Vern Williams, educator in the Longfellow Middle School’s gifted and talented program will present a free lecture, “Teaching Real Math: Mathematical Challenge as Awesome Intellectual Experience,” at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16 in Room 105 of the Joseph C. Shouvlin Center for Lifelong Learning, 737 N. Fountain Ave.
Williams received a B.S. in math education from the University of Maryland in 1972. He has taught math in the Fairfax County Virginia Public School system for over 30 years and has taught students in the Longfellow Middle School’s gifted and talented program for over 25 years.
In 1990, he was the Fairfax County Schools teacher of the year and received two national awards for distinguished teaching from the Mathematical Association of America.
For 14 years, Williams was a Mathcounts coach. During that time, his teams received regional, state, and national awards. He also developed the Honors Math 7 curriculum for gifted Longfellow Middle School seventh graders, which includes concepts from number theory, set theory, mathematical logic, analytic geometry, sequences and series, and elementary calculus.
From 1994-2000, Williams taught Math Reasoning for The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Summer Program. Williams’s special interest is teaching traditional and rigorous mathematics to gifted middle school students. He currently teaches Honors Math and the combination Algebra/Geometry course at Longfellow Middle School in the McLean area of Fairfax County.
The Bullock Math Academy is an initiative at Wittenberg University, sponsored by local philanthropist Rosalyn Bullock, for 6th and 7th grade students attending schools in Clark County. The free program includes a weeklong residential summer institute and additional experiences where scholars will be exposed to math enrichment opportunities, field trips and “hands on” projects. The students continuing with the academy through high school will be awarded a college scholarship. For more information visit bullockmathacademy.org.
