Jeanne White, Ed.D.

Jeanne White, Ed.D. began her distinguished career as an educator in 1992. She taught elementary school in Chicago’s south suburbs for 12 years, served as an adjunct professor in early childhood education at Governor’s State University and joined Elmhurst College as a full-time faculty member in 2005. At Elmhurst College, she teaches math methods courses for teacher candidates in the early childhood and elementary education programs, works with in-service teachers in the Master of Education in Teacher Leadership graduate program and serves as the chairperson of the Department of Education.

Dr. White has presented locally, nationally and internationally on topics related to elementary mathematics education, teacher leadership, service learning abroad and teaching English language learners. She has conducted workshops for teachers in Australia and South Africa on the use of everyday objects to facilitate early mathematics instruction, written numerous articles on education and consulted with school districts on the implementation of Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

She holds a B.S. in education and an M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction from Loyola University Chicago. Her doctoral dissertation investigated the ways in which children’s literature can be used to improve student performance and attitude in mathematical problem solving.

She recently published the second edition of her book, Using Children’s Literature to Teach Problem Solving in Math, which guides teachers in the use of children’s literature to build a positive math environment, engage students in mathematical problem solving and help them understand the role of math in their everyday lives.

Posts by Jeanne White, Ed.D.

Using Children’s Literature to Reinforce Classification

posted by Dr. Jeanne White When older children and adults perform chores such as doing laundry or putting away dishes, they may not even realize they are making decisions about how to classify objects into categories—washing the white clothes together and putting the plates together on a shelf. Young children can begin to see how […]

Using Children’s Literature to Reinforce Patterns

posted by Dr. Jeanne White Young children naturally begin to create patterns with objects such as Unifix cubes or colored tiles, even if they do not realize what they’ve created is called a pattern. A child’s early knowledge of color or shape patterns can lead to later recognition of more complex patterns in large numbers […]

Using Children’s Literature to Reinforce Geometry

posted by Dr. Jeanne White As young children are formally introduced to the names of shapes, they begin to notice these shapes in their surroundings. They see their plate as a circle and their napkin as a square when they eat dinner. They look at the windows and doors in a room and recognize them […]

Using Children’s Literature to Reinforce Counting and Cardinality

posted by Dr. Jeanne White Young children love it when an adult sits down and reads a book to them, carefully studying the illustrations before the adult can turn the page. Why not seize these opportunities as a way to introduce or reinforce mathematical concepts? There are four reasons why I like to use children’s […]