What's New in Mathematics
at Southwest Early College Campus?

Mathematics Contest Participation & Photos - Feb. 2009 to May 2012

Mathematics Award Ceremonies & Photos - Dec. 21, 2010 & Dec. 20, 2011

Mathematical Modeling Workshops & Photos - Dec. 3, 10, 17, 2011 & Mar. 3, 24, 31, 2012

Southwest Middle School Mathematics Workshop - April 2 & 3, 2009
[with Dr. Frank Gardella]

This page was maintained 2008-2012 by: Richard Delaware

GO TO Mathematics Southwest Home Page

2012

  • 12 June 2012: We write an article (the same as the 21 May 2012 entry below) for the May issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus published today.


  • 21 May 2012: We learn that Southwest 7th grader Nary Touch, student of Southwest English teacher Bethanie Glaser, has won an Honorable Mention in the national annual Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Essay Contest Entry contest to "write biographies of contemporary women in mathematical fields". Previously, on Wed. Nov. 30, 2011 evening (see below), with her mother in tow, Nary came to UMKC and interviewed Dr. Swati DebRoy, one of our new female mathematics faculty members, whose interest is in the interface of mathematics and biology. This interview was used for a 500-1000 word essay for Nary to submit to the AWM contest, which she learned about from information distributed to Southwest in mid-October by Dr. Delaware Congratulations, Nary!


  • 2-3 May 2012: Over these two days, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade Southwest Mathematics students enrolled in UMKC College Algebra (Math 110), Analytic Geometry (Math 202), and Calculus I (Math 210), taught by David Dryburgh, completed their courses by taking the same Common Final Examination given by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to every other student enrolled in those courses at UMKC.


  • 27 April 2012 (Math Team Workshop #23): We hold a Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC. [See the 30 March 2012 entry below for our last such workshop.]


  • 3, 24, 31 March 2012: a Three-Saturday Mathematical Modeling Workshop was held for and completed by 5 Southwest students in dual credit College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus I, on consecutive Saturdays, 10 am - 12 noon. Dr. Richard Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics ran the workshops. See the flyer.


  • 30 March 2012 (Math Team Workshop #22): We hold a Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC. [See the 24 February 2012 entry below for our last such workshop.]


  • 30 March 2012: We write an article for the March issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Southwest Mathematics Springs Forward

    Our first UMKC Calculus I Class moves on to Application Projets
    The students in our first UMKC dual-credit Calculus I (Math 210) course will finish the year by engaging in calculus projects from "Applications in Calculus", part of the Resources in Calculus series from the Mathematical Association of America. Working in teams of two or three, they will use their knowledge of calculus to study applications such as Arbitrating Disputes, Explaining the Rainbow, The Age of the Earth, How Fast a Raindrop Falls, and Measuring Voting Power. Their teacher David Dryburgh will guide them in producing a written report for each project.

    First and Third Saturdays Tutoring at Southwest
    Mathematics teachers Chris Cotton, Casey McComsey, and Young Nam are among those holding mathematics tutoring sessions in their rooms each first and third Saturday of the month at Southwest. These sessions are part of the general and forward-looking process of opening up Southwest on Saturdays for student academic and community service opportunities.

    After School MAP, ACT, and Mathematics Peer Tutoring
    A tutoring project specifically addressing the testing needs of Southwest students has been organized by Dr. Radie Krueger. To prepare for the April MAP test, our middle school students are encouraged to attend tutoring Tuesdays and Thursdays 3-5:00. For ACT prep, sophomore and juniors are invited to study at those same times with the assistance of UMKC students, and are made aware of the fact that the more often the ACT is taken, the more scores improve. Students who stay for tutoring during the week are fed a meal thanks to the efforts of Major Briseno and the JROTC, and bus transportation continues to be provided by the district. The Mathematics Team is also trying to revive the Mathematics Peer Tutoring program, hiring the best Southwest mathematics students and paying them to tutor other Southwest students. The funding source for this semester is Dr. Delaware's UMKC Research Account, provided we can work out the Southwest end of the payment process.

    Second Mathematical Modeling Workshop for Students
    On Saturdays March 3, 24, and 31, 2012, from 10-12 noon, in the Southwest Writing Center room, Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics is once again running a Mathematical Modeling Workshop. As in December 2011, this time with 7 students working in 3 teams, students work on problems modeling real world situations: Team 1 (Thuong Nguyen, Navar Clark, Joseph Garcia), Team 2 (Enilise Ramirez Vega, Roda Mohamud, John Paul Culver), and Team 3 (Dalia Prado). The projects are, respectively: Modeling the lengths of days over the year, A Function for Information Bits, and Gauging Rainfall Amounts with geometry, and the teams will each produce a 5 page paper describing their conclusions. Next Fall, we hope to field a Southwest student team in November 2012 for the national COMAP (Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications) High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM).

    Upcoming Southwest Mathematics Events:
    Professional Development (PD) Workshops for Mathematics Teachers continue on April 27 at UMKC.

    Please follow Southwest Mathematics Events here.
    As always, for more information or to support our mathematics work, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu.


  • 25 February 2012: The Southwest Student Team of 11 mathematics students competed in the KCATM Math Contests at Olathe East High School.


  • 24 February 2012 (Math Team Workshop #21): We hold a Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC. [See the 28 January 2012 entry below for our last such workshop.] Ronda Miles and David Dryburgh worked on lessons. Steve Obenhaus joined us.


  • 17 February 2012: We write an article for the February issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Southwest Mathematics - Update

    UMKC "RooMath 2012" Field Trip
    On Friday Feb. 10, about 41 Southwest dual-credit mathematics students attended the new "RooMath" event organized by the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics, from 8:15-12:00 noon at UMKC. About 100 students total from Kearney High School, Southwest, and Winnetonka High School attended. Students were able to attend three of the five presentations by faculty members on Careers in Statistics, Careers in Mathematics or Applied Mathematics, Public Key Cryptography, The Monty Hall Problem, and a Mini Math Video Fest, followed by pizza for lunch. Dual-credit Mathematics teacher David Dryburgh, counselor David Velasquez, and teacher Trey Prothro attended. See Photos. Some students responded: "I want to come back! :D <3 ", "I wanted to go to ALL of the fests", and "I enjoyed everything!"

    Mathematics Contest Assembly
    Also, on Friday Feb. 10, Mathematics teacher Shonda O'Dell organized an assembly in the auditorium for all 140+ Southwest mathematics students who earned an A or B in the first semester, to encourage them to join our Math Contest Team for the KCATM (Kansas City Area Teachers of Mathematics) Math Contest on Saturday Feb. 25. Mathematics teachers Casey McComsey, Chris Cotton, and Dr. Delaware from UMKC also attended and gave encouragement, and everyone advertised the weekly meeting of the Southwest Math Club every Friday in Ms. O'Dell's room 306 immediately after school. Shonda provided the students with printed materials for both high school and middle school students about the KCATM contest, along with permission slips to get their parents to sign. So far we have 22 students planning to go, from 7th grade through 12th grade. Wish us luck!

