September 1, 2006 was the start of an entirely new career for me.
Retiring in 2006 meant it was thirty years since completing my
doctorate (1976) in math education at UCLA, and having lived an
incredible career at UCLA involving the future of technology in
education: thinking about it, teaching about it, designing
(and building) a building for it,
and an opportunity to be invited to conferences around the world
to speak about it. That career was my trip to the
moon! Now I'm on a trip to Mars! Retired,
I turned my time and energy to
my first academic passion: teaching young children
mathematics! As a bonus, I was invited to write a book about how
to teach math problem solving.
2014 Culver School District adopted Cognitive Guided Instruction (CGI) and I began my CGI training
2015 taught a parent class to introduce CGI.
2015 –
2017 conducted
workshops for teachers and math coaches.
2016 Math Olympiad for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS) invited me to do a book teaching problem solving for math coaches.
2018
publication of Teaching
Mathematical Problem Solving Using MOEMS Contest Problems.
Ruth Sabean co-authored
the book with me.
One of
the workshop participants dubbed the book The Big
Yellow Book.
March 12, 2020 The Fourteenth Annual Math Olympiad Tournament scheduled for March 14 was cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Summer
2020 faced with the reality of being online next school
year, I invited former students and coaches to experiment
with me on how to do math via Zoom; we evolved a model with
middle and high school students facilitating elementary
school students in breakout rooms. I submitted a video
proposal to Culver City Unified School District for support,
and they enthusiastically embraced my plans!
2020-2021 Zoom Math
Olympiad clubs at five Culver City elementary schools
involving about 150 4th and 5th grade students, 10 parent
coaches and 30 7th – 12th grade facilitators. To support the parents and
facilitators, I made many instructional
videos posted on YouTube.
February
and May, 2021 we did a Zoom based math tournament for all
the students who participated during the year. Here we are doing our Math Cheer!
Summer
2021: Teaching via Zoom and making my videos crystallized
many of the ideas in the Big Yellow Book written for
coaches. I am now revising and building on those ideas for a
new book for 4th - 6th grade teachers on teaching word
problems. I'm hoping to find a publisher....