MOMENTUM AND MASTERY:
Quantitative Teaching and Learning at SPA
BY LAURA BILLINGS COLEMAN | PHOTOS BY SCOTT STREBLE
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“STEM education is on everyone’s radar screen. It’s more of a concern, because it’s clear it’s going to be more of a necessity.” Tina Barsky, Upper School science.
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Bill Boulger, the chair of St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s math department, began his teaching career in the sixties, while America was still reeling from a wake-up call that sounded October 4, 1957. “There was this little thing called Sputnik,” Boulger says, chuckling at the memory of the surprise Russian satellite that launched the space race, spurred a flurry of curriculum reforms, an infusion of federal education dollars, and years of handwringing about how to engage students in the serious business of science and math. Fifty-five years later, his colleague Tina Barksy, chair of SPA’s science department, wonders if we haven’t arrived at “a second Sputnik moment” as we see American students falling behind their international peers in math and science achievement. “Getting young people to see their futures in science is something we teachers have always cared about—it’s our passion,” says Barsky, who left her first calling as a cell biologist to start a second career in education. “But now I would say that STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] education is on everyone’s radar screen. It’s more of a concern, because it’s clear it’s going to be more of a necessity.” Students are clearly comfortable consuming new technology, if their embrace of the Internet and the iPhone offers any clue, but whether they leave school with the skill set to drive those advances is the question. With fewer than 20 percent of U.S. students taking calculus before they graduate, America earned a 31st place in a recent “global mathematics ranking” from Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance. The group ranked U.S. students at 23rd place in science—far behind first place China, and fifth Fall 2012 | Winter 2013 | SPA
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Lower School science teacher Akbar Muhammad works with two second-grade scientists.
thermometer readings will fall. Most of his students see another beautiful fall day on the horizon, but one boy casts a vote for a 15-degree downturn. “It takes courage to be the only one,” Muhammad tells him. “Let’s see what happens tomorrow.” Moving on to the main lesson, Muhammad starts with a question: What do we think we know about butterflies? “They’re insects!” one boy says. “They taste bad to the things that want to eat them,” says a girl. “They have really big teeth,” says another. Muhammad writes it all down on the white board, assuring his class that at this stage in their discovery process, there are no wrong answers.
place Japan. In fact, just 30 percent of graduating U.S. seniors have taken physics—a core science critical to developing the quantitative and analytical thinking skills at the heart of understanding everything from climate change, to sustainable energy, to the next killer app. At St. Paul Academy and Summit School, however, the equation looks very different. In the Upper School, most students go well beyond the three required tracks in Earth Science, Biology, and Chemistry. A surprising 93 percent of student take at least one of SPA’s advanced science electives, which include Physics, Physics with Calculus, Space Science, Environmental Science, and Advanced Scientific Research. Student demand for fresh science offerings is so high that some years more than 100 percent of seniors are taking science courses, Barsky says, doubling up on electives like Space Science or new offerings such as Environmental Science. This year, the school offered an individual research option called Advanced Scientific Research that allows juniors and seniors to design their own 16
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experimental inquiries, and encourages them to seek guidance from experts in the field for professional advice. Engagement in math courses at SPA is just as high. Three years of mathematics are required for graduation, but 97 percent of students take a full four years, including 65 percent who complete calculus or post-calculus. “I think it’s a testimony both to the power of teaching and the experiences students have in math and science at SPA that they don’t flee from it,” says Bryn Roberts, SPA’s Head of School. “Our students eagerly embrace it, not as a careerist move, or something that will appeal to a university admissions committee, but because they’ve learned the joy of meaningful scientific exploration. This will serve them very well in the future, no matter what they do after they leave SPA.”
