Math Camp Held for Young Students
By Daisy Martinez, Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
Jul. 10–HARLINGEN — Learning the language of math is best when students learn it at an early age, Texas State Technical College Math Department Chair Houssein Pezeshki said.
Chiquitos Math Camp, a two-week math camp for third, fourth and fifth grade students, began this week at TSTC. This is the camp’s first year.
The math camp’s purpose is to teach young students the correct set of basic math skills, said Houssein, who has been a TSTC professor for 29 years.
“I believe that kids need to learn the proper way to speak the mathematics language at an early age,” Pezeshki said. “By sixth, seventh or eighth grade, it’s too late, because they’ve already learned — and maybe even the wrong way.”
“We need to build their basic skills and teach them in a very proper way,” he said.
One of the keys, Pezeshki said, is to communicate with students in a simple and easy-to-understand manner. It is also important to build a trustworthy teacher-student relationship.
“If you have a big heart for kids, then you can have good communication with them,” Pezeshki said.
Math camp students learn addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, exponents and order of operations.
Benji Vela, 10, said he enrolled in the math camp because he “loves” math and wants to be ahead of his classmates when he enters fifth grade at Lyford Elementary School in the fall.
“(Pezeshki) gives us lots of examples and doesn’t get mad if you get an answer wrong,” Vela said. “He just cares that you’re trying.”
Grace Holder, another camp student, said she’s not only learned more math skills, but she’s also had fun.
Megan Johnson, who will soon be a fifth grader at St. Anthony’s School, said math is sometimes difficult and she hopes the camp will prepare her before school starts. Johnson also said Pezeshki “is fun to work with.”
The students also said they’ve learned about the importance of math since they use it in everyday life and will continue to use it in the future to shop and pay bills and taxes.
Pezeshki said he hopes to work with these students over the next three years to prepare them for college math by the time they enter high school. Pezeshki said he feels a responsibility to prepare students so that they will be successful when they get to college.
Students who do well in math will be overall good students, Pezeshki said, because math teaches people about order.
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Copyright (c) 2008, Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
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