My Mathography

My earliest memory of elementary mathematics was in first grade adding numbers.  My mother helped me to remember that we had an old chalkboard in the basement that we used to draw on as kids.  After my first couple days of first grade my mom told me that I dragged my younger sister down to the basement to show her what Mrs. Kennedy taught us that day.  Apparently I still have the same effect on some of my students, because she was not interested.   I enjoyed mathematics better than English class because if I missed a problem on a test I could get the answer and work backwards to figure out what I was doing wrong.  The fact that there was an actual “right” answer to the problem is what attracted me to mathematics.   When I wrote a paper for English I would wonder why I got a “B” or “C.”  The lack of feedback turned me off from English until I reached college and I finally got the feedback I needed to correct my writing.

I remember the fresh smell of the ditto machine and all the practice.  Since I knew my facts, it was gratifying to complete a sheet with ease.  It felt good to just get it and understand mathematics without studying.  I remember working a lot with my mother to memorize my vocabulary words for Friday’s spelling test.  The practice we did in class was enough for me to do well and understand it.

The two most vivid math memories I had were the two math tests I failed in elementary school.   The first was in second grade and I had to write down what time it was if it was quarter till four.  Since the entire class did so poorly on the test, Mrs. Gammel retaught telling time and I did well on the retest.  The second test that I did poorly on was the first test I took for Mr. Turner in sixth grade.  I made my four with the triangle (ex. 4), but he marked all of the questions with a four in it wrong because he only accepted square fours with the open top.  All of the problems were solved correctly, but to this day I make the square open topped fours.

Mr. Sharick, my seventh grade Pre-Algebra teacher, was my favorite math teacher.   I remember the classroom being very calm and comfortable.  He had very clear expectations for his students and I only remember one occurrence of student misbehavior.  I do not remember learning a specific topic or lesson, just that everything was clean, clear, and orderly.  I also greatly appreciated when a large portion of students would miss a test question; he would remove it from the test score, reteach the topic, and retest the topic on the next test.

Mathematics was always one of my favorite subjects growing up.  The reason I enjoyed it was because I could easily identify the mistakes I made and learn to correct them.  The analytical processes involved worked well for my learning style.  I did not mind learning a rule because once you memorized it; the rule could be applied to similar problems.

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