They Made it Count: Middle Schoolers Compete in Spring Math Challenge​

After months of practice, 44 sixth, seventh and eighth graders streamed into San Diego City College’s Math and Social Sciences Building, eager to put their math knowledge to the test at the San Diego Spring Math Challenge. Billed as a friendly, community-based competition and interactive experience, the math challenge was hosted by Math for America San Diego and sponsored by local, regional and national mathematics organizations. 

Genevieve Esmende led the spirited competition. Esmende, a mathematics teacher at San Diego Unified School District’s Wangenheim Middle School and a Math for America San Diego Fellowship recipient, was inspired by her experience as a DoD STEM Ambassador working with MATHCOUNTS, a national organization supporting middle school mathematics. Mathematics teachers Claudia Pruitt (Knox Middle School) and Chris Ray (Albert Einstein Academies) were recruited by Esmende to collaborate on the event. 

“The San Diego Math Challenge was developed to encourage middle school students to build teams and use their mathematical skills to compete in a friendly challenge against other area students,”  Esmende said. “The competition requires students to collaborate and use communications to solve problems. Math competitions like this help promote and elevate student mathematics achievement, as well as instill a passion and interest in learning mathematics."
“This is the third Math Challenge we’ve held,” said Claudia Pruitt (right). “Parents were so excited after the first one, they supported a GoFundMe page to raise funds for a second event. We then realized it would be unsustainable for parents to keep supporting these events. We are very grateful to Math for America San Diego and UC San Diego CREATE for championing these important -- and fun -- learning opportunities for students.”
“The brilliance of this event is that it makes mathematics accessible to our community’s families and students,” said Dr. Osvaldo “Ovie” Soto, executive director of Math for America San Diego and co-director of UC San Diego’s Math Project. “Problems were chosen to emphasize the fun and challenge of collaborative problem-solving rather than valuing speed, accuracy, and ability to answer routine questions. Scoring reflected how well students collaborated and justified their work. Math is fun when it’s ours and we get to create it together. This challenge promoted productive ways of thinking about mathematics. That’s hard to do,” Soto added.

Eight schools from across San Diego County sent teams to the event, including  Albert Einstein Academies, City Heights Preparatory Charter School, Ira Harbison Elementary (National Elementary School District), Knox and Wangenheim Middle Schools and The Language Academy (San Diego Unified School District), and Lincoln Middle School and North Terrace Elementary School (Oceanside Unified School District).
Six students from each school were allowed to compete. At the event, the school teams were then divided into teams of three.
Mathematics teachers from participating schools served as proctors during the event. Esmende also recruited UC San Diego Department of Education Studies’ graduate students currently apprenticing in her classroom to assist with event coordination. Undergraduate student volunteers from UC San Diego’s’ PAL program (Partners in Learning) also provided on-site support. 
The Challenge

​The competition kicked off with a 45 minute Team Round. Each team worked on solving 10 math problems while a proctor for each group clarified any questions they had and observed how well the students worked together.  At the end of the round, all final answers were submitted in a booklet with worksheets to showing the work. 
“We made sure students knew they could challenge their teammates if they thought they had made a mistake,” Esmende said. “We also acknowledged our sixth grade students for participating and tackling higher level math problems.”
Sample Team Round problems included:
  • Three positive numbers are in the ratio 2:3:5. Half the sum of the lowest number and biggest number is 25 more than the middle number. What is the middle number?
  • Alice needs 2 hours to repair a computer. Betty, her co-worker, can do the same job in 1 hour. How many minutes will it take them to do the job if they work together at the given rates?
After the mid-morning break, students competed in “The Amazing MATHCOUNTS Journey.” For this competition, students were assigned a team with students from other schools. The new teams set off from the Math and Science complex to complete a series of  mathematical activities at exterior locations throughout San Diego Community College’s main campus. 
Using clues, students visited four activity stations and solved problems as a team. At Station 2, students were prompted to use the staircase and act out or draw out step patterns to help them identify a famous sequence (Fibonacci) and to solve the following problem:
  • Leo the Rabbit is climbing up a flight of 10 steps. Leo can only hop up 1 or 2 steps each time he hops. He never hops down, only up. How many different ways can Leo hop up the flight of 10 steps? ​
At Station 4, City Heights Prep Charter School’s Tonya Ricketts Ortiz helped students with a proportional reasoning problem that featured cookies. 
After completing each activity, Math Challenge volunteers and teachers asked the students how they solved the problem before sending them on to their next math challenge. 
Students returned to the Math and Science complex to have lunch. Then the winning teams for each challenge were announced.
Teams from The Language Academy and Wangenheim Middle School tied for first place in the "Team Round", requiring an additional round to determine the top team. Competitors shook hands before tackling the final two-part question, which was solved first (and correctly) by the Wangenheim team. 
Students from Knox Middle School and Albert Einstein Academies were honored for winning the “Amazing MATHCOUNTS Journey” competition. 
Students proudly displayed their participation certificates. 
On hand at the event were UC San Diego’s Ovie Soto, executive director of Math for America San Diego and co-director of UC San Diego’s Math Project; Susan Yonezawa, associate director of UC San Diego’s CREATE (Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence); Beto Vasquez, director of outreach and community engagement for CREATE’s STEM Success Initiative; and Erica Heinzman, lecturer and supervisor of secondary mathematics in UC San Diego's Department of Education Studies.  
Student Voices

