Got Math?

It’s break time at summer
math camp. Five fifth grade girls squeal over a game of UNO, closely clutching their
cards to their faces. A competition brews in the foreground. Posters dot the
walls behind them, one especially funny, which quotes David, age 10, “When
aliens come to Earth they’ll speak math, not English.” — 

A tutoring spot on the Upper West Side, Mathnasium helps kids get personal help with
everything from adding and subtracting to fractions and fractals. But this
small yet open space, which sports a wall of exposed brick, doesn’t look like an
ordinary math classroom—a chess set and Rubik’s cube sit on one table near some
big, bright windows, and a jar of Smarties candy rests temptingly on another.

Mathnasium, part of a
national chain of math learning centers, has two locations in Manhattan both owned by married couple Tammy and Marc
Goldberg. During the school year, the center offers tutoring via individual
lessons and small groups for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It’s focus
is two-fold: bringing students up to snuff in their grade level as well as giving
extra challenges to number-crunching pros. All the while, the center strives to
remove the negative stigma that math learning can have for youngsters,
especially those who struggle with numbers.

“Why do kids hate math? Because
it doesn’t make sense [at first],” says Marc Goldberg. “But we haven’t had a
kid come in here who couldn’t become great at math—they [just] need the right
tools. As math starts to make sense, it becomes fun.”

To get started, each
student who comes in—there are about 200 students between the Upper East and Upper West Side locations—takes an assessment test to figure out
his or her individualized plan. Generally, highly-trained tutors help kids get
away from memorizing answers and start building “number sense,” a deeper
understanding of how math works. To do this, tutors help connect math with the real
world by using tools like dice, money and math games. And the tutors aren’t
just math whizzes—they also love working with kids, which is important for making
Mathnasium a fun and welcoming hub, Tammy Goldberg says.

Tammy, who studied math
education in college, started out teaching high school in New Jersey for two years. Dissatisfied with the classroom
atmosphere, she decided to pursue acting and tutored math on the side. She soon
discovered that she got more out of tutoring than performing, and sought a way
to help kids more than just once a week when worried parents called about a
tricky homework assignment.

But the dissatisfaction
didn’t stop there. “I felt like when I was doing my own private instruction, I
was really just putting Band-Aids on,” explains Tammy. “I wanted to be able to
go back and really help the underlying issues.”

After falling in love with
Mathnasium’s overall philosophy, Tammy opened a location on the Upper East Side and followed it with an Upper West Side center a little over two years later.

And though her husband,
Marc, doesn’t come from a strict mathematics background, he soon fell numerator-over-denominator
with the project, too. After going through business school, Marc pursued a rock
music career and started a music company with his brother. When Tammy needed
help with the business side of Mathnasium, Marc jumped in, and soon he was
hooked on helping kids.

“I fell in love with
teaching math,” says Marc. “It ended up coming very naturally to me.”

When you combine Tammy’s education
experience with Marc’s business sense and fold in the couple’s passion for
teaching kids math, it’s no wonder the center grew quickly. At about the same
time as the second location opened, the duo started another new endeavor—they
became parents. Their son Teddy is 19 months old now and can already count to
14. But his parents say they’re not pushing a super early math education—he’s
just naturally inclined.

“He’s very studious,” says
Tammy with a laugh.

But Mathnasium stresses
that even if a child isn’t born counting her fingers and toes, any kid can gain
the math skills she needs to succeed in school and feel confident. Marc talks
about one girl who he’s been working with for two years. When she started, her
parents were ready to pull her out of her competitive elementary school because
her math struggles were causing such insecurity. A rock music fan herself, the
young girl was paired with Marc and with practice, she made her way to grade
level math and beyond.

“One of the beautiful
things about this business is that we make such an impact in the lives of not
only the students but also their parents,” says Marc. “This was a very
difficult thing in her household and the parents just couldn’t solve the
problem.”

Tammy says parents often
gush, “What are you doing? Why does my kid not want to leave?” and ask when
they’re going to open a “Reading-nasium.” While that’s not in the works, the
couple does plan to open a third Mathnasium location in Tribeca in about two
years.

“I don’t know what I would do without Mathnasium,”
Tammy reflects, “It just fits me like a perfect glove.”

To learn more, visit mathnasium.com.

1. Buy several large, soft cookies (or pieces of
   pita, for us health nuts!) to have some fun with fractions. Cutting up food is
   a great way to teach your child about “parts of a whole.” Ask your child to
   show you how to:

• Share 3 cookies equally between the two of you. Then try it with 5
  cookies.

• Share 1 cookie so that 3 people will get a fair or equal share.

• Share 2 cookies evenly among 3 people.

• Share 3 cookies evenly among 4 people.

  2. Help your children set up their room like a store
  by placing prices on different items. Let them be the store owner and you
  be the customer. Have them ring up your purchases, which requires them to add
  up the prices of the items and subtract to make change for you. Children should
  learn how to make change from all denominations of coins and bills. Ask
  questions like:

• If I want to buy a book that
  costs 50 cents, and all I have is 39 cents, how much more do I need?

• If I buy a pencil that costs 18
  cents, how much change will I get from a quarter?

• If I buy a box of crayons that
  costs $1.46, how much change will I get from $5.00?