Marcy Mathworks

In my humble opinion Steve and Janis Marcy created the most effective resource that any teacher of Mathematics, from Elementary School right up to High School, will find invaluable.

In this day and age students are bombarded with information and numerous methods for doing things with scarcely any time to practice any of the methods they are taught. Parents also may be unfamiliar with some of the methods taught in class so are unable to assist their children when their children seek their help.

I first came across this couple's work at a High School in Dublin many years ago where a fellow teacher called Dermot Keeley was using a workbook called Mathimagination with a small group of teen age boys with learning difficulties.

As a matter of interest Dermot is also the former manager of the Irish football team Shelbourne FC. He is one of those inspirational teachers, larger than life and someone I and his students will never forget.

I was so excited by the book and the way the boys had taken to using it that I had to purchase a copy. So it was thanks to Dermot that this article is now being written. That was more than twenty years ago when Dermot introduced me to the Marcys and I have used that book along with the Marcy's other series called Maths with Pizzazz with students from Middle School right up to High School throughout my teaching career.

Steve and Janis Marcy are Maths teachers who have devoted their lives to creating resources that really do help children efficiently master the Mathematics concepts taught in school.

They have been teaching and writing these resources for over thirty years and but unlike some of the other authors of math textbooks Steve and Janis have never compromised their principles and sold out to big business. They refused to allow their work to be commercialised at the expense of quality and for that reason you will not see their books promoted by the big names.

Steve is a Middle School teacher of Mathematics in California and has a Ph.D in Educational Psychology and has been teaching since 1968. Janis began her teaching career as a 6^th Grade Elementary School teacher but then went on to teach Middle School and then High School also in California.

The couple published Mathimagination in 1973 and followed it over the next ten years with their Math with Pizzazz binders that covered the Middle and High School curricula.

These earlier publications were published by Creative Publications but are now sold by Wright Group/McGraw Hill which owns the Creative Publications trademark.

I have taught Mathematics very successfully from Middle school up to High School over the last twenty five years and owe much of this success to the resources created by Steve and Janis Marcy.

Children develop confidence practising topics that would otherwise be skimmed over and never mastered. As a teacher I found them invaluable because they were self correcting and so saved me an awful lot of marking. I could see at a glance when a student had mastered a topic and they could too and that was the beauty of the system created by these two geniuses.

In 1996 the couple self published their latest product called Punchline Problem Solving which was designed as a companion to the Pizzazz series and was designed for group work as well as individuals.

Though I have since retired from full-time teaching I still continue to at the local High School on a part-time basis teaching children with emotional problems and learning difficulties. As well as running our Private Hypnotherapy Practice here in Peel in the Isle of Man I also tutor students privately after school. The private tuition service my daughter Clara and I provide here in Peel is called Setanta Maths Tuition. There is something I will always keep in my armory of mathematics resources and that is the binders created by these two very special people.

I think so highly of their work that I even thought it worthwhile to write and ask them for the opportunity to promote their products as an affiliate but they declined. I decided to to write this article anyway because every teacher and parent should have access to the very best educational resources for their children especially now when they are exposed to so much rubbish. This mathematics resource, in my opinion, is among the best a teacher or parent will ever find.

Steve and Janis provide sample worksheets for you to download and try out before committing to any purchase so click the following link to be taken to their website

>>> Marcy Mathworks<<<

Following is a very informative video that every parent should watch in order to see the current state of mathematics education in America: