SMETHPORT — Heather Costa’s eight grade math students at Smethport Area Junior-Senior High School have used their problem solving skills to finish in 10th place in a national competition that drew 42,000 teachers.
Coming into this school year, Costa knew that teaching math would be a challenge since students would be learning both in class and remotely, and this made her wonder how she could assess the students and keep her sanity.
“Given that paper and pencil homework had become a thing of the past with the Chromebooks, I had to be able to give and receive my assessments remotely,” Costa told The Era.
So last summer she began reviewing programs that she could implement for this school year. She said, “I already knew about Khan Academy because I used Sal Khan’s videos for students who could not attend my class and needed someone to teach them math when I was not present.”
The Academy, which offers a wide variety of courses from English to physics, is guided by the motto: “Khan Academy is a non-profit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.”
Sal Khan started Khan Academy in August 2004. He was tutoring his cousin who was struggling in math. Since she lived across the country from Sal, he made videos to help her.
Those videos appeared on You Tube in 2006 as Khan wanted to help others.
After quitting his job, Khan founded his non-profit organization in 2009, a venture that received many large grants from Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“I spent two weeks in my summer taking their teacher training course and was just amazed that this program was available free to use for any school,” said Costa. “I really felt this was too good to be true, and then I took the Algebra I course as a student and I was sold!”
The program offers videos, articles, homework, quizzes and tests. It is a mastery curriculum, which means students can retake each homework, quiz and test as often as needed to master the subject.
The program does not replace the teacher. The teacher retains full control of the classroom, selecting what the students will learn and the pace at which learning occurs.
The teacher still teaches the lessons, but there are videos and articles to reinforce instruction, Costa noted. “This is extremely helpful this year with so many students not attending school or attending remotely.”
To motivate teachers to use their curriculum, Kahn Academy uses LearnStorm, which began in August and concluded in November. Its purpose is to “drive student mastery of skills, track and honor students for learning.”
Students are assigned articles to read, videos to watch and exercises to master.
Each day an animated tracker shows how much the students learned. For every three assignments assigned to each student and completed by the class, the tracker would move. Once it reached 100 percent, it would start over and a new level would begin.
Besides the animated tracker celebration, Kahn Academy paired with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund to provide life-saving packages that are delivered around the world on behalf of the students who completed above Level 15. In those packages were meals for families, water treatment tablets, jump ropes, ready-to-use therapeutic food to Third World countries.
“Once I decided I was going to use Khan Academy in my classroom, I thought LearnStorm would be fun,” Costa said. “I told my three classes about it, and they thought it was great that they could feed kids by doing their math.”
Costa told her classes — each teacher in the competition was permitted to enter more than one class — that they had to reach Level 15 by November, which meant they would have to complete 15 levels x 25 students x 3 assignments = 1,125 assignments by mid-November. “I felt this was achievable so I enrolled.”
As Costa and the classes checked their tracker every day, the students became more motivated to make it move. According to Costa, “Karly Tanner, a student in my class, asked every day if we could check our progress, and they would all get excited when they went up more than one level a day. They were truly excited to feed the world.”
Of course, being inquisitive, the students often asked Costa about their chances of winning. Knowing that this was a national competition, Costa thought the chances were slim, but encouraged the students to “keep working and we’ll see.”
At the end of the competition, the students had reached Level 74, a total of 5,924 assignments!
Kaylee Edgar, another student in the class, would ask Costa if the class had won. “I did a lot of problems, and we better win,” she commented.
As November drew to a close, Costa received an email that she almost deleted, saying “the class was in the top 20…More details to follow.”
Then, the following week Costa was informed that they ended up in tenth place out of 42,000 teachers who enrolled. “I was speechless,” said an obviously excited Costa.
“Unfortunately, the day I found out, my entire class was sent home due to COVID, and I had to tell them remotely that we won. They had their mics turned off so I couldn’t tell if they were excited or not. But, they were!”
The students were Jocelyn Alfieri, Adrianna Claycomb, Brayden Cosper, Lila Costa, Jacqueline Davis, Mylee Davis, Gracee Donovan, Lily Dow, Justin Dunn, Kaylee Edgar, Elena McKeirnan, Autumn Meeks, Jordan Mixter, Emily Rainey, Kaydn Riekofsky, Dominic Ritts, Owen Rounsville, Kyra Shields, Searah Shutt, Emily Snyder, Karlee Tanner, Emma Thomas, Raygn Walker and Trinitee Williams.
They will have their names recorded at the Khan Academy.
The Smethport Area School District Board of Education commended Costa and her students at their January meeting.
“I really needed some sign of hope in this challenging school year,” Costa told The Era in her closing comments. “My fourth Mod made me realize that they can learn no matter what challenges they face. They make me proud each day. We don’t hear a lot of joy lately. I just wanted everyone to know there is hope.”
