Grant aims to make math real

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

BROWN

Making algebra more “real life,” as opposed to merely abstract numbers and letters, is the goal of a $3,000 grant recently received by high school math technology teacher Lucretia Brown.

This marks the third straight year the high school has been awarded one of Highland Rim Tech Prep Consortium’s eight annual grants.

“This money will allow us to do more real life stuff to help learning,” said Brown. “It will help make math real, more than just a bunch of letters. Books are wonderful, but they’re bad about using problems nobody would use in real life. We want to make math relevant to what our students will be doing after they graduate.”

Purchased with the grant money was 30 graphing calculators, a computer projection device, as well as devices which detect motion and light. This equipment, Brown said, will help to allow math tech students to apply what they’re learning in a number of experiments and hands-on activities, both inside and outside the classroom, which will in turn serve to make the algebraic concepts easier to learn.

And learning the concepts is now more important than ever, she noted, as all students (including math tech students who are not college bound) are required to pass the Gateway algebra exam in order to graduate.

“The kind of equipment we were able to get was previously just used by the college-path students. This grant has helped to level the playing field,” said Brown.

But more than helping her students achieve a short-term goal, Brown said the equipment will also serve to help give the students experience with life challenges in problem solving.

“Everything we do is to get the students to think,” she said.

The Highland Rim Tech Prep Consortium is an 11-county partnership of school districts, two- and four-year colleges, technology centers, and business, industry and labor representatives.