Teacher preparation linked to student performance

This can't be recent news. I got into journalism because I hated math.

In my experience, as someone who did well at all levels of school and as someone who worked in a high school for four years, education is all about keeping it fun and engaging. If my math teachers in grammar school and high school were as engaging as my history and English teachers, I might have ended up as an engineer versus a jouralist/PR hack.

So yea, maybe the teachers are not prepared as much as they should be but for me, getting kids interested in math and sciences is all about engagement. One of well-liked science teachers are my former employer was a guy who made the content he was teaching fun. He put things on the kids' level so they would truly understand what he was teaching them and how it applied to the real world. He made homework fun and competitive (good for an all-boys high school).

Engagement, that's the key.