3 Campus Math teacher takes sensory approach The Rambler | www.therambler.org
September 22, 2010
Melissa Bates
mdbates@mail.txwes.edu
Lisa Scott, developmental math instructor, loves to teach. Scott has taught at Wesleyan for three years but has taught math for a total of 14 years. “I taught high school for five years, then I was a stay at home mom 12 years to raise my three boys,” Scott said. “High school teaching is much harder than college teaching. I also spent about 10 years tutoring out of my house.” Scott said she understands that math does not come easily to a lot of students. She realizes that most students are sensory learners, they have to learn by three of the five senses: visual, auditory and touch. “After working with kids individually for so long, I think they all have kind of the same problem with math,” Scott said. “Most kids that struggle with math, it’s because they’re visual learners. Algebra is not something most teachers teach as visual. It’s just—here’s a series of steps, just do them.” Scott developed methods that help sensory learners while she was an at-home tutor. The methods have shown positive results. “She’s really interactive in her
Meisa Keivani Najafabadi | Rambler Staff Instructor Lisa Scott helps two of her developmental math students, LaDedrick Minnifield (L), liberal studies major, and Derrick Roussell (R), exercise science major, with math exercises during class.
teaching,” said Ray Cox, senior criminal justice major. “[She’s] very hands on and understanding that not all of us are gifted in math. She has a special talent at helping you understand
the different math problems.” Scott said she tries to cover every type of learning style every day, while also leaving time for hands-on work with the students.
“I think that’s what makes it successful,” Scott said. “In developmental math, each student has different issues, so I try to take the time to address each person individually.”
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Melody Bell-Fowler, student support programs and services director, said when she first interviewed Scott, she liked the way Scott talked about math and understood the struggles students go through. “I have students that will come to me begging for me to sign an override so they can have her,” Fowler said. “But our classrooms are not large enough. It also wouldn’t be fair to her because she would not be able to give the personal attention that she so loves to do. I have had students tell me, ‘I never understood math until Mrs. Scott taught me.’” Giovanni Monsanto, sophomore political science and criminal justice double major, said paying attention in Scott’s class is key, everything else follows suit. “She’s very good at explaining the processes of the formulas to where it’s broken down simple enough for the class, as a whole, to understand,” he said. Scott said she loves Wesleyan because she is able to take the time necessary with each individual student. Wesleyan enabled her to rework the course so that everyone understands the concepts of the course before the class moves on to the next topic, she said.
Alzheimer’s drug may enhance learning
Jessica Gillotte
Daily Californian, U. CaliforniaBerkeley via UWIRE
A drug currently used to lessen the effects of Alzheimer’s disease may soon be able to aid healthy adults in perceptual learning, according to a study by U. CaliforniaBerkeley researchers. In the study, published Sept. 16 in the science journal Current Biology, UC Berkeley researchers Michael Silver and Ariel Rokem found a link between the use of the Alzheimer’s drug donepezil and improved attention and memory in adults not affected by the disease while the subjects performed a specific task. Donepezil, a drug often prescribed to Alzheimer’s pa-
tients, raises the level of one of the brain’s signaling molecules – called acetylcholine – by destroying the enzyme that inhibits its longevity. “Acetylcholine is involved in many different processes in the brain including voluntarily devoting focused attention to a particular portion of the visual field when you know something important might appear in that location,” Rokem, a postdoctoral fellow at the campus Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and lead author of the study, said in an e-mail. Twelve subjects participated in the study, which had them take a 5-milligram dose of the drug during the first round of five-day courses and a placebo during the second round about two weeks later.
ENROLLMENT ing 121 of those 2009-2010 freshmen returned for the 2010-2011 academic school year. With the influx of new students, housing on campus has also seen an increase, now at 88 percent capacity, with only 35 spots
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remaining among all three residence halls. Overall numbers, including the Texas Wesleyan School of Law and the Joint High School Enrollment program rose. The overall head count climbed from 3333 to 3378.
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her first phase of research concerning Latina administrators, Robles-Goodwin said she hopes to start the second phase, in which she will visit other regions of Texas. “In this Latina research, I really wanted to capture their experiences because there’s very few of them,” Robles-Goodwin said. “I wanted to see if there was a difference in Latina administrators if I went to a different part of Texas.” When she’s not teaching
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or conducting research, Robles-Goodwin gets involved with the community. She is currently a part of the Kiwanis in Fort Worth, a service-based group that guides young children. “A lot of students think all we do is teach, but we don’t,” Robles-Goodwin said. “Teach is just one-third of what we do. One of the other thirds is we have to do a lot of service with the community. That’s what I love about Kiwanis. Kiwanis is all about helping kids.”
“In our experiments, subjects taking donepezil during practice show about twice as much improvement in perceptual ability compared to subjects practicing under placebo.” Michael Silver
assistant professor, School of Optometry and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute After each round of courses, the subjects took a test that measured perceptual learning by reporting whether two sequentially presented fields of moving dots were proceeding in the same direction. “Perceptual learning is the ability to get better at a particular perceptual discrimi-
nation with practice,” Silver, an assistant professor at the School of Optometry and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the study’s principle investigator, said in an e-mail. “With practice, anyone can improve their ability for a given perceptual discrimination, but in our
Texas Wesleyan Presents . a.m 10:30 t a 6 2 ber ptem • Se unday odist yan S Meth d e t i Wesle c Un echni Polyt • O h ct Churc Fall P ober 1 at 7 :30 p. reside nt m Music Schola ’s Council K . Marti ic r s k off a n Hal hip Benefi l t Conc nd ert p.m. 7:30 al Series @ t a 8 r Classic ctobe • O ort Worth: rF Guita n ya le Wes l n Hal Marti For more information, visit The Music Department at http://www.txwes.edu/music/ music/index.htm or call 817.531.4992
experiments, subjects taking donepezil during practice show about twice as much improvement in perceptual ability compared to subjects practicing under placebo.” Silver noted that the study only revealed an improvement in attention in the specific task that the subjects were given, and more research is needed to determine whether the drug would enhance performance in other tasks. “One analogy is a fruit inspector who becomes very good at discriminating small differences in the colors of red apples,” Silver said in the e-mail. “This perceptual learning for color discrimination of red may not generalize to discriminating colors of green apples.”
Although the effects of donepezil are very beneficial to specific tasks involving visual perception, Silver notes that “it is far too early to say how donepezil may be used in the general population in the future.” According to Aaron Seitz, UC Riverside assistant professor of psychology, this is the first study to make a direct link between acetylcholine and visual perceptual learning in humans. “This research shows promise,” he said in an email. Read more here: http:// w w w. d a i l y c a l . o r g / a r t i cle/110398/alzheimer_s_ drug_may_enhance_learning. Copyright 2010 Daily Californian
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