Index of Student Workbook Sheets

different, and it is applicable in such a way that people do find it easier to understand. It is not quite as challenging as graphing logarithmic equations. It’s a lot different.

MW: There are many people who say women generally are more likely to have math anxiety than men. Is that something you’ve seen? Parker: There are great articles and podcasts and TED talks about the same concepts, of how we’re raising our girls to be perfect and raising our boys to be brave. And there was one example at a girls’ coding camp, where they have to learn to do coding and the girls specifically would type up all this stuff and then if they couldn’t figure it out they’d erase it all and call the teacher over. The teacher would press undo and show all of this work and that they were really close, but because the girls couldn’t make it work they wanted to tell the teacher to show them from the beginning. They didn’t want to show this not perfect work.

It is just a good example that demonstrates that girls are being raised to be perfect and not in the same way as boys, who may say (like in that example) that they don’t care and at least they’ll get partial credit. The only way to learn is by making mistakes, but that gets lost on girls when they feel they have to be perfect.

MW: Does that concept translate to adult couples in financial planning? Parker: It is more apparent for women when they are single individuals. They’re more comfortable saying “I don’t get it” or it’s more evident. They’re not as afraid to ask for help. It’s when they’re with their spouses it is easier to be quiet or let them talk and pretend you understand things because your partner is helping you, but it is still relevant. I always work with most clients together and I will ask them both “do you understand this?” or make sure they’re both on the same page.

MW: How would you say your background as a math teacher benefits you and your clients? Parker: One of the biggest ways is in my ability to explain things. It’s funny, I majored in math and decided to be a high school math teacher, but when I was in high school, I struggled with math. I had good grades and I didn’t have math anxiety, but I wasn’t some freaky Einstein genius kid who got it all. It made sense when I didn’t get something right and because I liked it so much I worked hard to understand it. I was good at explaining things to my friends. But my own struggle made me good at explaining it. A lot of math teachers are geniuses who understand it, and that makes it hard to explain it to students who are struggling.

That ability translates nicely to doing financial plans. I can see what is probably going to confuse them and where they’ll get lost.

MW: Are there any math-related topics that clients typically have a hard time understanding? Parker: It varies, but one big thing we talk about is inflation and compound interest. The need to factor in inflation because a dollar today is not going to be a dollar 10 years from now, and that it is a slow climb. People are amazed at how different the numbers look when I factor in 2.5% inflation. MW: Is there any way to overcome math anxiety? Parker: It is important that there be no stigma about it. There’s this expectation people have of themselves that they should know more about finance because it applies to their life. I am a financial adviser and I don’t know how to fix my car, so I bring it to be serviced by professionals. I don’t feel stupid because I didn’t focus on that and I know nothing about it.

It can be scary if you don’t know who you’re going to and unfortunately there are some bad people out there, but if you do your homework to find the people to help you, you don’t need to feel ashamed or embarrassed. That’s the whole reason you find a professional to begin with — someone who is trained. That’s their job.

ARTICLE

“Keeping Girls in STEM: 3 Barriers, 3 Solutions”

From Edutopia by Carly Berwick, March 12, 2019

Stereotypes and cultural norms dampen girls’ interest in STEM, but educators can counter the disparities with small changes to their practice.

Mathematicians and scientists are socially awkward men who wear glasses—at least, according to children.

In several studies, when children were asked to draw a mathematician or scientist, girls were twice as likely to draw men as they were to draw women, while boys almost universally drew men, often in a lab coat. I decided to try this out at home with my 12-year-old son, who said, “Really anyone can be a mathematician, but this is your average one,” and promptly sketched a man in a checked oxford shirt with a pocket protector.

Persistent, subconscious images of male mathematicians and scientists that start at the earliest ages may be one explanation why girls enter STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—at dramatically lower rates than boys.

As an English teacher at a STEM magnet high school in New Jersey, I see these gender disparities in our engineering and computer science (CS) academies, even as our dynamic, thoughtful girls work hard to dispel stereotypes and recruit younger girls through coding camps and workshops. Our teachers certainly reflect the STEM fields of a generation ago: Three of our four CS teachers and engineering teachers are male. The irony is that girls perform as well as boys in math. Nationally, math test scores for girls have been consistently equal to or within two points of boys in fourth and eighth grades over several years; middle school girls pass algebra at higher than boys. In science, girls perform on par with boys and enroll in advanced science and math courses at equal rates as they move into high school. And then something happens: A gender gap in participation starts to appear as girls take fewer of the more advanced STEM courses and tests as they get closer to college. This gap widens the longer girls are in school and is often compounded by issues of race and class.

Researchers don’t know yet if these continuing disparities in STEM reflect the slow pace of societal change, childrearing expectations, or something deeper and more entrenched, such as the way we think about girls’ minds. But teachers can play a significant role in influencing or dispelling stereotypes in STEM education. Here are some studies from researchers and educators that may offer a few insights—and a few solutions.

BARRIER 1: BUILDING A MATH IDENTITY

The problem: One explanation for the gender differences in STEM participation may lie with those formative ideas about who a mathematician or scientist is.

Stereotype threat—the mere perception that a group one belongs to is not good at a task—has been linked to lower academic performance, according to researchers. When girls become aware through both subtle and overt cultural messages about male superiority in math, it makes each encounter with math and technology more fraught, triggering self-doubt in even the most studious young girls.

Both teachers and curriculum can inadvertently contribute to these perceptions. In one striking study from 2015, Israeli researchers divided sixth-grade exams into two sets for grading: One batch was graded by the teachers and included students’ names, and the other contained no student names and was graded externally. In math, teachers graded boys higher, while external graders rated girls higher. Those low teacher grades then dissuaded girls for years to come.

Teachers often harbor these biases about themselves, too. Elementary school teachers are predominantly female, and many are anxious about teaching math, which can lead to lower achievement in math for girls.