Friend of UB supports Gifted Math Program

When Joan Eschner first began learning math in elementary school, she learned it by memory. There was no joy in the method, she said, and certainly she had no plans to grow up and teach it. She did become a teacher, however, and teaching math was part of her responsibilities. Despite her dislike of it in the early years, she stressed the importance of math. When she first started teaching in the 1960s, she taught children to learn math by rote.

But then she met her neighbor, Betty Krist, a secondary school teacher who later became chair of the mathematics department at UB and helped found the UB Gifted Math Program in the Graduate School of Education.

“Betty showed me why things work,” Eschner said. “It was fun to understand math, and I began to play with ideas in my head.”

Eschner earned a graduate degree from Buffalo State College. In the late 1970s she took a Philosophy of Education course at UB. Through it and subsequent math courses, Eschner says, “I became a better teacher.” She began to develop unique lessons to help children grasp how the number system works and gain an understanding of the place of value and fractions.

Now retired from teaching 5th grade at West Seneca East Elementary, she volunteers with the UB Gifted Math Program, which enrolls approximately 250 students of outstanding mathematics ability from grades 7 through 12 in public, parochial or private schools in Erie and Niagara counties. Her bequest commitment will benefit the Gifted Math Program.