Teacher’s math adds up to White House visit 01/22/10

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kris Jarboe worked hard to memorize her multiplication tables in elementary school — she wanted to earn a gold star that proved she knew her stuff.

But as she got older, math was never her favorite subject.

“My grades were good, but there comes a time when you have to apply the things you’ve memorized,” said Jarboe, now a math intervention teacher at Elkhorn Elementary School.

“When I got into high school and later into college, it was more challenging for me because maybe I didn’t have the best foundation.”

That’s something Jarboe wants to give her 22 students, most of whom struggle with math in the traditional classroom setting.

She also works to boost their numeracy — a basic understanding of numbers and how they relate to each other. The number two, for example, could mean plain old two, one-half, or two-tenths.

“We take it for granted that the numbers make sense to them,” she said. “Kids don’t necessarily get those multiple meanings.”

For that work, Jarboe earned a prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence recently. She said the award will encourage her to keep working hard to build her students’ confidence in the classroom.

“It’s more important to me that they just feel better about their learning,” she said. “(The award) inspires me to create an environment where they can feel comfortable.”

The Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching is given to the best teachers from across the nation, selected by a panel of scientists, mathematicians and educators.

President Barack Obama named more than 100 science, math and engineering teachers and mentors as recipients in a recent White House ceremony.

Jarboe was one of two winners from Kentucky. Keri Dowdy, a science teacher from Mayfield, also won.

Winners received $10,000 from the National Science Foundation to be used at their discretion, and an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for a White House awards ceremony and several days of educational and celebratory events.

Jarboe also took home a citation and a thank-you letter from Obama.

Her first impression of the president was how thin he looked. Second, that he seemed like a regular guy, who just the night before was helping his daughter Malia with her math homework.

Winning was a lengthy process that started nearly three years ago.

Jarboe had to submit a 30-minute video of her teaching and write a paper about her beliefs and classroom strategies. After being named a state finalist, she found out she won the national award last July.

“I would have never, ever expected that,” she said. “I was really surprised.”

Jarboe came to Elkhorn Elementary eight years ago as a fifth-grade teacher. She started a math intervention program four years ago, funded by a grant from the Kentucky Center for Mathematics.

Children who struggle with math come to her classroom, where she works with them in small groups or one-on-one. Some stay with Jarboe a year or more, but others catch up quicker.

They also attend math classes in their regular classrooms.

Jarboe pinpoints what students have trouble with by asking questions.

Through hands-on work or their own investigation, children come up with their own answer to a problem — they don’t depend on their teacher to tell them what it is.

“It’s nothing new, but it’s maybe not used as much as it should be,” she said. “That’s really when more powerful learning takes place.”

The lesson stays with them longer that way.

“When you learned how to ride a bike, you remember when you took off and did it on your own,” she said. “If you can question them and lead them where you want them to go, then they can discover it on their own.”

Jarboe graduated from Western Kentucky University in 1989, and did graduate work at the University of Kentucky.

Math difficulties in middle and high school can often be traced to concepts kids missed early on. Subtraction from double-digit numbers is usually the first place kids fall behind, she said.

To improve their numeracy, Jarboe’s students work on counting forward and backward, and they start from numbers other than one or 10. They spend a lot of time learning the numbers five and 10, strong bases for our number system.

“For a long time, as a teacher, I thought they had to stop counting on their fingers,” she said. “But there’s nothing wrong with that. Even adults count on their fingers.”

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Information from: The State Journal, http://www.state-journal.com

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