TEACHER OF INTEREST
84
Trends In Education
athletes. Others say they want to practice medicine.
“It will be all about problem-solving, critical thinking and
persevering,” she said.
Students are learning there is more than one way to solve a
problem, and that what works for one child might not work
for another. First-graders are participating in a pilot project
that uses a textbook recently approved by Singapore’s education
ministry.
“The textbook looks at number sense,” Meadows said.
“Rather than looking at the number 26 as a two and a six,
which most children will do, they look at it as 20 and six
ones. This helps children become more flexible with numbers
so they can learn how the parts make up the whole.”
Rather than having to memorize, for example, that seven
times eight equals 56, they could get the answer by counting
seven groups of eight. Teaching tools such as blocks and dice
help the children solve problems. First-graders recently had
an introduction to fractions by being shown a piece of paper
folded one way and then another.
“In a group setting, a child who sees the solution one way
benefits from a child who sees it another way,” she said. “It’s
a strategy to help a child build math facts without counting,
because counting is such a low-level way of learning.”
The website PBS Parents says Singapore math has become
popular in this country because of Singapore’s consistent
top ranking on an international assessment of student math
achievement called the Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study. In one year, Singapore was ranked in the
top three in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores, while the
United States ranked ninth and 11th, respectively.
“While American math instruction often relies on drilling
and memorization of many skills each year, Singapore math
focuses on children not just learning but also truly mastering
a limited number of concepts each year,” Laura Lewis Brown
wrote on the website. “The goal is for children to perform
well because they understand the material on a deeper level;
they are not just learning it for the test.”
Meadows never liked math when she learned it in the traditional
way.
“I was not an extremely strong math student,” she said. “As
a child, I did not enjoy it at all. I was taught in a very linear
way: ‘Here’s how you do the problem. Now do 50 of them.’
I was always inquisitive about why math worked the way it
did, but my teachers in the past didn’t give that to me.”
Not until college — she attended McNeese State University
in Louisiana, where she majored in elementary education —
did Meadows have a math teacher who helped her understand
concepts behind calculations.
“She always taught with the ‘why’ behind things,” she said.
Early on, Meadows set her sights on a career in the classroom.
“I always wanted to be a teacher, but I would have been
shocked if anyone had ever told me I’d be teaching math
someday,” she said.
Now she is in her 21st year of teaching, the last 10 at St. Edward’s.
Earlier, she taught math in Louisiana and Maryland.
When she’s not in the classroom, Meadows enjoys watching
her son play golf and working in her flower garden.
She also enjoys seeing her students express enthusiasm
about math. She overheard one girl say recently at the conclusion
of a lesson that math “made her happy.”
And that, in turn, made her teacher very happy.
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