“I was in the first Math Challenge when I was in 6th grade. I noticed I was extremely good at math, so I joined a competitive team to use my math skills.”  - Orson Liebold, Albert Einstein Academies  

“This is my second challenge. My math teacher told me to join the team. I used to go to Mission Middle School in Escondido where they had a math team, so that is why I was excited to join.”  - Precious Okere, Knox Middle School
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“I decided to come to the Math Challenge because I like to work with people from my school. I really like math and wanted to have this opportunity.” - Elizabeth Banuelos, Ira Harbison Elementary School. 
The upcoming San Diego Winter Math Challenge is scheduled for December 2, 2023 at Qualcomm in Sorrento Valley.
​Contact Genevieve Esmende (gesmende@sandi.net) if you'd like your school to participate!​
​The San Diego Spring Math Challenge was a collaboration with Albert Einstein Charter Academy, Knox Middle School, and Wangenheim Middle School, hosted by Math for America San Diego and supported by UC San Diego’s CREATE and the UC San Diego Mathematics Project; TRiO Upward Bound at San Diego City College; MATHCOUNTS, U.S. Department of Defense STEM Education Consortium (DSEC) and DESMOS. 

Special thanks to Better Buzz and Sprouts for providing refreshments. Raffle prizes were generously donated by MATHCOUNTS, DESMOS, Target, and the San Diego Mission Bay Aquatics Center.  Transportation was provided by San Diego Unified Enhanced Mathematics and Geometiles provided a space for students and their younger siblings to explore and build with geometric tiles during the event. 
​

2022 MfA SD Summer Math Academies Inspire Leadership

Academies boost math knowledge and build confidence for incoming middle and high school students
One-on-one attention. A nurturing environment to collaborate and share your work. Lively discussions on how and why some students can solve a math problem one way, while others figure it out another way. Examples of how math can help us in everyday life.  

Welcome back into the Math for America San Diego Summer Academy classrooms at Oceanside Unified School District.  

Math for America San Diego’s (MfA SD) Summer Academy is a student-centered, mathematics enrichment program to help students get ready for next year’s math class. MfA SD’s Summer Academy's mission is two-fold: To bolster student math knowledge and understanding, and to provide teachers with a robust professional development experience to refine and reshape their classroom instructional skills. 
 
The Mara W. Breech Family Foundation sponsored this year’s MfA SD summer programming. 

“The MfA SD Summer Academies wouldn’t happen without the continued generosity of the Mara W. Breech Family Foundation,” said Osvaldo “Ovie” Soto, executive director of MfA SD, co-director of the UC San Diego Mathematics Project and mathematics director for UC San Diego’s DSEC initiative. “Their annual gift is the financial backbone of every mathematics camp, summer institute and summer academy we’ve held since beginning this work in 2008.”