    Upcoming Southwest Mathematics Events:
    • Saturdays March 3, 10, 17 - The Second Mathematical Modeling Workshop for students at Southwest.
    • Professional Development (PD) Workshops for Mathematics Teachers continue monthly at UMKC.
    As always, for more information or to support our mathematics work, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu.


  • 10 February 2012: Shonda O'Dell organized a Math Contest Assembly in the auditorium for all Southwest mathematics students who earned an A or B in the first semester, to encourage them to join our Math Contest Team for the KCATM Math Contest on Saturday Feb. 25. Mathematics teachers Casey McComsey, Chris Cotton, and Dr. Delaware from UMKC also attended and gave encouragement, and advertised the weekly meeting of the Southwest Math Club every Friday in Ms. O'Dell's room immediately after school. Shonda provided the students with printed materials for both high school and middle school students about the KCATM contest, along with permission slips to get their parents to sign. We hope to field a large team.


  • 10 February 2012: About 41 Southwest mathematics dual-credit students took a field trip for the "RooMath 2012" Recruitment Event, 8:15-12:00 noon at UMKC, organized by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. About 100 students total from Kearney High School, Southwest, and Winnetonka High School attended. Events included five presentations by mathematics and statistics faculty members on Careers in Statistics, Careers in Mathematics or Applied Mathematics, Cryptography, The Monty Hall Problem, and a Mini Math Video Fest, followed by pizza for lunch. Teacher David Dryburgh, counselor David Velasquez, and teacher Trey Prothro attended.


  • 28 January 2012 (Math Team Workshop #20): We hold our first Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC this Spring, on this Saturday. [See the 9 December 2011 entry below for our last such workshop.] We worked the whole day on mapping out an Algebra I curriculum for the rest of the year. Steve Obenhaus joined us.


  • 25 January 2012: We write an article for the January issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Southwest Mathematics - Spring Semester 2012

    Congratulations!
    In December 2011, Southwest student Thuong Nguyen earned 8 out of 10 points, and won a $50 prize in the =EQUALS= Club Kansas City Math Challenge created by Mike Round, who runs the local =EQUALS= Club of Investigation and Discovery. This contest was open between Dec. 1 and Dec. 15, and was written up in the Kansas City Star on Nov. 30 (and later on Dec. 22). Seven local students answered 10/10, two answered 9/10, and two answered 8/10.

    Photos Posted!
    On our Southwest Mathematics Events web page [See the top of this page.] there are now links to 115 photos of Southwest students at the Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremonies, at the Southwest Mathematical Modeling Workshops, and at Mathematics Contests.

    UMKC Grading Assistance:
    Once a week all semester, a mathematics assignment from Southwest students in any of the UMKC dual-credit courses College Algebra, Analytic Geometry, or Calculus I, will be delivered by the dual-credit instructor David Dryburgh to UMKC for grading by a mathematics graduate student working with Dr. Delaware. The grading will include commentary and suggestions to the students, from a college work point of view, and of course will lessen the burden on the teacher, allowing more mathematics discussion in class. Each assignment will be returned to them in one week. We hope this will both motivate students and raise the level of their written work.

    Upcoming Southwest Mathematics Events:
    • Professional Development (PD) Workshops for Mathematics Teachers continue monthly at UMKC.
    • Friday February 10 - UMKC RooMath 2012 Field Trip - We're taking about 100 students.
    • Saturday February 25 - KCATM Mathematics Contest - We plan to field a large team.
    • Saturdays in March - The Second Mathematical Modeling Workshop for students.

    As always, for more information or to support our mathematics work, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu.



2011

  • 24 December 2011: We write an article for the December issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Southwest Mathematics - Modeling Workshops, Awards, and more
    Professional Development (PD) Workshops for Mathematics Teachers
    On Oct. 14-15, Nov. 18, and Dec. 9 we held at UMKC our second, third, and fourth PD Workshops for the Southwest Team of Mathematics Teachers. Major topics we discussed and studied were the ongoing classroom management problem, as well as the use of clickers in the mathematics classroom. We used current materials from national clicker expert Kelly Cline who spoke on Oct. 8 at UMKC at the Math EXPO. The way it works is, you project a slide with a mathematics question that addresses concepts, students must first talk to someone else about a choice of answer, then everyone clicks in, and when all have done so, you reveal on the slide a bar graph with the choice distribution, but do not reveal the correct answer yet. Then the class discusses individual reasons for selecting an answer, and a wealth of misconceptions or misreadings are revealed in the room. Students who would otherwise not participate in a class, will willingly click in an anonymous answer. As always Dr. Delaware was there, joined by Steve Obenhaus (winner of the 2011 UMKC School of Education Alumni Achievement Award, as mentioned in the October issue), and Bob Riggs who has taught mathematics in tough inner city schools, though he now works in the UMKC Physics Dept. as Instructor and Outreach Coordinator, finishing a Ph.D. in Physics Education studying "Curricular treatments in math and science that are effective with holistic learners; primarily, at-risk African American students living in generational poverty".

    Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Essay Contest Entry
    On Wed. Nov. 30 evening, with her mother in tow, Southwest 7th grader Nary Touch (student of Southwest English teacher Bethanie Glaser) came to UMKC and interviewed Dr. Swati DebRoy, one of our new female mathematics faculty members, whose interest is in the interface of mathematics and biology. This interview was for a 500-1000 word essay for Nary to submit to the annual AWM contest to "write biographies of contemporary women in mathematical fields", which she learned about from information distributed to Southwest in mid-October by Dr. Delaware.

    Mathematical Modeling Workshops for Students
    On Saturdays Dec. 3, 10, and 17, 2011, from 10-12 noon, in the Southwest Writing Center room, Dr. Ian Besse and Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics ran a Mathematical Modeling Workshop. During this intensive experience 9 students worked in 3 teams on problems modeling real world situations. Team 1 (Hannah Kludy, Binh An Nguyen, Dalia Prado), Team 2 (Navar Clark, John Paul Culver, Davonte Hammond, Thuong Nguyen), and Team 3 (Jhon St. Paul, Lamond Walker) worked respectively on: moving long objects around a hallway corner, railroad rails bending in the heat, and viral marketing. We hope to offer a second workshop in the Spring, and possibly to field a Southwest student team in November 2012 for the national COMAP (Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications) High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM).

    Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremony
    Our second annual Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremony will be held on Tuesday Dec. 20 during 7th period (about 1:45-2:40 pm) in the Library. 82 students will receive certificates and a new "Southwest Mathematics!" t-shirt, and one of the Mathematics Modeling Workshop teams will present their work.

    UMKC Field Trip
    On the morning of February 10, 2012, a major field trip for all the dual credit mathematics students (about 100) to the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics will be undertaken. There will be several events and lunch following.

