{"id":5759,"date":"2017-04-19T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=5759"},"modified":"2017-04-18T17:31:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T01:31:11","slug":"serving-underserved-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/serving-underserved-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Serving the underserved students"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre>By: Jasmine Morrow\r\nStaff Writer<\/pre>\n<p>On April 11, Western mathematics instructor and developmental math coordinator Dr. Sylvia Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez gave her presentation, \u201cMath: The New Civil Rights Issue.\u201d Though the presentation was only an hour and a half long, attendees of the event were given something to think about regarding underserved students in math courses.<\/p>\n<p>Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez and her father co-founded the Vald\u00e9s Math Institute in San Jose, California; a seven-week program, that helps underserved students with mathematics, which was honored by the Obama administration with the Presidential Award for Academic Excellence.<\/p>\n<p>Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez believes in creating fair and understanding classroom environments for students who feel that they\u2019re treated like they can\u2019t understand math.<\/p>\n<p>According to Dr. Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez, underserved students have a more difficult time when it comes to math literacy. They are told that they can\u2019t do well in this area and that it\u2019s their fault when something is hard to understand.<\/p>\n<p>When Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez was asked why math is important to her, she responded, \u201cTo me, it\u2019s not so much about the math, but it\u2019s about what math affords people. Jobs, a position in society. It opens up a lot of doors, since there are so many careers that are closed to you if you don\u2019t have a certain amount of math literacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Everyone should have a chance to learn something that\u2019s going to be very crucial to make a living. One of the problems about achieving equity that Dr. Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez mentioned was the \u201cbelief that not all students can learn math.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If educators keep looking down on students who have difficulty understanding math, then the students are just going to give up. When a student is having difficulties, the educator can\u2019t make the whole class simpler, but they should be able to accommodate for all students.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMath needs diversity for new ideas,\u201d concluded Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n<p>Contact the author at jmorrow16@mail.wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Jasmine Morrow Staff Writer On April 11, Western mathematics instructor and developmental math coordinator Dr. Sylvia Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez gave her presentation, \u201cMath: The New Civil Rights Issue.\u201d Though the presentation was only an hour and a half long, attendees of the event were given something to think about regarding underserved students in math courses. Vald\u00e9s-Fern\u00e1ndez [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-life"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}