Where teaching is greater than the sum of its parts

Kasi Allen Fuller, her energy building, leans forward for emphasis. “Math is a global endeavor, but in the United States we tend to focus only on the Greeks and other Europeans. All cultures have contributed to math’s development, and many countries even organize play and games around numbers. That’s not characteristic of the United States. But here, we can create a generation of math teachers with a broader vision of what math is and what students are capable of. We can restore a sense of mathematical wonder.”

She pauses, not to catch her breath but to let you catch yours.

By “here” she means Lewis & Clark’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling. Here, Assistant Professor of Education Kasi Fuller prepares students to teach math in secondary schools. Here, she helps them discover how to make math accessible, meaningful, and fun for everyone they teach. Not one of her students has ever taught before. Some are fresh out of college. Others are changing careers. Sometimes their age difference spans 30 years. No matter. Regardless of their age or background, all her students, she says, “are young teachers whose minds are open.”

The Stanford Ph.D. teaches at Lewis & Clark to engage such open minds and because the graduate school supports progressive pedagogy and technology. “We are educating a strong group of teacher-leaders who will advocate excellence and equity for their students and help ensure that all students have access to high-quality instruction.”

As her students assemble for a Fuller presentation, some carry flashlights, others blocks of wood, and others tape measures. With a little coaching and a lot of collaboration, they’re soon learning how to generate trigonometry functions using their low-tech instruments. They’re also learning how to make math a sensory experience, how to make it fun. The proof, so to speak, is in their energy and laughter.