    As always, you can read about all our mathematics events here [http://d.web.umkc.edu/delawarer/MathSweccEvents.htm], our mathematics teachers here [http://d.web.umkc.edu/delawarer/MathSweccTeam.htm], and for more information or to support our work, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu.


  • 20 December 2011: The second Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremony is held 1:45-2:40 pm in the Southwest cafeteria. See Photos. 82 top mathematics students at Southwest, nominated by their mathematics teachers were awarded a certificate and a new gray with orange lettering "Southwest Mathematics!" t-shirt. Congratulations all! Richard Delaware and his colleague Ian Besse from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC led the event, but the entire Southwest Mathematics Team of Teachers was involved in the organization, and Southwest Mathematics Department Ronda Miles created all the certificates. We hope to see those t-shirts around Southwest helping to knit together the academic and social fabric of the school.


  • 15 December 2011: Southwest student Thuong Nguyen earned 8 of 10 points, and so a $50 prize in the =EQUALS= Club Kansas City Math Challenge created by Mike Round, who runs the =EQUALS= Club of Investigation and Discovery. Congratulations, Thuong! This contest was written up in the Kansas City Star on Nov. 30 (and later on Dec. 22). Seven local students answered 10/10, two answered 9/10, and two answered 8/10.


  • 9 December 2011 (Math Team Workshop #19): We hold our fifth Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC this Fall. [See the 18 November 2011 entry below for our last such workshop.]


  • 3, 10, 17 December 2011: a Three-Saturday Mathematical Modeling Workshop was held for and completed by 9 Southwest students in dual credit College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus I, on consecutive Saturdays, 10 am -12 noon. Dr. Ian Besse, and Dr. Richard Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics ran the workshops. See the flyer.


  • 30 November 2011: On Wed. Nov. 30 evening, with her mother in tow, Southwest 7th grader Nary Touch (student of Southwest English teacher Bethanie Glaser) came to UMKC and interviewed Dr. Swati DebRoy, one of our new female mathematics faculty members, whose interest is in the interface of mathematics and biology. This interview was for a 500-1000 word essay for Nary to submit to the annual Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Essay Contest Entry contest to "write biographies of contemporary women in mathematical fields", which she learned about from information distributed to Southwest in mid-October by Dr. Delaware.


  • 18 November 2011 (Math Team Workshop #18): We hold our fourth Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC this Fall. [See the 14-15 October 2011 entry below for our last such workshop.]


  • 12 November 2011: The Southwest Student Team of 6 mathematics students competed in the Second Annual PREP-KC Regional Math Relays at Center High School. In the Geometry - Alpha level contest the 4th Place winner was our own Diamond Alexander. Congratulations, Diamond!


  • 4 & 11 November 2011: The Southwest Math Club has its first two after school Friday meetings of the 2011-2012 academic year, organized by Shonda O'Dell and in her Room 306 from 2:40 until nearly 5:30 pm. 7-8 students appear each day, and Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics joins them until about 4:15 pm. Students are currently working on math contest problems, both at desks and at the whiteboards in the front and back of the room, but we hope to have mathematical guest speakers as time goes on.


  • November 2011: Larry Poisner [see 6 January 2009], a volunteer and alumnus of Southwest High School, continues to tutor mathematics students in various classes at Southwest.


  • 14-15 October 2011 (Math Team Workshop #17): We hold our third Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC this Fall. [See the 23 September 2011 entry below for our last such workshop.] Ronda Miles and Dr. Delaware were there all day, Chris Cotton, Casey McComsey, and Shonda O'Dell were there from 8:00-11:00 am, and traded off with David Dryburgh, Danielle Chang, and Young Nam from 12:00-3:00 pm, so fewer substitute teachers were needed back at Southwest.

    We distributed some clicker materials to all: The two power-point presentations by our guest national clicker expert Kelly Cline who had spoken at the Math EXPO the previous weekend, a clicker FAQ copy, and a printout of the archive of Algebra clicker questions that Kelly has compiled. We then conducted a clicker demo. Each teacher got a clicker, and we projected a slide on the screen with a mathematics question that would address concepts as well as computation. We followed the rules Kelly recommended: First the teachers were required to talk to someone else about their choice of answer, then everyone clicked in, and when all had finished we posted a histogram with the choice distribution, but did not reveal the correct answer yet. Then we discussed what we saw there, and there was always something to say, both about the reasons for selecting the correct answer, as well as misconceptions or misreadings that led to an incorrect choice.

    We also had a special guest from 12-3, Steve Obenhaus, winner of the 2011 UMKC School of Education Alumni Achievement Award, and a former, long time teacher at Olathe North High School, as well as a Presidential Award winner for excellence in math and science teaching, recently completing a year as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in Sen. Joseph Lieberman's office in Washington, D.C., and currently working as a Master Teacher for UKanTeach at KU. At 5:30 pm, Casey, David, and Dr. Delaware met at Avenues Bistro for dinner. Danielle, Steve and Richard also met for a couple of hours on Saturday. You can always read about the team of teachers on the Mathematics Team page.


  • 4 October 2011: We write an article for the October issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Mathematics at Southwest in Year 4
    "This Fall, Southwest has a total of 118 students taking UMKC dual-credit mathematics classes, namely Math 210 Calculus I (11 students), Math 125 Trigonometry (34 students), and Math 110 College Algebra (75 students), all taught by our new dual credit mathematics instructor, David Dryburgh. David has a Master's degree in Mathematics, extensive urban teaching experience, and was recruited through our UMKC connection. You can read about him and all our new mathematics teachers here. The other teacher members of the new Southwest Mathematics Team are four Teach for America Corps members, Danielle Chang, Chris Cotton, Casey McComsey, and Young Nam, and continuing from last year, Ronda Miles, Shonda O'Dell, and Carol Simmons, with Ronda remaining Chair. So, we have 8 mathematics teachers, 4 of them TFA. The new Mathematics Instructional Coach team member is Tom Sullivan.

    On September 23, we held at UMKC our first full-day of Professional Development for the Team, featuring Dr. Delaware and a special guest (and former student of his), Steve Obenhaus, winner of the 2011 UMKC School of Education Alumni Achievement Award. (The award description said he "harnessed his passion for math and teaching to serve humanitarian needs as a volunteer in Haiti using mathematics to track poor water conditions and discover fresh water." Steve is also a Presidential Award winner for excellence in math and science teaching, and recently completed a year as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in Sen. Lieberman's office in Washington, D.C. Currently he works as a Master Teacher for UKanTeach at KU.) We hope to hold such PD days once a month at UMKC all year.

    We would like to continue our Mathematics Peer Tutoring program in the hour after school, but until there are after-school busses available, we cannot. The Math Club, started last Spring, is on hold for the same reason. We are planning our second annual Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremony in December (complete with those bright orange "Southwest Mathematics!" t-shirts), and a major field trip for all the dual credit mathematics students to the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics in January. As always, for more information about the team or to support our work, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu."


