Builders use math when they measure wood to make houses. Chefs use math when they multiply a recipe to serve four people. Cops use math when they reconstruct accident scenes.
Those were just three examples of real-world math that middle school students heard Tuesday at Clover Park Technical College. More than 600 seventh- and eighth-graders from Tacoma, Bethel and Clover Park school districts roamed the Lakewood campus for the technical college’s second annual “Math to Careers” middle school conference.
The event attacked the same nasty problem everyone in education is talking about. To make it in the world economy, Washington students need better math skills, the experts say.
Part of the answer is showing younger kids how math can figure into their lives, said Clover Park Technical College President John Walstrum.
“It’s getting to them early enough so we can help them make the most of their years in high school,” Walstrum said. “Before you go to high school, here’s a real legitimate reason to hone your math skills.”
It’s because you might want to be a police officer, an architect, a home-builder, a baker, a cosmetologist, a firefighter, a photographer, an engineer, a floral designer an electrician, a mechanic or practically anything else.
They all need math.
Derek Sparks of the Associated General Contractors of America showed a group of about a dozen kids the importance of math in construction through building an 8-foot-by-10-foot minihouse.
He told them how to figure square footage and why roofs are peaked – because a triangle is the strongest shape. Students got to hammer the walls together and slide on the pitched roof.
“If they see how they’re actually going to use it, they’re more likely to want to use it,” Sparks said.
Areil Jones, an eighth-grader at Meeker Middle School and one of Sparks’ students for the day, said she didn’t like math much before Tuesday, and she “hmmm … kind of” liked it by lunchtime.
But she definitely had fun building the house.
“People worked together,” she said.
Allyssa Willis, a seventh-grader at Mann Middle School, liked seeing how cosmetologists have to know about the pH scale to mix hair color.
Karley Kessel, Kelsey Herstad and Katie Conner, all seventh-graders at Mann, learned from Lakewood firefighters how math figures into their jobs.
They learned about friction, about where to put the fire hose in relation to the truck and the burning structure, and about how many people it takes to hold how many pounds of water in the hose.
All three girls said they already liked math before they got to Clover Park.
“But now we know why it’s so important,” Herstad said.
“If you mess up something with the hose, you could kill someone,” Karley said.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.