I thought I had a decent head for math and numbers when I was a kid…

…up to a certain point. I know exactly what that certain point was.

Malcolm Gladwell famously talks about success in ice hockey in his book Outliers. He outlines a Birthday Theory. The idea is that

“…In any elite group of hockey players - the very best of the best - 40 percent of the players have been born between January and March, 30 percent between April and June…’

He expands on this idea; the gist is the way that small advantages in size and weight relative to peers, at a certain age, leads to being a tiny bit ahead, and how this small advantage snowballs as the top players in a young group get invited to an advanced team or league, and from there, the way these small advantages grow into big ones, opening up increased opportunities.

How is this relevant to math? I don’t know precisely. Except to say that I know the point at which the inverse happened to me.

I know the point I started falling behind in math. I know the point I lost confidence, and I know how long it took to get it back. Spoiler: didn’t get it back until deep in adulthood.

The point it happened was in 9th grade. I started the year at a small private religious school; one I had attended for a few years previous. The principal also taught several classes, including high school math. I’ll skip to the end: he did not have a basic understanding of rudimentary math. It’s one thing to live life as a learner, to be humble enough to acknowledge what you don’t know, to figure things out along the way.

It’s an entirely different deal to fake your way through teaching something you have no business doing; especially when it’s at a level where the foundations are being laid for concepts that will be built on for every stage of math after. The ways in which he was incompetent are numerous; it was not until after the fact that I realized just how little he understood. Here’s one of the more important aspects: I did not realize what he didn’t know at the time. Instead of teaching ideas such as, say, how to effectively set up equations, he’d wax eloquent about concepts such as fractals and ‘high math.’ I remember a coloring sheet being passed around one period.

This is my memory. Others may have different memories and experiences. Fine. But I still retain a sadness and an anger that this is the math education I had at this point. I left halfway through the year for other reasons related to incompetence and character. I started in at a math class at the high school…and I was in the deep end. I was behind before I started. I struggled the whole year to catch up in math. The problem is, I got good grades and even though I struggled, I did well enough to not fail, or land on any remedial lists and such. I think my grade was actually decent. I did the work, I did well enough on tests to get - I think - a B.

But I didn’t understand a huge amount of what I was learning.

That bled into the next year. Little by little, I kept falling behind. Not my grades, my grades were fine. But my understanding of what I was doing was doing an inverse snowball. There were more and more concepts we were learning, and I never had a solid enough grasp of certain key algebraic principles to fully understand.

I had a math teacher my Junior and Senior year who was kind, patient, and willing to work with me. She was encouraging and seemed to recognize my desire to learn…but I struggled. I really struggled. At this point I felt surrounded by people heading into engineering, science, and medical fields; all areas that heavily lean on math. I recognize now this was a perception, not reality, but I felt like my classmates and peers were easily getting these concepts that I was really struggling with.

It took me multiple tries to get through Calculus in college. That’s a story in and of itself. But I finally got through. My grade was not good. But I was proud of it, because I worked hard to get it and kept going. As an adult, I’ve slowly, slowly found enjoyment again in numbers and math; enjoyment that was long dormant, that took me back to early and mid-childhood years when I enjoyed math. Why did I enjoy it?

Because I understood it.

I say this again: good math teachers are rock and roll drummers. They are essential, they are gold, they are super stars.

Because they help people like me to understand math.

If you understand something, you can enjoy something.

I sat in her 7/8 class today and listened as she led 25 students through the process of solving linear equations.

Distribute if needed
Combine any like terms on each side
Add or subtract to get the variable by itself
Multiply or divide to find the solution

Dry, but simple, right?

She halted a 7th grader with his whiteboard up, shaking her head:

“If the test is ‘write an equation,’ and you just give me the answer…you fail.”

She came back to this again and again, in a pleasant but firm manner. “Writing an equation,” she said, “is a big deal. You have to learn to write an equation! These are the foundations of how you’ll solve so much that comes further on, from exponents to quadratic functions…you’ll do the same process. Process process process! Even when your equation is huge, the process is the same!”

She patiently walked through multiple examples; going through different options, having each student show proficiency or understanding before moving on, carefully talking through and listening through questions and ensuring that everyone understand the basic principle:

You have to go through the process of 1) setting up and 2) solving an equation.

You have to. You have to. You have to practice it, you have to understand it, you have to embed it.

How many of her students will go into careers heavy on math? I don’t know. A handful? Doesn’t matter how many. What she is doing is amazing; she is respecting them enough to expect their understanding and to demand they achieve proficiency. Her patience is incredible; her manner of guiding and explaining is TED-talk worthy of emulation.

The point is not that many of her students may go into fields someday that require deep understanding of math. The point is that her students will leave her classroom with a solid basis of understanding the core, basic, fundamental principles, and that will give them the ability to stay up on new concepts, to continue building their self-confidence, and to maybe, maybe even enjoy math.

She received one of the best kinds of compliments; the kind that’s not directly given, but rather said to someone else that is a reflection on the teacher. A 7th grader is sitting at her pod of four desks, and finishes a problem. She looks up, looks around a giant smile.

“Hey,” she says, “I don’t suck at math anymore!”

I might have gotten goosebumps. I love that.

Thank you. On behalf of my child in your class, and on behalf of all those you are educating and sending out into further learnings not sucking at math, thank you.

Thank you.

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