  • 23 September 2011 (Math Team Workshop #16): We hold our second Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop meeting at UMKC this Fall. [See the 26 August 2011 entry below for our last such workshop.] Ronda Miles and Dr. Delaware were there all day, Danielle Chang, Shonda O'Dell, and Carol Simmons were there from 8:00-11:00 am, and traded off with David Dryburgh, Chris Cotton, and Young Nam from 12:00-3:00 pm, so fewer substitute teachers were needed back at Southwest. (Casey McComsey was out of town this weekend.) We also had a special guest from 12-3, Steve Obenhaus, winner of the 2011 UMKC School of Education Alumni Achievement Award, and a former, long time teacher at Olathe North High School. The award description said he "harnessed his passion for math and teaching to serve humanitarian needs as a volunteer in Haiti using mathematics to track poor water conditions and discover fresh water. A Presidential Award winner for excellence in math and science teaching, he recently completed a year as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in Sen. Joseph Lieberman's office in Washington, D.C." Steve currently works as a Master Teacher for UKanTeach at KU. He tells us he can probably come to help with future PD days too. At 5:45 pm, Chris, Danielle and Dr. Delaware met at Avenues Bistro for dinner, and were joined for drinks by Halley Chapman, former Southwest mathematics teacher, who shared some advice with those two new TFA teachers.


  • 26 August 2011 (Math Team Workshop #15): We hold our first partial Southwest Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Workshop, meeting at UMKC this Fall. [See the 28-30 October 2010 entry below for our last such workshop, quite a while ago.] Ronda, David, Danielle, Casey, Young, and Dr. Delaware met at UMKC from 12 noon to about 3:15 pm. Although this was an abbreviated time period, we were pleased to start what we hope will become regular monthly mathematics team meetings, over all of Friday and part of Saturday. We did not actually do much mathematics this first time, but talked for 2.5 hours about how the first two weeks have gone for mathematics at Southwest, about some issues to pursue, and some plans to make. Our discussion was congenial and free-flowing.


  • August 2011: We welcome new members of the Southwest Mathematics Team. They are: David Dryburgh, our new dual-credit mathematics teacher, and 4 Teach for America Corps members: Danielle Chang, Chris Cotton, Casey McComsey, and Young Nam. From last year, only Ronda Miles, Shonda O'Dell, and Carol Simmons continue onward, with Ronda remaining Chair this year. The new school Mathematics Instructional Coach is Tom Sullivan. You can always read about all of them on the Mathematics Team page.


  • 21 July 2011: A new Southwest video [47:15] is posted in the "Documentation" playlist on Southwest's YouTube Channel, titled "Five Teacher Interviews SWECC Fall 2010", and created by Southwest 11th grader Alicen Brown, with recording assistance from classmate Salam Al Shimaily, recorded on Sept. 29 and Oct. 21, 2010. The five teachers interviewed, in order, are Mike Nelson (Biology), Philippe Vinaimont (French), Nora Burt (Spanish), Grigori Saiyan (Physics), and Shawn Cardwell (Mathematics).


  • 18 July 2011: A final report (38 pages) on the activities over the last two years of the Southwest Mathematics Team on a "Mathematics Peer Tutoring", and "Math Video Shorts" grant, is posted.


  • 10 June 2011: 10th, 11th, and 12th grade Southwest Mathematics students enrolled in UMKC College Algebra (Math 110) and Analytic Geometry (Math 202) , taught by Shawn Cardwell, completed their courses by taking the same Common Final Examination given by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to every other student enrolled in those courses at UMKC. The two hour exams began in the cafeteria, and then moved to the library.


  • 9 June 2011: We write an article for the June issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Mathematics Peer Tutoring Program Needs Financial Support
    "We initiated a Mathematics Peer Tutoring job program at Southwest in Spring 2010 due to a generous grant from Prep-KC. Peer tutoring has a powerful influence on academic motivation and achievement for both the tutor and tutee, and it helps knit together the social and academic fabric of the school ("We're all in this together!"). Not to mention, tutoring increases the social standing of tutors among their peers, the amount of time tutees have on task, and even more, paid tutoring elicits the pride of employment.

    Here's how it has worked: Southwest high school students are invited to interview for peer tutor positions based on their academic performance in mathematics; each student completes an application form, and is interviewed by a panel of 2-4 mathematics teachers including Dr. Delaware from UMKC; if hired, the students receive an offer letter on UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics stationary, signed by the teachers. We paid these peer tutors $7.50/hour and monitored their work schedule. In Spring 2010, peer tutors numbered from 29 to 23, tutored a total of 442 hours, and in all acted very professionally. The program was a popular success. For a brief video snapshot, see "Mathematics Peer Tutoring 2010 SWECC" by clicking here in the "Southwest Documentary Videos" playlist. We spent about $4,000 on tutor payments in the single semester Spring 2010, including a small stipend of $600 for the coordinating mathematics teacher. In Fall 2010, we intended to hit the ground running. But the absence of after-school busses, and other chaos, kept us from reviving the program until late in Spring 2011. We are finishing this year with 11-12 working peer tutors.

    But, the grant period has now ended, and we must find sustainable financial support for next year and beyond, likely from several sources. We do not expect school or district support due to limited budgets. So, we are asking for help from all quarters. If you have any funding ideas or would like to help, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu. Thanks!"


  • 6, 13, & 20 May 2011: The Southwest Math Club, organized by Shonda O'Dell as after school Friday meetings in her Room 306 for the hour after school, finishes its first semester. We ended with only 2 students regularly appearing, Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics joining them each day, and again, Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Morrison also attending the last two days.


  • 9 May - 25 May 2011: UMKC Secondary Mathematics Education student Kris Everson helps a substitute teacher at Southwest with Algebra I and Algebra II/College Algebra students as part of a practicum.


  • 1, 8, 15, & 29 April 2011: The Southwest Math Club continues to be organized by Shonda O'Dell as after school Friday meetings in her Room 306 for the hour after school. We have now had up to 6 students appear, Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics has joined them on the last three days. In addition, Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Morrison also attended the last two days.


  • 12 April 2011: We write an article for the April issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Mathematics Contest
    "Southwest Mathematics students had planned on competing in the annual KCATM mathematics contests earlier this semester, but poor weather that Saturday kept them and their district bus home. However, Southwest Mathematics teacher Shawn Cardwell and former Southwest Mathematics teacher Joe Morse, now at Winnetonka high school, whose students likewise missed the KCATM contests, together proposed the innovative idea of a head-to-head Southwest-Winnetonka High School Mathematics Contest to give all our students the contest they missed. So, we are planning to hold the contest on Saturday April 16 at UMKC, with 10-14 students from each school competing. Other Southwest Mathematics teachers have already volunteered to help proctor the tests. If any community member would like to help with food or awards, or in some other way, please contact Dr. Richard Delaware of UMKC at delawarer@umkc.edu."


  • 4 & 25 March 2011: The first ever Southwest Math Club is started by Shonda O'Dell and has its first two after school Friday meetings of the Spring 2011 semester, in her Room 306 for the hour after school. Only 1-4 students have appeared so far, Dr. Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics has joined them both days. In addition, on March 4 Mike Round, who runs the =EQUALS= Club of Investigation and Discovery was our guest, and Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Morrison also attended that first day.


  • 9 February 2011: We write an article for the February issue of the online WE ARE SOUTHWEST newsletter of The Community Outreach Committee of the Community based Engagement and Outreach with Southwest Early College Campus:
    Mathematics at SWECC
    "The "Southwest Mathematics Team" of 15 consists of all the mathematics teachers working at Southwest, both current and former, and two university professors, including Dr. Richard Delaware of the UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and a professor from Hunter College, New York, supported by the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation. Click here for bio-pages of all members of the Team. This UMKC commitment is the largest that the department has made to any school in its history.

    The Team has worked tirelessly since Southwest opened in 2008 to raise the quality and deepen student understanding of school mathematics, beyond short-sighted obsessions with state tests, and continues to focus on college-pointing mathematics teaching in the face of the chaos we have seen this year as the school ballooned into triple its size last Spring. Read here for a brief 19 page report on our work through June 1, 2010. There's a long way to go, and sometimes it seems stumbling blocks appear in every direction, but we are optimistic and excited about the untapped talent of our remarkable population of Southwest students (in all three Academies).

    Beyond class lessons, we have also initiated creative mathematics activities, such as the production of dozens of mathematics videos, and our participation in mathematics contests. See here for a chronological list of nearly all mathematics events at Southwest since 2008 (our latest being an awards ceremony and distribution of "Southwest Mathematics!" t-shirts in December), and here too for the unusual YouTube collection of mathematics and documentary videos we have so far created. This semester, we plan to send students to two mathematics contests, and hope to increase that to possibly five (!) next year. Please, feel free to contact Dr. Delaware at delawarer@umkc.edu if you have ideas about supporting Mathematics at Southwest!"


  • 28 January 2011: Fifteen 10th grade Southwest Mathematics students enrolled in UMKC Trigonometry (Math 125), taught by Shawn Cardwell, completed the one-semester course by taking the same Common Final Examination given by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to every other student enrolled in Trigonometry at UMKC during Fall 2010.


  • 27 January 2011: Southwest Mathematics Teachers move to new rooms: Along with most of the teachers at Southwest, in the new trisection of Southwest into three "academies", from Saturday January 22 through Monday January 24 the Southwest Mathematics teachers moved to the following new rooms, listed by "Academy":

    Early College Academy: Brian Anderson - Room 425, Isao-Osuga Chapa - Room 423, Ronda Miles - Room 410, and Shawn Cardwell - Room 409.

    Academy of Health Sciences: Christy Cavaness-Adams - Room 202, Halley Chapman - Room 218, Takeia Paige - Room 200, and Roseanne Stowers - Room 209.

    Children As Individuals Academy: Renee Gray - Room 304, Tim Morrison - Room 305, Shonda O'Dell - Room 306, and Carol Simmons - Room 307.


2010

  • 21 December 2010: The first Southwest Mathematics Awards Ceremony is held 4-5:00 pm in the Southwest library. 140 top mathematics students at Southwest, nominated by their mathematics teachers were awarded a certificate and a new orange and black "Southwest Mathematics!" t-shirt. Congratulations all! Richard Delaware and his colleague Ian Besse from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC led the event, but the entire Southwest Mathematics Team was involved in the organization, and Southwest Mathematics Department Chair Ronda Miles created all the certificates. We hope to see those t-shirts around Southwest helping to knit together the academic and social fabric of the school.
    SW Awards 1    SW Awards 2











  • 20 December 2010: Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC delivers a 6 page handout to all Southwest mathematics students in College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus I, in which is listed in full detail the mathematical requirements for every degree program at UMKC, and every course at UMKC requiring a mathematics prerequisite. We so often tell students that mathematics is important to their college career, but rarely show them exactly how.


  • December 2010: We start a new process of every two weeks gathering together the same long homework assignment from all Southwest College Algebra students, and sending it off to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC for grading. We have already completed two such assignments this month. Not only do students get direct and detailed commentary from UMKC, we lift the grading burden from the teachers briefly. So far, the students have been excited to get this independent feedback on their hard work. We will continue this process through May 2011.


  • 28-30 October 2010 (Math Team Workshop #14): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade PreAlgebra, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for more details.] We also have begun work on revising the UMKC College Algebra course, and looking ahead to how our work will continue into next year, given all the upcoming changes at Southwest.


  • 22 October 2010: A new Southwest video Mathematics Teaching Workshop - Gardella (28:04), documenting part of Frank Gardella's visit on September 25, is posted in the "Documentaries" playlist on Southwest's YouTube Channel.


  • October 2010: The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWF) (one of the Southwest early college partners) publishes a 27 page report titled "College Readiness: The View from Early College High Schools". The Southwest Mathematics Team, in particular Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, along with Frank Gardella from Hunter College, NY, were interviewed for this report between January and July. Although we find ourselves caught up in the day to day routines and sometimes feel alone here, we are in fact connected to a national partner. Some notes: p ii: The names mentioned above are all acknowledged in the first and third paragraphs; p. 1: The chart shows some reasons why we are committed to the Early School model at Southwest; pp. 8-15: This is the section on "College Readiness in Mathematics"; p. 12: The photo was taken by Delaware at the middle school math workshop arranged at Southwest, April 2-3, 2009; p. 14: The quotation at the bottom of the page is Delaware's. Although we are acting here locally, we have a global (national) impact and support!


  • 2 October 2010: Southwest Mathematics teacher Isao Osuga Chapa, along with Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, give a talk at the 20th Annual Kansas City Regional Mathematics Technology EXPO titled "FLIP Video Math Shorts: A Fresh Archive of Students Teaching Students", describing their experience last May-June at Southwest. [See 2-3 June 2010 below.]


  • 23-25 September 2010 (Math Team Workshop #13): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade PreAlgebra, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for more details.] We also have begun work on revising the UMKC College Algebra course, and looking ahead to how our work will continue into next year, given all the upcoming changes at Southwest.


  • 11 September 2010: A new Southwest Mathematics Peer Tutoring video (13:29) is posted in the "Documentation" playlist on Southwest's YouTube Channel.


  • 7 September 2010: A brief update report (20 pages) on the Mathematics Peer Tutoring and Math Videos grant is created. A notable fact is that over the Spring, the number of student tutors varied from 29 to 23, and they tutored a total of 442 hours. The original 29 tutors consisted of 17 9th graders and 12 10th graders, of which 22 were girls. [See 2-3 June 2010 below for information on the Math Videos.]


