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02/22/2017 07:30 AMFor Megin Sechen, Old Saybrook’s new K-12 math coach, the disciplines of math and martial arts are linked—it’s all about the angles.
Seeing invisible angles in space along which your body and your opponent’s body will move. Executing your moves while preparing for an opponent’s counter-moves. To be successful at martial arts, you need to understand how the principles of geometry and physics apply to physical movement through space. It’s an understanding Megin has honed while moving from novice to black belt in the martial art practice of Krav Maga and Muay Thai, a form of karate.
“While we’re doing the moves, I’m thinking about the angles,” Megin says.
Similarly, as the school district’s new K-12 math coach, Megin’s role is look at math and math teaching methods from all the angles. She works closely with the district’s teachers to design and test model lessons to ensure that each student develops a deep understanding of the mathematical concepts presented.
For Megin, achieving math mastery is about so much more than learning math facts. Math fluency is about being able to understand the “why” behind the math facts, which helps students to apply that knowledge to varied real-life situations.
Laying out a vegetable garden in rows using the space available and the spacing requirements for each plant; estimating the materials needed to build a roof based on pitch angle, spacing of trusses, and other requirements; doubling a recipe’s ingredients so it will serve twice as many people and adjusting the cooking time accordingly—these are the types of real-life math problems that deep understanding of math can help students solve.
“To work in the classroom with teachers and kids—that’s my favorite part of the job. Education is what I always wanted to do,” Megin says. “I’m one of six kids. There were always people around. My love of kids has always been there.”
And Megin knows about teaching students math at many levels. When she started her career, she taught math to 5th- and 6th-grade students in Stratford before moving to Willimantic to teach math to 7th-graders. Then she took a break to focus on her young family. For the past eight years, with her family now older, she returned to the profession, teaching kindergarten in Colchester for the past eight years.
Asked what inspired her to love math, Megin says it was her 7th-grade math teacher, Mr. Swords.
“He was so engaging. He brought real-life to math. We studied probability around the Super Bowl. We did the stock market game, and I learned how to invest,” Megin says. “He was the best math teacher I ever had. He was that person that always inspired me to do more.”
This year, the school district is working with teachers to test and evaluate two pilot math programs for kindergarten through 8th grade. To that end, Megin works with teachers at each level.
“A lot of math coaching is about building trust. So relationship building is a huge and important part of my job. Teachers have to feel we are working together,” says Megin.
First she works to teach and present a model lesson in the classroom based on the math programs for that grade level. The classroom teacher observes. Afterward, she meets with the teacher to reflect together about what they saw, what they heard, and how to use it.
“Then we’ll teach a lesson together and afterwards, have the same type of reflection. Next each teacher teaches the lesson themselves, and we reflect together again,” says Megin, explaining the interactive team/coaching concept. “I work with any teacher who reaches out.”
One math teacher, for example, recently wanted to have more small-group instruction in her classroom, so Megin and the teacher worked together for two weeks to plan a model lesson. Then they tested it in the classroom, meeting afterward to reflect on how it might be modified to improve it.
“There is less focus on rote learning of math facts and more focus now on understanding the concepts to a deeper level. Students don’t just learn a math fact, they understand how it was reached. Math facts are still important. It’s just that we now teach kids different strategies to getting to an answer, such as using estimation to assess if an answer is reasonable,” says Megin.
New state standards have also shifted in which grades some math skills and concepts are taught.
“Kids are introduced to fractions at younger grade levels using hands-on activities and tools,” says Megin. “Exposing kids at a younger age will help them to understand fundamentally the concepts of numbers, fractions, measurements.”
Megin says that over the last 15 years of so, kids are spending more time on computers, computer games, and their phones. While there is a downside, one upside in Megin’s eyes is that it has given them the ability to be fearless, to more risk-taking in their learning than risk-averse.
“Young children especially are more eager to try when you offer an opportunity to try something new,” says Megin. “It’s called ‘productive struggle.’”
“For the world they’re going out into, they have to be willing to persevere to find the solution to a problem,” says Megin. “Growing up we learned there was only one way to get to an answer. Now there may be multiple paths. Now students just have to learn to explain how they got their answer.
“We grew up—many of us—thinking that you were either good at math or not. But it’s not true,” says Megin. “With the right teacher, everybody can be good at math.”
Megin lives in an antique farmhouse of many angles—most of them not perfectly square—with her husband, two teenage boys, and 2 ½ year-old twin boys. Fixing up the house, vacant for more than 20 years until they moved in, has been their family project. With boundless energy and enthusiasm, however, Megin eagerly faces each new challenge, whether at home or at work.