Mathematics conglomerate

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=15<strong>Mathematics</strong> department faculty, left to right, front: Terri HerrNeckar, MarthaJacobsen, Jeanne Jacobs, Heather Sugrue, Erica Banderob, Gregg Reilly, andKeith Hilles-Pilant; back: Geoff Theobald, Steve Feldman, Anne Kaufman, PeterKahn, Hal Pratt, John Banderob, Juan Ramos, and Jackie Bonenfant, chair.and then zoom out to test where elsethose criteria might apply,” says Keith.“They might apply to circular motion, forinstance, or a field of objects that work ina similar way.”Writing your own teaching materials takestime and work, and it fosters a collegialenvironment that members of the departmentwho have come from other schoolsexperience as rare and intellectually invigorating.“You understand,” says Jackie,“that to do the best work with students,you need to trust and depend upon yourdepartment colleagues.”“As a department, and as a group of individuals,we have had to think and talkabout what we are teaching, why we areteaching it, and how best to teach it; it’san essential and ongoing conversation,”says Terri HerrNeckar. All those who teachsections of a given course meet onceeach week; teachers of several courseshave many meetings. They discuss howclasses have gone and roadblocks thathave appeared; they agree upon commonhomework assignments and who willwrite an upcoming quiz. The discussionsinclude: “What way would you use to solvethis problem?” or “I want to introduce thisconcept. Do you have an effective problemto do that?”The outcome of teacher collaboration andattention to the craft of teaching is a curriculumthat is responsive, efficient, customized,open-ended. “I teach two classesthat each have a single section of students,”Erica Banderob says. “I writesomething up after each class. It’s not thesame as last year; it fits exactly. When I seea need, I respond with the right thing,tomorrow!” Rather than following the preordainedsequence in a textbook, “having adata base of our own materials gives usthe confidence to change the flow, basedon the students,” Terri notes.When he arrived at Milton almost 20years ago, Keith Hilles-Pilant designedMath 7 for students who have alreadytaken at least two years of advancedplacement-level calculus. “The content iscompletely different every year,” Keithsays, “based on the interest of the students.I poll the incoming students andtogether we establish the syllabus for thecoming year. This year, the students wereinterested in studying mathematicalphysics, so we are doing that. Along withthe students, I generate the materials forthe course. The result is a book, or perhapsa research journal is a more appropriatename for it. My hope is that the studentswill not only learn, but also discoverthat they can and want to do their ownresearch.”Not surprisingly, students respond well tomath that is designed just for them. Eachstudent keeps a notebook, compiling dailythe teaching materials from faculty mem-36 Milton Magazine
ers along with their own work. “Whenyou give students a new section of the‘text’ each day, every day is important. Thestudents know the pages are the work ofthe faculty in the department and they sortof share in our pride of ownership,” saysSteve Feldman. “When a student asks ateacher why he or she is studying this orthat, a faculty member can easily answerthe question.”Students are responsible for building theirnotebooks; therefore, they are in charge ofthe key resource for the course. (The facultykeep a close eye on the Class IV notebooks,as they emerge.) In this environment,note-taking increases in importance:students can’t easily look up in abook the information they miss, althoughthey might find helpful information onthe Internet. Students learn to use otherresources, too, like each other.Students are much more aware of theirhomework; they have a sense of ownershipfor it, and it becomes part of theiroverall math notebooks. “Having the samehomework as others in different sectionsof the course is helpful, too,” HeatherSugrue notes. “They’re likely to work on ittogether, in the library, the student center,or the dorm. The conversations stretchacross sections.”82“We have the technology now to producemuch more professional-looking materials,”John says, and reworking the materialsis constant and demands time. Thetransition from textbooks to facultydevelopedmaterials is the most difficultpart; the up ramp is steep, and it takes twoto three years to come up with a good criticalmass of material. After that, teachingwith these materials is easier, mainlybecause it’s not boring, it’s more effectiveand much more efficient.New technological developments that areaffecting the teaching environment andsparking creativity today are digital projectorsand SMART Boards. “The next bigquestion,” Jackie says, “is whether or notwe’ll use a computer algebra system(CAS). Students can use calculators with aCAS on standardized tests and AP tests,so that’s the next issue we will need toaddress.”Providing the best possible math experiencefor students has been the mathdepartment’s abiding goal, as they workedclosely together to shape pertinent, challengingmaterial year after year. “This styleof teaching,” says Heather, “is what makesme want to stay at Milton. Not manyschools are doing this: I feel I can contributeto students’ success on a dailybasis.”Cathleen Everett“We spend less time on the repetitivepractice of skills, in theabstract, and more on presentinga stream of situations, asking studentsto determine what theyneed to know to solve the problem.We help them develop mathematicalideas and skills by workingon them in a context—a moreintriguing, less routine treatmentof math for students.”—Jackie Bonenfant,Department Chair37 Milton Magazine
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Mathematics conglomerate

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