Inspired by innovative word problems, math studies led students to raise money for charity at Boyce Middle School in Pennsylvania.
Fifth grade math teacher Matthew Dudley began to incorporate an imaginary company into math word problems. He named the company Eagle Sweets, after the name of the team of his math students, Team Eagle.
“One of my teaching philosophies is to try to find ways to incorporate math and the kids learning it to the real world,” Dudley said. “Trying to give them any avenue I can, because we’re competing with so many different things with technology and so forth. … I wanted to connect it to the business world just trying to get the kids to see how the math is actually applied.”
During the course of the school year, Dudley’s students became attached to the make believe company. They began interviewing for fake jobs at Eagle Sweets, and asked Dudley to be the “Cupcake CEO.” They created a ten member honorary board of students. Then they asked Dudley if they could turn Eagle Sweets into a real company.
With Dudley’s support, they developed a business plan, presented the plan to the principal, and began to plan a bake sale to raise funds.
In total, through fundraising sales of baked goods and homemade slime and matching funds from the student council, the group raised $1000 which they donated to South Hills Pet Rescue.
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