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Math teachers drill in shop Mail Tribune/Bob Pennell Fran Fischer, a Rogue River Middle School math teacher, gets a lesson in pipe cutting from pipe fitter Jim Blake on Monday. Thanks to a weeklong workshop, she and other schoolteachers are learning how to show their students real-life uses for math. Program shows students practical uses for algebra By Vicki Guarino On Monday, they cut and soldered copper pipe. Today they�re stripping wire and hooking up electrical circuits. By Thursday, they�ll be trimming sheet metal. In shop coats and safety glasses, the students study diagrams, measure angles and swap tools. This isn�t a typical class of apprentices and journeymen, however, huddled around the workbenches at the White City Carpenters Training Center. This is a class of schoolteachers trying to learn a better way of teaching math. Twenty Southern Oregon middle and high school teachers are hoping to capture their students� attention next fall with lessons and projects straight from the contractor�s workshop. Such projects show the real-life uses for lessons in algebra, trigonometry and geometry. State building industry associations are sponsoring the trade school for teachers in an effort to improve math instruction. In the process, trade group educators say, they hope eventually to have better-prepared workers. "Typically, what we hear people say is, �I wish I had paid more attention in high school�," says program coordinator Dick O�Connor, executive director of the Oregon Building Congress and consultant to the Associated General Contractors. This is the first year the program has been offered in Medford. It has been offered in Portland for the past four years. The two construction trade organizations supply instructors, materials and $250 stipends to teachers attending the weeklong session. "A lot of the time, kids say, "I�m not going to college; I don�t need math�," says O�Connor. "Well, now the teachers can say, �Well, there are good-paying jobs out there, but you need math to access them � jobs that pay $20-$30 an hour." But it won�t be only the vocationally inclined students who can gain from the industry effort, says Eagle Point High School math teacher Matt Pinder. "Even my top math students, the ones who would be going on to four-year colleges, would find this intriguing," Pinder says. "I find it intriguing.�� Pinder and colleague LaMarr James signed up for the session because they already had planned on spending the summer drafting a new math curriculum to bring Eagle Point�s math classes more closely in line with state standards leading to the Certificate of Initial Mastery, the CIM. Introducing pipes and wrenches into the classroom seems to James to be a promising way to engage students in their assignments. "It�s hard to motivate students with a piece of paper with fractions written on it,�� James says. Rogue River Middle School math teacher Fran Fischer sees the session as a way to restore some of the practical applications for math that have faded from classes at most schools. Years ago, Fischer says, shop classes and home economics classes were commonplace and popular. They gave students the opportunity to put the math lessons to use. Because those classes have declined, Fischer says, ��the math never quite sinks in the way it used to. ��This does sink in.�� Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA