Mount Si integrates more math into the curriculum
November 19, 2008
By Laura Geggel
Many students expect to encounter mathematical concepts in algebra and physics, but not in their Spanish or language arts classes.
Still, Mount Si High School math teacher Tracy Petroske is asking her colleagues to integrate math into their lessons in a program called Math Across the Curriculum. Math should percolate into casual classroom conversation, Petroske said.
Senior Emily Brodie looks at a problem in her calculus book. With the Math Across the Curriculum program, Brodie may start seeing math in her other classes at Mount Si.
“There are times when it’s obvious,” she said, using the construction technology class as an example. Students, for example, might deduce the pitch of a roof — a term Petroske would call slope.
“It’s the same thing, you just use a different vocabulary,” Petroske said.
Gregg Meyers, the construction technology teacher, has already introduced math into his curriculum through Renton Technical College’s Construction Math Initiative. Now, Meyers has a “math toolbox” he connects with his lessons.
Last year, Meyers began coordinating with geometry teacher Melanie Breitbach.
“We worked out a deal where she would teach the Pythagorean theorem,” Meyers said. His students visited her class and learned about how the theorem related to roof lines and “squaring up concrete stairs.”
In return, Meyers’s class taught Breitbach’s students how to use different tools and how they could be used to implement geometry concepts.
“My objective was to show that math was already being taught, but it was just taught in a different way,” Meyers said.
If his construction students go into the trade, they will need to understand math. Students who pass a test put out by the National Center for Construction Education and Research will be recognized nationally for understanding industry standard mathematics. That mathematical certificate could help them land a job, Meyers said.
Chemistry teacher Ken Hagler said math naturally surfaced in his subject, but so did other subjects.
“I try to incorporate as much of other disciplines as I can,” Hagler said. “If I know a historical aside that goes along with teaching chemistry, I’ll throw in a little history. If I have my students do a research paper, I’ll ask them to do it in MLA (Modern Language Association) format.”
Petroske said the idea to implement Math Across the Curriculum at Mount Si happened after the successful school-wide literacy across the curriculum program. Petroske participated in the campaign, asking her students to write with proper, grammatical sentences when explaining their problem solving.
“I would say to students, ‘don’t just give me three words, give me three sentences,” Petroske said. “It was not trying to turn us into English teachers. It was trying to turn students into literate people.”
As a result, WASL scores in literacy and subjects that dealt with literacy soared.
John Pinkser, the literacy teacher on special assignment for grades six through twelve, said the department regularly communicates with other teachers in other subjects.
“We want teachers in other classes to see the level of instruction and the writing skills students should have so they know what they can expect from students,” Pinkser said.
After watching the success of literacy across the curriculum, Petroske said she wondered if the school could do the same for math. She learned Deann Leoni, a math instructor at Edmonds Community College, had received two grants from the National Science Foundation to create a Math Across the Curriculum program.
Leoni described the push for math as a national movement that, like Mount Si, followed a push for literacy.
Leoni said the goal of the program was to promote quantitative literacy in every subject instead of restricting it to “an isolated 50 minutes a day.”
“Our end goal is to increase student’s understanding, knowledge, familiarity and fluency with math,” Leoni said.
Leoni spoke at Mount Si and explained how Edmonds Community College is utilizing the program. For example, Spanish students could do math in Spanish, which would improve both their math and foreign language skills. Other classes can incorporate percentages and graphs into conversations.
“We’re not asking people to be math teachers,” Petroske said. “There are mathematical ideas in every subject.”
Reach reporter Laura Geggel at 392-6434 .221 or lgeggel@snovalleystar.com.
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