential candidates. The rules were that one candidate had to be male, and the other female to recognize the historical campaigning system. I then isolated the presidential candidates and made them pick between two issues which they would debate to the class. The first was whether or not schools should offer healthier food. The other was whether or not uniforms should be allowed. I flipped a coin that decided who would argue the affirmative and negative positions. They got a couple of minutes to review the electoral votes on the board to come up with a strategy to recruit votes.

Then, I introduced the presidential candidates to the rest of the class, and explained that they would be debating on a specific issue. The candidates presented some very interesting arguments to the class, and we had a mini question and answer session which I feel was the best part of this activity because the students seemed to get really involved.

Then, the 'states' voted on the candidates with a majority, winner take all policy (simulating how the United States acquires electoral votes in most states). We then tallied up the votes for each candidate and determined a theoretical winner. After determining the winner, Mrs. Mills and I briefly reflected on the experience. I told them a few reasons as to why this mock election was not completely realistic and got some feedback from them. I also explained to them the importance of math in politics and offered suggestions to those who were interested in this area that they may want to pursue a career in political science or economics. Mrs. Mills explained the importance of emotion in the elections and how many of the students were using emotions to characterize the presidential candidates and straying off the issues (similar to the real election).

Overall, I thought the exercise went very well, and I am going to make an effort to create interactive presentations like this one. I had a lot of fun

My Experience at UPSM!

Last week, I went to UPSM (University Prep Science and Math) in Detroit with Rachel Phillips where I enjoyed observing a learning environment different than one I have ever witnessed before. As I walked into Compuware's beautiful gigantic headquarters equipped with an amazing water fountain, a Hard Rock Cafe, a Borders and other stores, I was already overwhelmed that middle schoolers were somewhere in the building. As soon as we got to the 11th floor where the middle schoolers were, I heard a bunch of kids screaming at the top of their lungs. It was Halloween so everyone had colorful costumes and tons of energy. Even most of the teachers and staff had costumes on!

Although I mostly observed the students, I learned so much about how a different learning environment can enhance a student's motivation and willingness to learn. This is an amazing experience for the students because there are only a couple hundred students and they receive a lot of attention from their teachers. Even more exciting, within the next year the prep school will be having daily classes at the Detroit Science Center so they will be exposed to museum exhibits and the like on a daily basis! That is an extraordinary opportunity in my opinion!

There were a few small things that I noticed that were different than conventional methods / approaches to teaching that I would like to highlight:

The layout: Although the Compuware headquarters is a temporary location for the students, it works extremely well for middle school students or students with high amounts of energy. Everything is in close proximity, even the superintendent's office is a heartbeat away from anyone of the classrooms. There were no 'doors' to the classrooms. I really can't even classify the rooms as 'classrooms' because all that separated any one of them was a wall, which I thought was very effective because it gives the students an opportunity to have more face time with all of the teachers. Also, the classroom was not set up with rows of desks like most normal classrooms. There were about 4 - 5 tables in the room so students were forced to sit in groups which makes it easier for the teacher to be more interactive. Although the rooms were a little crunched, the intimacy between the students and teacher, with the teacher not standing in the front of the room, but walking around constantly seemed to encourage the students to ask and answer questions and be motivated to be involved with the lesson.

Teachers going to lunch with the students: I understand that these kids are a little younger, so they need more guidance, but the fact that some of the teachers have the chance and the time to eat lunch with the students is an important factor which I believe builds respect and trust, which could really enhance their limited time in the classroom.

Letting the Students Pioneer: This was a brilliant idea in my opinion. There are a lot of advantages to starting a brand new school system, and that is there are no rules! It seems that the management of this new school is very focused on reaching the students in a way that takes the least prying and that is the most effective. Since a lot of communication in our generation is through technology, and this school has the resources to use different communication devices and applications, they are appropriately making an effort to use technology whenever possible. I briefly met the superintendent and she was discussing to Rachel, another TF, how there are currently no student clubs and how the students need active extracurricular activities like a debate club, or a student council. The neat thing is, they are going to let the students pioneer these student clubs, kind of like they will be entrepreneurs starting their own business. Not only is this a practical experience, the students would have credit for building their own organizations from scratch which is generally not offered in traditional systems that don't offer much leverage.

Students looked happy: One of the biggest things I noticed is that the students looked happy to be at school. Again, this is slightly hard to compare to high school students which are a little older and mature, and have a million and one other things to worry about, but these students were definitely excited about learning and I feel as though the openness of their environment and the setting had a lot to do with it. They seemed motivated by the fact that they could feel like someone had a lot invested in their learning and took pride in beginning to appreciate their self-worth.