MfA SD is  a non-profit teacher professional development program formed by three public universities and five school districts in San Diego County. It is housed at the University of California San Diego’s Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE).
    2022 Summer Academy and Summer Institute Quick Links
 
MfA SD/Oceanside Unified School District Collaboration 
MfA SD and Oceanside Unified School District (OUSD) held Summer Academies this year for incoming sixth and ninth graders, along with a professional development Summer Institute for teachers. For teachers, the 2021-22 school year provided a new set of challenges: Repercussions of the pandemic on student learning and on classroom interactions.*

“The pandemic had a devastating impact on our students, affecting their social, emotional and intellectual learning and growth,” said Teresa Collis, OUSD career technical education coordinator and former principal at Oceanside High School. “Every year, but especially this year, it’s been crucial to equip students with additional academic support on their path to graduation. Historically, MfA SD Summer Academies have been extraordinary in raising math understanding and achievement in students.” 
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Mrs. Collis listens as an incoming Oceanside High School ninth grader explains how he solved a mathematics problem.
Collis expanded 2022 Summer Academy funding through OUSD’s U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) grant called “Project MaSTerS in Math (Marching Students Towards Success in Math)”. The district with its high percentage of K-12 military students and families is eligible to receive Department of Defense K-12 STEM resources. Through MfA SD, Collis tapped additional resources from the U.S. Department of Defense STEM Consortium Initiative San Diego hub (DSEC), a K-12 STEM federal effort also housed with MfA SD at CREATE.

“The MfA SD Summer Academies are not remedial math classes, but an excellent opportunity for students to improve the way they approach future mathematics courses,” Collis said.  “After attending the Summer Academy, we tell students we’ll be looking to them as the ‘leaders’ in their math classes next year.” ​
MfA SD High School Summer Academy
Twenty-nine incoming ninth graders from three OUSD feeder middle schools attended the high school Summer Academy from June 21 - July 15 at Oceanside High School. Brett Patrick, a mathematics teacher at San Diego Unified School District’s Pershing Middle School, and Gregory Guayante, a mathematics teacher at OUSD’s El Camino High School, were the instructors. Both are alumni of MfA SD’s five year Teaching and Master Teaching Fellowship programs. 

According to Patrick, incoming students’ math knowledge at the Summer Academies can range from very good to needing help. To bridge that gap, “we present and lead students through daily ‘low-floor/high-ceiling’ problems,” he said. “These are math tasks every student can at least start or ‘access’ no matter their level of math knowledge. These kinds of math tasks jump-start the process of exploring multiple ways of finding a solution.” 
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Secondary math teachers, including Brett Patrick (above), attended a weeklong professional development Summer Institute. Afterward, the teachers lead a high school or middle school Summer Academy for real-time feedback on their new teaching methods from students and their Summer Institute colleagues.
This year’s Summer Academy focused on math inequalities, (when the sides of an equation are not equal to each other, i.e., one value is less than, greater than, less than or equal to, or greater than or equal to, or not equal to, the value on the other side of the equation).

Using  inequalities as a learning through-line, high school Summer Academy students explore a range of math reasoning skills, including:
  • how to convert word problems to number problems; 
  • attending to the order of operations: The correct sequence of steps for evaluating a math expression, or PEMDAS (Parentheses, Exponents, and from left to right, Multiplication, Division, Addition and Subtraction);
  • becoming comfortable with turning numbers into fractions and decimals; and 
  • solidifying their reasoning by writing out how they solved problems.  

Class each day began with a warm-up problem. While students worked, the teachers moved from table to table to observe each student and to assist those who needed help. Students with different ways of solving the warm-up problem were asked to present their thinking to the class.
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An important part of the Summer Academy was sharing with students what would be expected in high school mathematics classes. “The answer is correct, you just have to write down how you solved it,” said Mr. Guayante. “Write what was in your head. You’ll have to show your work when you’re in high school.”
In creating a successful learning environment, Summer Academy instructors noted the importance of fostering an atmosphere where students would feel comfortable showing and sharing how they succeeded, or did not succeed, in tackling various math problems. 

​“In some math classrooms, students won’t produce or participate because they don’t want to get it wrong. They think it’s their fault if they don’t understand,” Guayante said. “The Summer Academy environment gets them out of that way of thinking. There’s no right or wrong here. I tell students, ‘If you’re not learning, I’m the one not doing a good job.’ We let them know we want to understand more about what they know. It’s our job then to catch those super important moments of reasoning that are taking place that the kids discount.”
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Future Oceanside High School 9th grade students celebrate the completion of the 2022 MfA SD’s Summer Academy.
Collis noted when students return to school, teachers can tell the ones who have participated in the MfA SD summer program.

