USI Network Solution:
Small Schools Offer Summer Math Camp
Editor’s Note: The following story shows how the Urban Education Institute’s Network of small new schools worked together to help their students accelerate their learning over the summer of 2007.
While many Chicago teenagers lingered in bed enjoying the extra sleep provided by summer vacation, 16-year-old Carolon Davis rushed out the door at 6:30 a.m. to ride four different buses to reach an accelerated math camp sponsored by five charter schools in the University of Chicago Urban School Improvement Network.
Davis and 28 other ninth and 10th graders from five small public schools spent every morning for four weeks in July 2007 on the University campus studying polynomials and other advanced algebra concepts, along with economics. The students, who excel in math, volunteered to give up some of their summer break so they would be ready to handle the challenges of advanced placement calculus and other demanding math and science courses later in high school.
Davis, a sophomore at Perspectives Charter School-Calumet, said her long commute to math camp on public transit is worth it, even though it took her about an hour and a half from suburban Riverdale, where she spent the summer with her sister.
“I really like the way things are taught,” said Davis. “It shows us how we are using math without even knowing we are using it, like when you use credit cards or take out a loan.”
Two years ago, Davis said she didn’t see any connection between the math she was learning in the classroom and the real world. “I was like, ‘What is the point of learning this?’ But now I get it. I’m really glad I came even if I am getting up at the crack of dawn.”
The math camp, free to the students, is an example of how small Chicago high schools can pool their resources to offer the wider array of courses available at larger, comprehensive high schools. Small schools are a key strategy in many school reform efforts in Chicago and across the nation because of the opportunities they offer for in-depth and individualized instruction, along with more meaningful relationships between students and teachers. Yet, enrollments of 600 students or even less during a small school’s start-up can make it difficult to offer the same kind of variety as schools with 1,000 or more students.
While the math camp solution came out of the Urban School Improvement Network at the Urban Education Institute, the approach has wider implications for small schools everywhere.
“What these small schools can do together for the kids, no one school can do alone,” said Linda Wing of the Urban Education Institute who oversees the USI Network of schools that meet regularly to improve instruction and leadership, fostering the relationships that made the math camp possible.
“We’re hoping that these are long-term relationships,” Wing said. She said the plan calls for students to meet periodically on Saturdays and in the summer in the coming years to continue their accelerated math studies. Eventually, the schools would join together to offer an advanced placement math course during school hours.
In addition to Perspectives, the Urban School Improvement Network schools collaborating on the math camp were the Woodlawn campus of the University of Chicago Charter School, two campuses of the Betty Shabazz International Charter School, ACE Technical Charter School, and the Urban Prep Academy for Young Men. The South Loop campus of Perspectives also sent students to the math camp.
Teaching the camp also was a cooperative effort among Assata Moore, the Shabazz math teacher who directs the camp, and three instructors. They were: Shannon Mason, another math teacher from Shabazz; Stacy Sniegowski, a math teacher from ACE Tech; and Earick Rayburn, who has taught at Julian and Gwendolyn Brooks high schools in Chicago.
Topics like futures trading that could put students to sleep in less capable hands became lively under the leadership of Moore. She started summer math camp each morning promptly at 8:30 with an economics lecture that covered topics such as hedge funds and options, but also seamlessly incorporated vocabulary-building, career education and practical information on issues such as credit scores and home ownership.
One minute the students were learning the Greek etymology of the word “economics” and the next they were introducing themselves and their career aspirations in an ice-breaking exercise. The exercise also gave them practice speaking in front of a room and prompted discussion about various jobs from forensic scientist to midwife nurse.
Whenever a student said, “I want to be” a certain occupation, Moore jumped in to correct them. “Not want. You will be,” Moore said. “Notice that I am not giving you the option of not going to college.”
Moore even managed to turn a routine review in the course’s second week into a fun game of jeopardy that encouraged students to use logic and math as they calculated their final wagers. The winning team earned a free lunch provided by their teacher during a field trip to the Chicago Board of Trade.
“I’m trying to give them the course I never had; all the things about personal finance we usually have to learn from experience and sometimes mistakes in life,” Moore said. “I want them to see that studying mathematics can lead to many different careers from being an actuary to being an astronaut.”
The students also chose stocks to buy and graphed their progress. They got some help using the computer program, Excel, from instructor Rayburn, who used to work as an analyst with an institutional investment firm.
For some of the students, it was the first time they had thought about investing.
“We’re learning how to get rich young,” said Javon Cooper, 14, a sophomore at Urban Prep Academy for Young Men.
After the economics lecture, the students broke up into small groups each day for two and a half hours of intense instruction in advanced algebra.
One morning, students perplexed by a complex equation got a tip from instructor Stacy Sniegowski, a math teacher at ACE Tech. She advised her students to think about pulling up to the drive-in window at McDonald’s with a car full of friends. One friend wants two cheeseburgers, a soda pop and fries while another wants a milkshake and fries. The third wants a soda pop and fries.”
“You’d never give the order like that, you’d summarize,” Sniegowski said. “Math is like that; you’re looking for the like terms.”
At the imaginary drive-in window, the cheeseburgers turned into the terms with an “x” and the sodas became “xy.” Suddenly, the concept made sense to the students and they started organizing the problem by circling and underlining like terms so they could go on to solve it.
Next door, teacher Mason encouraged his students to go up to the blackboard to factor polynomials and explain their solutions to their classmates.
“I’m trying to get the students to understand that it’s okay to make mistakes in front of each other; that we’ll help each other,” Mason said. Student Andrew Grant, 14, a sophomore at ACE Tech, got up from his seat and headed toward the board. “I don’t like to communicate,” he moaned, getting laughs from his classmates.
“Just do your best,” Mason advised. Grant succeeded and even managed to explain his thought process to his classmates. “I like this class,” he said with a smile. “If I wasn’t here, I’d be home watching TV in my underwear.”
The class offered many of the youngsters a real-life opportunity to explore an economic lesson about long-term versus short-term gains, since many of the teens sacrificed pay at summer jobs to attend math camp.
Dejerea Calhoun, 15, a sophomore at the Woodlawn Campus of the University of Chicago Charter School, is one of many students who calculated that it is better to go to school in the summer even if it meant she lost a chance to make money at a temporary job.
“If I get good grades and do well in college, I’ll get a good job,” Calhoun said. “Then it will be easy to get back the money I lost by coming to this class and not working this summer.”
She added, “You have to think about your future.”
