What have I been doing at the week long Math Workshop? Playing with wooden blocks, colored plastic cubes that connect, and lot’s and lot’s of graph paper. Yesterday we constructed gigantic Oompa Loompa factories using rolled up newspapers constructed into triangles…we had to build them ten times larger than our model. Our Oompa factory was a gigantic head with an attachable “thinking cap” that came on and off. The ‘candy’ was produced inside the brain of the factory and spit out the mouth. After the designated designers in my group pitched the idea I was in charge of documentation. I drew cartoon versions of our factory including a conceptual and graphic 3/d design…but I totally forgot to add any mathematical findings into the data. When it came down to how many triangles or how many sides it took to create our factory I was clueless. When I presented our factory using my drawings I summed it up by saying, “Uh…it’s presented less mathematical and more creative.” I was corrected: “No, no, not less mathematical but highly VISUAL.” Ok, cool…visual.
I’m making fast friends with the other Resident Teachers…out of the 6 in the lower elementary group 4 of us are married and 1 is engaged. It was a nice surprise, considering I thought I would be this old married crone amongst a gaggle of fresh-faced, early-twenties, graduate student bound resident teachers. Actually, half of the residents already have some sort of master’s degree and/or teaching certification. I’m impressed! The ten of us were picked from 350 applicants, so pats on the back all around. I’m sure most of them are questioning why I’m here since I’ve exhibited some stunning Math incomprehension…just wait until we hit Language Arts, ladies, I’ll ROCK that workshop.
All in all, I have found the workshop to be incredibly engaging. Although I still find Math to be difficult and overwhelming, I can’t argue with playing with blocks to learn multiplication and division. It’s incredibly helpful and meaningful to have a visual aid and I curse my former teachers for taking away my tiles in first grade. It would have made more sense had I not been pushed into memorizing and factoring inside my blank head and not visually presented using 3-dimensional objects. What a different world it has become. If I ever have a Math Challenged child, he or she will have a lot more resources than I did.
My favorite tool? The fabulous Geoboard. Who knew it was so much fun to string rubber bands all over a bed of nails? Despite the temptation to flick rubber bands at each other, the Geoboard is a great tool for teaching geometry.

In other news, enthusiastic congrats to Johnny and Amy for creating a soon-to-be Mini-Peel! (I actually got misty when I found out…)