There’s no place like home for math education

Last month, we mobilized a small but enthusiastic band of Google engineers to visit schools across the county as part of National Engineers Week. Googlers talked to kids about their career experiences and how they became engineers. The school visits also provided Googlers with an opportunity to get away from their desks and connect with a classroom of students. One group traveled right down the road from our headquarters to visit our local schools in Mountain View, Calif.

This volunteering program is part of our broader effort to help develop and inspire the next generation of engineers and computer scientists. And we want to make sure we’re helping that happen not only around the world, but also in our own neighborhood.

In that spirit, we’re awarding a $1 million grant to the Mountain View Whisman School District (K-8) to help improve math achievement for its students. Math education is critical not only to computer science and engineering careers, but to academic success overall.

My daughter and I have a bedtime routine where we read a story and also make up mathematical word problems that we solve together. I believe it’s important to teach her math and problem-solving skills that she can apply broadly. And developing these skills early on is crucial. In fact, a recent education report noted that understanding math concepts in early school years may be a more important predictor of future achievement than reading skills. We want to help level the playing field and ensure all students in our community are getting a strong foundation in math, so this grant will help deliver resources and strategies to support students who are struggling in the subject.

As a Googler and the proud parent of a child in the Mountain View Whisman School District, I’m thrilled about this news. Mountain View has been a great home for Google and we’re pleased to be able to support our hometown.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, Chief Health Strategist and parent