By Miki Hui ’31 ’33 ’38, Kindergarten Grade Rep 2025 – 2026
At this month’s PFA Teacher Talk, “Exploring the K – 5 Math Journey,” parents were invited to see math through the eyes of today’s students – discovering how learning has evolved from memorization and drills to curiosity, flexibility, and deep conceptual understanding. The K – 5 math program, which now uniformly uses Envision 2024, was showcased by Erin Nelson ’99 Koshiba, who is currently completing a Faculty Fellowship and serves as the Math Curricular Review Lead; Junior School Assistant Principal K – 5 and Dean of Faculty and Curriculum Rebecca Wagner; and several classroom teachers. Together, they guided attendees through new terminology, mind-stretching philosophies, and hands-on learning experiences.
For many of us in the room, childhood math was rooted in memorization, drills and a single prescribed approach reinforced through repetition. By contrast, today, math is far less stringent – allowing for and encouraging open-ended investigation with a goal of exploration and understanding, rather than a sole focus on arriving at a specific answer.
To help illustrate this “new math,” as it’s often referred to, fourth-grade teacher Shelly Yoshikawa brought along several of her students, who began by sharing their favorite aspects of the subject. The audience was then presented with an equation and asked to volunteer methods for solving. Collectively, three approaches were shared. Mrs. Yoshikawa’s students were then asked if they had additional strategies, and it was impressive to watch them expand the list with three more.
Attendees were also introduced to the concept of subitizing and invited to participate in a memory-style game designed to challenge their ability to recognize and retain the many ways a quantity can be visually represented. The goal of subitizing is to develop fluency in recognizing quantities without counting individual units – much like sight words are used to build a foundation for reading. This activity felt more like playtime than study, yet it clearly demonstrated its educational value.
An excerpt from the K – 5 math philosophy summarizes the value of flexibility:
“We believe providing students with a flexible mindset allows them to balance procedural fluency with deep conceptual understanding as they engage with both the “how” and the “why” of mathematics and enables them to approach mathematics with curiosity and perseverance, setting a strong foundation for future learning.”
Bridging the gap between those who grew up with traditional math and this new approach is no small task. Faculty Fellow Erin Nelson ’99 Koshiba captured the sentiment perfectly when she quoted from the movie, The Incredibles: “Why would they change math?! Math is math!!” While true that math remains math, creating a learning environment that supports deeper thinking, adaptability, and a truly enriching student experience is the ultimate goal as K – 5 teachers continue to instruct Punahou’s youngest learners.