Kay Toliver is a

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

specialising in

mathematics education In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although rese ...

Background

Kay Toliver was born and raised in

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, F ...

and the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Bronx, Concourse, Mott Haven, Bronx, Mott Haven, Melrose, B ...

. A product of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

public school system, she graduated from Harriet Beecher Stowe Junior High, Walton High School and

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

(AB 1967, MA 1971) with graduate work at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

in mathematics.Kay Toliver Bio
/ref> For more than 30 years, Kay Toliver taught mathematics and communication arts at P.S. 72/East Harlem Tech in Community School District 4. Prior to instructing seventh and eighth grade

students A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementary ...

, she taught grades one through six for 15 years. ''"Becoming a teacher was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. My parents always stressed that education was the key to a better life. By becoming a teacher, I hoped to inspire African-American and Hispanic youths to realize their own dreams. I wanted to give something back to the communities I grew up in."'' At East Harlem Tech, with the support of her principal, she established the "Challenger" program. The program, for grades 4-8, presents the basics of

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

and

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...

in an integrated curriculum. This is a program for "gifted" students, but following her belief that all children can learn, she accepted students from all ability levels.

Teaching methods

The Math Fair

These events are similar to science fairs but involve students in creating and displaying projects relating to mathematics. Participants had to be able to explain thoroughly the mathematical theories and concepts behind their projects, which were placed on display at the school so that students from the lower grades could examine the older students' research. Students have created mathematic games such as "Dunking for

Prime Numbers A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...

," "Fishing for

Palindromes A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panam ...

," and "Black Jack Geometry."

The Math Trail

Kay Toliver developed a lesson called the "Math Trail" to give students an appreciation for the

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

as well as an opportunity to see mathematics at work. To create a Math Trail, the class must first do some research on the history of the community. Then, they are instructed to plot a course, starting from the school building, that leads the class through the community and back to school, with stops along the way to visit several sites and create math problems about various real-life situations.

Teaching Honors

* Presidential Awardee Secondary Mathematics, State and National levels * Reliance Award for Excellence in Education, Middle School * Outstanding Teacher for Mathematics Instruction, Disney American Teacher Awards * Fellow of FAME (Foundation for the Advancement of Mathematics Education) * Featured in the

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

-winning PBS special, " Good Morning Miss Toliver," and the Peabody Award-winning classroom series, " The Eddie Files". * Outstanding Educator of the Year, National Conference on Diversity in the Scientific and Technological Workforce (

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

). * Kilby Award *

Essence Award ''Essence'' is a monthly lifestyle magazine covering fashion, beauty, entertainment, and culture. First published in 1970, the magazine is written for African-American women. History Edward Lewis, Clarence O. Smith, Cecil Hollingsworth and Jo ...

References

External links

Kay Toliver Math Program
{{DEFAULTSORT:Toliver, Kay Schoolteachers from New York (state) American women educators Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Hunter College alumni People from East Harlem People from the Bronx City College of New York alumni 21st-century American women