Thinking like scientists and mathematicians Lower school science teacher Akbar Muhammad starts class by asking his first graders what they noticed about the weather on their way to school, and where they think tomorrow’s
Across the hallway, science and math teacher Andy Power’s room is ringing with the sound of hammering, as third graders put the finishing touches on boats, planes, and cars they’ve just crafted out of scrap wood and glue. The volume grows as students take turns testing their crafts in pools of water, and learning that some of their more outlandish designs aren’t nearly as seaworthy as they thought. “It looks like chaos,” Power laughs. “But there’s a tremendous order to it. Think of this lesson as pre-engineering.” With SPA’s small class size, Power says many computational and arithmetic lessons can be covered quickly, with skills honed through homework completed outside of class. This freedom gives his accelerated math students class time to try their hands at projects like boatbuilding, or compete in “math Olympics” style problem-solving games his next class of fourthgraders clearly love.
The real-world application of mathematical and scientific principals is the foundation of quantitative learning in SPA’s Lower School, Richter says. She notes that getting kids excited about these subjects, and seeing how math and science connect to the real world, “has to start on day one.” Though Muhammad’s questions about the weather may seem casual, Richter says, he’s also teaching the school’s youngest students tools for observing the natural world, the difference between a guess and a prediction, and how trends in data collection can influence a hypothesis. “One thing you’ll notice is that the students aren’t working from a book about someone else’s experiments,” she says. “They’re exploring and making hypotheses and designing experiments and drawing conclusions. The idea is that we’re not just teaching them how to do math or how to do science. Throughout the K-12 curriculum, we’re teaching them to think the way real scientists and mathematicians think.”
Momentum and mastery Technology is an important part of SPA’s quantitative curriculum, and it is used in age-appropriate and measured ways in all three divisions. For instance, in the Lower School, Muhammad uses his laptop computer and a smart board to take his students straight to the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the week’s weather trends. As students’ sophistication with technology grows in Middle School, students start attending classes with Nobi tablet computers that include both a keyboard for typing, and a stylus and screen for taking notes. The interface allows math teacher Jenny Borovsky’s
seventh graders to create a real-time copy of the lessons she’s giving on the SMARTboard, while storing their own notes and calculations about the lesson at the same time. Though the extra technology is clearly a cool addition to class for the seventh graders, the Nobi is just one unusual element of the class. Borovsky notes that SPA students are assessed regularly to see which sequence of math classes—basic, regular, or honors—will stimulate them to succeed. “Some schools steer away from that approach but we have found that if kids are not challenged in math, they’re not thinking— they’re just doing math to do math, and that’s not our goal. At SPA, we see math as bigger than that.” In her lesson today, in fact, Borovsky is introducing these accelerated seventh graders (and one sixth grader) to algebraic proofs—a concept that many schools don’t introduce to students until 10th grade geometry class. Though Department Chair Bill Boulger notes this has been an SPA tradition for nearly 40 years (“ask any alum what they remember about math and it’s probably the eighth grade Theorem Project,” he says), this traditional approach has begun to look very progressive. “We attempt to do some things with math that people don’t do as much now, including a lot of mathematical proof with young students,” says Boulger. “Beginning algebra is proof-based at SPA, and it’s very highly structured, and very intellectual, and it lays a very firm foundation for the study of algebra.” In fact, SPA’s math sequence includes Algebra I and II in 9th and 10th grades instead of the more conventional practice of interrupting the sequence with geometry in 10th grade.
Middle Schoolers work out a problem set on the board in math class. “We’re not just teaching them how to do math or science…we’re teaching them to think the way real scientists and mathematicians think,” says Assistant Head of School Cindy Richter.
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Building that momentum and mastery is important, Boulger says, not just for winning math tournaments (SPA has been a perennial winner in regional and state math championships), but also because knowing the language of math helps build a student’s fluency in so many other disciplines. “We want students to think in quantitative language,” he says. Whether you’re in earth science or algebra, “mathematics is always the language that is either lurking in the background or right out front, so the more kids can take in, in terms of mathematical language and structure, the better off they are in their study of science, chemistry and physics, and I would argue, even some of the humanities.” Boulger says he often encounters former students who followed SPA’s regular math sequences who discover in college that their rigorous training
enabled them to surpass their college peers, or even pursue higher degrees in the field. One lesson he’s proud they all seem to remember: “If you don’t continue to study mathematics, you’re hearing doors close behind you all the time.” He still keeps a copy of the Theorem Project completed by Eric Olson ’82, which Boulger calls “as close to perfect as you can get.” Olson went on to study chemistry and Russian at Macalester College, became a Rhodes Scholar, and is now a Senior Vice President for Business for Social Responsibility, a global consulting firm.
