EDUCATION
Excellence Award by the University of Arizona Center for Recruitment and Retention of Mathematics Teachers. The award recipient will be announced at a math educator appreciation ceremony during the conference. RAM Academy serves MUSD high school students who are behind on their credits, helping them return to their home campuses or graduate on time. Bayanin said the academy has added at least 50 graduates a year since he joined the program in 2022, its sixth year. Those students now make up about 10% of the district’s graduating class. Bayanin, who previously taught at Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande, said working with struggling students is especially meaningful and rewarding. “There’s fulfillment with helping students that are struggling,” he said, adding that the program plays a critical role in helping students stay on track for graduation. Michelle Williams, who teaches fourth grade at Maricopa Elementary School, was also nominated for the Teacher Excellence Award. Williams was not available for comment.
he still strongly believes in. The method taught in that country’s public schools emphasizes visual learning and building strong, tangible arithmetic foundations before moving into abstraction. When comparing textbooks, Paz said the difference is striking. “The sixth-grade Singapore math textbook is like the second-grade textbook here in the U.S.,” he said. “It’s so simple, because they focus on the basic concepts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. If your foundation is strong, you can endure anything.” Paz says he’s grateful MUSD encourages teachers to pursue professional development and refine their skills. He is also frank with students about the limits of the educational content itself. They are unlikely to use trigonometric formulas in everyday situations, he tells them. But math also teaches discipline and problem-solving. “If you understand the basic concept, that’s what matters most,” Paz said. “Life is full of problems. Math teaches you that there’s always a solution.”
ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 10TH GRADER?
Desert Sunrise High School students using Kevin Paz’s trigonometry trick can solve this equation in seconds. Can you?
sin 2 15°+sin 2 75°+cos 2 20°+sin 2 20° tan 45°+cos 2 0°
E=
WIN! SCAN THE QR CODE TO CHECK YOUR ANSWER AND EARN A CHANCE TO WIN A GIFT CARD TO BASKIN-ROBBINS.
District depth That philosophy is shared by other MUSD educators being recognized at the conference. Kim Bayanin, a math teacher at RAM Academy, was nominated for a statewide Teacher
RAM Academy’s Kim Bayanin was nominated for a statewide Teacher Excellence Award by the University of Arizona Center for Recruitment and Retention of Mathematics Teachers.
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