Herald-Review – Valerie Wells
“Math scares people. “I hear that all the time,” said Kim Dewey, instructional coach for Decatur schools. “Everyone thinks it’s funny: I can’t do math. But nobody ever says, ‘I picked up my newspaper today and couldn’t read it.’…One solution for that is to stop math phobia before it begins by introducing math at an early age in such a way that children are successful and think it’s fun. Thanks to a grant from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Foundation, instructional coaches in Decatur are visiting preschools to help teachers learn how to do that…one of the driving forces behind the focus on math is that school success is closely tied to math competence, according to the foundation’s website. To meet the demands of the workforce in the 21st century, math competence is also critical.”(more)