Ontario's first-year math investment: Parents

Ontario's first-year math investment: Parents

Samuel Reano

The government of Ontario has decided to invest in the future of your children by developing a plan to improve their math skills. We know that not each student is strong in math and we can’t always help the future generation to avoid the stress it can provide. This is why the government has determined to use its resources to change the future of math education. This investment is beneficial for students in elementary and secondary schools. In addition, new teachers will be trained to know math inside-out so that students can understand the math lessons and do homework questions with confidence. The overall strategy behind the investment is to improve students’ abilities in mental math and applying math in their everyday lives. Students will receive extra-math-help from the online tutoring program and will be able to continue to practice skills in the summer program so that they won’t forget the math skills they obtained from the previous school year as they enter the new one.

You can think of it as learning a new language. Learning a new language consists of daily practice in verbal communication and written communication. The outcome is ideally fluency. Essentially, that’s what the government of Ontario is attempting to do with math. These programs will help you and your children plan the future ahead. We all want the future generation to be satisfied in their careers and remain financially stable. Obtaining math skills will help them to maintain their finances, protecting them against poor habits and such. 

Another outcome of the investment is students gaining independence. It is typical for students to ask teachers, parents, and guardians for help on some math problems. While there’s nothing wrong with asking for help, it’s better to equip students with the skills to understand theory rather than force them to turn to outside resources every second question. As students slowly gain independence, they will become confident in their math skills and won’t doubt themselves while answering questions. Throughout elementary school and some of secondary school, I continually asked my dad for help in math because of his excellent memory. But that dependency slowly broke in high school as I stopped asking for assistance on a daily basis. 

Outside of school, students need to apply math in their everyday lives as part of the most mundane of things such as time management, counting items and calculating the number of volunteer hours remaining to graduate. Basic math skills such as addition and multiplication have helped me in time management and in building my schedule for the Fall 2019 semester so I don’t dedicate disproportionate amounts of time to different courses. It’s not a perfect system but I’m better off than I was before. In other words, facilitating students to continue to develop math skills contributes to an improvement in organizational skills, as well. Indeed, the investment will help your child to prepare for higher levels of education.  

Ontario's First-Year Investment Plan for Students by Samuel Reano

Ontario's First-Year Investment Plan for Students

Samuel Reano

The government of Ontario has decided to invest its money towards your struggles, specifically, those you may experience in math. This investment is beneficial for you because you might not have a parent or a guardian who is strong in math and can tutor you. Not every teacher of yours will sacrifice their free time to help you understand their lessons and homework. The purpose of the investment is to build your confidence in mental math without having to doubt yourself and to help you develop the ability to calculate numerical problems without relying on a calculator. This is in addition to helping you learn the applications of math. There are numerous applications stemming from the subject that we may or may not realize such as time management, finance, and the number of ways one might be able to win in a game. 

At the beginning of a new school year, it is likely that students will forget some or most of their math lessons from the previous school year that are required for this higher level of math. The government of Ontario has decided to give a portion of the investment to start summer programs for students like you so that the math skills you had obtained during the school year remain fresh in your mind. EQAO is a challenge for everyone. When I was in elementary school, Grade 3 and Grade 6 EQAO’s math questions were the hardest to answer. That’s because the majority of the questions were not related to the math lessons I had been taught in class and, consequently, not from the homework questions I’d been assigned. 

In Grade 9, when I took the EQAO numeracy test, the level of difficulty for the questions was fairly high, though lower than those in Grades 3 & 6. Grades 8 and 9 introduced new challenges as a new level of math I had to adapt to. I remember that in the first week of ninth grade math, the teacher had decided to evaluate our existing skills by having us do a diagnostic test. Fortunately, the test was based on grade 7 & grade 8 math. At the end of the first week, the teacher announced the results to the class and I had gotten the highest score. This favourable score was the outcome of the Grade 8-to-Grade 9 math transition program at my elementary school. My grade 8 teacher had led the program because he knew about the struggle students face in the heat of that transition. He tried to make grade 9 math more simplistic and thereby easier for us to learn.

Teachers do care about your success. It’s up to you to show your teachers your full potential. It is common for students to say something along the lines of: “my teacher wasn’t good at teaching math”. The government has listened to your feedback and decided that there will be another qualification process for those applying in the future to teach math at school. With the creation of this process, students will be able to learn from educators who know the subject of math inside-out. As a result, they won’t struggle in EQAO math as well. This investment does not include a clause to take away your free-time but it remains important to recognize that it’s ultimately up to you to continue to improve your skills. You must be ready to respond to the challenges you may face in the future.