Sometimes you especially respect those with similar skills to your own. And sometimes you especially respect those with distinct and differing ones. That is the category in which I place effective Middle School Mathematics Teachers.

It takes a lot of patience to teach math to 7th and 8th graders.

I marvel at the way she can ask a fundamental question : if the equation is ‘x-1,’ and the answer is 7, what does ‘x’ equal?

Crickets.

Finally, a brave soul raises their hand. She continues, nonplussed and encouraging. Again and again, she is patient and encouraging, as she leads them through concepts that are fundamental roots for the upcoming phases of high school math.

I have witnessed again and again the patience - not just tolerant patience, but encouraging patience, in guiding and showing in different ways these ideas; new ones, old ones, circling back around, trying different analogies and examples to try and get everyone up to speed.

Amazing.

Math journal expectations.

She has students keep a math journal, and these are the expectations (I’m paraphrasing).

Keep it neat.
Title and date each page.
Bring it every day.
Use it regularly.
If you’re absent, get the notes.

I love this. These expectations, I think, would work for most subjects in most classes, if not all.

Vi Hart is one of my favorite mathematicians!
-Mrs. ________

A good math teacher is like a rock and roll drummer…

…they’re always necessary and they’re probably always going to have a job.

Things I didn’t have to worry about when I was in Middle School Math, circa 1989:

Network connections going down while going through algebra together on a smart board . Internet? Wi-Fi? YouTube, Vi Hart, Khan Academy? Nope. None of them. What I ended up with, one year anyway, was a teacher who didn’t understand the basic concepts well enough to teach them, so instead he lectured on fractals and ‘high math’ beyond our planes of understanding (pun intended). This did not help me be prepared for high school math. Full stop.

Anyway, that is a frustration that teachers - not just math teachers, any teacher - have to deal with now: the time lost when you’re trying to use an effective online resource and you go offline.

The role of embarrassment in learning.

“I don’t want to do it on the board, it’s embarrassing!”

a student, in reference to solving a problem

Is embarrassment always a bad thing?

I am against shaming, humiliation, or committing acts of indignity against other human beings of any age. However, and it is a big however:

Asking and expecting people, including students, to engage in learning activities, to participate and be a part of things, and yes, to sometimes do something up front that’s uncomfortable, that’s awkward, that’s out of your comfort zone…that can be a necessary preparation for life. You can’t spend all your time on the back rows, on the sidelines, and trying to stay off the radar. Sometimes potential embarrassment is not a reason to avoid something. That is why we have to move away from the hopeless Sisyphean pursuit of perfection, and instead focus on the ongoing necessity to learn, to improve, and to grow.

Here it is in big letters:

We have to move away from the hopeless Sisyphean pursuit of perfection, and instead focus on the ongoing Need to learn, to improve, and to grow.

If a fear of embarrassment was enough to prevent us from doing something, many of us would have stopped learning a long time ago. My face still starts to go red when I speak up or out in public. I get it.

Bonus: learning how to organize information.

One of the common ways students scoff at math is teachers trying to convince them that math will be useful throughout their life. There’s all kinds of reasons why this is true, but here’s one more:

One way Math is relevant is in how it helps you learn to organize information.

As she was taking students through story problems, I was struck by how simple the equations were once you set them up…but how a common phase of getting stuck was in figuring out what information to pull out of the example and where it should go.

This is a super important skill to learn, and practice again and again, whether it’s with numbers (now) or words (the rest of your life):