Maybe More Kids Would Enjoy Math With More Teachers Like This

As a little kid, I was such a geek that I actually enjoyed math, and since my parents were often doing math with my older sister, I picked up some things by listening in on them. One of those things I learned ahead of my class was the impressive feat of adding a whole three numbers at once!

But when it came time for the class to learn the same thing, they didn’t add the numbers right — at least that’s what young me thought. Our teacher taught us to add all numbers in the ones column, then the tens, etc. By contrast, I’d always added the numbers by adding the first two and then writing the third number under the sum of the first two and adding those. The way I had learned seemed less error-prone. I mean, adding three whole numbers in your head at once — who could possibly manage such a feat?! So, I chose to ignore the way our teacher was teaching it and keep doing things the way my father had taught me.

Then, one day, the teacher had multiple problems written on the board and she called four or five students up to solve their problems at the same time in front of the class. I was on the far end, away from the teacher, but I was worried that she would catch me doing things the “wrong” way, so I did things my way, put the answer, and then hastily erased my work so she wouldn’t see how I did things.

She wasn’t having any of that. When she got to me she agreed that the answer was right but insisted that I needed to show my work. So now, I got extra attention as she made me redo my work in front of the class with her watching me as I did my math “wrong”.

I was honestly expecting a scolding for not doing things the way she had taught us. Instead, she acted surprised and asked me to explain my “complex” logic for how I was doing the work to the class. She told me that was a good way of doing things and actually said she was fine with kids doing math however they wanted if they got the right results.

Come our next math test, we were asked to add numbers the way she had taught us, but the very next question asked us to add the same numbers “[My Name]’s way.” She continued to encourage kids to learn both ways, and I was proud to have a whole way of doing math named after me!

It’s only later as an adult that I can fully appreciate how refreshing it was to have a teacher willing to encourage kids to solve problems their own way rather than insisting we all stick to the officially taught way of doing things. Thanks for being flexible, Ms. [Teacher].