  • July-August 2010: We welcome new members of the Southwest Mathematics Team. [You can read about them on the Math Team page.] They are: Teach for America Corps member Brian Anderson, as well as Christy Cavaness-Adams, Renee Gray, Tim Morrison, Shonda O'Dell, Takeia Paige, and Roseanne Stowers. This year Shawn Cardwell becomes a full-time KCMSD employee, and we welcome two new UMKC Adjunct Lecturers, Martha Haehl and Meg Sellers. From last year, Ronda Miles and Isao Osuga Chapa continue onward, with Ronda becoming Chair this year. Our two team members who have been here since the first year have taken on new duties this year, though both will remain members of the Math Team: Halley Chapman will teach the first Engineering Project Lead the Way course at Southwest (really just applied mathematics), and was intensively trained this July 5-16 at Missouri Science and Technology University in Rolla, MO, while Gislaine Ngounou becomes the new Mathematics Instructional Coach for the school, working closely with all our new mathematics teachers this year.


  • 8-17 July 2010 (Math Team Workshop #12): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for more details.] We also have begun work on revising the UMKC College Algebra course, and looking ahead to how our work will continue into next year, given all the upcoming changes at Southwest.


  • 2-3 June 2010: The second Annual Southwest Mathematics Video Shorts Festival is held in Halley Chapman's 6th grade mathematics classroom. 26 6th grade student-written Math Video "Shorts" were shown to students. These were created over the previous two weeks in her classes, with funding from the Southwest Mathematics Video Shorts Project though a grant from one of our Partners, PREP-KC. All these video shorts, and more Southwest videos (a total of 36 at present), are posted on Southwest's YouTube Channel.


  • 1 June 2010: A brief report (19 pages) on the activities over the last two years of the Southwest Mathematics Team is posted.


  • 27 May 2010: All Southwest students enrolled in UMKC dual credit mathematics courses (College Algebra, and Analytic Geometry) make a field trip to UMKC to take their final exams, and afterward, visit the Rare Book Room of Linda Hall Library to examine historically important mathematics and other books. Once again, one Southwest College Algebra student gets the highest score (in fact, 100%) on the Common Final Exam among all UMKC or Southwest students taking the exam this Spring semester.


  • 13-15 May 2010 (Math Team Workshop #11): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for more details.] We also have begun work on revising the UMKC College Algebra course, and looking ahead to how our work will continue into next year, given all the upcoming changes at Southwest.


  • 7-11 May 2010: We expect deliveries of supplies for Mathematics on these days. Twenty-five 18"x24" white dry erase boards are coming for Mathematics Peer Tutors to use as they move to different rooms each day they tutor, funded by The Southwest Mathematics Peer Tutoring Project (see 30 April 2010 below). Likewise, two 3'x5' black dry erase boards are coming for the Southwest Mathematics Video Shorts Project (see 16 April 2010 below), since it is difficult (and blinding) to record off whiteboards.


  • 3 May 2010: Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC has arranged for Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, who has been working with the Southwest Mathematics Team since April 2009, to offer a 7 day course this summer, while he is in town as funded by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (one of the Southwest partners) to continue our ongoing Southwest Mathematics Team Workshops. Richard will also be teaching with him during this course. The course will be offered through the School of Education Continuing Education division, for 1 credit hour, and is titled: Special Topics: Seminar in the Learning and Teaching of Middle School and High School Mathematics Education 489 Q (undergraduate course) or Education 5589 Q (graduate course). It will meet Thursday July 8, Friday July 9, and Monday through Friday July 12-16, 8:00-9:50 am each day. Frank's Description is:
    "Beginning with the idea that a mathematics curriculum encompasses Standards, Sequence of Topics, Activities for Learning and Assessment, the seminar will focus on the sequence for teaching topics as well as the activities involved. Of special note is that the participants will be polled prior to the seminar as to the areas of mathematics that they would find difficult to teach from a beginning level. In this instance, the idea would be: When addressing a topic, what do you do day one, minute one, second one? Key features will be the use of physical and visual models to address the mathematical topics in grades 6 to 12. Participants will come away with: Ideas and strategies for teaching mathematics using a variety of models; Knowledge and understanding of moving students from the kinesthetic to the symbolic level of communicating mathematics in an efficient and effective manner; A view of the mathematics classroom as a science area carrying out experiments, establishing conclusions and validating with formal mathematics". Course Requirements: Attendance at all sessions; a 1 to 2 page reflection on each session due at the beginning of the following session; Submission of a lesson plan relating to ideas or concepts presented at the seminar; Submission of a 3-5 page paper/project focusing on how the ideas developed during the seminar can be adapted to the classroom, due August 15."


  • 1 May 2010: The Southwest Mathematics Team of 18 students competed in the First Annual PREP-KC Regional Math Relays at Wyandotte High School. Remember, this year we have only 9th grade and 10th grade students, who were competing against four-year schools with grades 9, 10, 11, and 12. Nevertheless, we came away with 10 wins!, 6 individual wins, and 4 team wins, amounting to 22 individual medals. Namely:

    Algebra - Delta level 3rd Place winner - Samantha Curfman
    Algebra Relays - 4th Place team winner - Devon Fitts, Octavio Sosa, Ngan Nguyen, Julio Cerda
    Algebra Relays - 2nd Place team winner - Samantha Curfman, Logan Masenthin, Lorenzo Rodriguez, Monty Tucker
    Geometry - Alpha level 4th Place winner - Estefania Espinosa
    Geometry - Alpha level 2nd Place winner - Daejah Martin
    Geometry - Gamma level 3rd Place winner - Jhon St. Paul
    Number Sense Relays - 4th Place team winner - Devon Fitts, Octavio Sosa, Ngan Nguyen, Julio Cerda
    Number Sense Relays - 2nd Place team winner - Samantha Curfman, Logan Masenthin, Lorenzo Rodriguez, Monty Tucker
    Data - Gamma level 4th Place winner - Roda Muhamad
    Data - Delta level 4th Place winner - Logan Masenthin

    Congratulations to all!


  • 30 April 2010: The Southwest Mathematics Peer Tutoring Project (see 20-21 January 2010, and 10-11 & 15-16 December 2009, below) has been moving along well. Already, $2,347.50 has been paid out to the peer tutors for their work. We look forward to continuing and expanding this project in the Fall, provided we can find a continuing funding source. The tutors have been very professional.


  • 21 April 2010: During our April 16-17 video work, a question arose about decimal multiplication, that afterward led to Richard Delaware writing and proving a Theorem (PDF) to answer the question. Curious? Take a look! The story of the question is included on the PDF. Mathematical questions are everywhere, and fun to answer.


  • 16 April 2010: We create our first Southwest Mathematics Video Shorts Project 2 minute video, titled "One Square Yard = Nine Square Feet", using Southwest 6th graders and directed by Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, who had done a similar video with graduate students some years ago. We also recorded the "behind the scenes" making of the video, so other teachers can see how it was done. The next day, April 17, we recorded footage for another video. The video project is rapidly getting underway now that MAP testing and EOC exams are (nearly) done, and Halley Chapman's 6th grade class begins its work toward their "Second Annual Mathematics Video Festival" in late May. We also look forward to continuing and expanding this project in the Fall, provided we can find a continuing funding source, after the generous grant from one of our Partners, PREP-KC runs out.


