About the Teacher
Julie Kotoff has been an educator since 1975. She has been a classroom teacher, an administrator, and is now teaching groups of students Mad Dog Math while running her small business called by the same name. Life is never dull!
As an administrator, her chief tasks were mentoring new teachers and coordinating curriculum from kindergarten through sixth grade. As a mentor teacher, she had the opportunity to experience each grade level. Of them all, her love is third grade.
As a third grade teacher, she developed and perfected Mad Dog Math. She knew the importance of her students memorizing their multiplication and division facts. If not, she knew they would limp through math at best from then on. She has succeeded in developing an exciting, motivating, and challenging program to help students commit their facts to memory for future success in math.
As an administrator, she went on to develop addition and subtraction Mad Dog Math using the same successful principles. Many kindergarten teachers wanted to use it in their classrooms as well, thus, Puppy Dog Math was born!
She has taught in public and private schools and has worked with all ages of children. She volunteered to teach ESL to adults, and loved that as well. She has been happily married to her husband Dan since 1982 and lives with two rescue pit bulls, Addy and Bonnie, and one stray cat, Timmy, who came for a visit and never left. (For obvious reasons, Timmy the cat did not want to be in the family picture!)
Her Mad Dog Math program is named after her beloved Ruff, a one-of-a-kind Golden Retriever, whom she lost to cancer in 2004. Although he was not a “mad dog”, his name and image will live on through the Mad Dog Math program.
This is the campus where Julie teaches:
TUESDAYS at ILA Meridian, Idaho: http://www.independentlearningacademy.org
About Mad Dog Math
Mad Dog Math is a supplement to any math curriculum used in any classroom or in any home. The basic facts are a very small piece of the academic math pie, but a crucial piece for future success as children move to higher levels of math. We’ve taken the basic facts and broken them down into bite-sized pieces that any child can master. A child progresses through a series of timed drills at his own pace. With each success come confidence and with confidence comes more success. Children, for the first time, feel empowered by their gained knowledge and are not intimidated by math ever again. Where once they said, “Math is hard; I hate math”, they now say, “Math is easy; math is fun!”
TO ALL PARENTS AND TEACHERS: The importance of children learning their +. -, x, and ÷ facts is undeniable. Without them, children cannot progress to higher levels of math. As phonics is to reading so the math facts are to math. The facts are the basics on which a strong math foundation is built.
Components of Mad Dog Math
- Daily paper/pencil drill
- Facts broken down into bite size pieces that any child can master
- Nightly practice to prepare for tomorrow’s drill
- Competition against self
- Building blocks to higher levels of Math
- Successes build self-confidence