Seattle Math Man

http://bit.ly/MakingMath

Teaching Math to People Who Think They Hate It A popular Cornell professor tries to help language-arts types learn how to "make math" instead of just studying it.

Congratulations to Iranian Mathematician, Maryam Mirzakhani, a Professor at Stanford, who has become the first woman ever awarded a Fields Medal.

http://nyti.ms/1rbkI0f

Top Math Prize Has Its First Female Winner A professor at Stanford who made an important discovery about dynamical systems joined three other mathematicians in accepting the Fields Medal.

Will we, as a nation, ever become serious about our need to teach math teachers how to teach?

Chalkbeat's Elizabeth Green sees crumbling resolve to give Common Core a chance as a continuation of a decades old pattern of not taking teacher education seriously.

This is a good read from the NYTimes. Just be prepared to get fired up. The two excerpts below are two examples of how far off the mark we are as a nation from getting it right.

We. Must. Do. Better.



Almost half of Japanese students’ time was spent doing work that the researchers termed “invent/think.” (American students spent less than 1 percent of their time on it.)

Finland, meanwhile, made the shift by carving out time for teachers to spend learning. There, as in Japan, teachers teach for 600 or fewer hours each school year, leaving them ample time to prepare, revise and learn. By contrast, American teachers spend nearly 1,100 hours with little feedback.

http://nyti.ms/1xfSU8f

Why Do Americans Stink at Math? The Common Core should finally improve math education. The problem is that no one has taught the teachers how to teach it.