Teaching Mathematics
* Re “Governing Schools,” Letters to the Valley Edition, Feb. 28.
For the past four years, each week I have been in 16 to 20 classrooms at the middle school level in the Los Angeles Unified School District, working with teachers and students in mathematics. As a coach / teacher / mentor, I see teachers presenting situational problems and students fully engaged in solving those problems. The students are using the skills they possess, as well as developing new skills, are focusing on strong mathematical ideas and are solving problems that one calculus teacher said his students haven’t gotten to yet. All of these classes are in schools that are part of the Los Angeles Systemic Initiative (LASI).
I would like to ask [David] Klein how many classrooms in LAUSD he has visited. Has he seen the test results from students in “scrambled-eggs” classes as compared to the “over-hard” method classes he seems to be proposing?
It seems to me that business leaders are not the only ones who “lack even the foggiest understanding of issues that really matter in education.”
I invite [Klein] to come out of his ivory tower at Cal State Northridge, into the real world of hard-working teachers and students excited about and loving mathematics.
He might even change the way he orders his eggs!
MARIAN PASTERNACK
Chatsworth
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