|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||||||
| | ||||||||
|
Contact: Jenni Brockman Phone: 804-443-3357 Fax: 804-443-6781 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tappahannock (December 16, 2002) - Three students from St. Margaret's School won this year's team math contest at Rappahannock Community College, demonstrating the powerful impact that single-sex classrooms can have on girls' success in mathematics. 
Photo left:
St. Margaret's School seniors Emily Chang, Patti Webb and Maggie Lu won the recent Rappahannock Community College math team contest. SMS teams placed second and third, respectively, in the 2001 and 2000 competitions.
Advanced Placement calculus students Emily Chang, Maggie Lu and Patti Webb bested 15 teams from 10 local high schools to win the competition. An SMS team placed second in last year's competition and third the year before. "We emphasize group work in all of our math classes, because we know girls learn best when they collaborate," said Math Department Head Keith Krusz. "Our winning team members have been in the same classes for the last two years and enjoy tackling problems together--which is how most adult mathematicians and scientists work." Some take-home calculus quizzes, for example, are group projects. Krusz asks students to note independently the percentage of work that they and each of the others in their group performed. Typically, each girl will take responsibility for developing solutions to an equal number of problems, then the group reviews them together to arrive at final answers. The all-girls environment provides additional support, SMS math students say, because it's ok to excel in a field where boys typically dominate. Students at girls' schools throughout the country share their experience. According to a recent survey by the National Coalition of Girls' Schools, 85% of girls' schools graduates believe their institutions provide more encouragement in the areas of science, math, and technology than do coed schools. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed thought that their girls' school education made them better prepared for college-level math and science than their coed school counterparts. |
 |