Steve Brandes
President & General Manager
Idaho Stampede of the NBA Development League
NBA Affiliate of the Portland Trail Blazers
There were a couple of teachers that had a huge impact, not only on me, but I am sure on other students in my class. Those specific teachers had an amazing ability to connect with the student, and make math fun and engaging.
I know math isn't always easy for everyone, but it was very easy for me. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to solve problems and it was very gratifying to put in the work to find the answers to problems. I believe I had teachers that taught tricks on how to do math in your head and tricks for algebra that made it much easier.
Math is truly a skill set that students will never be able to escape in the real world.
Running a professional sports team requires the utilization of percentages, algebra, addition, and subtraction, to name a few. We use math in sponsorship sales when dealing with dollars, percentages of return on your investment (ROI), cost per thousand (CPMs), budgets, bottom lines, forecasting sales, and understanding expense control. These are all important areas that require a good grasp of the fundamentals of math and accounting. Also, just like our sales staff, our players' productivity is measured in the time they are on the court with percentages of shots, rebounds, turnovers, etc.
I was lucky with the teachers that I had, but I wish I was exposed to a program that we have been doing the past 6 years with Micron. It's called the Idaho Stampede and Micron "Add Up the Fun" and is a basketball-themed work book based around 7th grade math that students utilize throughout the year and earn incentives for achieving good scores on a monthly basis. Some of those incentives include tickets to an Idaho Stampede NBA Development League game, pencils, and the chance to win an all-expense paid trip with other math students to a Utah Jazz game as a reward for their efforts. Those types of programs would have appealed to me since I am a sports guy.
It's been a while since I was a math student, but to the best of my knowledge, at the time I was in school, it was taught well. I have seen a trend in technology away from teaching students to do math in their head and instead rely way too much on calculators, etc. I may be dating myself, but bowling in my day was all about the competitors doing the math and tallying up the score, which was a fun process as there was some anticipation of what your score would be and if you would win. Now you just rely on a computer and it takes away some of the fun.
Math is a skill set that most of us take for granted as we go through our schooling. But if a teacher and influencer can communicate properly and connect with a student on their level, which is different for every student, and then they may understand the importance of learning the basics and how that might apply to their future.
