MEDIA, Pa. — Math teachers from around Pennsylvania participated in two Pennsylvania Mathematics Initiative (PMI) workshops hosted by Penn State Brandywine that explored new approaches in teaching. The two weeklong workshops, titled “Math as a Second Language” and “Functions and Algebra,” took place in mid-July and were partially funded through a National Science Foundation grant.
Penn State’s PMI was designed to improve mathematical education for all children in Pennsylvania schools by strengthening teachers’ understanding and implementation of mathematics through intensive summer workshops. Ultimately, teacher-participants can become leaders who can act as resources to other teachers in their districts for the teaching and learning of mathematics.
“The workshops covered the many perspectives of how to present to students the basic concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebraic operations, relations and functions, linearity and graphs,” said Professor of Mathematics Charles Helou, who organized and taught the workshops. “They emphasized understanding the concepts underlying the processes that are usually taught."
Kimberly Schultz and Marina Skyers, both instructors in mathematics at the Brandywine campus, also taught the workshops.