“‘He’s one of those Academy kids, they’ll point out, because they ask questions,” Collis said. “One year we had an incoming freshman attend the Summer Academy who was desperately behind and struggling in math. At the Summer Academy she learned new ways to see and understand math. It set her on the path to taking AP Statistics her senior year.”
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Ms. Vu (left table) and Ms. Lin (center) prepare students for 6th grade math by attending to students’ mathematical reasoning skills.
MfA SD Middle School Summer Academy
The Summer Academy for middle school students was held June 13 - July 15 at Santa Margarita Elementary (K-8) on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Fourteen incoming sixth graders attended. Trang Vu, mathematics teacher at Marston Middle School in San Diego Unified School District and an MfA SD Teaching Fellowship alumna, and Jennifer Lin, mathematics  and science teacher at OUSD’s North Terrace Elementary (K-8), taught the academy.

This year’s academy focused on sharpening students’ mathematical reasoning with fractions, linear equalities and inequalities. Students explored the meaning of fractions and whole amounts, e.g., “Can you split a cookie? Can you split a person?” and applied their knowledge to a range of math tasks. 

Teachers were well aware of the disruption in learning caused by the pandemic.
​
“Students were home for two years and needed to re-learn how to engage in classroom conversations and group work,” Vu said. “At the Summer Academy, we taught students how to write out and then verbalize their thinking to solve math problems. Because it’s hard to ‘say’ things, to articulate your thought processes out loud, it’s a very powerful way for students to learn.”
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“We had students build on a good line of reasoning as a class.” Vu said. “Using a range of input from different students to solve a problem can help other students understand something they didn’t see or consider.”
Dynamic Learning in Action 
For one math task, students constructed two blocks made up of plastic and wooden cubes to determine if the weight of one block was greater than, equal to, or less than, the weight of another block. They were then asked to explain how they know.  

Students wrote down the differences they noticed between both blocks using the prompt, “I claim that….” Ms. Vu had students vote on the weight of each of the two blocks. Each block weighed the same and had an equal number of cubes, so students agreed on “equal to.”  
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Students were then asked to explain to their partner about their reasoning (an exercise in attention to reasoning/writing everything down).

“I see more reasoning added onto the papers, awesome!” Vu said as she walked around the classroom. Next she invited students to answer the prompt, “I have some reasoning, but I need help.” Students shared their statements so others could weigh in with alternate ways to find the answer.
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“Hands on hips if you agree that the weight of the blocks are equal.” Summer Academy teachers continually engaged students through a stream of connected teaching moments, including active classroom participation, use of manipulatives, peer conversation, guessing, explaining, and responsive show of hands or body movements to questions posed by the teachers.

Here's an example of a learning interaction at the middle school Summer Academy. 
  •  A student noticed from information given in a problem text that the weight of block A was equal to the weight of block B. 
  • She claimed that each individual cube in A weighs less than each individual cube in B. And because block A is bigger than block B, each cube in B has to weigh more to even it out. 
  • After some time to think about the student’s claim, five students disagreed and eight others agreed.
  • Here is a conversation between the student and another classmate who disagreed:
          Video Part 1: Part 1 - Genesis and Layla block task debate.MOV
  • After pausing for a few minutes for students to process what they heard, the student realized that her counterpart was correct:
​          Video Part 2: Part 2 - Genesis and Layla block task debate.MOV 
 
​“Learning how to take on a math problem and then make claims is essential in math,” Vu said. "At the Summer Academy we give students as much opportunity as possible to ‘get messy’ and work with what comes out of class conversations. We want students to learn to problem-solve and learn how to have ownership of their own mathematical thinking.” 

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Dustin Long, Oceanside High School mathematics teacher, at the 2022 Summer Institute.
Summer Institute for Teachers at Oceanside High School
MfA SD’s annual summer mathematics program includes a one-week Summer Institute for mathematics teachers. This year, 13  mathematics teachers attended the one-week teacher professional development institute, developed and led by Dr. Guershon Harel, Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UC San Diego.  

According to MfA SD Executive Director Soto, the professional development component of the MfA SD Summer Academies allows teachers to improve their practice in a supportive environment and to recapture the joy of teaching. 
​
“To advance student ways of thinking, teachers need to know their own current ways of thinking to be able to teach effectively,” Soto said. “The pandemic was hard on students, especially underserved student populations, and therefore extremely difficult for teachers. The Summer Institute is a way to help teachers shape or reshape their classroom teaching habits and knowledge to better serve themselves and their students.” 
Summer Institute teachers this year included OUSD’s Ben Davis, Jeremy Robydek and Sal Sanchez, mathematics teachers at Lincoln Middle School; Jennifer Lin, mathematics and science teacher and Trevor Walker, mathematics teacher at Santa Margarita Elementary (K-8); and Jeff Kamansky, Dustin Long, Darius Pickett, and David Kalt, mathematics teachers at Oceanside High School. 

