NPR – Jenny Brundin
“The Soroco High agriculture shop is massive — a warehouse full of old motorcycles, tractors, various machines, even a greenhouse. On the concrete floor is the start of the feeder: an octagon of blue tape, laid down with the utmost precision, using the Pythagorean theorem. But getting those angles exactly right was the hardest part of the project. “Maybe somebody would not quite understand an equation,” says student Bailey Singer. “Sometimes you have to go back and redo some equations, redo some math, trying to make sure every angle is right.” Sometimes, the pursuit of perfection led to spirited, mathematical debate. “We all worked together pretty well but on some occasions we would somewhat argue — because one person would think something’s right and then one person would think it’s wrong,” says Harrison Ashley. Bruski says it’s important for students, especially those who traditionally struggle in math, to “sort out those difficulties and hopefully really see — because they’re able to touch the math, not just try to do the math on paper.” Though the project dovetailed with the kind of advanced work her upper-level students were doing, Bruski says Whaley’s shop students, most of them freshmen, eagerly tackled the trigonometry.”(more)