28/09/2018

Students discover mathematics in their parents' profession.

Ivonete, autora do projeto “De pai para filho” Foto: Fundação Victor Civita/Arquivo

Reproduction from Veja / Reporting by Luiz Felipe Castro

Ivonete Dezinho , 52 years old, found an innovative way to combat the rejection of math classes by some of her 8th-grade students at EMEF Professor Milton Dias Porto, in Naviraí (Mato Grosso): taking them out of the classroom to demonstrate the importance of numbers in everyone's daily life.

“The first point is to make the students not afraid and understand that it is possible to calculate without worrying so much about formulas,” explains Ivonete. To this end, she asked the teenagers' guardians to take them to their workplaces. “Mathematics is present in all activities, and the parents and grandparents were great partners. They showed the usefulness of numbers in the daily lives of a baker, a doctor, an architect, a waiter, a chef, and shared their own calculation methods.”

In addition to the strategies of their parents and grandparents, the students also discovered that units of measurement, interest, percentages, household budgeting, perimeter and area, among other topics, are important knowledge in everyday professional life.

In the classroom, Ivonete doesn't prohibit the use of calculators, but she encourages a more active approach from the students. "Many of them use their cell phones to do any calculation, even multiplication tables, so my role is to show them that it's necessary to first understand the whole process and then, yes, use the cell phone to check the result."

With her project "From Father to Son – An Approach to Teaching Mathematics in the Professions," Ivonete earned a place among the ten best teachers of the year in the "Educator of the Year" award, promoted by the Victor Civita and Roberto Marinho foundations. She now has the chance to win the title of Educator of the Year at the ceremony taking place on October 1st in São Paulo.