Slim, bright-eyed Dawn Yuen was looking for Sierra Hall. Jeffery Thomas was the lucky guy who happened along and helped her find it.

Had Thomas ‘89 (Humanities), ‘92 MA (History), and Yuen ’90 MBA, not stumbled upon each other that day, it is anyone’s guess whether a certain math curriculum out of Singapore would now be making inroads—however embryonic—into the U.S. math education landscape.

The Thomases have played a significant role in raising U.S. consciousness about what has come to be known as Singapore math, in which children learn math by using exercises and diagrams that emphasize meaning rather than uninspired repetition. Their company, Singaporemath.com Inc, has the exclusive distributing rights for the curriculum textbooks.

Long story short, Yuen and Thomas’ chance meeting resulted in their marriage and the events that led to the creation of Singaporemath.com Inc. First, their daughter, Echo, was born. Second, they moved to Singapore. There, Echo and the 41 other students in her Singapore classroom were exposed to a curriculum that focused heavily on “mental math” to help them master the basic skills and facts of mathematics. Quite early, she was introduced to word problems that required her to use logic in order to solve them. “We were pretty impressed with the results,” Thomas said.

The Thomases returned to the U.S. in 1997 and enrolled Echo in a suburban Portland, Ore. primary school. The school was an award winner, Thomas said, but “in mathematics it had no coherent program. We saw the contrast.”

Her parents began supplementing Echo’s math schoolwork with the Singapore curriculum and saw the youngster’s skills get back on track. “That got us thinking about the possibility of bringing the Singapore curriculum to the U.S.,” Thomas said. “Had our daughter’s school here had a great math program, we probably would never have done this.”

Exquisite timing

Their timing was exquisite. Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) scores were consistently placing Singapore at or near the top of international math comparisons and the U.S. scandalously low in the rankings of industrialized countries.

CSUN mathematics professor Joel Zeitlin said adoption of the Singapore texts would be “a good direction” for math education. He observed that “Americans introduce many topics, then cover and re-cover them…The Singapore program starts off with a smaller number of topics, covers them and moves on, assuming that students can use them.”

But beyond the Singapore curriculum, Zeitlin sees the need for K-12 math specialists, better tests that measure deeper student understanding, and a keener focus on “actual mathematical knowledge for teaching…

In the search for ways to better prepare future teachers, faculty in the Michael D. Eisner College of Education and the College of Science and Mathematics work together closely. One example, said Zeitlin, is assistant secondary education professor Julie Gainsburg’s practice of inviting faculty from the Math Department to serve as research project reviewers for the master’s degree in mathematics education.

“Our projects are always trying to improve math education, whether developing brand new or veteran teachers,” said Gainsburg, who with colleague Ivan Cheng works on credentialing future math teachers and helping experienced math teachers in the Secondary Education Department’s math education masters program.

Gainsburg’s ears are always open to the concerns of math teachers on the front lines, including the challenges of teaching math to English language learners and requirements that have them teaching increasingly more math topics on a tight, “if-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be-Section-D” schedule.  A recent requirement that eighth graders take Algebra I is affecting both middle school teachers who may not feel prepared to teach it, she observed, and students who may not feel prepared to master it.

Algebra’s the target

Algebra, a major culprit in district dropouts, is in fact the target subject of DREAMS (Developing Resources and Engaging Activities to Motivate Students), designed to ”help students before they fail.”

Backed by a grant from a consortium that included the CSU chancellor’s office, the Educational Roundtable, the UC president’s office and others, Cheng and colleagues created the summer program for eighth graders who were unsuccessful in math.

By integrating pre-algebra with robotics, mathematics was opened up to them in a way the youngsters never would have imagined. Children responded readily to a problem involving, say, the speed of a Lego robot, Cheng said. “They began to see education as relevant.”

Cheng met daily with the participating middle school teachers to focus on the learning needs of the kids. “We took a good hard look at what was going on in their heads,” he said.

In the fall semesters following DREAMS, students who ordinarily would not have been placed in algebra passed the subject at the 86 and 90 percent rates. “What happened was, teachers began to teach differently, working on getting through to the kids rather than just getting through the book.” said Cheng. “My mission has been to help teachers teach for understanding. If teachers just give the answers and the students don’t know what to do with them, then they can’t solve the problems of life.”

Math teachers Michelle Katz ’04 MA (Math Education) and Wendi Williams ’04 MA (Math Education) agree. The two are National Board certified master teachers at Northridge Academy High, designed in collaboration with CSUN faculty and located on the CSUN campus. Their alma mater, they said, demonstrated “the practice of looking at how students learn math,” making content “accessible and relatable,” and building a connection with the learner.

As their students conducted investigations recently, their adjoining classrooms buzzed with activity. “It’s almost like science lab, but with math-themed problems,” said Katz, who like Williams was drawn to the new academy and its research-based innovations because she “wanted to be part of looking toward the future of education.” For Williams, the “mile wide, inch deep” approach to education has no place in that future.

Take a look at Provost Hellenbrand’s P.O.V. on math ed.

— Brenda Roberts

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