Providing the tools and getting out of the way The 12 seniors in Karissa Baker’s environmental science class are growing accustomed to getting dirty. “I brought my rubber boots!” says one student, as she joins her classmates unloading bag lunches and water sample bottles from a school bus. Earlier this week, Baker’s students counted up all of the car makes and models in the school’s parking lot for a lesson on diversity index calculations. Today they’re on the banks of a small trout stream at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, a surprising green space between the airport and the Mall of America.
“We attempt to do some things with math that people don’t do as much now, including a lot of mathematical proof with young students…it’s very highly structured, and very intellectual, and it lays a very firm foundation.” Bill Boulger, Upper School mathematics
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“Okay, you know what to do,” Baker says, as teams of students fan out across the bank with state-of-the-art sensors that can collect information on water temperature, ph and oxygen levels. Her students will visit three more bodies of water in the area this afternoon, collecting samples that they will analyze later in the lab. Later this fall, they’ll study sustainable building practices at Macalester College, and go see the West 7th Street Fire Station’s new “green roof”—high impact outings that Baker acknowledges wouldn’t be possible without SPA’s intimate class size and the support of school leaders who see the value of getting students out of the classroom. “At SPA, we believe the essence of the educational experience is bringing the best students and the best teachers together,” says Roberts. “And in science, we also have to make sure that they have the instruments and machines they need to really dig
Nina Perkkio ’13 works with an SPA kindergartener on a science experiment. An experiential and inquiry-based approach is a common denominator in math and science instruction in all three divisions at SPA.
deeply into any problem. We believe in putting students in the position where they’re working like scientists so that they can embrace research opportunities when they see them in college and university, and not fear the work that will be expected of them.” Learning more about data collection and analysis encourages SPA’s science students to think critically about the methods of other researchers, says physics teacher Dr. Steve Heilig. Last year, for instance, he gave his students what he calls “a climate change myth-busters” assignment, coming up with a list of claims on either side of the climate change debate, charging students with visiting their respective websites to see which side was supported by the most meaningful data. “At first, when they go to Google, they see a fifty-fifty mix of support for both positions,” he says. “But when I limited them to sites that backed up their claims with data, the picture looks different.” Tina Barsky believes encouraging students to investigate deeply the questions of the day is a critical skill for every student, regardless of whether they intend to pursue math and science in their careers. “I tell my students, you may never go into gene technology, but you will all be voting in the next election, and these are questions you may need to be informed about,” she says. The ability to look deeply into a wide range of questions is one reason SPA has chosen not to follow the proscribed Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum. This is particularly
important for quantitative learning: since SPA’s curriculum isn’t limited to content covered in the AP exams, students and teachers can pursue questions there might not be time for in a more traditional high school setting. It’s a succesful formula: when SPA students choose to take Advanced Placement tests they perform very well: 81 percent of SPA students who take an AP test score a 3 or higher, and 55 percent score a 4 or 5. Perhaps even more important that test results are the independent and innovative quantitative thinking skills students develop. In her Advanced Scientific Research course this fall, Upper School science teacher Beth SiebelHunt had one student reproducing a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli, investigating whether subsequent generations grow more resistant to hand sanitizer. Another student is continuing a pursuit he started at a summer program at M.I.T., developing a robotic “shark” to sample and study water quality from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Siebel-Hunt notes that several students discovered that their research plans were flawed, forcing them back to the drawing board—a valuable learning experience. “We try to put kids in situations where there is no right answer,” she says. “It’s an important part of developing critical thinking skills. You get them excited, give them the tools to do things on their own, encourage them to take responsibility for their work, and then get out of the way.”
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