Today I began a week long math workshop at my new school. Because I typically will do anything and everything to avoid math in life, I knew this workshop would be one of the best things I could do for myself as a teacher as an adult. I also knew that it would be dreadfully painful and bring up a lot of sore memories. One of the first things we did was fill out a sheet entitled: “Writing Your Mathematic Story! When you were in school…remember that…”
1) The CRITICAL EVENTS: Tell about a PEAK EXPERIENCE…a time you experienced joy, happiness, and even inner piece about a mathematical experience. Who was there? Where? How did it happen? (Etc…)
Seventh Grade. Mrs. S. The end was not the reward the process was just as important. This was Assist Math, so it was largely review. Because I was removed so often from my regular classroom and shuttled off to the portables with the remedial kids, I missed a lot of the concepts…like, fractions, I was gone during fractions. So in seventh grade it was as if my entire elementary math education was summed up and cemented in this single solitary school year. It did not last, but for that one year I felt that maybe I had “got it.”
2) Tell about a NADIR (a low experience)…describe the moment or episode . Where did it happen. Again who was involved? What did you do, what were you thinking and feeling?
My entire education is one big NADIR experience…honestly, for the most part. From First grade to Linguistics (who knew math with letters and languages would be even harder than with plain old numbers?) in college, I have little memory of any significant success. I can’t encompass my continuous feelings of failure in regards to even basic math, applying it to every day life is still a struggle for me; I have worn the title of “Bad At Math” almost my entire life.
Should I go on? I outed myself right away. I had so much anxiety sitting in that classroom, my heart raced, my blood pressure went up, and it’s as if I was six years old having my counting blocks taken away all over again. Granted, new technology and research has provided new and different ways to present Math in the classroom. The focus is on problem-solving, mathematical thinking and inquiry versus pounding out arithmetic–which is what most of us did in grade school.
I spent most of my public education removed from regular class and put in Assist Math, counting out blocks and chanting multiplication rhymes. By the time I reached fifth grade I had given up on myself, cheerfully failing tests and not filling out half the answers on the scan tron sheets. I was told ‘you have a mental block against Math.’ I recall the teacher of my Freshman Assist Algebra class grading my test in front of a group of kids. The answer was 41 and I wrote 14. He laughed, circled my answer incorrect with a red pen and said, “What is she? Dyslexic?” (As if I needed one more thing to be neurotic about in 9th grade). I eventually wore the “Bad At Math” title snidely, sarcastically, bitterly. “Yeah, I’m bad at Math, I scored like a 330 on my SAT.” I embraced my absent math skills by laughing at myself for years.
Many teachers had heart warming stories about their math experiences: “I always got Math—I didn’t enjoy it, but I always understood. Than I was involved in this Math class (workshop, retreat, camp) and everything opened wide up and I had this amazing cognitive experience where everything made more sense and I could see the big picture.” So I raised my hand and said, “What if you have never ‘got it’? What if Math is too black and white, too concrete right or wrong, and you failed the work repeatedly–even though you spent all night trying to find that one single solitary answer?”
While I was outing myself as Hopeless I was answering my own questions. Obviously I’m not completely inept, I can count back change and guesstimate the correct 20% tip on a bill. So what if I don’t find Math interesting, I suppose this workshop will show me how it can at least be engaging, (although I discovered that I have no interest in Dollar Words…none).
The bottom line is that I can’t honestly teach Math to kids if I don’t understand it. So, trying to leave the dramatics and hysterics at the door, I am diving head first into very unknown territory.