I am not a math guy. Just saying “I am not a math guy” is something that registers high on the Richter Scale of Understatement. Yet there are times when I must put this fact of life aside and apply myself to a mathematical undertaking. Whether it is helping my kids with their geometry homework or editing the math activities on the Featured Resources page of themailbox.com, math is there everyday. It’s true for everyone. Faced with math, I cowboy-up and do my best.
Not a blogger comfortable with boring his readers, I will skip the personal history about why I am not a math guy. I will, instead, tell you that when I was called upon to teach math in the absence of a fellow junior high teacher, it was the most thrillingly uncomfortable teaching moment I ever had. While I could pluck seventeen journal writing prompts about Boxing Day celebrations in the Solomon Islands during the mid-1950s from thin air in one-seventh of a nanosecond, it took me nearly ten minutes just to decipher a single page of the teacher’s edition of my colleague’s math textbook. Teach a day’s worth of math to four different classes at two different grade levels?
Gulp.
But I did it, and it was good. No, I was never comfortable with what I was doing. Integers, inverse operations, quadrants, variables, and quotients? Um, no, but thanks for offering. And while I can make myself at home in a lot of places, both the associative property of multiplication and the distributive property of multiplication over addition are far less attractive to me than Baltic Avenue or Park Place. Did I ever let the students see that I was about as far out of my element as a humpback whale climbing Mt. Everest? No. Did I learn something about myself as a teacher that day? Yes. Teachers have a repertoire of skills, tricks, and gumption to get them through the day.
These days, were I to find myself in this situation again, you can bet I wouldn’t set foot in a math class without stopping off first at themailbox.com for a copy of “Four Corner Flip Out” or the latest “Math in Minutes” ideas from The Mailbox magazine.
Ever found yourself teaching seven thousand miles outside your comfort zone? What tips or tools did you rely on to save the day?