Tiger Math

As a parent and a former elementary school teacher, I cringe every time a parent tells me his or her child’s teacher “can’t teach” or “doesn’t teach right” – And when that teacher is a math teacher I drop to the floor, curl up, and squeeze my eyes shut real tight — I wrap my arms around myself and rock myself and tell myself that everything’s going to be alright –

You see, my mother — my Tiger Mother – “taught” me math because my American elementary teacher didn’t do math “right.”

The “right” way to learn math was to memorize the “rules” and complete page after page of timed workbook drills. If I failed, I stood in the corner of the dining room, faced the wall, and recited the times tables from zero to 12 until I was asked to stop (and not before).

I spent hours quietly tracing the faint lines and mottled designs in the wood paneling on our dining room wall. Sometimes I’d imagine microscopic race cars speeding around and around the wavy tracks. Sometimes it would be a train – a steam engine – chugging along a dangerous mountain passage with its treacherous curves.

Now, mid way through my 40s, I still stumble on my times tables and I need a pad and pencil to write the numbers down — so you see why I get a little twitchy whenever a parent tells me his or her child’s math teacher isn’t teaching math “right.”

BUT I’m an adult.

And as an adult, I’ve come to accept math as a necessary evil like heavy drinking at the end of a particularly hard day. I have a truce with math. It accepts that I will always stumble when it comes to doing even the simplest bit of arithmetic in my head and I accept that I will need to do simple bits of arithmetic in my head when I count out scoops of coffee or measure cups of rice to water or figure out the appropriate tip after dinner out.

As a parent and an educator — a former elementary school teacher, now a curriculum developer – I want more from math for my children. I want them to LOVE math (not just tolerate it like I do). I want them to see as much value in the challenge of solving a particularly complex equation as they do getting to the next level on a videogame. I don’t need them to become mathematicians or engineers but I would like them to have the same enthusiasm for puzzles and disciplined approaches to solutions.

Currently,I am familiar with three classroom math curricula: TERC, Everyday Math, and Singapore Math. The former is well intentioned but often too repetitive and laborious. The latter is my favorite because it acknowledges the need for memorization, appeals to the visual learner, and incorporates Language Arts in its answers. The challenge to the latter is helping students like myself build rote memorization skills.

Unfortunately, I don’t think too highly of the middle. I want to believe it is well intended but where TERC does not provide enough direction, Everyday Math is overly prescriptive. Students spend a lot of time doing math but very little time thinking about it. Their so-called Journal is a repackaging of the traditional workbook instead of a place for students to write about math and construct a deeper understanding of it.

BUT as a result of its over-prescription, Everyday Math is able to offer a well organized site for parents that is correlated to the its classroom textbooks. This is an accessible and easy to use resource for parents wishing to work collaboratively with their children’s teacher to support math learning outside of the classroom. Neither TERC or Singapore Math provide this level of teacher-parent collaboration.

I like Singapore Math because,  based on the way it was presented to me several years ago at a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference, students are allowed to draw out a problem. They are literally able to draw pictures to represent the information given within a word problem. Also, a solution is not complete until they write out their answer in a full sentence (meaning the answer to a word problem is not just a digit like “4” but a written statement like “There were 4…”)

And while I like the drawing and solutions written out in a proper sentences, I am burdened by the painful truth that the success of Singapore Math relies on its expectation that students will memorize and quickly access core math facts like multiplication tables.

I draw a distinction here between the teaching multiplication tables and the automatic recall of them. Stumbling on the later does not mean failure of the former. Stumbling on recall might mean devoting attention to teaching and modeling methods of memorization instead of additional teaching of the content itself.

I am a fan of musical mnemonic strategies. Schoolhouse Rock taught me English and Math (as well as American History and Science) –

I should clarify – School taught me English and Math and American History and Science but it was Schoolhouse Rock that helped me remember what I was told.

There are several “Tiger Endangering” mnemonic methods in addition to song. Another favorite is having students create their own flash cards or better yet they create their own matching games where the equation must be matched with the solution.