Why is Math Important?

Last week wasn't as exciting because the students had to take tests during the hour so I just helped answer questions and watched the class when Mrs. Mills had to step out for a few minutes for a meeting. This week, I decided to start my series of mini-presentations to the classroom. One of the students had raised the question "Why is Math Important?" - a valid question, especially for beginning highschool students who have little to no interest in math. As I begin shaping my goals for the class this year, one thing that is important to me is that the students understand the practicality of math, and the infinite applications of math in their everyday lives and future careers. Personally, when I find that I don't 'like' something, more often than not its because I do not 'understand' it or haven't taken the time to understand it, or haven't used and applied it. I think that one way to make math seem more appealing to the students is to see math in action in more areas outside of the classroom. For the first presentation, we had to use overheads, but we plan to use powerpoint in the future. I started off with a slide with four quotes about math:

"The great book of nature can be read only by those who know the language in which it was written. And that language is mathematics." - Galileo “Father of Science”:

“Mathematics is biology’s new microscope – only better.” - Rita Colwell, Director of National Science Foundation

"For example, how can we exploit the world-wide network of seismic sensors to predict earthquakes? How can we mine the vast genomic databanks to advance biology and medicine? How can we sift through the massive amounts of text, video, web, and satellite data to detect terrorist events before they happen? Well, data means big collections of numbers--remember that text and images are digitized and stored as numbers--and data mining means discovering the patterns and structures hidden in those collections. That's practically a definition of mathematics: the study of structures and patterns in large numerical sets. So you can be sure that in the 21st century--the century of data--math will again have a huge impact." - Unknown

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. ~Gottfried Leibniz

This was just a starter to get the student's attention and to ask them what their thoughts and opinions were about these quotes. Most of them had heard of Galileo so they could understand the first quote, and the last quote sparked a lot of discussion because some didn't want to believe that math was used in music. So I asked the class how many of them played musical instruments and some students shouted out the different instruments they play. I mentioned that I also have played piano and clarinet, and how the rhythms in music was actually an abstract application of math.

Next, I put up a sheet that had a list of about 30 random career areas that I could think of. Everything from "Law" to "Economics" to "Sociology" to "Engineering." The point to this slide was to show that math is relevant in virtually every career field. This was very interesting because at first glance many of the students argued that some of the careers like "sociology" or "culinary arts" didn't require math skills, but I explained simple examples of how you could use math in those fields to silence them. Then other students tried to challenge me on other careers to see if I could think of examples of where to use math. The only one that stumped me was cheerleading.

Next, I went over some practical examples of math and how it makes you more competitive when trying to find a job. I listed about 10 or so examples:

- Math is the most widely used subject in the world

- Every career uses some kind of math

-Doing math helps the mind to reason and organize complicated situations or problems into clear, simple, and logical steps.

- High paying jobs often demand someone who can take complicated situations and simplify it to the level that everyone can understand.

- Therefore, by knowing more math, students give themselves the competitive edge they will need to compete for these high paying jobs

- The ability to identify and analyze patterns

- Logic and critical thinking skills

- Ability to see relationships

- Problem solving skills

This one wasn't as interactive, but I just explained the importance of learning math and how it exercises your brain while enhancing problem solving skills.

Lastly, I put up a slide to portray the universality of math. In one circle, I enclosed the words:

Medicine

Religion / Beliefs

Culture

Race

Government

Environment

Language

And in a separate square, I enclosed the words:

Mathematics

Math literacy = “numeracy”

And I asked them to tell me what would change about the things in the circle if I was in Japan. I got a good response from that, different students shouted out answers basically saying that all of the things in the circle would change - the correct answer. I explained that many of the things in the circle will change even if you just go to a neighboring city. Its not necessary to travel around the world to find differences. Then I asked them what would happen with math if I traveled to Japan. Some of the students hesitated on this one, and then a couple of them answered that math would change depending on where you were in the world - interesting. Some were confused and thought that because the language changed, the math would change too. I explained that although the languages may change, and the way in which the math was taught may change, the mathematics is still the same anywhere in the world. I also asked them to fill out information sheets with their name, hobbies/interests, and two jobs that they thought were cool. I got good participation with this and it has been interesting to thumb through all of these to get a feel for what they are interested in. For my next presentation, I plan to show them some stats comparing this information by class and grade and then putting together a booklet with information on different careers. This should be fun!