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I currently teach mathematics in Hartland, MI at Hartland High School.  I have taught Geometry for the past four years and next year I will be piloting a new math class to help college-bound seniors enhance their math skills before entering their post-secondary choices.
This class is engineered to help students focus on the math skills they have attained throughout their education system and to improve and apply those math skills beyond the classroom into their real world experiences.
The goal of the class is to improve student knowledge and understanding in mathematics. We will establish the criteria and skills that are strengths and weaknesses of the material that has already been taught throughout the students secondary education curriculum. We will design curriculum for the course based on those strengths and weaknesses and improve student understanding of mathematics so students will be more successful when entering their post-secondary education.

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Although we teachers have the best intentions when piloting new material, sometimes there are margins of error that we cannot expect. My main concerns for this new senior math class involve the seniors themselves; will they be motivated to persevere and prepare for their future outside of high school? Will they be willing to participate in this new study I have created? And most importantly, will they be equipped with the knowledge and tools to be successful without my help in their future endeavors? All of these questions and concerns worry me in the beginning stages of this process. However, I will learn and grow from the data collected and continuously make changes to better improve the curriculum for all students that I encounter.

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The Effectiveness of the North Carolina Early Mathematics Placement Test in Preparing High School Students for College-Level Introductory Mathematics Courses.   

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The Effectiveness of the North Carolina Early Mathematics Placement Test in Preparing High School Students for College-Level Introductory Mathematics Courses.   

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This article summarizes the reason I started showing interest in a senior level math course for college bound students.  It discusses the necessary reasons we need to better prepare our students in their mathematics curriculum to be better prepared for their post-secondary education.  The article discusses the top reasons why we need to best prepare our students for college level mathematics.  First, if students are successful in their freshman year, then they are more likely to continue their education.  Second, taking remedial courses in college is costly, where educators could better plan for their success while they are still in their secondary education schools.  Remedial courses also cause a delay in the advancement of the students’ education.  Last, as the article explains “An early warning can help combat what sometimes is a lack of clear information on students’ progress toward college and career readiness during the high school years (Barnett, Fay, Bork, Weiss, Community College Research Center, 2013)” (Hilgoe, Brinkley, Hattingh, Bernhardt, 2016, p. 370).

The goal of the study is to examine the students’ mathematical performance to the graduation rate in their post-secondary education.  Unfortunately, the study was inconclusive based on the data collected, however, the schools in North Carolina took action and implemented the same strategies that I plan to use for my senior mathematics class.  I plan to use college placement practice exams as a tool to measure a student’s strengths and areas of growth before leaving their high school setting.  “Most importantly, the non-threatening reality check supplied by NC EMPT spurs interest and allows time for students to strengthen important mathematical skills while still in high school” (Hilgoe, Brinkley, Hattingh, Bernhardt, 2016, p. 377).

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Making Sense of and with Mathematics: The Interface Between Academic Mathematics and Mathematics in Practice. 

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Making Sense of and with Mathematics: The Interface Between Academic Mathematics and Mathematics in Practice. 

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This article was a great introduction to the action research I plan to implement into my classroom next fall.  The author compared the mathematic curriculum taught in the classroom to the mathematics used in a job setting to discover how the traditional school system might prepare our students for their post-secondary education and work force.  Wake (2014) states that “it is my intention to consider what we might distil from our research and emerging understanding of mathematical activities in workplace settings that might inform future iterations of curriculum design” (p. 272).

The study asked high school aged students who were following a pre-vocational engineering course to step into a work environment to understand the engineering at a railway station.  The employee “illustrated how he calculates the speed at which the trains should travel on a stretch of track” (Wake, 2014, p. 274).  The study showed that the employee understood very well how to calculate his specific task but did not consider that he was using mathematics.  However, the students observing the worker were struggling to understand the material being taught to them. The study went on to explain the many different influences lead to our understanding of different mathematics tasks and each student has their own set of factors that attribute to their own understandings of mathematics and how to apply it beyond the lesson.  My goal is very similar to the findings in the article and that is to transition my students from their general education classroom into a working environment where they can apply and participate in the task at hand.  “It is essential that future general mathematics curriculum specifications recognize the quickly changing nature and wide range of contexts in which mathematical principles are being applied” (Wake, 2014, p. 288).