Fractions

Tuesday's trip to Chemawa was dedicated to one of my favorite math subjects: fractions! I know very few people who don't have a strong aversion to fractions. They seem to contain some element of difficulty and create fear and a lack of confidence in many math-doers. I can see why, especially when placed next to decimals and a good calculator. I also have a little bit of anxiety around them, but there's something so neat about reducing 3/9 to 1/3, or multiplying straight across the numerator and denominator... A big thank-you to the teachers who had the patience and ability to teach me when it mattered most. I worked with a student on Tuesday that sort of, sort of, understood the concept of a fraction, but had mostly memorized the "how" without the "why." A very common occurrence, especially with mathematics. We worked through all of his assignment, and he was kind enough to humor me when I tried to explain the idea of division being the opposite of multiplication... so much of math is logical, and catching onto the logic in the most basic principles makes the transfer to more difficult processes a whole lot easier. I felt for him--there's no way to make it through a fraction assignment without having multiplication tables memorized. So, we made our own little multiplication cheat sheet FIRST, and then worked our way through his homework. I encouraged him to make flash cards and start memorizing things like 5x6, 7x9, 3x8...



Since Tuesday I've been thinking, yet again, about how difficult this business of teaching might be. Not everybody learns at the same pace, students most definitely do not come from the same place as far as what they've been exposed to or how they have been exposed to it, not to mention all of the other factors that affect the ways we learn and our ability to focus our energies. And by high school, there are years and years of knowledge or lack of knowledge that a teacher has to work with. Tricky stuff.