Ms.Kim Langen is the CEO and co-founder of Spirit of Math Schools Inc.She has a diverse experience, working in the education industry for over 30 years.Combined with extensive teaching experiences, her relentless efforts sparked her passion to make high quality learning techniques available to students and teachers alike.Her methods proved to be successful, which lead to the creation of Spirit of Math® Schools.
Spirit of Math is an innovative leader in after-school mathematics education.It is now Canada’s largest math enrichment program that addresses to the needs of the high performing students. It was recognised in 2014 and 2015 by PROFIT Magazine as one of Canada’s fastest growing companies, and Kim Langen was named an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist by EY and a member of Chatelaine magazine’s W100 list of top female entrepreneurs in 2015.
Spirit of Maths was launched in Pakistan last year and they aim to teach students analytical skills, conceptual skills, and sharpen mental assessment capabilities.Following is the edited transcript of BR Research team’s meeting with Kim Langen and her team in Pakistan.
BR Research: Tell us about yourself.
Kim Langen: My background has been very varied.I started in the arts; I was a ballet dancer.Then went into sciences – environmental and life sciences – and I ended up teaching.I was naturally attracted to teaching; I had taught ballet when I was in university; I had also taught piano and swimming when I was in high school.My interest in teaching also comes from my mother and my father, who were teachers themselves.
BRR: What is Spirit of Math? How did it all start?
KL: At its core, Spirit of Math began with the ideas of Charles Ledger, my father who was a Toronto-area math teacher recognised for his excellence in teaching ability. He was teaching in a way that was very different from the rest of the schooling systems by getting away from the procedural type of mathematic to this very open, discover-yourself, be-creative type of teaching methods, which was producing great results for the school.
Initially, he developed the grade 7 to 9 Spirit of Math curriculum over a twenty-year period starting in the 1970s and 1980s while teaching at a suburban junior high school.My mother Gwen Ledger, who was not a mathematician, also began using and adapting the program.With the curriculum in place, we were able to move outside the day school environment.In the early 1990s, successful summer programs led to students demanding for ongoing after-school classes.And in 1994, I began teaching the first cohort of Spirit of Math students from home.Within a couple of years, we expanded to multiple classrooms in larger facilities.Following my parents’ retirement from the public school system, both became involved in this after-school program.
We extended the concepts down to the junior grades and up to high school students to create an after-school program.By the early 2000s, when my mother passed away and my father didn’t want to continue anymore, I quit my day job because I didn’t want all of it to go to waste.We created all the drill books by grade, hired teachers to work full-time and, with my father’s help, created a comprehensive curriculum for every grade, for 39 weeks of classes.
During this process, I developed the teacher training program as well to equip them with the right way of teaching the concepts.In 2006, we had our franchising division incorporated, and now we have 10 franchises. But we continue to expand corporately.We have 40 campuses – 39 in Canada, 1 in USA and now we will be at three locations here in Lahore this fall.
BRR: So what exactly is Spirit of Math now offering?
KL: Our teacher training course has been so successful that now the day schools are asking for their teachers to be trained using our course.Some of the very elite schools have admitted to me that the kids now know more maths than the teachers just because of their training at the afterschool math school; they requested us to teach them our way of teaching and create books for them.That’s when we came up with our series of Math Problem of the Day Books and the contest series that they now use as resources.
Today, there are three main divisions to our company’s business: After School Classes and Campuses; Publishing; and Training.
What is interesting is that we went for courses for high performing and bright students, and not just for the regular child.We believe that these kids have very special needs that are usually not being met in the day school because they are usually helping students that are average or below average. The high performing students are not stretching their thinking to their potential.Our ideas and concepts can be used for any type of student, but our afterschool program is for the high performing kids.
Our teacher training course is designed for any teacher of any grade in mathematics.Spirit of Math has enjoyed more than a decade of success training teachers at public and private institutions, ranging from the individual school level to entire boards or divisions.
And our books that we sell are also for everyone.These workbooks are suitable for use in the classroom, or at home for after-school or home-school use.
BRR: What is your idea of education?
KL: My philosophy is that educators tend to help those who are weak, which is not bad.However, we will never progress as a society or as a world if we keep looking down to the problems.We have to look at what we’ve got.I firmly believe that if strengthen our strengths and create a vacuum underneath, people will push up to fill the gap as they start to believe that they can also do more.It’s like making high level of thinking, reasoning, and teaching a new standard.
At Spirit of Math, this is what we do.We have tried to introduce a different paradigm of thinking, analysing, reasoning, problem solving and logic that could help kids to be the future leaders of the world.
There are different types of teaching: one is rote learning, which is a memorising technique based on repetition; the second and relatively newer method is lecturing – telling them what to do.So in essence, we are teaching the society to wait until it’s told what to do.The next phase is teaching kids how to think and reason the right way based on logic and facts.We focus on this third way of teaching where we use mathematics for a much bigger vision and that is to have independent thinkers who can be terrific leaders and our best problem solvers.
BRR: What made you choose Pakistan after Canada and USA? Why not India?
KL: Actually, we did have a potential partner in India, we are incorporated in India and do have trademarks there, but it just didn’t work out.I think we were too premature for India; it is too big.We have put our plans on hold for now, but we will be going there eventually.
As for Pakistan, I was here for a wedding, year and a half ago, and some people approached us for partnership with Spirit of Math.We realised that probably a partnership was not such a good idea for us, but the interest opened the doors to the potential here.Pakistan has a very sophisticated culture.Though it has been classified as under-developed, it is now being reclassified as an emerging economy.I am amazed to see that many people here are thinking like first world; they have high-end needs and preferences.
BRR: How many classes are you offering here? Are you planning to expand to other cities?
KL: We are starting from kindergarten to grade 5 in our first year of operations.We do plan to go to other cities but as of right now, it is Lahore where we want to test and see how we can tweak it, and make it as best as possible.A lot of it is teacher training, and I am here for that.We want to train Pakistani teachers and not just bring Canadian teachers here, and eventually develop trainers here as well who can then train other teachers too.
BRR: What is your observation of Pakistan’s education system?
KL: There a dichotomy here that is interesting; the private school system in the country is doing some of the best work that I’ve seen globally; there is a huge competition between private schools and that raises the standard.While they’re raising the standard, they are still doing it with the same thinking, which is more around rote-learning.Then there are the government schools, and while they are trying to fix a few things, they have many challenges to address.
A key challenge in both the private and public education system is the teachers.You don’t have enough qualified teachers.For a massive population, you need to have massive number of teachers.For such massive scale, how do you maintain a standard? You need massive teacher training.