Courtesy of the Algebra Project
Unlocking Math's Power
On March 15, Robert Moses delivered the Sixth Alliance for Quality Urban
Education (AQUE) Symposium’s keynote presentation to a full audience
of teachers, principals, administrators, AU students, education and mathematics
professors, and civil rights enthusiasts. His talk, “Improving Mathematics
Education in Urban Schools,” addressed ways to improve mathematics
performance in urban middle and high schools. Jason Kamras, special assistant
to the chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, offered welcoming remarks. Kamras
was formerly a DCPS math teacher at Sousa Middle School and was awarded the
National Teacher of the Year Award by President Bush in 2005.
A civil rights activist, doctor of philosophy, and former math teacher,
Moses is founder and president of the Algebra Project Inc., a national nonprofit
that strives to ensure that quality mathematics education is accessible to
all children via the public school system. Moses’s work focuses on
the role of mathematical literacy in empowering rural poor and inner-city
students.
The message was particularly germane to AU’s education program, which
operates several alternative certification programs—including the AQUE
program—as a means of helping improve the teaching quality in D.C.
schools. “The shortage of qualified teachers of mathematics is at a
critical level nationally, and finding dedicated teachers willing to work
in urban classrooms is difficult to say the least,” says Danielle Sodani,
special projects coordinator in the School
of Education, Teaching and Health. “We
hope the event, and Professor Moses’s insights on math literacy as
an urban and civil rights issue, will inform the city’s teachers and
leaders and AU’s education programs.”
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Don’t let the Star Wars Legos hanging in his office fool you—Chemi
Montes-Armenteros is a professional preparing other professionals.
“I try to make students understand that anything worth doing is worth
doing well,” says AU’s graphic design program director. “I
set professional levels of expectation so they’ll take pride in their
work and push themselves and see what they can really do.”
Montes-Armenteros came from Spain to the United States to attend Pennsylvania
State University’s graphic design MFA program. He stayed in State
College, Pennsylvania, for two and a half years after graduation but found
himself wanting to branch out from the college town. He explains, “When
you find yourself in a town where everyone is progressively younger than
you are, it’s easy to decide to move to a metropolitan area.”
He joined American University’s Department
of Art as a graphic design
professor in 1999. “For a designer to be a good designer, they need
to be a very well-rounded individual, and most art school curricula can’t
provide that exposure to their students,” he says. “Art students
at AU take courses in other disciplines that students in dedicated art
schools aren’t exposed to. That’s why I’m here.”
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In addition to his work in the classroom, Montes-Armenteros has designed posters
for Department
of Performing Arts events since 2006—a job he shares with
his fellow faculty member Kate Resnick.
“It allows an outlet for the faculty to do not-for-profit work in addition
to continuing working with clients,” he explains. “If you’re
not doing professional work consistently, you find yourself falling out of
touch with what the profession expects—and you can’t provide students
with what they need if you don’t know what the profession expects.”
In his rare spare moments, Montes-Armenteros may be found partaking in one
of several hobbies, some of which betray “both my geekiness and my age.” A
self-professed movie lover with “a weakness toward sci-fi—even
bad sci-fi,” Montes-Armenteros also plays guitar and has started collecting
Madelman articulated action figures from 1970s Spain that his father wouldn’t
buy for him as a kid. He jokes,
“I play with them the way grown men play with toys—put them on
a shelf, take them down to look at them occasionally, and then put them back.”
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