From the Origin provides a forum for lively discussion of issues of importance to the mathematical community. The Michigan Section-MAA Newsletter solicits opinion pieces for publication in this column from anyone in the Michigan mathematical community. In addition, comments on pieces published in earlier issues are welcomed.
Items for From the Origin should be submitted to the editor by the beginning of October to be considered for inclusion in the December issue and by the beginning of February for the April issue. Main opinion pieces should be at most 1800 words long, and responses at most 400. The editors reserve the right to shorten responses, if necessary, in order to fit as many as possible within the available space.
This New Year’s Eve I returned from Ecuador, where I had spent the fall semester as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of San Francisco in Quito. My assignment had been to teach a linear algebra class using MATLAB. It was one of the most pleasant teaching experiences that I have ever had, but I think the activity of more lasting importance may turn out to be a service learning project that I began with a public school in Quito.
Why Quito? About eighty-five percent of Kalamazoo College students spend at least one term and sometimes an entire year studying at universities around the world. We regularly send students to the Budapest Semester in Mathematics, and our German-speaking majors often take a math course at Erlangen, but until this year we have had no university to recommend to our Spanish-speaking majors.
“Why not apply for a Fulbright to Ecuador?” asked our Director of International Programs. I decided it was worth a try. Besides, it would give me incentive to learn Spanish. (In the Language Proficiency Certification that accompanied the application, I think I was listed in the “can take care of basic daily needs” category.)
The Fulbright applications are due more than a year before the fellowship is awarded, so there was lots of time to prepare. During the fall and the winter I sat in on the beginning Spanish classes. I wrote the quizzes, took the exams, went to the labs, and generally held myself to the same requirements expected of the students. I was crushed by the occasional C and thrilled with the A’s. This humbling experience was a vivid reminder of the reality that our students live with daily. It has changed my approach to their assessment.
The Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) was founded in the late 1980’s by three physicists and an economist and is modeled on that uniquely North American invention, the private four-year liberal arts college. Since its modest beginnings in a hacienda in Quito’s northern suburbs with a handful of students and faculty, USFQ has grown to a university with about 3,000 students, 200 faculty, and a half-dozen handsome buildings on several acres of campus in the beautiful valley of Cumbaya to the east of Quito. USFQ works hard to diversify its student population, but with absolutely no endowment it is completely tuition-driven and only forty percent of its students receive financial aid. Its largest applicant pool is naturally from the children of Ecuador’s relatively small but wealthy upper classes.
As I thought about the context of privilege that surrounds USFQ I began to wonder how I might find a natural connection to the rest of Ecuador. I decided that a service learning project might achieve this. It would also connect my students to some of the desperate needs facing their country, and would give the schoolchildren perhaps their first acquaintance with a university student. It might even awaken within them the possibility of future study for themselves.
To get an idea of what might be involved in a project like this, I decided to include a service learning component to my linear algebra class last spring. Supported by a grant from the Stryker Institute for Service Learning at Kalamazoo College, I arranged with a nearby middle school to have my students work with able but unmotivated seventh and eighth grade algebra students. This would be a natural pairing: My own students would be learning about familiar algebraic properties in the domain of vector spaces and linear operators; their middle school partners would be encountering these ideas for the first time. This project turned out to be of immense pedagogical value. And it also gave me the experience I would need for Quito.
I had been told that my students in Quito would be fluent in English, and so decided to use David Lay’s book. At the Baltimore meetings I asked David if he could arrange to have the books donated to USFQ. ’“It’s worth a try,” he said, and about a month later I received confirmation from Addison-Wesley that they would be sending 30 texts and three instructor’s editions to USFQ in early August. The lasting impact this gift will have on the students and faculty of USFQ far exceeds its considerable market value.
The mathematics department at USFQ consists of six full-time faculty and about the same number of adjuncts. Most of them are Ecuadorians. All of them have degrees from elsewhere—places like Northwestern, Wichita State, Ukraine, Illinois, and Havana. Like most of the other faculty at this new university, these mathematicians are relatively young, idealistic, and eager to contribute to the larger efforts of education in Ecuador.
Most of the students who study mathematics at USFQ do so because it is required by another discipline. My class consisted of 13 engineering students, one economist, and one physicist. Although I was using an English text, I had hoped to teach mostly in Spanish, but early in the term several students told me that it was hard for them to switch between the Spanish and English terminology. Another told me, in the gentlest possible way, that if I continued to speak so slowly we would never get through the syllabus! I decided to use Spanish at the beginning of each class meeting, then switch to English when developing new material.
