Teri Perl

Teri Perl (born November 19, 1926) is an American mathematics educator, author of mathematics resource books, and a co-founder of The Learning Company.

Education and career Perl was born in New York City, New York. In 1947, she received a bachelor's degree in economics from Brooklyn College in New York. She did post-baccalaureate work at San Jose State University in California and earned a secondary mathematics teaching credential there in 1969. While doing substitute teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, Perl discovered that there weren't adequate resources for substitute teachers. She began a long-distance collaboration with Miriam K. Freedman to produce A Sourcebook for Substitutes and Other Teachers. Freedman developed the material for teachers of English, foreign languages, and social science and Perl for teachers of mathematics and science. Perl was a mathematics consultant and resource teacher at Ventura Elementary School in Palo Alto, California in the 1970s.

After her youngest child was in high school, Perl attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics education in 1979. The title of her dissertation was "Discriminating Factors and Sex Differences in Electing Mathematics". From 1971 to 1979, while working on her doctorate at Stanford, Perl taught part-time at San Francisco State University.

Selected publications

Book review: