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Ahh. The phrase that played on an endless loop in my mind through my high school math years. Sound familiar? 

While I loved school and was a good student, I hated math. Saw no practical purpose. Saw no daily application. Saw no good reason for it except that it was required. Wait - that's just a reason ... not a good one.   

Yet I suffered through four years of honors math because I was "supposed to." Upon graduation, I entered college as a sports psychology major, not really knowing what that meant, but it sounded cool to my athletically-inclined brain. You can imagine my joy upon discovering that psych majors had to take two semesters of calculus! 

After my sophomore year, though, I realized my brain was also geared towards black-and-white linear thinking. Psychology was not for me! After two more years of changing majors to sports management (still wanted to be in athletics but didn't jive with the business aspect) to athletic training (still fascinated by anatomy but as a varsity track & cross country runner, I had to quit the teams to serve as a student trainer for other sports) to health education (so I could be a teacher & coach, and it was the subject area that most closely matched my previous courses), I found myself in the most ironic of situations. I was assigned to tutor a local middle school student in math. 

MATH?!

And that's when I realized just how big God's sense of humor is. 

It dawned on me that math IS useful, and I was pretty good at explaining it once I caught on! After 4 years of college, I changed majors for the fifth time, crammed in 8 more math classes and student teaching, and started my math teaching career 18 days after graduation in August of 1995.

And every year since, my students have echoed the phrase that haunted my own high school days.

I tried to rationalize & convince them that math developed their logical thinking skills and certain careers used it extensively every day. Math IS used every day by most of us in some context, but seeing daily applications of quadratics, logarithms, or derivatives simply wasn't obvious for my students. 

The real test came when I would get seniors who failed algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 and still needed to complete all 3 of these courses through a credit recovery program, on top of passing my fourth year math class, in order to graduate.  It first became my job to convince them to even TRY, then to fill in the gaping hole because of their very limited skill levels, then to train them in the art of hoop jumping.  We always got them through, but math wasn't taught. 

It was fought.  

Why did it have to be that way? I searched for years for "real life math" lessons and projects, but everything I found was on an elementary or middle school level. While those lessons may have matched the skill level of my seniors, the students didn't need clip art reminding them how low they were. The word problems at the end of each section in our textbook? Like any average person would have data readily available for the height or velocity of a roller coaster... and why would you want to?? We were starting with the math and trying to make it fit life. It was time to start with life & showcase the math that fits it. 

The seeds of Applied Math were planted. 

After 26 straight years of teaching at least one lower level prep, I created a math curriculum that focused on senior students who planned to go straight into the workforce. STEM classes and college degrees are wonderful avenues for many, many people, but we seemed to have thrown out the baby with the bathwater in our push to become globally competitive. Our country is full of overlooked students who need real-life mathematical skills and mathematical thinking skills to make educated decisions about their financial futures, independent living situations, and even daily activities. 

To our surprise, we found that it wasn't just non-college bound seniors who were eager to learn real-life math. It was all seniors. And juniors. And their parents! They wished they could've taken a class like this in high school! The feedback was incredible! Don't just take my word for it - see actual comments in the Student Reviews!

So check out how you might benefit from Applied Math! Click on the Applied Math button to see content descriptions and the Shop button to purchase through TeachersPayTeachers. Most of the math skills center around basic addition, subtraction, & multiplication, so nearly all of these lessons could be used in classes from MIDDLE SCHOOL through HIGH SCHOOL, from math classes to career tech, consumer science, & financial literacy classes, even for the average adult looking to make sense of math in the real world!