Minutes of Meeting at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes, April 11, 2002

 

 

In attendance were your loyal secretary, Paul Penniman; Joan Reinthaler of the Sidwell Friends Upper School; Doug Adams, Eileen Budde, and James King of the St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes Upper School; Suzanne Nuckolls of the St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes Middle School; Beth Cole of the St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School; Margo Dunlavey; Ron Umbeck of Bishop Ireton High School; Betsy Bennett of the St. Albans School; Karen Dee Michalowicz of the Langley School; Ayana Touval of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School; Nancy Wright of the Washington Episcopal School; Phyllis Friedemann of the Alexandria Country Day School; Syamala Chenulu of the Capitol Hill Day School; and Lee Goldman of the Madeira School.

 

 

  1. First, some nuts and bolts:  Joan brought up the salary of our math meet question writer, Buzz Mauro.  Betsy volunteered without dissent that she is happy with Buzz’s work, and he has been very responsive to our needs and requests.  After some discussion of our finances, it was decided unanimously to raise Buzz’s salary (at his request) from $1000 to $1200 annually.
  2. Finances:  Nancy Wright distributed a report that can be distributed electronically when W.E.S.’s email service is up and running again.  ISMAW netted approximately $100 this year, so to keep our coffers full enough, it was decided to raise middle school fees to $30 and upper school fees to $50.  (It should be noted that for many years Karen D.M. has been, pro bono, writing our middle school meet questions.)  Also, several people volunteered to research alternatives to maintaining a checking account with a $7/month service charge when the balance dips below $1000.
  3. Officers for next year:  Nancy will remain as treasurer; Paul will be a virtual secretary, keeping track of membership and minutes; and Syamala and Ayana will return as coordinators/co-presidents?
  4. We discussed rigor.  I have reordered some of the points made to make our discussion seem more coherent, although it was a good discussion!  Syamala distributed a recent article from the Washington Post which discussed different teaching methods for different students.  Paul mentioned our country is heading toward a rigorous approach for our better students, but a more user-friendly, more accessible approach to the masses.
  5. What is rigor?  Is it a 2-column format, with every last step justified?  Not necessarily, says Syamala.  Instead, logical thinking must be inculcated, and a disciplined, organized mind must be developed.  This cannot be left up to the students.    Betsy:  A logical construct is necessary, not just an empirical method.  Phyliss:  Students must learn justifications before they are allowed to skip steps.  Joan:  Rigor is relative.  Some students can construct proofs well, but they don’t always appreciate what they’ve done at that age.  Ayana:  Some proofs are possible at certain ages, then concepts and rigor can develop.  Some of Beth’s sixth grade students understood the question, “Does this always work?”, and some of them can generalize in some ways, but others can’t at all.  Karen:  With younger kids, rigor means showing in any way that you really understand.  Joan wondered whether students know the difference between believing and knowing.

 

  1. We discussed different teaching methods.  Karen:  Informal proofs can come first, with the Geometer’s Sketchpad and paper-folding, then real proofs can be discussed.  Doug:  Geometry’s axiomatic method build good learning methods.  Margo likes Serra’s Discovering Geometry textbook, although Betsy said the first part is easier, pre-proofs.  Ayana likes the book for mature students, while Joan uses it in Sidwell’s less strenuous geometry class, where they write mini-, paragraph proofs initially, then they want to do two-column proofs.  Syamala’s students will be doing paragraph proofs to be assessed by both English and math teachers.  At Thomas Jefferson High in Annandale, an IBET (sp?) project involves  the biology, English, and technology departments.  Joan:  Logic is a good topic which hardly anyone teaches anymore.  (Just Montgomery County’s honors program has a significant unit.)  Someone:  Math vocabulary games can be fun, like hangman and syllable games.  As for exploration-oriented lessons, Ayana said the students need to find what we want them to find.  Nancy said her better students see the connections well when they do explorations, but the other students just have a good time.  Beth:  Explanation is needed at the outset of instruction.  Is lots of repetition and drill the answer?  After the Post reported on a resurgence in sentence diagramming, W.E.S. decided to teach it for a week to help teach parts of grammar.

 

  1. Future topic department:  Doug:  Two-column versus paragraph proofs.  Karen:  Math books from long ago (this would be an encore performance).  Paul:  How to help the elementary math teachers in your school. 

 

  1. Many K-5 teachers race through material with which they are not comfortable, avoid particular topics.  Karen and Penni Ross, also of Langley, are teaching K-6 content to prospective teachers.  Syamala will this summer conduct a workshop with math-phobic elementary teachers this summer.  Nancy said meetings at W.E.S. with elementary teachers have been very well-received.  Joan team-taught with a generalist one year, a great experience, but it must be ongoing, not a one-shot thing like a one-day workshop or conference.