By: Seth Householder –

So what’s the deal with math? Why is it so hard for so many of us? According to a recent article in the Lincoln Journal Star “just more than half of LPS’ juniors are considered ‘on track’ to succeed in college or are meeting benchmarks set by the ACT.” The article further stated that 53 percent of students are on ‘track’ with math, and that LPS leads out of other districts in the state. This is a good thing, and definitely shows that LPS employs high quality math educators. But what do students think? What about the students who struggle with math here at LSE?

Are the teachers giving us the “Living Above the Line” education Southeast promises, or an education six-feet-under-the-line education, surrounded with a coffin made of written notes and dirt made of crumpled up homework? These are questions that I’ve set out to answer after hearing complaints from my peers. You may not hear it everyday, but I sure do. Math education at LSE is very well respected in the LPS community, with most teachers having masters in their subjects, some even having doctorates. In talking to these educators, I hope to get to the bottom of this complex problem.

“[A good teacher is] someone who can vary the activities used in teaching and learning.  They need to be prepared to answer questions and help students and have the courage to make mistakes and realize that is part of learning,” Advanced Algebra teacher Janice Patterson said. “[They’re also] someone who connects with students, is flexible, is reliable and dependable and has a sense of humor. Someone who is humble and can admit when they didn’t handle something incorrectly. Someone who can put themselves in a student’s place and remember what it was like to be young. Someone who cares.”

According to Patterson, being a good teacher means adapting to the learning styles of your students and incorporating all of their learning styles into your lessons, by doing a range of activities that would help auditory, visual and physical learners, not just taking notes every day.

In a survey of 72 students, 12.5% said that the teaching style didn’t work with their learning style. As time progresses, so do learning styles. According to ZDNet, a technological news website, our math teachers are teaching the way their math teachers taught them 10 years ago, not adapting to the new teaching styles and in most instances, are not using technology to their advantage.

In a world full of touch screens, face ID, and moving emojis, we’re still writing notes on paper. But the math department is incorporating iPads for projecting notes, which has shown to be helpful to some students. Patterson, however, is always looking for ways to make math fun and make sense of it for her students.

“I’d like to see more hands-on things where you could take a real world problem and spend a lot of time on that instead of a lesson,” said Patterson. “[There is] always a better way of teaching.”

If you don’t understand what is going on in your math class – along with 39% of people from the survey – whether it be a difference of teaching and learning style, or not, your teacher will normally tell you to come in after school for help or go get help in the math help room.

“You could walk down math hall after school on any given day and most teachers will be helping students,” said math teacher and head of the Math Department Sherry West. “LSE  math teachers give a tremendous amount of their personal time to help students.  I’d put their dedication up against any other department.”Set featured image

Subjects such as English and Social Studies don’t nearly have as many kids coming in after school, and that’s because they’re not as cumbersome to students. There is no perfect way to teach math. It’s always going to be one of those subjects that many seem to need help with, that many get frustrated with.

If you need help, go into the math help room, a room ran by the math teachers open for the students to use. But if the math help room uses the same teaching style, just more one on one, what’s the point?

Adding on to that, Marko Jerkovic (11) believes the math help room is too crowded., “Even when I go in for help, only one or two questions get answered.”

Is this kind of math you’re learning right now necessary at all? Not unless you are going into a STEM (a career in science, technology, engineering, or math) field.

According to US News and World Report, people going into STEM fields only make up 34.5% of the population, so why are STEM classes consuming 28.6% of our time at school? These required classes should be optional for those of us who aren’t going into a STEM field so we can focus more on what we want to do, not what others want us to do.

“I know that pharmacists use Pre-Calculus and Calculus, my sister is one, so some people use it, but it’s not super duper common, but they can teach you this in college [when narrowing down what you want to do],” said an anonymous source.

Granted, the purpose of high school is to broaden your education and get you to see what you like doing and what you don’t like doing. But for others who already know what they would like to do with their future, these highly specific and specialized math classes seem like a waste of time.

“[It’s] highly unnecessary and not applicable to my future or anything in normal life. Trigonometry doesn’t seem valuable in the real world, it’s only applicable in the math world,” said Jerkovic.

Even if math is necessary for all of us to know in the future, it definitely isn’t being presented that way. Math teachers should be focusing on telling us why we’re doing this, as well as how, seeing as “Why?” is a very powerful question to ask.

But all we’ve offered so far is all problems and no solutions. Here’s a few that students, have come up with. First of all, please get more resources that help those who don’t understand what’s going on. Whether it be expanding the hours of the math help room, which is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8th period and after school everyday, or just devoting more teachers to helping the students in the math help room.

When teaching a lesson, try not to accidentally make mistakes that confuse the students even more. Some teachers do use a teaching strategy called “find the error” to make students critically think about a situation. Maybe try monitoring your time and getting all of the information you need to give the students out before the bell rings and everyone is out of there. Or just being more enthusiastic about math and presenting it in a way that appeals to your students.

Giving her opinions on what the Math Department could do better, Jorie Kohl (12) said, “I think that we could definitely change the way we look at how people learn math, some teachers don’t really think about other ways to teach to the class and don’t think about other learning types and how to help them learn. [We could] move away from being so note driven.”

Math Department chair Sherry West thinks that Math Education could definitely be improved, but it’ll require effort on both sides. West says that students need to understand that practice is essential to their learning.

“If you truly want to be prepared for college, you have to do your work. It’s a joint thing. We help kids try and understand things, because kids don’t think it should be difficult, but they have to put in some work, too,” said West. “If every class isn’t making you uncomfortable, then that means you’re not learning.”

So please, answer the call. Always strive to be better and we will, in turn, do the same. Adapt to the new age. Help those that need help. Meet the math education standards but go above and beyond. Provide options for people that don’t want to go into a STEM field. Give us the education we deserve, not the one we need.