In 2015 Arkansas became the first state to require all schools offer coding education, a priority of Governor Asa Hutchison. This is a great first step to make Arkansas students nationally competitive and to help us continue the innovations created by our entrepreneurially minded business leaders which include Sam Walton, J.B. Hunt, Don Tyson, Charles H. Murphy, Jr., William Dillard, Patty Upton, or P. Allen Smith and many others. I have many teacher friends involved in teaching coding or in helping students learn to put technology to beneficial uses to solve community problems. Many are promoting STEM or STEAM initiatives. These are all positive movements that will help to open doors of opportunity for Arkansas students and build a strong and innovative Arkansas. Couple STEM with entrepreneurship and we could experience remarkable economic benefits! I applaud these efforts. But I strongly believe that to help us achieve coding and STEM benchmarks, we must empower our students to understand mathematics and to have ‘math confidence’. I define math confidence as their belief that they are good in math and can use math to solve problems. This TED Radio Hour podcast, Don’t Fear Math, defines the challenge and proposes some solutions while sharing stories of women in math and science fields. It also includes an interview with a math teacher turned professor! I teach future elementary and secondary teachers. The majority of whom often tell me they are not good at math. I make them promise me they will NEVER repeat that comment to a student. If a teacher or parent wasn’t good at math, students use this as an excuse to believe they are not good at math either. At graduation I analyze the program. The graduates for advanced degrees in science or math based fields are dominated by international students. My hypothesis is that there is a direct correlation between our teaching of mathematics and these degree fields. A look at the most recent Programme for International Assessment would support this. This link will allow you to make your own country comparisons. This is only one exam and it is difficult to compare systems that are drastically different but I do believe their is value in searching globally for the best teaching resources so we can empower our young people to solve the myriad of emerging world issues. I have many fabulous international student friends who enrich my life tremendously, but I would like to see our Arkansas students equipped to be competitive. More on math education in another post. Now that I have finished my rant, I want to include a few resources to help you, as educators, to understand the value of math education to computer science and to STEM. The ARKIdsCanCode 2020 report gives an update on Arkansas initiative.
I recently added a new children’s book, The Girl with a Mind for Math: The Story of Raye Montague to the Bessie B. Moore Center for Economic Education’s library. It was published by The Innovation Press which specializes in memorable children’s books that inspire learning, enliven creative thinking, and spark imaginations. Raye Montegue, was from Little Rock, Arkansas and attended high school in Pine Bluff. After seeing her first submarine, Raye wanted to design them. But sexism and race inequalities put many barriers in her way. Raye had grit and taught herself math to prepare for engineering at college. But engineering was not taught to black students so she studied business. She ended up working for the Navy as a typists. But she studied computers by night and eventually impressed her superiors by solving a demanding ship design problem completed in 18 hours using a computer and caffeine. Unfortunately, because of her color and gender, she was not allowed to attend the inauguration of the ship. Raye was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2018. Enjoy this Hidden Figures tribute to Raye from Good Morning America. If you missed the Hidden Figures movie, I highly recommend it!
With the mention of Hidden Figures and the theme of mathematics and STEM, I must mention the children’s book, Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race , a Coretta Scott King Award winning book by Margot Lee Shetterly. This book introduces young readers to the lives of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, all of who worked as ‘computers’ for NASA and who were really good at math. Today, we think of computers as machines. In the 1940s, computers were actually people whose jobs were to do mathematics. Read the book to learn which lady because the first African-American female engineer. And which lady was requested by John Glenn to do the trajectory calculations. These ladies knew that with hard work, perseverance, and a love of math, anything was possible. Let’s instill this love of math in our Arkansas students.
A third children’s book to introduce the importance of learning math to children is Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13 by Helaine Becker. Katherine Johnson was the mathematical genius who helped NASA guide the historic Apollo 11 moon landings and returns. Katherine was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Children of color in your classes and females need to hear the stories of people like them who have achieved greatness and had a positive impact on the world.
For those of you teaching coding, this article from Quantamagazine is about Barbara Liskov, the recipient of the Turing Award which is known as the Nobel Prize for computing. With a University of California, Berkeley undergraduate degree in mathematics and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University in 1968, she used her mathematical thinking to pioneer the modern approach to writing code. At MIT she lead the team that created an approach that relied on data abstraction – what would eventually become Java, C++ and C#. This article abut the accomplishments of Dr. Liskov can be used to show students the connections between mathematics and computer science.
One resource popular with young students to learn math, coding and to teach biodiversity is Minecraft. The Council for Economic Education has curricula developed to unpack economic understandings as students create and play games. The CEE also has a curricula titled Math and the Real World filled with lessons for high school that use economics to teach mathematics concepts. Since the Bessie Moore Center is a part of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and since this blog serves career and business educators, this Planet Money podcast tells the story of the founding of accounting. Legos are a great way to introduce young minds to STEM and to ‘making’ according to the Marketplace episode. The Arkansas Department of Education just announced this competition for history and coding.
I invite you to share the value of this information and how you use it with your students in the comments section or with me personally. Think positively about mathematics instruction and encourage all of our Arkansas students to learn and explore mathematics and science. The real treasure in this post is that you can use literacy to encourage it! Which of course literacy is also key to success.
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