Using Bad Words In School

9/21/2013

Being a math teacher, we have this unique challenge that many of our colleagues don't have the pleasure of dealing with. You see, math is difficult. Math has a hard time translating to the daily lives of teenagers and, for the most part, adults. We can make math engaging, interesting, and plausible as much as we want, but there will still be human beings who see "math" as a 4-letter word (yes, I know). Heck, there's even scientific research to support Math Anxiety.

.@Jstevens009 They're were a lot of adult fixed mindsets re: math ability at Parent Night as well.
— Chris Robinson (@absvalteaching) September 20, 2013

Because you're on twitter (you are on twitter, right?) and because you're already following Chris (this is assumed. Chris is must-follow material), you've certainly been involved in some great discussions and pondered many thoughts about the way that we teach math. The tweet above came from the guts of a conversation we were having about parents proudly proclaiming "I suck at math".

The trickle-down effect of this announcement pours right into the laps of math teachers as we try to instill our passion for mathematics into our students. "My parents suck at math, they seem to not need it, so I won't ask for help, then I suck at math, then I'll find a job that doesn't need it". Unfortunately, we're not even talking about standard deviation, differentiation, or sine functions. We're talking the bad words of school. We're talking about the words that everyone knows, but they might as well not be allowed to be spoken at home or at family functions.

The F Word

The dirtiest, nastiest, and most inappropriate of all bad words is certainly the F-word. Fractions. When we're trying to cut something out of a unit to make life easier for students and teachers, we cut fractions. If we're looking to assess a standard, we remove the fractions so that they don't get in the way of the standard itself. Huh?

Why? The one thing that students need help with the most is the concept that we're cutting? No wonder kids hate fractions. To make matters worse, we foster this hatred by skirting around them, cutting them out, or downplaying their existence.

I tell my students that we will be using the F-word. Not just sprinkled into a lesson, but throughout the year, we will actively engage in the F-word. We could dance around standards without using it, but it sure would be a nightmare trying to solve a problem like this without f'ing it up:

OK kids, let's not use fractions here... And go.

It gets messy, no doubt about it. However, it's also productive. When we are posed with legit problems in engineering, business, economics, carpentry (well, almost all math-rich industries), the problems are not packed nicely with integers. It gets dirty. There are some F-words thrown around. Before you know if, there might even be some D-words as well (don't get me started on decimals). Fact is, students need fractions. They need to be comfortable with the F-word.

The A Word

Teaching Geometry for the first time has had its slew of roller coaster moments. One day it's great because we are discovering, playing and learning. Another is horrendous because the kids don't know how to use a protractor. Things really get hairy when we start using the A-word: Algebra. We started talking about using systems of equations to solve for a variable and the disgruntlement from the crowd was apparent.

"Man, I thought Algebra was last year!"

Yeah, sorry kid, but about that...

Parents see the A-word and the freakout begins. "Whew, thank goodness I passed that class and neeeeeever have to see that stuff again. Ever." Thanks a ton, ma and pa. Unfortunately for that mindset, Algebra keeps rearing its ugly and vicious head throughout high school and college mathematics, so we need to get kids used to it.

Everyone seems to have their own horror story with the A-word. Even other teachers on campus will reminisce on the days of dancing with the A-word, thankful that it finally ended. In fact, there's aFacebook page dedicated to the hatred of this word. That's when you know that things got real. Even the Urban Dictionary has weighed in on the definition of the A-word and, let me tell you, it isn't very positive. Fame reaches its pinnacle when you get a shirt to make your word go viral. Hooray, math teachers, we should be so proud.

Honestly, the list could go on. We could talk about the S-word (simplify), the P-word (properties), and so much more, but it's all the same. My students have gotten used to seeing these words as synonymous with the 4-letter words that used to get their mouths washed out with soap. If that wasn't enough, there is the "I Hate Mathematics" book that's supposed to make you not hate math by starting off with a hatred of math. To cap things off, girls are given a little bit of help with their math from a head-scratching style and appeal.

There has certainly been a lot of research done on Math Anxiety, and hopefully there is more that focuses on the correlation between external support and acceptance of math relevance and how much anxiety is actualized. This blog post did a decent job of teasing out some of the issues, mainly:

On the plus side, the self-confidence and encouragement of parents and teachers can help math-anxious students learn to relax, too. Laura Bilodeau Overdeck, who as a child had "memorized perfect squares for fun," started giving her own children math story-puzzles at bedtime along with their fairy tales. That tradition grew into a blog for friends and then an online community, Bedtime Math, which provides daily math games and puzzles for parents to do with their children.

as well as:

Ms. Beilock's previous research shows teachers with math anxiety can pass it on to their students--particularly students of the same gender. A teacher's self-confidence in the subject, or lack thereof, can feed into gender stereotypes that young children are already internalizing, she found.

I will continue to use those bad words, and many others of comparable relevance, because I am their math teacher. I can only hope that, through time, I can convince the parents of my students and my non-math colleagues that boasting about mathematics is no way to build a generation of students who need to be successful.