Math Related to Amusement Parks

Shaw says that he’s worked “with teachers who relate amusement parks to every subject” — the algebra of visitors and costs, for instance, combined with the functions and graphs of certain rides based on time, gravity and other variables. This kind of focus might culminate in a trip to an amusement park at the conclusion of the academic year. He says this approach “not only gets students excited, but also helps them relate any subject of math to something relevant to their lives.”

Shaw says his personal qualities derive from both his parents. He describes his father, who is an engineer who owns his own engineering company, as “a quiet, reserved man.” His mother, who he says is “outgoing and energetic,” was a computer programmer and worked for the Coventry School system. Shaw himself is gregarious and seems to enjoy talking with people. He notes that artistic aptitudes went to his sister, who is now 16.

About his parents, he says, “Both are very practical individuals,” but neither of them hindered him from making his own choices in terms of college major. “They said to me, ‘Do whatever you want to do.’”

The best part of choosing for yourself, he adds, “is you find you are doing what makes you happy; true you are working, but it makes you happy all day long.” It is what he dreamed of doing when he was a child.

- Gloria Redlich -

Math is Fun!

It quickly becomes clear that Shaw lives what he feels and brings his exuberance directly into his classroom. He insists, “Math is fun! There are lots of visuals, colors, variables!” He wants to get across to his students that it’s in this place, the classroom, that learning takes place. “You’re here to learn during the hour I have you,” he says to them, “and it’s my job to help you understand what you need to know while you’re here.”

He explains that homework is not the place to learn, but only to reinforce what’s already been taught in class.

He has put up a website for his students called “Block Island Wiki,” on which he posts everything relevant to his classes — for example, a weekly syllabus (although he also makes hard copies to hand out). He’s planning to make it available for parents as well. He also puts up illustrated lessons and practice sheets, enhanced by proofs and diagrams he’s either entered by hand or found online and transposed.

                                - Gloria Redlich -

For the new math teacher, it's about relating to kids, and to amusement parks

Photo by: Gloria RedlichNathaniel Shaw.

This fall, Nathaniel Shaw stepped into the math post at the Block Island School vacated by Kayla Bourn and held before her for years by James Rondinone. It’s the tall, Rhode Island native’s first full-time teaching position after college, and he brings all the enthusiasm of someone who is embarking on a career he chose when he was just a kid himself.

With his open manner, he is happy to sit down to talk with this visitor from the Block Island Times. But he doesn’t sit for long. He is soon jumping up to illustrate a feature of the smartboard, a sort of chalkboard-sized computer screen that occupies a large section of a wall facing his students. He says the technology helps him bring more flexibility to lesson plans, and helps kids prepare for their futures. “I absolutely love it. I try to use it with each of my lessons.”

He says he’s settling in well to the small island K-12 school, and the different rhythms it has to a mainland school where kids are more segregated by age. “What’s beautiful about the classroom is that it’s always different,” he says, “the kids are different in each class. There’s always learning going on, but it’s never exactly the same even when you’re teaching the same subject.”

Perhaps because he is only recently out of school, Shaw says he’s learning every day, often from his students. He says it helps him identify with how his students feel, and he understands that they want “someone to relate to them.”

Growing up in Coventry, where he attended local schools, Shaw studied at the University of Rhode Island, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in math and secondary education. Because he took additional courses, he also received an endorsement that certifies him to teach grades eight through 12.

His students’ minds are open he says, and have the capacity to absorb a great deal — more, sometimes, than they believe of themselves.

                                                             - Gloria S. Redlich -

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