05/13/2022
As a student, math was the bane of my existence; my report cards were mostly solid A’s with C’s and even a D, in trigonometry, in math. Lucky for me, math was not the basis of almost everything when I was a kid; not so true today.
I tried my best but with very little success; I therefore avoided taking math or math based (Economics, Statistics, Oy!) as much as I reasonably could.
When I became a principal, I took a lot of workshops and courses to bolster my knowledge base; I remember one lecture, but not the name of the speaker, vividly. This very large woman, wearing a huge straw hat, stood on the stage lecturing to a group of about 500 educators. She walked to a blackboard, it was the olden days and before the invention of the Smartboard. She may or may not have introduced herself, and then quickly started writing a bunch of numbers and equations across the entire surface of this board. As she wrote, she talked, for some but not me, and explained. When she was finally finished with no more room on the board, she said, “That's how it’s done, everyone understands?”
Many in the large room raised their hands, Not Me!! I was not alone in my confusion.
The speaker then laughed and explained; “there is an anxiety disease infecting our students, mainly girls, called “math phobia”. I believe that it’s not because it’s more difficult than other subjects; the cause of so much math anxiety is simply Poor Teaching. According to this speaker, teachers themselves are not prepared appropriately to teach math correctly and therefore should not be expected to be able to teach it so that kids can learn to be math confident.
I cannot tell you how good her words made me feel. I carry that message with me to this day, 20 years later.
This week, Mrs. Beer brought her charming math brilliant son to be the guest lecturer for her fifth grade honors math class; those kids are good math students and those kids know their stuff! As I watched Yonatan teach math concepts that filled the smartboard with numbers and more numbers, I observed the students sitting in rapt attention. One boy, Charlie, actually seemed to glow.
I asked Charlie what he thought of the lesson. He turned to me and said, “ Oh yes, this is Art.”
Math is Art?
When the class was over, the kids rushed the guest teacher, plying him with questions and showing off their numbers to Yonatan. There was an exciting vibe in the room.
It was a magnificent moment that reminded me why I chose to be a teacher.
An interesting lesson that I learned on my rocky math journey was that math and arithmetic are very different; arithmetic is mechanical, practiced and mastered. Math is a language and an art. I’m not good at arithmetic but I understand math. I get the concepts and the big picture.
Good teaching has helped me overcome some of my phobia but you still won’t find me taking a math class anytime soon. As teachers, we must make sure that we are fluent in our subject matter and that we are prepared in our practice. Teachers are tasked with putting down the foundations for our students’ future in just about everything.
Last week at the Yom Haatzmaut concert, Mordechai Shapiro asked the cheering audience of kids, “How many of you were my students?” Mordechai’s smile lit up his face when ⅓ of the audience raised their hands. It is clear that Mordechai cherishes this accomplishment among his many.
The State Fair projects incorporated cutting edge technology and were created by the children and not their parents. What we witnessed today was good teaching and it was awesome.
The poor teaching that I suffered as a child still colors my daily life. At HANC, I am so proud of the staff’s commitment to hard work coupled with a sincere dedication to students and the school. It cannot be taken for granted that teaching is a hard earned art that builds a child’s tomorrow.
The impact of a teacher lasts forever.
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