A heralded math teacher reflects on lessons learned

One of the top grammar school math teachers in New Jersey has hung up her slide rule - or whatever is today's equivalent high-tech device.

When school resumes this week, Jayne King will not be standing in front of a classroom. For the first time in 30 years, she will not be dealing with lesson plans, homework assignments and parent-teacher conferences.

"I just decided I wanted to go out when I was on top of my game," King, 54, said from the comfort of her kitchen in Medford last week.

And that she did.

King was one of just 93 teachers nationwide to receive the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching last spring.

The award and $10,000 prize from the National Science Foundation were announced in May as she was wrapping up her final year as a fifth-grade math teacher at Hartford School in Mount Laurel.

She received the award for a hands-on, interactive lesson that taught the concept of perimeter and area.

But as she sat in her kitchen last week, it was not what she had taught, but rather what she had learned during three decades in the classroom that seemed most important:

Show, don't tell.

Let the students "discover" the answers by asking the right "prompt" questions.

Make it real.

"You have to create an environment where kids are comfortable taking risks with their learning," she said.

Several years ago, she said, she came across a quote that captured the classroom spirit she wanted to instill, a spirit of cooperation and collegiality. Each September, as a new group of students walked into her room, they would see it on the side of her desk.

"None of us is as smart as all of us," it read.

Math wasn't theories and concepts, it was a life learning experience to be shared.

That, King said, is an approach any good teacher takes to any subject.

Hers turned out to be math.

But it didn't start out that way.

Armed with a degree in psychology and education from the University of Pennsylvania, she got her first job as a third-grade teacher in a small grammar school in Oldmans Township, Salem County.

"I thought I wanted to be a school psychologist," said King, who grew up in Montrose, Pa., and who has a sister who teaches there.

The plan was to get a few years teaching experience - "It seemed to me you ought to know a little about the classroom if you were going to work in a school" - then go on for a master's degree in psychology.

King never left the classroom.

She spent 12 years in Oldmans Township, then 17 in Mount Laurel, first at Larchmont and most recently at Hartford.

She credits the late Bob Madden, her first school administrator, with instilling an appreciation for what a teacher can accomplish and the best way to go about it.

She still has the critique he wrote after observing her in class that year.

"One of the things he wrote was, 'Just remember to always catch children being good.' "

It was a different way to maintain discipline.

"You've got 12 kids sitting up straight and paying attention and two others," she says, pausing to slouch back in her kitchen chair, roll her eyes at the ceiling and throw her arms akimbo.

At that point you can either reprimand the two, or thank the 12 for doing the right thing. Madden's message was that thanking the 12 will take you further.

Madden and now retired Mount Laurel administrators Kenneth Ruhland, a former assistant superintendent, and Eunice Smith, a curriculum supervisor, were three people who had a great impact on her career, King said.

In the Mount Laurel district, she said, the emphasis has always been on "hands-on, discovery-based, inquiry-oriented" learning.

Ruhland and Smith set the tone. It was a combination of "dynamic leadership" and "high expectations."

When King moved from Larchmont to Hartford - a school of about 1,000 fifth and sixth graders that employs a team teaching approach - she switched from a self-contained classroom to a math specialty.

Risk taking, discovery and making math relevant were the goals she set for herself. The project that earned her the presidential award had all of that.

The point of the lesson was that the area of a rectangle can vary while the perimeter remains constant. But rather than say that, she let the students discover it.

Working in teams, students had to develop a plan for a dog named "Scruffy" whose owners decided that he spent too much time lounging on their deck. They wanted him to get more exercise, but in a safe environment. To that end, they had purchased 32 meters of fencing.

The project included multiple tasks and analysis, including pricing the cost of fencing, writing poems about area and perimeter, and assessing the pros and cons of different rectangular shapes for Scruffy's pen.

A long, rectangular 15-meter-by-1-meter pen, for example, would allow Scruffy to run for distance. A square pen, with eight meters on each side, would provide him with more area.

Part of the beauty of the project was that there was no right answer, just lots of options, all of which dealt with math in a practical way.

Students also had to interview their parents and report on how area and perimeter played a role in everyday life - who was having a carpet installed, who was fencing in a backyard.

A classic response came from one student who said when he asked his mother about perimeter she told him the rule in their house was that "Daddy has to stay outside the perimeter of the kitchen when I'm cooking."

A videotape of the lesson, with charts, designs, letters and poems, and an eight-page outline were submitted when King was nominated for the presidential award.

One of two winners from New Jersey, she got to spend a week in Washington, meet the President and Laura Bush, have breakfast meetings with members of Congress and with the heads of several federal agencies, including the Department of Education, and attend a series of workshops.

"I was honored to represent the state and to represent the district," King said last week as she reflected on the end of one career and the start of another.

"I think I'd like to work teaching teachers," said King, who has already conducted two summer workshops for the Mount Laurel district and hopes to do more.

In the meantime, she and her husband, Douglas, an industrial technology manager, have a full schedule this fall.

The oldest of their three sons, Brian, 25, is in law school at Villanova. Stephen, 21, is a senior at the University of Maryland and Sean, 19, is a sophomore at Bucknell. (The $10,000 award helped defray some college tuition costs, she said.)

Both Stephen and Sean play soccer. Stephen, in fact, is one of the standouts on a highly ranked Maryland team that is expected to compete for the NCAA championship.

So while Jayne King said she would miss her time in the classroom this fall, her calendar is already full with dates of Maryland and Bucknell soccer matches she and her husband will attend.

Her sons are grown, but she's still a soccer mom.

And while she's no longer standing in front of a classroom, King says that in her heart she's still a teacher.

What she will miss, she said, are those days when the kids got so caught up in the excitement of learning that "they were still talking about the lesson as they were leaving the classroom."

And those special times when she could see, feel, sense "that spark" that a fifth grader gives off when he or she "gets it."

Those were the days, she said, when she drove home from work smiling.