Attending and serving as mentors to the OUSD teachers were alumni of the five-year MfA SD Teaching and Master Teaching Fellowship: Fred Griesbach, mathematics teacher, Sagebrush Canyon High School, Carlsbad Unified School District; Gregory Guayante, mathematics teachers at El Camino High School, OUSD; Brett Patrick, mathematics teacher, Pershing Middle School and Trang Vu, Marston Middle School, San Diego Unified School District. 
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Sal Sanchez, mathematics teacher at Lincoln Middle School, and Professor Guershon Harel work with mathematics expressions as part of the Institute's focus on teaching inequalities.
 
Student Reflections
Here’s a sample of reflections from the 2022 Summer Academy incoming high school students on what they learned this summer. 

What did you like most?
  • I liked when we worked with our team
  • The group work because it helped me find my mistakes in my work
  • How the teachers walked around and helped all the students

What did you like least?
  • Probably doing the math, even though they taught me how to do it over time
  • There was a lot of math but I did learn
  • When we took so long on one problem. I didn’t like it, but it also felt needed for some people that maybe didn’t understand, which was me.

What did you learn?
  • How to convert word problems into number problems, how to simplify the equation, PEMDAS and
    finding more than one way to solve a problem
  • How to read the problem carefully so I can do the problem right
  • How to turn numbers into fractions, how to multiply fractions and how to do word problems

Rate your confidence level in math after this academy on a scale from 1 to 5:
  • 5 - because I took notes so I can remember
  • 4 - I have been doing math all summer and other kids have not, so I already know a lot
  • 4 - because I do believe I improved. I just need a little help sometimes
  • 3.5 - I learned a lot of new things, but maybe if I practice problems with fractions more I think my confidence will go up
  • 2  - in the beginning. I’m a 4 now!

Rate your confidence level for passing Math 1 next year on a scale from 1 to 5:
  • 4 - because I’m somewhat ready for what high school math will throw at me
  • 4 - I might not do perfect but I know I’ll do good
  • 4 - because I kept doing math throughout the summer 
*Recent Regional/National Media on Pandemic’s Impact on K-12 Student Achievement 
​
San Diego Union Tribune, September 28, 2022 Opinion: A note for every student challenged by the pandemic
“Not being able to meet new people, see our friends and sit in a real classroom — this affected the mental health of students in all age groups.”

Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2022: Pandemic’s toll seen in LAUSD student scores  
“Rick Miller, chief executive of the CORE Districts, a consortium of large California school districts, said there is a “generational challenge” in front of educators. In math, in particular, it was clear before the pandemic that many students were not learning foundational skills needed to progress to higher-level work, Miller said. For example, students often learn how to get the right answer when multiplying fractions such as one-half times two-thirds, Miller said, but “they don’t understand why one-half times two-thirds equals that answer. … We have to sort of go back in the system and think differently about how we’re teaching these foundational skills.”

New York Times, September 1, 2022  The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading
“The declines spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students. While top performers in the 90th percentile showed a modest drop — three points in math -- students in the bottom 10th percentile dropped by 12 points in math, four times the impact.”

The Nation’s Report Card 2022: Reading and mathematics scores decline during COVID-19 pandemic
"Average scores for age 9 students in 2022 declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the                                           largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics.”
​About Math for America San Diego 
Math for America San Diego is committed to improving the teaching and learning of mathematics in high-need secondary schools in San Diego by providing professional development, mentoring and other forms of professional support to teachers and their districts. MfA SD is a consortium of three partner universities – California State University San Marcos, San Diego State University and UC San Diego– and five local school districts – Escondido Union High School District, Grossmont Union High School District, Oceanside Unified High School District, San Diego Unified School District and Vista Unified School District. Launched in 2008, the non-profit program is housed in the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at UC San Diego.

