Ed struck gold today.

He's interviewing students from Westchester County who are applying to Princeton.

Today he interviewed two amazing students, both of whom are headed for math-related careers.

Both students have Math Brain parents, and both are Chinese-heritage immigrants, which I think is OK to say, given articles like this one. ($) They went to school abroad during their early years.

One of them gave Ed an amazing piece of advice.

He said his dad had complained all the way throughout his school years here in the U.S. that math was not being taught conceptually.

He countered this by having his son derive every formula he used.

The boy said this had helped tremendously, that he now has a great deal of conceptual understanding of math. (He's in BC calculus.)

I think that's brilliant.

My challenge, now, is figuring out how to teach math in the tiny pockets of time we have that aren't devoted to school.

Grade school was easy. I taught my own separate curriculum. Saxon Math: every lesson, every problem in every problem set.

We had the time, and we did it.

There's no time now. Christopher goes to school all day, then has homework to do at night, and his brain is consumed by thoughts of girls and lunchroom rivalries with his friends and he's rebellious, resistant, and emotional. (Apparently, middle school means mood swings, something I didn't know going in.)

Carolyn and I started writing this blooki nearly a year ago saying reactive teaching was a bad thing.

Now I have to figure out how to do reactive teaching that works.

This may be the way to go.



update: an example from Saxon

Susan asked about what deriving a formula means.

I'm not certain I know, but I think I can give an example from pre-algebra.

Saxon 8/7 teaches the 'formula' for finding the area of a trapezoid thusly:

To me — and let me know if I'm wrong — that's 'deriving a formula,' or close to. The student has to know that a trapezoid can be divided into two triangles, and that you can add the areas of the two triangles together to get the area of the trapezoid.

In contrast, Prentice-Hall teaches the formula this way:

To us this is the same thing, but to an 11-year old just starting out it's not.

Saxon gives kids a lot of practice with the un-simplified version before anyone moves on to the standard, simplified expression.


advice from a top high school student
rote knowledge in Everyday Math



-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Feb 2006

Back to: Main Page.