A downpour begins and the flying is off. With a group of disappointed students and three wet visitors, the teacher trudges back into the classroom. She goes to the chalkboard and begins to create problems for the students to solve that use the trigonometry they have been studying. The teacher personalizes the problems by making class members the characters in the problems. The class is quickly totally engaged in a new world that features them and mathematics problems.
Trees fall, safely missing houses.
In front of visitors, working with students who came to her having already given up on themselves in mathematics, she has the class eating out of her hand for more mathematics problems. Both the sixth-grade teacher and the geometry teacher face multiple classrooms of students five days a week. Each child is different and needs special attention to learn to his or her fullest potential. Yet, guided by their knowledge of, and love for, mathematics and their unswerving belief that each child can meet high expectations, these teachers are finding ways to give their students what they need to succeed in mathematics. Such commitment to high standards and expectations is an underlying part of the NCTM Standards, and it's rewarding for me to see it in action in mathematics classrooms across the continent.