President's Message

Karen Cockburn, WSMC President
Joel E. Ferris High School, Spokane

The mathematics teachers of the state of Washington have an exciting adventure ahead as we all try to match our daily instructional goals with the Washington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements and follow up by assessing those learning targets in meaningful ways. Haven't we been doing this all along? I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, I know this is really something different.

For one thing, I am spending more time deciding if what I am teaching is important mathematics not just the standard content offered in that particular course. I am more carefully choosing the delivery method for the mathematics my students are seeing. In addition, I am trying to tie that mathematics to some part of my student's world. These considerations are not entirely new to me but they have taken on added importance.

How and what I assess has also changed its complexion since I have been involved in our state's restructuring process. I have become a believer that we must prepare our students for a different world than the one for which I was testing. In many ways it is much easier to test for recall and one answer type problems, but the world at large is not that simple. Students have to learn how to deal with ambiguity, how to communicate their thinking, and how to be comfortable with many different methods of solutions to problems. This requires different assessment tools.

I am still working on making these assessments teacher friendly, thought provoking, relevant, and valid. Some of those things seem mutually exclusive at times. This is not an easy task for teachers. Some of the suggestions I hear at conferences sound good in the meeting rooms but fall flat in the classroom. That doesn't mean it is impossible to change my assessment procedures to become more "authentic". It does mean that it does not happen over night and that it does take a lot of time and effort.

I said we are all involved in an "exciting adventure". I was not being facetious. It is an exciting time to be a mathematics teacher. We have more methods and materials available than ever before to help students understand and enjoy the study of mathematics. We have more reasons than ever before for students and their parents to appreciate the study of mathematics. We have a state that is supporting the reformation of what the study of mathematics looks like in schools. We have new state mathematics tests which give students and parents a different picture of what it means to know mathematics. All together we have the ingredients to produce better thinking, more articulate, more serious, and more qualified mathematics students. I think that is exciting!

©WSMC and Richard T. Edgerton