My Angst with Teachers.

Alright, now I'm an adult. There's a library 300 feet from me with proof of everything I could possibly need in mathematics. So there's no excuse for me not understanding any math taught in class. Just, you know, laziness. But at one point I was a wee child and all I could really do was ask questions. I was always good at math, excelled even, but a lot of the time I had questions. Questions (although I couldn't yet express it so clearly) a young me would consider fundamental to learning. Why does the math work?
I remember a particularly unpleasant teacher in 8th grade who would just point to the math over and over and say "see! It works" and I think we were talking about the Pythagorean theory.

I guess what I'm saying is that if we are all going to be teaching children math we have to be prepared to have our explanations challenged. That is the nature of children, or at least some children. You have to be prepared to explain something nine different ways because these kids are all different. Luckily for the kind of stuff that we'll be teaching there really is a chance to do that. I mean, this is the best chance to really sink in proper math skills in students. So we have to teach math without stressing it. We have to make it enjoyable, because imagine how much easier the hard math classes could have been if someone had really taken the time to make sure you really knew, really understood, how math worked. There is so much cool stuff you can teach kids, and most teachers do a lot of really creative and neat things with English or History, and Science too. But i remember math was always a very serious time, and that was okay for me, but a lot of kids struggled in that. I mean, seriously, a lot of adults struggle trying to pay attention in classes they paid hundreds of dollars to go to, but Greg, who spent all his money at the Cafeteria during lunch on ice cream, the nine-year-old is somehow to be expected to pay attention to the most boring thing he could possibly imagine. Seems like we need to improve the teaching more than anything else.

And furthermore, I'd like to say that we, as teachers of the future work force, may want to stress occupations that use serious math. Because those people exist, and they make a lot of money and wouldn't it be cool if Sally decided she was going to be good at math because when she was 4 she decided that she wanted to be an engineer. I'm just saying, the stigma against math is there and it starts early. But, we have to plan ahead for the future of these children. What jobs are there going to be 20 years from now? I'd put money that a lot of those jobs are going to be pretty heavy on the math and science.

In Conclusions, I really think that the only thing holding kids back from learning mathematics well are the teachers and their methods.