The university cultivates the Socratic tradition of informal relationships between professor and student. This is not always easy to do in a culture that holds its elders in respect and with a language that has very clear rules about formal and informal personal pronouns. USFQ’s way around this is to use first names for everybody. The President is “Santiago”, the Dean is “Carlos,” and I was “John” (usually spelled “Jhon” and pronounced “Dyong.”) The telephone book, e-mail addresses, and other internal lists are sorted by first name. This works OK for the one Jhon but not so well for the twelve other Santiagos.
As my students would leave class each day, nearly every one of them would acknowledge me in some way: “Goodbye, John,” or “Thank you, John,” or ”“Que tenga un buen fin de semana, John.” Not even the shyest or most discouraged would just sneak out. It was not until I felt its absence at the end of my first few classes back in Kalamazoo that I realized how much I had come to appreciate this quiet affirmation and gentle encouragement.
A few weeks before the semester began, I described the service learning project I had introduced in Kalamazoo to Valentina, the Department Chair, and asked her if a similar thing might be possible with a public school in Quito.
“It’s worth a try,” she replied, in the spirit of openness that I would come to find characteristic of many in her department and at the university.
We decided to explore this possibility with Colegio Quitumbe, a K-12 school about a half-hour drive from the university. The vast majority of public schools in Ecuador fall under the jurisdiction of the highly politicized Ministry of Culture, Education, and Sport, but Quitumbe is one of a handful of public schools for which the final responsibility rests with the municipality. Because of this local authority, the school can be much more flexible in its operations. Moreover, Colegio Quitumbe enjoys strong support from the parents of its students, and the faculty and staff take great personal pride in ensuring that their students receive the best education they can provide with their limited resources.
At the end of our exploratory meeting the headmaster asked Valentina if, in addition to the USFQ students coming down to Quitumbe during the week, it might be possible for some of the teachers from Quitumbe to come up to USFQ on Saturdays for English language instruction and enrichment in science and mathematics. Her response: “It’s worth a try.”
A few days later, I saw an e-mail addressed to the English and Polytechnic faculty asking for volunteers. A few weeks after that, I learned that eleven English faculty and nine math and science faculty had volunteered their Saturday mornings to this effort without any incentive other than the sure knowledge that they were enlisting in a good cause. Would my colleagues back home have responded so generously? Would I have?
On the second Saturday in October, 23 teachers from Colegio Quitumbe arrived on the San Francisco campus for their first classes. After two hours of placement exams and beginning language instruction they adjourned to the mathematics department for an hour of problem solving.
These meetings continued regularly every week throughout the rest of the semester, each week led by different members of the USFQ faculty, each week attended by the same faithful 23 from Colegio Quitumbe.
“How do you get here?” I asked some of the teachers during a break between classes on a Saturday in late November. “We take the bus,” she said (a two-hour journey). ”“Or we car-pool,” added another.
“How can you give up a Saturday like this?” I asked one of the USFQ teachers. He looked at me like I was crazy. “This is why I teach,” he answered.
I have been witness to a number of educational initiatives over the span of my career and I know what has happened to many of them after that initial bloom of enthusiasm has faded and the spirit of innovation has departed. Since my return to Michigan, I have been concerned that the Saturday pressures that plague us all would eventually claim this noble project as well: Tia Susana’s weekend visit, Hijo Carlos’s futbol match, Sobrina Maria’s confirmation, . . .
But a few days ago I received a very encouraging e-mail from one of the USFQ mathematicians. “We began to work more formally with the teachers of Colegio Quitumbe,” he writes, “and it seems like things are going very well…. We will start also a module in Geometry with the teachers of Quitumbe in five weeks and they are excited about it.”
As I reflect on this promising beginning in the Andean highlands, I am wondering if the same thing might not be possible right here in Michigan. Middle school is where the door finally shuts for many students who might otherwise go on to study mathematics and science in high school. Middle school is where sensitive and thoughtful mathematics education can really make a difference. Our middle school math teachers don’t need supplementary English instruction, but they might well appreciate a regular relationship with nearby university faculty. Maybe what began as a service, learning project last spring could be extended to included occasional faculty enrichment as well.
It’s worth a try.
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