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Carol Fisher's Homepage Send me some comments on this site. I'd love to hear from you! |
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email from Carolyn Melo, Subject Area Coordinator, Secondary Math, Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, USA I am planning to use your book somewhat extensively with our special education students who are well below grade level in an attempt to get them somewhat prepared for our state assessment in March. I will link to your web exercises pages, and ask them to send me screen shots of their time. This should be interesting, since many of them are not very computer literate. By the way, we are a cyber charter school, so having something like this is a god-send. I absolutely love the book—it is the one I would love to have written if I were going to write a math book. I am always sending people to the site to look it over. [...] Right now I am trying to get Algebra Pinball to work on our server—hopefully the prospect of posting their names and times will inspire the kids to practice! Thanks again for an amazing book! |
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email from Jose E. Revelo, a father in Southern California, USA: I love your site... And wish I would have had a teacher like you!! My wife told me that a student can learn when they have a good teacher presenting the material. In fact, they should see that as part of their job; find what works when teaching and what doesn't. You see, I could never get it when I was in school back in the late 70's and college in the early 80's. So I felt, well you know, dumb about math, it was not for me, I am not smart enough, etc. The usual clichés. I found your site through Curriki.org and love it. I have reviewed your first 13 sections of Algebra I and really see the light. So much so, that I am helping my 8th grader see that it is easy. You just have to learn the language and know the rules!! Your presentation is so crystal clear; that everything I should have known way back when is amazingly easy for me to comprehend today. I love doing the exercises, and then helping my son. Because of you, he will never struggle with any of these concepts, or have the same inadequate feelings I had. When he comes to me, I review your site and then have a GREAT time helping him. Thanks a bunch for your "Mathematical Energy." I am sure you have been told that you have a great gift from God! What a blessing!! |
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selections from email correspondence (July 11, 2007) with Kara C., a home-schooling mother in Atlanta, Georgia, USA: I home educate my children and last year I started to use [a text] that was published in 2001. My ten year old son and twelve year old daughter were very excited to use this beautiful book and had no apprehensiveness about learning Algebra. Well, that was until they started into chapter seven! [...] It seemed simple enough, but before I knew what hit me our lesson had turned into a debate session [...] they felt that the real-world situations were too vague and didn't give enough details to allow them to feel confident that they had accurately solved the problems. At this point, it was January and we were over three-hundred pages into the text. Although I had used teacher's resources for testing and they were scoring well, I really hadn't been confident that either of them had a firm grasp of algebraic concepts. Thanks to a Google search, I found One Mathematical Cat. Suddenly, math was fun again! The children actually looked forward to the lessons. They were encouraged and I could see the puzzled, dazed look in their eyes fading away. Carol, I cannot thank you enough for offering this course. These are children that had a 94 average in pre-algebra and at a crucial time, when they were ready to admit their defeat and throw in the towel, your Math Cat saved them. Now [...] these two children are sincere and confident when they offer free tutoring services. I think that speaks for itself. [...] When I think about A/B averages that proved to be false positives, I'm left shaking my head [...] [...] I've been piecing together curricula for myself, and others, for a number of years and I've found very few people that offer educational material that is so complete and well formatted [...] |
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"The Miss Hall's School Student Council established the Pietas Award in 2007 to recognize a faculty member
who has a profound sense of duty to their students, their school, and the community.
Qualities that the Student Council looks for in its nominees for the Pietas Award are willingness to go the
extra mile and to be truly involved in the school community not because it is one's job, but because it is one's passion. On a once-a-semester basis, in the months of November and May, members of the Student Council review the nominees who are submitted, and the winner will be announced during Morning Meeting where she/he will receive her/his charm and certificate of recognition." May 21, 2007: Dr. Fisher was the first recipient of this award, nominated by AP Calculus AB student Masha Jones (Class of 2007). There was a gift of a beautiful, engraved, silver box! Not only does she know her subject inside and out, but she also goes above and beyond to communicate her knowledge to her students. She does not just rely on a textbook, but uses her own index cards to make material easier to understand. She created an entire math website to help her students and other people throughout the world fill any gaps they have in their knowledge of math. Before having Dr. Fisher as a teacher, I never would have imagined myself taking AP Calc. Math just did not come very easily to me. But Dr. Fisher's style of teaching and enthusiasm transformed my entire outlook on mathematics. She prepared me for AP Calc and got me through the course. Granted, there were times when antidifferentiation and slope fields made me want to scream, but whenever that happened, Dr. Fisher's door was always open and she was happy to help me outside of class. After having Dr. Fisher as a teacher, I feel much more confident as I look ahead to math courses that I will take in college. Moreover, Dr. Fisher illustrates for me the kind of passion and continuing curiosity that I hope I will have in my future career. |
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a series of emails (April 16, 2007) from Naomi Laeuchli, a home-schooled American living in Vienna, Austria: On your site you say you encourage feedback concerning your material and I am quite pleased to do so after the great help your Algebra course has been for me. I am a fifteen year old Home schooled American living in Vienna Austria and I have never been good at math. Though I am still working through the first Algebra course it has already been a great help. It is understandable and clear, and though I shall never be great at math, your course has already been a great help to me. I have tried several online Algebra courses for my math and have always been confused after the first few sections, yours is the best I have ever found, remaining clear, even after it gets into some of the harder material. I am reading through the entire text. I read it on the computer but also print it out in case I need to review something. I do have to confess though that I do not print out the worksheets, I simply practice online and do the exercises given in the text. Also I didn't have any trouble whatsoever in installing MathPlayer, it took less then a minute to download with my internet connection. Also I always enjoy the links you have to other sites with interesting math facts and such. It really is a wonderful course that has helped me a great deal. Each lesson is long enough and in-depth enough to make things clear. I used to use Saxon for math and after it got to Algebra their lessons grew harder to understand and less clear. Your course explains everything in-depth and always has everything written out so clearly. The course is indeed very easy to use without a teacher, I have never had to get help from either my parents or my brother (who actually knows something about math), I've always been able to figure it out, based solely on the lessons. Thank-you for the course, as I have said, it has been a great, great help. |