  • 15-17 April 2010 (Math Team Workshop #10): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for more details.] We also have begun work on revising the UMKC College Algebra course, and looking ahead to how our work will continue into next year, given all the upcoming changes at Southwest.


  • 18-20 March 2010 (Math Team Workshop #9): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. On Saturday March 20, Southwest and UMKC College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Analytic Geometry Instructor Shawn Cardwell joined us. [See the 18-20 February 2010 entry below for full details.]


  • 12, 18, 23 March 2010: UMKC undergraduate middle school mathematics teacher major Sara Tucker, taking a mathematics class from Richard Delaware in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and soon-to-be accepted into the Institute for Urban Education, visited Isao Osuga Chapa's 7th grade mathematics class to observe and write journal entries for a UMKC Honors project about what she saw.


  • March 2010: UMKC undergraduate middle school mathematics teacher major, and Institute for Urban Education student Mark McVay, taking a mathematics class from Richard Delaware in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, starts regular visits to Gislaine Ngounou's 9th grade Algebra I classes to observe, two mornings a week.


  • 24-26 February 2010: Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, and Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, who has been working with the Southwest Mathematics Team since last April 2009, are invited to participate in the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (one of the Southwest partners) Convening in Philadelphia, PA, during which, coming as a complete surprise to Richard and Frank, Rob Baird, WWF Vice President of School-University Partnerships, presents their PowerPoint description of the mathematics work being done at Southwest. It was great for Southwest to get this unexpected early national recognition for the hard work of all 7 of us on the Southwest Mathematics Team.


  • 18-20 February 2010 (Math Team Workshop #8): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. [We have abandoned further work on 6th grade mathematics, though we will finish and save it, due to the KCMSD decision to make Southwest a 7-12 school next year.] Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, Isao Osuga Chapa, Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • February 2010: UMKC and Rockhurst University graduate mathematics education student Chris Durden starts volunteer daytime tutoring in Ronda Miles' Algebra Skills classes, once or twice a week.


  • February 2010: Once again, we are pleased that the UMKC Workstudy Program has arranged to supply to Southwest two UMKC work-study students as Mathematics Tutors, working 10-20 hours each week at Southwest this semester, providing we can find takers.


  • 21-23 January 2010 (Math Team Workshop #7): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July 2009 to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, Isao Osuga Chapa, Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • 20-21 January 2010: The Southwest Mathematics Peer Tutoring Project (see 10-11 & 15-16 December 2009, below) held an Orientation for 28 Peer Tutors hired for the project. The orientations were organized by 9th Grade Algebra I teacher Gislaine Ngounou, and 10th Grade Geometry teacher Ronda Miles. Logistics and tutoring behavior and tips were discussed, and UMKC spiral notebooks as logbooks were distributed.


  • 14 January 2010: Five 10th grade Southwest Mathematics students enrolled in UMKC Trigonometry (Math 125), completed the one-semester course by taking the same Common Final Examination given by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to every other student enrolled in Trigonometry at UMKC during Fall 2010. We are proud to say that one of our Southwest Trigonometry students earned the highest grade attained by any of the 36 UMKC students who took that Final! We applaud the impressive performance of this student, and the other four students who took the exam. Out of the five students, four passed the course with three UMKC "A"'s and one "B", earning 2 hours of UMKC college credit. Our Trigonometry course had never before been offered by UMKC to students in the 10th grade, and we are pleased at this success.


  • 11 January 2010: We are pleased that Katie Don Carlos, a student at the UMKC School of Education will join us as a half-time Algebra I student teacher in Gislaine Ngounou's room this semester. (She'll spend the other half of her time helping with 9th Grade Biology) Welcome Katie!


2009

  • 10-11 & 15-16 December 2009: The Southwest Peer Tutoring Project, one of two grant proposals (see 1 September 2009, below) submitted by the Southwest Mathematics team for this academic year and funded by PREP-KC, begins by interviewing 35 Grade 9 and 10 Southwest students as potential peer tutors. The students were recommended, and encouraged to interview, by 9th Grade Algebra I teacher Gislaine Ngounou, and 10th Grade Geometry teacher Ronda Miles. The interview team consisted of Ms. Ngounou and Ms. Miles, as well as UMKC Adjunct Lecturer Shawn Cardwell, teaching College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Analytic Geometry at Southwest this year, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC. Letters of invitation were written to 30 of those interviewed students and distributed to them personally Dec. 21-22.


  • 10-12 December 2009 (Math Team Workshop #6): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, Isao Osuga Chapa, Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • 30 November 2009: In the November 2009 electronic issue of "Data and Dialogue, A Newsletter of the Woodrow Wilson Early College Network", we receive the following mention:
    "The UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics hosts a website for its work with Southwest Early College Campus. On the site you will find video shorts created by last year's 6th graders in Ms. Chapman's math class, a video documentary of last year's 6th graders commenting on their Southwest experience in the new school, and other information on the mathematics-related partnership between UMKC and Southwest."


  • November 2009: Larry Poisner [see the 6 January 2009 entry below], a retired professional engineer with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri - Columbia, continues his volunteer tutoring of Algebra at Southwest this academic year during the day in Gislaine Ngounou's class. He also added Chemistry tutoring to his duties this year. [Following this date, Larry fought a bout with illness, but recovered and returned shortly to tutoring at Southwest in late April 2010.]


  • 5-7 November 2009 (Math Team Workshop #5): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest and UMKC. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, Isao Osuga Chapa, Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • 21 October 2009: Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, and Southwest Algebra I teacher Gislaine Ngounou are invited to participate in a Seminar of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's (one of the Southwest partners) Early College Initiative titled Proficient, but not College Ready: How English and Mathematics Pedagogy can Bridge the Gap held in Princeton, New Jersey.


  • 8-10 October 2009 (Math Team Workshop #4): We continue the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, meeting at Southwest. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, along with new hires Isao Osuga Chapa and Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • 3 October 2009: Southwest 6th grade Mathematics teacher Halley Chapman gives a talk at the 19th Annual Kansas City Regional Mathematics Technology EXPO titled "Creating Math Video Shorts Using the Flip Mino Camcorder", describing her experience last May at Southwest. [See 29 May 2009 for more.]


  • 17 September 2009: The Mathematics Team holds a Southwest Mathematics Assessment Meeting. Attending are Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, Isao Osuga Chapa and Ronda Miles, Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, and mathematics assessment consultant Dennis Chaconas working with PREP-KC.


  • 16 September 2009 - 29 October 2009: We send 3 UMKC undergraduates [Kenyon Thornton, Paul Smith, and Lee Wolfe] as volunteer Mathematics Tutors to Southwest on 17 Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays after school from 2:20-3:30 pm. Kenyon is a secondary mathematics education major, Paul is a mathematics major, and Lee is a middle school mathematics major.


