Holiday Week/healing week

I don't have a post ready for this week, but I would like to share a couple of things that I have been looking at in preparation for my next post.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a way at looking at different levels of learning, and has been updated since I took Education Classes. https://www.learning-theories.com/blooms-taxonomy-bloom.html

The other thing I am looking at is Pedagogy versus Andragogy. 

All of this will be part of my discussion of teaching the basic skills of Mathematics to adult students.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday and and Happy New Year.

There are two kinds of math students

There is a great deal of back and forth about whether or not there is such a thing as a "Math Brain." Just Googling the phrase "Is there such a thing as a Math Brain" I got results that went back and forth:

Can't add up? We are either born with a mathematical brain or not ... (Yes there is a difference, Aug 11, 2011)

'Not a Math Person': How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math - KQED (No there is not a difference, Nov 30, 2015)

How Does a Mathematician's Brain Differ from That of a Mere Mortal ... (Yes there is a difference, Apr 12, 2016)
 
Reckon you were born without a brain for maths? Highly unlikely ... (No there is not a difference, Mar 26, 2016)
 
And so it goes
 

One of the things that fuels this yes/no debate is the debate over the idea that some people are left brain and others are right brain. Left brain people are supposed to be more analytical, and therefore math/science type people, and right brain people are supposed to be more intuitive and therefore liberal arts type people.

There are a couple problems with thinking of people in this binary way. First of all, unless the connection between the two sides of the brain, called the corpus callosum, is severed the two sides of the brain are used for just about everything we do. Furthermore, when we factor in the fact that different people have different learning styles we can work with different types of students to help them learn math, even if they are ‘right brained.’ Finally, notice in the diagram above that different things that are used in mathematics (which is shown as ‘left brained’) are useful in working in math. When you are reading a word problem, you need creativity, holistic thinking, and visualization to work out what is going on in the problem. When you get to higher level mathematics, creativity is definitely needed, to be able to go beyond what you already know.

Now, students may not like mathematics, and not wish to major in it, but that is separate from being able to do mathematics. I struggled with German, even though language is shown as ‘left brained,’ so you would think as a mathematics person, which is also ‘left brained,’ I should have had no problems. A great deal of my difficulty, in my opinion, from the fact that I was not at all enthusiastic about having to take a language for my degree.

To my mind, one of the reasons that students come to my classes being convinced that they are not able to do math is that they think that you have to be able to look at a problem and know how to solve it right away, every time. If you are not able to do this, they think, then you can’t really do math. 

Well, if you are taking math in high school, 5^th period, from a book that the school has been using for several years, chances are the teacher can whiz through all the problems without slowing down. But this has nothing with how long it takes to do the problem the first time you see it. One thing I like referring my students to is a scene from the first season of Big Bang Theory.

My favorite way of describing being a math student to my students is as follows.

            There are two types of math students.

The first, when they encounter a hard problem will scream, cry, throw things, cuss and eat too much ice cream, or smoke too many cigarettes. And when they finally get the right answer they go, “Oh thank you God. I never want to do that again.”  

The second, when they encounter a hard problem will scream, cry, throw things, cuss and eat too much ice cream, or smoke too many cigarettes. And when they finally get the right answer they go, “Woot! I did it!” And do a happy dance.

Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means that you may not like it. A quote that I heard years ago, attributed to Gloria Steinem (I have not been able to confirm this, so take it with a grain of salt) that I absolutely agree with is, “There’s no such thing as a math brain any more than there is a history brain”

Inside my student's minds

One of the things I really love about teaching is getting to know my students. Not just how they learn math, but who they are as people. I have found that students tend to do better when they feel valued as a person by their instructor. (I know there are studies about this, and I will post those in the near future.) One way I have found to get to know my students, while helping them feel less intimidated about math is by assigning a final project in lieu of a comprehensive final. I knew professors who would assign projects in Math for Liberal Arts Majors type classes, but it took me awhile to figure out how I could apply this idea to my classes.

