Why Did They Change The Math Program?

Wait, wait, wait. Let’s rewind. Why did we change the math program in the first place? This is a question many students are probably asking themselves and others.

As you may know from reading my previous blogs, I have weekly meetings with Mr. Payeur and of course the “why change” question has come up several times. Here’s some of the reasoning behind changing the math program:

• To benefit students online skills
• To make it so we can have both pure and applied math
• To make math flexible  
• To build a community of math learners
• To create a place where students can work at an appropriate pace for their own needs.

To benefit students online skills:  Math lab is a place where students do a lot of online learning. The online aspect is important because colleges are becoming more and more advanced in using technology and it’s important for students to learn those skills. In a way, math lab teaches those skills.

To make it so we can have both pure and applied math: Pure math is doing math for the sake of math. It’s basically just equations.  Applied Math is taking pure math and putting it in a context that is important to you. The IMP’s are a kind of applied math. Math lab would open up student schedules so they could take applied math classes.

To make math flexible: The administration wanted math lab to be flexible and to not control schedules. Math lab opens up an opportunity to teach pure math, but to also open up student and teacher schedules to create applied math classes. In applied math classes you would learn about things that are important to you, but math is included in it. In the previous years, students had just one math class, and now with math lab students have the opportunity to work on regular math, which is pure math, and have the opportunity to choose an applied math class to take on the side. Students would be benefiting in math in two different ways.

To build a community of math learners: Teachers want all the math students to cooperate and work together because in a way all of our math relates. It’s a way to begin to allow students to take control of classrooms, because they’ll be able to go in and have student lead conversations and everyone would be asking each other questions instead of waiting around for teachers to help them.

To create a place where students can work at an appropriate pace for their own needs: This is pretty self explanatory. Math lab makes it available to students to  work at their own pace.

As you can see their intentions for changing the math program were good, but of course there are some flaws, change isn’t alway going to be perfect the first time. Math lab right now isn’t the best, but eventually it will be. I agree with the online concept of math lab because colleges are advancing in technology and it’s important to prepare us for it. Not only that, math lab is helping us to become independent learners and it’s important for students to know how to be independent when it comes to college.

Keep leaving comments and visit my blog again for more information on the math lab.

Updating The Math Lab

When I first started this project, I approached it close-mindedly and had no hope of it being change in any way. It caused me a lot of frustration. As my project progressed, my thoughts changed. Now, changes are actually being made to the math lab.

For the last three Wednesdays, I’ve been meeting with Mr. Payeur. We’ve been discussing the math lab. In the most recent meeting, we discussed the changes they’ve planned to apply to the math lab after February break. These changes included:

• Incomplete grades will go away
• A new buddy system, with a go to person for each student when a teacher is unavailable
• Direct instruction for IMP 1, 2 and 3
• IMP 1 on one side of the room and IMP 2 and IMP 3 on the other side of the room
• Community activity when class first starts
• A daily entrance task
• Last 5 -10 mins closing activity

Mr Payeur had told me that lately he’d been talking to the administration about trying to find a way for us to get credit for what we did last semester. Hopefully, credit will be earned based on the amount of submissions a student has completed.

Math lab was made to be flexible, so it is easy to change. There are several reasons why they changed the math program. One reason is because they wanted to build a community of math learners another reason is that they wanted and create a place where students can work at an appropriate pace for their own needs.

For many, math lab doesn’t seem like a community workspace because students usually stay in their own world at their tables don’t converse with others. The purpose of the community activity when class first begins and the buddy system is to help build that community of math learners that the teachers want to see. The community activity is to help brings us together so we feel more comfortable with each other. As of now, most students I have interviewed said that it’s awkward going up to students they don’t usually talk with. Most of the time they don’t like bugging others and making them  go back to previous activities they’ve already completed. Again ,community activities should help to bring us together and fix these problems.

Student voice is finally somewhat being heard. They are at least trying something different from what they’ve been doing and, hopefully, it works better than how it was working before, because many students, including myself, are struggling and were not making progress in our math work.

Keep leaving your thoughts about the math lab in the comments, I need them to make the full changes to the math lab that I want to see. A change is happening! Students need to keep speaking up! We do have a voice!