College Preparatory Mathematics.
CPM.
Or, better known to sophomore Leah Norris as the annoying review & preview, groupwork and problems she learned three months ago but doesn’t remember how to solve.
CPM is a math program going on its second year in all SMSD high school math classes up to Algebra 2. It’s specifically tailored to prepare students for life after graduation, whether that be problem-solving or working with others.
But teachers and students have mixed opinions on the program.
The Shawnee Mission School District’s secondary coordinator, Holly McCarty helped pilot the program throughout the district and worked with other coordinators to implement it throughout the SMSD high schools.
“It is about solving problems together in teams and helping each other out as we look at math from different angles and different sides,” McCarty said.
CPM uses “productive struggle” — a new idea that makes students work together and struggle to discover the answer, rather than the teacher showing students how to do everything.
“It fits nicely in preparing students for jobs outside of high school and, along with getting prepared for college, where you’re not spoon-fed, here’s this and here’s that,” McCarty said.
Geometry teacher Megan Dawson is starting her second year with CPM after transferring to SM East last year when the program first started.
According to Dawson, CPM also stands for collaborative problem-solving mixed space practice. It is discussion-based; it values teamwork and ends every chapter with a team test — a test taken in small groups at the end of every chapter with harder questions to encourage discussion. CPM requires students to use skills they’ve previously learned and might not remember, and it doesn’t fully teach the concept before giving students questions to answer.
Dawson has noticed a big difference in students retaining material from her old school, Olathe East to now SM East. However, has also noticed that her classes at SM East don’t cover as many topics.
“I know the students don’t like it, and they’re like, please get rid of it,” Dawson says. “I just think we can implement it better and understand more about it.”
Dawson believes the students’ dislike of it comes from how different the program is from every other class. In other classes leading up to freshman year, a teacher talks, students take notes, memorizes the notes and then takes a test on the content.
“It’s just such a huge learning curve,” Dawson said. “It’s a different way of doing math than I’ve ever even heard of or thought of.”
Junior Bella Tilgner, in Honors Algebra 2, classifies herself as a visual learner, needing full instruction on what to do, followed by practice to memorize the concepts, however, CPM contradicts this learning style.
With CPM, she is put into a small group with little prior knowledge of the concept and is expected to struggle with her peers until everyone understands what they are doing, according to Tilgner.
“Teaching myself and others, it can become really confusing, really quickly,” Tilgner said.
Tilgner, along with others, has aspects of CPM that she likes and others that she dislikes.
“I do like the idea of trying to struggle until you understand, because I do think that helps you understand better,” Tilgner said. “But I just dislike the idea of not knowing going into class or going into my homework, or going into notes and not having an understanding or an idea.”
Tiilgner believes she’s a group learner for certain classes but not for others, math included.
Sophomore Leah Norris relates. After three years of using CPM, she knows the routine. Notes, then groupwork and finally review and preview. During groupwork time, typically only one person will solve the question, leaving everyone else to figure it out themselves. Review and preview is where she has to answer multipart problems that can be from recent content or months-old content.
“It tries to get you to remember what you’ve done before, but then you did it three months ago and haven’t done it since,” Norris said.
Norris, similar to Tilgner, has found good and bad aspects of the program. On one hand, the textbook is split up well and easy to navigate, but on the other hand, it expects her to teach herself how to solve the problems.
“It just doesn’t really teach you how to do everything,” Norris said. “It just gives you a lot of problems, and you just kind of figure it out as you go along.”
She believes the program’s effectiveness depends on the student and how they learn. Though she dislikes the program, she understands there’s not much she can do.
“I don’t really like it, but I’ll deal with it, you know, I’m still gonna do it and get my work done,” Norris said.
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