Letter: Math teachers are sorely needed

Monday, June 20, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

Who can I talk to about finding part of a human finger in my classroom? Did that get your attention? OK, good. Now listen folks, because I've been trying to get this message out for two years. Thousands of Clark County students do not have math teachers!

This is why so many of our students need remedial math courses when they get to college.

Most of the students at Cheyenne High School, where I teach, do take four years of math. It is just that two or three of those years are spent repeating algebra. Requiring a fourth year of mathematics would just mean more students would be taught by long-term substitute teachers. You know, those people who no one is interested in until a kid draws a picture of one with her head blown off.

The large number of students in my school who do not know arithmetic takes three to four years off my life for each year I stay. High school teachers are known for passing the buck on down the line back to the parents, but more than half of my 10th and 11th grade geometry students do not know their times tables or how to subtract when borrowing is required!

Forty percent of Nevada's high school graduates need remedial courses when they get to college. Any dialogue on this problem that ignores the people on the front lines, the teachers, is going to be weak at best. It is critical that students learn arithmetic as early as possible, because high school students are not too excited by flash cards.

The Clark County School District is partly addressing the problem by requiring all eighth graders to take algebra. But what good will this do if so many of these students cannot even divide or subtract?

JEREMY M. CHRISTENSEN