Middle school students within the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools District learned math this week in a very unusual environment.
Students gathered at the district’s Education Center in the Indian Springs shopping center this Wednesday for “Math at the Mall,” an event in its fourth year that brings students and family members together for an evening of math.
Faculty and staff members from the district’s middle schools were on hand to inform parents about the Connect Math curriculum.
“Middle school math is different today than it was when (students’) parents went to school,” said April Banks, lead middle school math coach. “We’re hoping parents can visit and see the differences and try to get a better understanding of what the district is going.”
Students rotated around the mall to booths featuring various math-related activities. Throughout the evening, staff used visual aids and games to help inform students and parents about the district’s curriculum.
Families were served dinner and prizes were given out.
District officials who spoke at the event included Banks, Kansas City, Kan., Board of Education President Gloria Willis, Assistant Superintendent in Human Resources J.D. Rios, Math Relays Coordinator Cecil Christwell and Scott Macek, a math teacher at Coronado Middle School.
Macek said he wanted students to be as excited about math as many of them are about team sports like football and basketball.
“If you were playing a football game, you would go out and practice in order to get better,” Macek said. “A lot of my students did not have the same attitude with math.”
For the district, getting students to learn and enjoy math is an essential part of its strategy to improve assessment scores.
“No Child Left Behind has raised our students’ expectations so high that without the parent support, our children wouldn’t be doing as well as they are doing now,” Banks said.
Events such as Math at the Mall and the Math Relays held at Wyandotte High School each year help the district prepare for the math assessments, Christwell said.
“We getting better at making the connection between elementary, middle and high school students,” he said. “We want the students to have a competitive feeling with math. We want to break the wall down with math. It is for everybody.”
Event sponsors included Staples, Common Sense Math and Communities in Schools of Kansas City, Kan. Last year, about 300 students and family members attended the event.
