B. Reed Henderson High School Math Department Wins PA House Speaker’s Golden Apple

The West Chester Area School District gained a very visible and prestigious award when it was learned from State Representative Barbara McIlvaine Smith that B. Reed Henderson High School and its mathematics department, as well as Donna Spatz, our Math and Business Supervisor for Secondary Education, was being recognized with a “Golden Apple Award.” The Golden Apple is bestowed by the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Dennis M. O’Brien, who offers his own view of the award: “The Golden Apple Award was designed for elected officials and education officials to reward and recognize some of the great programs instituted in public schools and also a way for educators to share their best education practices with colleagues across the state and the nation.”

	Left to Right: Speaker O’Brien; Dr. June Garwin; Joan Hohwald; Mary Ann Ohlert; Dr. Marc Bertrando; Donna Spatz.

The Golden Apple Award itself is an impressive and very heavy 14-inch trophy consisting of three golden books with a golden apple on top. West Chester B. Reed Henderson High School earned the award in the category of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Donna Spatz collaborated on a new math curriculum with Dr. Marc Bertrando, Henderson’s Principal. Dr. June Garwin, the Director of Information Technology for the district, submitted the nomination to House Speaker O’Brien’s office.

The main concept behind the program comes in two parts. The first, in keeping with the District’s Mission, is to guarantee that students achieve their personal best, to perform at their highest level. The second includes the use of technology as an enabling facilitator for students to connect to real world math.

Donna Spatz has a strong belief regarding the real key to accomplishment. “Mathematics is not a series of skills to be learned,” she said. “It is a way of thinking, a science of patterns, and the development of proof. If students are able to experience the beauty of mathematics in the classroom at all levels, then all students will be prepared for life in the twenty-first century.”

Technology is seen as a method to create opportunities for open-ended questioning and to view different learning styles. Students view the beauty of math by appreciating and understanding mathematics and its uses. The State of Pennsylvania played a key role in helping the math program move forward in this way by making some of the technological tools available through the “Classrooms For the Future” grants.

By employing the Carnegie Learning Program for students who struggle with math, technology and math instruction also come together to provide real-world examples that make upward mobility in student math placement a reality. The overall impact of this new approach to teaching mathematics should result in exposing a greater number of students to more and better mathematics instruction, as well as helping to close the achievement gap, and giving students the opportunity to enjoy the sheer beauty of the language of mathematics. The recognition coming from the Golden Apple Award is really just the first step in this important journey.

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For more information contact: Rob Partridge / Communications Program Director rpartridge@wcasd.net

 

 

 

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