Math Department Hosts Workshop For Local Teachers

Local high school mathematics teachers will attend a professional development workshop organized by the VIU Mathematics department, on Monday, February 23rd, 2009.

The goal of the workshop is to improve communications between university faculty and local teachers, and to help teachers improve their classroom instruction. Nanaimo is fortunate to have a number of high quality, dedicated secondary math teachers. Some of these teachers completed the VIU mathematics minor before obtaining their teaching certification.  The department believes that students who are thinking of studying math often overlook VIU because it has not traditionally been seen as one of our strengths. Department chair, Dr. David Bigelow, feels that when teachers see the quality of the VIU Mathematics faculty and the unique nature of the math minor, they will more vigorously promote VIU to their students.

Workshop coordinator, Dr. Valerie Watts, has organized four sessions. Dr. Phil Dauk will present a session on Statistics, Dr. David Bigelow will demonstrate how games can be used to teach math and Dr. Ian Bailey will discuss some different ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem. The department has also enlisted the help of Chris Tamm, a Dover Bay Secondary School mathematics teacher and long-time friend of the department, to illustrate how graphing calculators can be used in a classroom setting to gain a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. The schedule also includes opportunities for the teachers and VIU faculty to discuss common challenges and concerns.

The workshop is funded by the VIU Research Awards Committee and NSERC.