​For more information about MfA SD, contact Dr. Osvaldo “Ovie” Soto, MfA SD executive director. ​

​2021 Summer Institute and Academies

What we learned, loved, and accomplished
Math for America San Diego provided another successful summer of high-quality mathematics support in the Oceanside Unified School District. Teachers and students alike were happy to leave behind last year’s remote learning on Zoom and meet in-person, face-to-face -- or rather, mask-to-mask — at the program’s annual teacher institute and student summer academies. Math for America San Diego (MfA SD) Summer Mathematics Institute and Academies are made possible each year by a generous gift from the Mara W. Breech Foundation.  
​
“We are enormously grateful to The Mara W. Breech Family Foundation for their continued support of our summer work,” said Osvaldo “Ovie” Soto, executive director of MfA SD, co-director of the UC San Diego Mathematics Project and mathematics director for UC San Diego’s DSEC initiative. “Annual funding by The Breech Family Foundation assures we continue our mathematics teaching and learning in the region’s highest-need districts and schools.”  
MfA SD/Oceanside Unified School District Collaboration 
MfA SD’s summer programming success is also attributed to the robust partnership it maintains with the Oceanside Unified School District (OUSD).  Teresa Collis, OUSD’s Career Technical Education coordinator and MfA SD Executive Committee president, has worked with MfA SD and with Soto for more than eight years to bring crucial mathematics support to the district’s incoming middle and high school students. 

In addition to her career technical duties, Collis is the district’s project director for a U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) grant called Project MaSTerS in Math (Marching Students Towards Success in Math). Dr. Guershon Harel, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at UC San Diego and director of the summer Mathematics Institute for teachers, serves as the grant’s principal investigator (PI). This year Collis helped to expand funding for MfA SD’s efforts by tapping grant funds to support MfA SD’s summer mathematics programming. 

OUSD also welcomed support from the Department of Defense STEM Consortium Initiative (DSEC) San Diego hub, housed with Math for America San Diego and the UC San Diego Math Project at UC San Diego’s Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE).  Districts like OUSD with a high percentage of K-12 military students and their families are eligible for Department of Defense K-12 STEM resources. 

“CREATE draws from its base of in-house STEM grants, programs and initiatives supporting regional high-need schools and districts,” Soto said. “Successful programs and our dedication to supporting local educators has helped to increase our growing mathematical resources and educational expertise,” Soto said.   
Summer Institute 
MfA SD’s annual summer mathematics program includes a summer institute for teachers and a follow-up summer academy for students.  This year, 11 mathematics teachers attended the one-week teacher professional development institute that was developed and led by Professor Harel. 

​At the Summer Institute, teachers deepened their mathematics knowledge and pedagogy in an immersive learning environment: Teachers work individually and with each other by exploring multi-layered mathematical problems and by analyzing research on student thinking and instructional outcomes. Following the Summer Institute, the teachers teach at either a high school or middle school Summer Academy, where they receive real-time feedback on their new teaching methods from students and their Summer Institute colleagues. 
Summer Institute and Academy teachers for 2021 included Armand Amoranto, teacher on special assignment, OUSD;  Jennifer Barnes, El Camino High School; Trevor Walker, Santa Margarita Elementary (K-8); and Thomas Wills, Oceanside High School.

MfA SD Alumni Teaching Fellows who served as mentors for the OUSD teachers included Gregory Guayante, El Camino High School; Fred Griesbach, Sagebrush Canyon High School; Genevieve Esmende, Wangenheim Middle School; and Trang Vu, Marston Middle School. Victoria Holley, a MiraCosta college student, STEMULATE scholar at UC San Diego, and OUSD El Camino High School graduate and future secondary math teacher also attended.

MfA SD Teaching Fellow alumnae Yekaterina Milvidskaia, improvement coach at High Tech High Graduate School of Education, served as the 2021 Summer Institute and Academy director.
Summer Academies ​
​The Summer Academy at OUSD’s Rancho Margarita Middle School was held at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.  Nineteen incoming sixth graders attended the academy, which focused on proportional reasoning. Gen Esmende, Trang Vu, Trevor Walker and Armand Amoranto were the instructors. Victoria Holley attended the academy each day and gained an appreciation for the complexity of teaching mathematics. 

“By observing the work of teachers ‘behind the scenes’ I realized the depth of expertise required to provide effective math methods to younger students," said Holley (pictured right). “I have a new respect for the mathematics teaching profession after learning how deeply teachers must think about the mathematics they are teaching.” 

The high school Summer Academy at Oceanside High School supported 12 incoming ninth graders. It was taught by Gregory Guayante, Fred Griesbach, Thomas Wills and Jennifer Barnes. Students at the high school academy tackled linearity, an essential concept for success in secondary mathematics. 
About the Summer Programs
The Math for America San Diego Summer Mathematics Institutes and Academies serve teachers and students by engaging them in deep content knowledge through puzzles and intriguing math problems. Students gain confidence and improved understanding of key mathematical concepts and feel better prepared as they enter school in the fall.