For example, making the set from index cards and markers, one card might have “4×4” on it and another “16.” With all the cards face down, the goal would be to match “4×4” to “16.” Students would play the same way they would play a store bought matching game with pictures. The exercise builds memory skills and creates associations between equations and solutions.

The Math Department at Kutztown University has posted some familiar math rhymes and anagrams to help students remember their math facts – Including the lyrics to the Schoolhouse Rock “Multiplication Rock” songs. The Mathematics Learning blog has a post on “math mnemonics” that includes an informative comment thread. And the Math Forum @Drexel provides a list of suggested mnemonic techniques from teachers around the world.

I am pleased to say that none of the materials I came across suggested standing in a corner for hours, repeating the times tables.

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The YouTube clips at the top are from Jack Neo’s I Not Stupid Too. It and the movie that came before it, I Not Stupid, deeply impacted my parenting.

Dr. Tae Says: School Sucks!

See the complete lecture at http://drtae.org

First, thanks to Rebecca at Modite for sharing this video on the Brazen Careerist Network. It was very inspiring. Second, thanks to Dr. Tae for putting his thoughts down on video and then sharing them. As someone who has been in education for over a decade, struggling now to thrive in an environment of high stakes testing centers, his philosophies are reaffirming. Hope lingers.

Dr. Tae says: School Sucks! And I agree. In it’s current condition school is nothing more than a testing center devoid of any depth or engagement. And what is most disappointing is that the general public and its politicians – its experts – want this!

“Teaching and Learning As Cultural Habits” is perhaps my favorite statement from his lecture. There is not enough emphasis put on instilling positive cognitive habits at an early age. I say “cognitive” instead of “study” or “academic” because those words have come to have bad educational connotations in my opinion. “Academic” and “Study” have come to mean the uninspiring rote regurgitation of information. We say a school is a “good school” nowadays not because it is involved in its community and its students demonstrate charity and a social conscience but because the students “test well” and are “obedient.”

Children are born curious about their worlds and in awe of its many touches, tastes, smells, sights, and sounds. Presently, our schools discourage inquisition, experimentation, and learning. In their places our present schools award mindless, thoughtless compliance. I am always reminded of the story of an MIT professor who asked his students to observe an image and write down what they saw. One of his students confused by the activity and looking panicked, asked him: “But Professor, What should I see? The emphasis on test scores and the fear of a “wrong” answer had silenced the student cognitively. I felt the same frustration when I taught sixth grade math and was constantly asked, “What’s the formula?”

I agree with Dr. Tae’s assertions about how students learn – through the creation of knowledge – through meaningful hands on experiences – through personalization. Though he teaches adults and college students, his observations are applicable in the K – 12 classroom – which goes to show even though an adult mind is considered to be more able to cope with abstract concepts, the inclusion of concrete hands on experiences remain essential to teaching and lesson planning regardless of age.

On STEM education, he cites an interview with Dr. Lawrence Krauss, Director of the Origins Initiative and science education advocate. Dr. Krauss says, American kids in grades three and five are actually more advanced in science and mathematics than their international peers but by the time these same American kids turn 15, they do significantly worse. He says, “We’ve been doing something very effective to de-educate them or disinterest them in science.”

I don’t think it is too far fetched to say that the removal of hands on experiments in favor of longer lectures, more chapters from oversized textbooks, and more high stakes tests, from grades three to 10 has lead to the “de-education” Dr. Krauss speaks about. It is also not too off the point to ask, why politicians and the general public – even highly qualified scientists – believe it is OK to remove meaningful tactile real world experiences from teaching once a student reaches age X?

Dr. Tae makes a lot of sense here. What’s sort of disappointing is that he is making “common sense” – revelations that are easily rationalized or witnessed. As far as I know he has had no specialized training in education. His degrees are in Physics. Without getting into a discussion of what a qualified educator looks like, Dr. Tae has made some insightful comments that those running school districts – who are also mostly non-educators like in New York – should heed.