Math Amigos Featured in Santa Fe New Mexican

Math Amigos was featured in the Jan 21, 2023 Santa Fe New Mexican in an article written by Claudia L Silva.  The article link is:  https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/mathamigos-helping-santa-fe-teachers-find-better-clearer-ways-to-teach-subject/article_c878ff96-96b1-11ed-a4f8-0fe4ff3971df.html

The article is reproduced below

About 60 teachers braved the cold and ice Saturday morning to learn new ways to get students interested in a topic that makes many kids groan — math.

MathAmigos, a local nonprofit, gave teachers the chance to look at math through a new lens with a series of workshops Saturday at Milagro Middle School. Participating teachers received a $150 stipend if they attended the whole day.

Judy Reinhartz, a MathAmigos lead and math literacy coach, said the organization’s goal is to make math less scary for students in Santa Fe and help them see it as an everyday activity. They do this by showing teachers new ways to tackle math problems that many had never seen before.

“You know, when I was taught math, it was very different. It was done in one way on a blackboard,” Reinhartz said during an interview. “But, many kids have different modalities of learning, so we want to be sure to plug into that.”

MathAmigos was founded in 2017 by a group of volunteers, mathematicians, educators and community members who want to change the way teachers and students view math.

Reinhartz said the program started with just five schools and grew to include all of Santa Fe Public Schools. She said many of the strategies the group teaches were developed based on teacher feedback and can fit into just about any curriculum.

“We’re really trying to help teachers and students understand the standards, making them more easy to discern, easier to look at,” Reinhartz said.

The educator said she hopes the program will help turn the tide on the district’s poor math scores.

In September, the state Public Education Department reported only 24% of Santa Fe Public Schools students are proficient in math — just below the state average of 25%.

Some of the workshops instructed teachers to use books to help students identify stories in word problems.

Others taught the “exploding dots” method to add, multiply and divide.

James Taylor, an instructor for Math-Amigos, demonstrated ways to solve math problems that don’t always have a straightforward solution.

“Most teachers have not experienced this because the word problems in textbooks are not really word problems at all, they’re exercises,” Taylor said in an interview. “They’ve been told how to solve them and what technique to use.”

Taylor said teachers generally don’t know how to tackle these problems, so they need to use problem-solving strategies to get their answers. He said these new strategies have changed some kids’ perspectives on the subject.

“Students enjoy this; they find that there can be joy in mathematics,” Taylor said. “Some of the students who might not be finding joy, or a challenge, in mathematics might suddenly find that math is something much more than they thought it was.”

He said it has also helped some students come out of their shell as they learn to work collaboratively and speak up about how they solved a problem.

“There’s a social and emotional aspect to it, and that’s good,” Taylor said.

“You know, and you get to learn to gain confidence in your ability to get up and speak to a group of your classmates about something that’s hard. That part of it is developing intellectual confidence.”