When I taught Basic Math Skills I would have students stick to finding the subjects we are covering in class out in the 'real world:' whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percents. In all of the other developmental classes I allow the students more freedom in choosing what their project will consist of. I have also included intermediate deadlines to, ho

At the beginning of the semester I give my students the following:

One of the hardest things for Math Students to do is to feel that there is a connection between what they are doing in class and what they do in the “real world” outside of the classroom.  What this final project is getting you to think about more than the computations that you do in math class.  You have a lot of leeway in the subject that you can choose, and the way you choose to present the material.  A rubric of how I will grade your project is attached.  If you have any questions about how to make sure that you meet all of the requirements, please make sure to ask. 

            Possible Projects:

·         A history of your mathematical journey, including your history and your progression this semester. 

·         An examination of how mathematics is used in the career that you are planning to go into, or the career you have now, or the career you had before coming back to school.

·         Research a mathematician. Include some discussion of what about them makes them so interesting to you as well as, as best you can, some stuff about their mathematics.

·         Research a different number system.

·         Research the history of mathematics. Not all of it, but some area of the history that grabs your interest.

These are just possible projects, but it is in no way an exhaustive list.  If you have an idea on what you want to do that is not on this list, feel free to propose that as a topic.

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In the future I would like to team up with an English Instructor, but right now I tell students that I would rather not have them turn in a research paper, but to think more creatively. I get a lot of poster boards, and this semester I got three PowerPoint presentations – I really like those, they can just email them to me. 

Three students in my class this semester are on the basketball team, so they did different projects on basketball and mathematics. With one of them figuring out the physics of his jump shot.

Because our community college offers both a certificate and a degree in welding I usually get at least one project on math in welding, which has given rise to some interesting builds from my students, from a pseudo-dagger to a bench made from two metal barrels.

Last spring one student’s project was based on a paper for one of her honors class about the benefits of nuclear energy, and the dire ecological circumstances if current energy policies continue.

One student this semester chose to make a short story about her ‘Mathematical Journey,’ complete with stick figure illustrations, and some hashtags based on silly things I have said in class.

            #MyBrainistoast

            #Mybookwentintoanotherdimension (that one I will have to explain later)

A few times I have had students who are very artistic: a painting of a skyline, 

a pagoda with Chinese numbers.

I continue to work on how to help my students bring out their creativity while in math class and to help them see that math is more than what we do in the classroom.

In the Beginning.....

Twenty-five years ago this month I graduated with my BS in Mathematics from the University of Texas. A month later I started teaching what was called at the time Remedial Math. I was teaching at Austin Community College, where I had started my college career. From my first semester at ACC I had been a tutor, and now I was stepping up to the big leagues.

My first couple of semesters were full of the pitfalls that new teachers face: how to handle making mistakes on the board, dealing with students who are angry with how you graded or your policies on late work and absences, and of course, the interminable grading.

But something else happened. Something that was more than the mundane, often aggravating details of teaching. I had decided my first semester in college, while in my own College Algebra class that I wanted to major in Mathematics and teach. I deliberately chose to teach at the community college level. As a tutor I had developed ways of explaining concepts to students, and I wanted to take them into the classroom with me.

Some worked, some didn’t work, some have been adapted to better convey the ideas. What I am going to be writing about in the weeks to come are insights that I have come to after teaching so many students in so many different schools. I will be writing about the pitfalls in doing calculations, where students often make mistakes. I will be writing about how to succeed in math class, things students do that can really help them. And I will be talking about anything else education or math related that come to mind.

The material is more suited for adult students who are taking what is now called where I work Developmental Mathematics. This is where my expertise is, and my one attempt to transfer this to Junior High School students was not successful. If you are looking for the ins and out of EXACTLY how to solve a particular problem, this is not the page you are looking for. I will soon

have links to sites that may help you.

I plan to post every Monday. December 19^th may however may be a day early as I will be having surgery done while the college is closed for the winter break.

I will be starting out with a discussion on how to prepare for being in a college math class, along with encouraging words about people’s ability to actually DO math. I look forward to comments and suggestions on what you have found that works.