Jannie Kim enters her geometry class with a giant innertube, tosses it on the floor, and asks her students to find the volume. There’s no obvious formula for a donut shape, yet the kids perform swimmingly. “They’re exceeding my expectations,” Jannie notes. “They are doing calculus-level stuff.”
Props, like the inner tube, help students visualize problems. With her background in cognitive psychology, Jannie leans into deeper learning methods, like visualization and learning-by-doing. She encourages her students to wonder why math principles are true and to resist accepting them on “face value,” preferring instead to lead students along the path of discovery. When they are able to make their own connections, their insights stick — and they’re excited to keep exploring.
In fact, one student solved a problem in a way that Jannie and another teacher with a degree in aeronautical engineering had never seen before. Now Jannie teaches the student’s discovery, introducing it as The Chloe Method.
In Jannie’s classroom, miscalculations are simply part of thinking through equations and theories; her students approach math creatively and without fear. When they stop worrying that they are bad at math, they follow their sense of wonder to possible solutions. Through this process, they become mathematicians, not just math students.
“I tell my students, ‘Don’t just accept things because I say it’s true. I want you to wonder why.’”
For Jannie, wonder is the key to mathematical discovery. Her students transcend traditional memorization and truly conceptualize the material, achieving a deeper level of understanding. “That’s exactly what will get our students far in mathematics if they want to pursue it,” she says.
Earlier this year, Jannie’s students were interested in a Halloween costume she was making for her child. She mentioned using geometry to sculpt a leg shape with an arc. When her students heard this, they wanted to try the calculation.
She set aside her lesson plan and allowed them to run with their curiosity.
About the Wonderful Teachers Series
Building upon the 2021-2022 school-year theme of “Wonder,” this series highlights examples of faculty and staff sparking wonder inside and out of the classroom.