MfA SD Teaching Fellows work with secondary mathematics departments and teachers who benefit from these collaborations. The academies provide the math teachers with a safe context to try out innovative teaching strategies, something that is hard to do during the traditional school calendar with the rush to “cover” material and prepare students for standardized tests.   

Summer Mathematics Academy students: 

● Strengthen their mathematical content knowledge
● Learn new ways to solve math problems
● Learn to communicate their thinking with others
● Receive individual attention from excellent instructors
● Develop confidence for next year's math class 

If your school or district is interested in participating in a Summer Mathematics Academy, please contact MfA SD Executive Director Ovie Soto for more information.

​2020 ​Mara W. Breech Foundation Supports Annual
​Summer Academies

Teachers and students pivot to distance learning in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic
With continuing support from the Mara W. Breech Foundation, Math for America San Diego offered two one-week Summer Mathematics Academies for Barrio Logan students from the San Diego Unified School District in July 2020. Math for America San Diego's Executive Director Ovie Soto and four veteran Math for America San Diego (MfA SD) Teaching Fellows engaged 12 rising 5th grade students in a reconceptualization of mathematics, including content from game theory, a part of Discrete Mathematics. The MfA SD teaching fellows used the Summer Math Academies as a setting for a virtual teaching pilot program. The pedagogical approach and tools needed for distance learning differ from those used in face-to-face instructions. 
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According to Soto, to engage students in meaningful learning of mathematics requires the orchestration of meaningful dialogue. “Students need to verbalize their understanding of mathematics as a basis for learning to represent those ideas more efficiently,” he said. “Mathematical discourse remotely is proving challenging for teachers. This program was designed to help students and teachers begin to cope with the challenges of online learning in mathematics specifically.”
Math for America San Diego’s yearly Summer Mathematics Academies represent both a student-facing activity and a form of teacher professional development as teachers meet for two hours to prepare and debrief lessons together. This year’s Summer Math Academies helped high-need, low-income students in one of San Diego’s neediest communities.​
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"We received an outpouring of gratitude from parents and students for providing this innovative learning experience. We are deeply appreciative of the Mara W. Breech Foundation's annual support of the MfA SD Summer Academies and teacher professional development,” Soto said.
About the Program
The MfA SD/Mara W. Breech Foundation Summer Math Academies serve students directly by engaging them in deep content knowledge through puzzles and intriguing math problems. Students gain confidence ​and improved understanding of key mathematical concepts and feel better prepared as they enter school in the fall.

MfA SD Teaching Fellows work with secondary mathematics departments and teachers who benefit from these collaborations. The academies provide the math teachers a safe context to try out innovative teaching strategies,
something that is hard to do during the traditional school calendar with the rush to “cover” material and prepare
​students for standardized tests.   

Summer Mathematics Academy students: 
  • Strengthen their mathematical content knowledge
  • Learn new ways to solve math problems
  • Learn to communicate their thinking with others
  • Receive individual attention from excellent instructors
  • Develop confidence for next year's math class 

If your school or district is interested in hosting a Summer Mathematics Academy, please contact MfA SD Executive Director Ovie Soto for more information.

​2019 Mara W. Breech Family Foundation Annual Gift Supports 107 Students at Summer Math Academies 

Thanks to an annual gift from the Mara W. Breech Family Foundation, the Summer Mathematics Academies were held again this year in the Oceanside Unified School District. Hosted by Math for America San Diego, a teacher professional development program housed at UC San Diego’s CREATE, two Summer Mathematics Academies ran from July 22– August 9, 2019, supporting 12 math teachers, one future math teacher and 107 incoming 8th grade students from four Oceanside Unified School District middle schools. The two Summer Academies were held at Oceanside and El Camino high schools.

Continued funding by the Mara W. Breech Family Foundation has supported mathematics camps, summer institutes and summer academies for the past five years.

“We were delighted the Mara W. Breech Family Foundation provided funding for two Summer Mathematics Academies in the Oceanside Unified School District,” said Osvaldo “Ovie” Soto, executive director of Math for America San Diego and the newly launched UC San Diego Mathematics Project, also housed at CREATE. “Summer Mathematics Academies are places where teachers learn pedagogy and curriculum for a week, and then run a three-week academy with students on a topic they learned about the week before. The academies strengthen and prepare students’ math knowledge while at the same time providing a highly effective professional development experience for teachers. 
A very special thanks to Teresa Collis, principal at Oceanside High School,” Soto added. “She has been a champion of our work for the past four years. With her vision and energy, we’ve been able to provide teachers with necessary instructional support for increasing math understanding and achievement in their students.” 

