Ohio Journal of School Mathematics | Issue: Issue: 1(85) Summer 2020 (2020)

Volume 85 • 2020 • Summer 2020

Three of the five articles here have preservice teachers at their center, which says something about where this issue’s attention sits. Wachira walks future teachers through an activity that ties mathematics to art, the kind of cultural connection that is easy to talk about and harder to actually plan. Colabianchi and Matney follow preservice teachers through an informal field experience and find they came away talking about classroom management, rapport, and planning. Roberts and Pachnowski take the sharpest stance: with Ohio weighing a return to a K-8 license, they argue the middle-grades license is worth keeping, and they say plainly that the math achievement of students in Grades 4–12 is what stands to be lost.

The other pieces put mathematics in places students don’t always look for it. Wilson and Walker introduce actuarial science as a career, partly because most high schoolers have never heard of it and their teachers can’t say much either. Driskell, Gold, and Herick hand fifth graders a tiny house to design, and the floor plans pull in scale, area, angles, and parallel and perpendicular segments without anyone needing to call it a geometry lesson.