  • 3-4 September 2009 (Math Team Workshop #3): We once more continued the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July to rewrite, re-sequence, and plan activities for each day of the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, this time meeting at SWECC. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was again generously supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman, Gislaine Ngounou, along with new hires Isao Osuga Chapa and Ronda Miles, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC.


  • 1 September 2009: Two grant proposals submitted by the Southwest Mathematics Team for this academic year have been funded by PREP-KC. One is titled "The Southwest Mathematics Peer Tutoring Project" and is designed to set up a mathematics peer-tutoring program at Southwest in which 10th (and some 9th) grade students would be paid to tutor students in lower grades. The other is titled "The Southwest Math Video Shorts Production Group" and is designed to help students and faculty create short mathematics videos (< 5 min.) to build up a fresh archive for the school and increase the mathematical understanding of students.


  • 24 August 2009: We are excited that the UMKC Workstudy Program has arranged to supply to Southwest two UMKC work-study students as Mathematics Tutors, working 10-20 hours each week at Southwest this semester. We are pleased to welcome the first one, James Slaughter!


  • 24 August 2009: We are pleased that Mackenzie Gamble, a 4th year student in the UMKC Institute for Urban Education program and to be part of the second IUE graduating class in May 2010, will be a middle school mathematics student teacher in Halley Chapman's room all year. Welcome Mackenzie!


  • 24 August 2009: New mathematics teachers Isao Osuga Chapa (7th grade mathematics), and Ronda Miles (Geometry) join the Southwest Mathematics Team this year. The UMKC Department of Mathematics and Statistics has also hired an Adjunct Lecturer Shawn Cardwell to teach College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Analytic Geometry at Southwest this year, while we continue to build our mathematics faculty. Welcome Isao, Ronda, and Shawn!


  • 13-14 August 2009 (Math Team Workshop #2): We continued the Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop, begun in July to rewrite and re-sequence the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, this time meeting at the offices of PREP-KC. Once again, Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, was supported by the national Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, to join the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman and new Teach for America Corps hire Isao Osuga Chapa, Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, and again Dennis Chaconas working with PREP-KC.


  • 6-11 July & 13-15 July 2009 (Math Team Workshop #1): For a week and a half, a Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop was held at UMKC to begin the process of rewriting and re-sequencing the entire 6th grade mathematics, 7th grade mathematics, Algebra I, and Geometry courses at Southwest, to reflect best practices in teaching mathematics and the needs of an early college school. Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, who has worked with the Manhattan-Hunter Early College school and who was generously supported by the national Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, joined the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman and Gislaine Ngounou, Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, as well as Dennis Chaconas working with PREP-KC.


  • 29 May 2009: The first Annual Southwest Mathematics Film Festival was held in Halley Chapman's 6th grade mathematics classroom. 17 Math Video "Shorts" were available for viewing. These were student-constructed videos created over the previous two weeks in her classes.


  • 8 May 2009: The first class of Southwest Mathematics students (six 9th graders this year) enrolled in UMKC College Algebra (Math 110), stretched out over the entire academic year, completed the course by taking the same Common Final Examination given by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to every other student enrolled in College Algebra at UMKC during Spring 2009. We are proud to say that one of our College Algebra Southwest students earned 100/100 points, the highest grade attained by any of the 119 UMKC students who took that Final! A second Southwest student earned 86/100, which was a rank of 19 out of 119. We applaud the impressive performance of these two students, and the other four students, all of whom passed the course and earned UMKC college credit! College Algebra had never before been offered by UMKC to students in the 9th grade, and we are pleased at our initial success.


  • 1 May 2009 (Math Team Workshop #0): In preparation for the upcoming Southwest Mathematics Curriculum Workshop in July, Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, who has worked with the Manhattan-Hunter Early College school and who was generously supported by the national Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of our Southwest Partners, joined the Southwest Mathematics teachers Halley Chapman and Gislaine Ngounou, and Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC, for a one day quick organization session.


  • 30 April 2009: Halley Chapman and four of her 6th grade mathematics students attended an awards dinner at the Marriott Hotel in Independence, MO, for being ranked as the First Place Kansas City Middle School team in our region, having participated in the State of Missouri Stock Market Game in which students have the chance to invest a hypothetical $100,000 in an online portfolio, learning about mathematics and economics as they go. See the Final Rankings. The winning team consisted of Brando Garcia, Bryan Marquez, Lateef Kane, and Carlos Stone. Students could buy, sell and trade any stocks they liked, and usually chose to invest in things that were of interest to them (like Nike, Sony, Apple, etc.). It turned out that in the end, our Southwest students fared much better than most adults during the recession. In addition to learning very applicable information about investing money in the market, they had to use quite a bit of mathematics. For instance, a certain percentage of their purchases and sales had to go to a "broker", so that had to be calculated, and they had to keep track of their portfolio increases and declines because the game only told them their current balance, not how much it was up or down. [See 29 September - 5 December 2008 too.]


  • 17 April 2009: Joe Morse took his 9th grade Geometry students on a field trip to a professional welding shop in Fairfax, KS, to see how the many theorems of geometry they learned are applied in practice to the building of conveyors.


  • 2-3 April 2009: [See Pictures.] A Middle School Mathematics Workshop was held at Southwest, featuring Frank Gardella of Hunter College, New York, whose travel costs were supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The participants were the two Middle School Mathematics teachers at Southwest ECC, Halley Chapman and Gislaine Ngounou, as well as 6 young preservice middle school mathematics teacher students from Math 204 at UMKC, Cleora Taylor (Mathematics Coordinator for the Kansas City Missouri School District), and Sharon Hayes (SIOP Mathematics Instructional Coach for the Kansas City Missouri School District), and finally Joe Morse who teaches 9th grade mathematics at Southwest, dropped by. Richard Delaware from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC organized (and also attended) the Workshop.


  • 10 March 2009 - 6 May 2009: We start sending 6 UMKC undergraduates as volunteer Mathematics Tutors to Southwest on 15 Tuesdays and Wednesdays, after school from 2:20-3:30 pm.


  • 28 February 2009: Congratulations! A team of three Southwest 9th grade students [Ngan Nguyen, Devon Fitts, Lorenzo Rodriguez], with no previous preparation time, went to and won 3rd place in the Algebra Team Event (small school category) at the KCATM (Kansas City Area Teachers of Mathematics) annual mathematics contest, held at Olathe South High School. Southwest Mathematics Teacher Joe Morse organized their entry and travel. 1100 students participated.


  • 6 January 2009: Larry Poisner, a retired professional engineer with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri - Columbia, began tutoring Algebra at Southwest during second and third hours in Gislaine Ngounou's class, and in Joe Morse's class, for about 4 days a week.


2008

  • 29 September - 5 December 2008: Halley Chapman's 6th grade mathematics classes participated as a Kansas City Middle School in the State of Missouri Stock Market Game in which students have the chance to invest a hypothetical $100,000 in an online portfolio, learning about mathematics and economics as they go. [See 30 April 2009 for further news.]



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