Penn State Brandywine recently hosted two weeklong Pennsylvania Mathematics Initiative workshops for math teachers from across the state to explore new initiatives and approaches in teaching, writes Michael McDade for Penn State News.

The “Math as a Second Language” and “Functions and Algebra” workshops took place mid-July, and were partly funded through a National Science Foundation grant.

The initiative was created to improve math education for all children in commonwealth schools by strengthening teachers’ understanding and implementation of the subject.

“The workshops covered the many perspectives of how to present to students the basic concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebraic operations, relations and functions, linearity and graphs,” said Charles Helou, Professor of Mathematics who organized and taught the workshops.

Kimberly Schultz and Marina Skyers, both math instructors at the Brandywine campus, also taught at the workshops.

Workshop attendee Andrew Guyon, who teaches at de Burgos Middle School in Philadelphia, said there is a shift happening in the way math is taught.

“Change is consistent, and in order to keep up with the new trends in education, it’s important to seek professional development opportunities like this one.”

Read more about the workshops from Penn State News by clicking here.