With additional support from MiraCosta Community College’s GEAR UP grant, the UC San Diego Mathematics Project hosted Dr. Guershon Harel, professor of mathematics for UC San Diego, to lead the one-week teacher professional development summer institute. Sixteen math educators from Oceanside Unified School District (OUSD​) and four Math for America San Diego (MfA SD) alumni teaching fellows attended the one-week Summer Institute for teachers before a subset of nine teachers taught at the three-week Summer Academies.

MfA SD Teaching Fellows alumni included San Diego Unified School District’s Brett Patrick, mathematics teacher Pershing Middle School, Trang Vu, mathematics teacher from Marston Middle School and OUSD’s Gregory Guayante, mathematics teachers from El Camino High School.

A key to the Summer Academy success is the collaboration of MfA SD alumni fellows to design a curriculum to meet the mathematical needs of students transitioning from middle to high school. 

“Starting in April, fellows worked on lesson plans centered on proportional reasoning, which is the gateway to understanding linear function, which is the gateway to understanding local linearity, which is calculus, which takes you into rate of change ideas,” Soto said. “We've found that proportional reasoning is a kind of a pivot point. So we invested a lot of effort in understanding the pedagogical and cognitive difficulties that students face on specific math concepts, such as proportional reasoning.

The one-week professional development institute, developed by Harel, provided an atmosphere where teachers worked individually and collaboratively on rich mathematical problems, while also learning about research on student thinking and implications for instruction.

“Teachers learn that decisions about pedagogical approaches and ‘teaching moves’ come out of a deep understanding of the mathematics content and the research on students’ thinking,” Soto said. “The Summer Institute educates teachers on how to approach instruction in a student-centered way. Teachers did their best to implement all that Professor Harel taught them, learning day by day from each other -- and from their students.”
​Summer Mathematics Academy Participants 2019 (*Also taught at Summer Academies)
OUSD Middle School Teachers 
  • ​Rasela Mendez (Jefferson Middle School)
  • Jay Miller (Jefferson Middle School)  
  • *Jeremy Robydek (Lincoln Middle School)
  •  Joey Rota, (Lincoln Middle School)
  • *Sal Sanchez (Lincoln Middle School)
  • *Renee Thomas (Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School)
  • Adrienne Villarreal (Jefferson Middle School)

OUSD High School Teachers
  • ​Cameron Clark (Oceanside High School)
  • ​​Darius Pickett (Oceanside High School)
  • David Kalt (Oceanside High School)
  • *Eduardo Mireles (Oceanside High School)
  • William Richman (Oceanside High School)
  • Megan Sheffield, (El Camino High School)
​
 Math for America San Diego Alumni Fellows
  • *Gregory Guayante (El Camino High School)
  • *Brett Patrick (Pershing Middle School )
  • ​*Becky Vega (Morse High School) 
  • ​*Trang Vu (Mann Middle School)
​
Summer Academy Principals
  • Teresa Collis (Oceanside High School) 
  • Frank Balanon (Jefferson Middle School)           
  • Steve Bessant (Lincoln Middle School)
  • Eileen Frazier (El Camino HS)
  • Jenny Morgan (Cesar Chavez Middle School)
  • Greg Smedley (Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School)
The MfA SD/Mara W. Breech Foundation Summer Math Academies serve students directly by engaging them in deep content knowledge through puzzles and intriguing math problems.  Students gain confidence ​and improved understanding of key mathematical concepts and feel better prepared as they enter school in the fall.

MfA SD Teaching Fellows work with secondary mathematics departments and teachers who benefit from these collaborations. The academies provide the math teachers a safe context to try out innovative teaching strategies,
something that is hard to do during the traditional school calendar with the rush to “cover” material and prepare
​students for standardized tests.   

Summer Mathematics Academy students will: 
  • Strengthen their mathematical content knowledge
  • Learn new ways to solve math problems
  • Learn to communicate their thinking with others
  • Receive individual attention from excellent instructors
  • Develop confidence for next year's math class 

If your school or district is interested in hosting a Summer Mathematics Academy, please contact the MfA SD office for more information.
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