Teachers Bring Math to Life at The Oaks Mall

Hundreds of Thousand Oaks students and their parents hit The Oaks mall Monday night. But they weren’t there to shop.

They came to do their math homework, spreading out across the mall to answer questions about the mall, its stores and what $5 might buy.

“The problems are easy,” said 8-year-old Candice Simpson of Thousand Oaks. “I’ve already learned all the questions.”

“She’s pretty bright,” nodded her dad, Kelly Simpson. “I think this thing is great, but I wish they would have scheduled it on a Saturday or Sunday.”

Candice and her brother, Casey, were taking part in the Math on the Mall program, designed to help students take an interest in math.

Six stations were set up in the mall, each staffed with teachers who corrected workbooks and gave students stamps of approval that entitled them to skip the night’s regular homework.

“We really want to make math as accessible to our children as reading is,” said Christina Myren, a math mentor in the Conejo Unified School District. “No parent ever comes to me and says ‘I wasn’t good at reading.’ But they often say that about math.”

Parents often read to the children, she said, but few of them are comfortable enough with math to help work problems.

“We wanted to show parents and kids that math is really all around them,” she said.

The questions included what a child could buy for lunch at the mall with $5, how many vending carts are in the mall, and how many right angles make up the entrance to the Gap.

Krista Ruggiero, a fifth-grade student at Park Oaks Elementary, declared that question the hardest.

She said she would have come even if she didn’t earn a homework credit.

“I came for the fun of it,” she said.

Throughout the mall, students used store displays as makeshift tables to answer questions, and parents and students crouched on the floor in consultation.

Monday night was the second of three Mondays of Math in the Mall. The first two weeks ago drew 800 people, and organizers expected the same turnout on Monday, though they didn’t plan to count tickets until today.

The quest to make math interesting worked for 9-year-old Jenna Kwiatkowski from Madrona Elementary School.

“I like math because it’s fun,” Jenna declared.