Virginia Kent, a teacher at Sandburg Elementary School, Wheaton, is one of three Illinois winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching.
Kent was selected for her innovative teaching style that includes applying mathematics to the real world. She has taken her pupils to Cosley Animal Farm and Lincoln Marsh to challenge them with problems at the two sites about compensation, patterns, geometric shapes, date collection, recording and graphing.
At Sandburg, Kent has a combined class of 1st and 2nd graders as part of the school’s multi-age concept of assigning children to the same teacher for two years.
The National Science Foundation and Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics selected Kent as one of three teachers in the state who will go to Washington, D.C. next year for a national competition of mathematics teachers.