Mathematics

Jared Poper, a fourth-grader at Greencastle-Antrim Elementary School, concentrates to solve a math problem Thursday. Teachers and parent volunteers created "Multiplication Madness," a series of games, quizzes and songs to help fourth-graders learn multiplication tables.

Two Eastern Panhandle high school students earned the right Saturday to compete in a national mathematics competition in June. Robert Zollinger, a senior at Martinsburg (W.Va.) High School, and Jim Park, a junior at Jefferson High School in Shenandoah Junction, W.Va., placed among the top 15 students in grades 10 to 12 at the 39th annual West Virginia State Mathematics Field Day, held Saturday at West Virginia State University in Institute. Robert placed second in the state competition and will be making his second trek to the American Regions Mathematics League, or ARML, competition, set for June 1 at Penn State.

Kim Sutton created a makeshift classroom for her mathematics workshop this week, filling the Next Dimensions event hall with bouncing music and vibrant, laminated posters. Her students, more than 200 elementary teachers, laughed and sang along as they took notes. An elementary school teacher, Sutton has published 17 books, many of which are used in Washington County classrooms. She works with Creative Mathematics, a company that sells teaching resources and sponsors educational lectures.

Martinsburg South Middle School teacher Jeremy Anne Knight's attempt to avoid taking up the family profession only led her back into the fold. “I came from a family of teachers, so I thought I was sure of the one thing I wasn't going to do,” said Knight, who was recently named the 2013 middle school Mathematics Teacher of the Year by the West Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Knight, 47, said she had to join the U.S. Army to figure out that teaching was in fact her professional calling in life after all. “I ran away from it,” said Knight, who grew up on Long Island, N.Y. At the University of Virginia, she was in the Army ROTC Cavalier Battalion and enlisted as an officer upon graduating with a degree in English.

SMITHSBURG - Daniel Ridenour recently won the National Society of Professional Surveyors' (NSPS) Trig Star Program contest for Washington County and Smithsburg High School. Daniel, who will be a senior at Smithsburg High in the fall, won $550 in the Trig Star competition. According to NSPS's website, Trig Star is an annual high school mathematics competition sponsored by NSPS and based on the practical application of trigonometry. There are two contest levels, with level one the local high school test and level two the national test.

Taking experiences learned in the field and bringing them into her sixth-grade classroom led Michele Adams to be named one of America's top science teachers. Adams, who has been teaching science in Berkeley County for 20 years, the last seven at Spring Mills Middle School, was named by President Obama as one of 85 math and science teachers in the country — and the first from Berkeley County — to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

Brian Ansel and Kris Pearl thought they were going to spend Tuesday morning observing and helping another teacher work with her students at Bester Elementary School, but the pair was surprised when a group of people walked into the classroom with balloons. Schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox and officials from the Washington County Public Schools Education Foundation then presented Ansel and Pearl with a large ceremonial check for $1,000. “I was amazed. I was astonished. I was overwhelmed.

Hagerstown Community College recently announced that 10 faculty members have received promotions. Elaine Ashby was promoted from associate professor to professor, biology and chemistry. Richard Campbell was promoted from instructor to assistant professor, developmental mathematics. Thomas Crawford was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, mathematics and business. Joseph Mason was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, mathematics.

Seventh-grader Gunnie Margrabe devotes three hours a day to it on weekends and two hours a day during the week. Unlike many middle-schoolers, it's not playing video games and it's not practicing sports. It's studying math. The 12-year-old Boonsboro Middle School student reads textbooks from AoPS “Art of Problem Solving,” and studies number sense and number theory with MIST Academy. To bone up on his competitive skills, he goes to mathcounts.org and practices problems from past math competitions.

English and mathematics teachers at St. Maria Goretti High School in Hagerstown are providing classroom instruction on taking SAT tests. Classes will be held for six weeks, from 6 to 8 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, Sept. 18 to Oct. 25. The cost is $125, including the required text. For information, call 301-739-4266.