Educator praised for math teaching

BELFAST – A mathematics teacher at Troy Howard Middle School was awarded the nation’s highest honor for teaching science and math, it was announced Tuesday.

Margaret Southworth of Winterport has been teaching math for 10 years, the past nine to eighth-graders at Troy Howard in Belfast.

She was nominated for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in December.

Steven DeAngelis, a science teacher at Maranacook Community High School in Readfield, was the other Maine teacher presented with the award.

Southworth also received a $10,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that administers the awards on behalf of the White House.

A graduate of the University of Maine, Southworth teaches both general and advanced math classes. Her eighth-grade pupils study concepts that most students encounter in the ninth and 10th grades.

Southworth was in Washington on Tuesday, where she and the 100 recipients from around the nation are participating in an all-expenses paid trip. She could not be reached by phone Tuesday.

“Young adolescents are in transition from being concrete lower-level thinkers to more abstract upper-level thinkers,” Southworth said at the time of her nomination. “I try to provide students with concrete, hands-on experience to understand more abstract concepts.”

In his citation, President Bush commended Southworth for “embodying excellence in teaching, for devotion to the learning needs of the students, and for upholding the high standards that exemplify American education at its finest.”

Bush noted that math and science were critical components for maintaining the country’s technological and competitive strength.

Established by Congress in 1983, the presidential awards program identifies highly qualified mathematics and science teachers around the nation. Individuals are recommended by a panel of leading mathematicians, scientists and educators.

In Southworth’s case, the application process required the submission of a video of a classroom lesson from start to finish, along with her written reflections on the lesson and its subject. The written portion had to focus on a specific segment of the lesson, where it fit in the unit of instruction and samples of the students’ work.

The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering with an annual budget of nearly $5.58 billion.