Sam Morrison

[sam morrison]

Good Evening ED526b,   My name is Sam Morrison and I am living in Lawrenceville, NJ, with my fiance. I just recently moved up to Jersey from Texas and am currently teaching summer school math at a charter school in Philadelphia. I will be teaching and coaching soccer in the fall as well. Most recently I spent two years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, starting in Kenya and ending up in Togo. Looking forward to meeting all of you. Rock on,   Sam Morrison

[Maria Droujkova]

Welcome, Sam! What is your charter school about? There are such interesting charter schools out there!

I have been following the Enthomathematics group, in particular the works of Eglash (fractals) and Gerdes (weaving, sand stories) in Africa, though they looked at different countries: http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/isgem.dir/links.dir/african.htm Have you seen any cool math in your travels?

There will be a live event about Egyptian math next week, though it's all very ancient stuff.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[sam morrison]

Thank you. It is Mastery Charter School in Philly--here's a link to the site www.masterycharter.org . Great organization that has taken over the management of now 7 low performing public schools, kept the students, hired new staff for the most part, and has shown some great results. I just started and love how focused the organization is on providing coaching and support to new teachers.   That's cool about the ethnomathematics. Actually something we are talking about in another class I'm taking--The History of Mathematics. There is some very interesting math in Togo. Many people play mancala--adults have the wooden mancala sets and children play in the dirt by digging holes and using small stones. There is also a lot of Kente cloth in Togo which is not only beautiful but believed to hold some very sophisticated mathematical patterns in its weaving patterns. Pretty interesting stuff.   I look forward to learning what you have to share during this course. Hope you have a great day and I'll talk to you soon.   Best,   Sam Morrison --- On Mon, 7/12/10, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Maria Droujkova]

Sam,

Maybe you can use Kente patterns in this week's geometry unit. They look incredible!