Shut the Door and Teach

I’m reaffirmed in my stance on math education. I’ve been a math interventionist, math coach, and worked with advanced learners. A few years ago I was working with a gifted learner because he couldn’t get the correct answer to a multiplication problem. He had spent three fourths of the page trying to solve the problem with the box method/area model. With our current math education we teach multiple strategies to learners. You can do it this way, or this way…..or this way…whatever strategy works best for you. Students end up with so many strategies they can’t find their way out of a paper sack! Even when I sat with this particular child and showed him the “old fashioned” way of multiplying double times double digits, he still wanted to gravitate towards the area model. Another child this week was confusing two different strategies and was not able to get the correct answer because of it.

Last week I went to visit a former students who had left to go to a private school. He was excited to show me his sticker collection, his cats, and how he was leaning long division. Guess what?! No 15 strategies to arrive at the answers, and he was getting it right. Why are we making math difficult for students when it doesn’t have to be? At my school by the way, math fact drills are forbidden unless it’s covert. I’m of the ask forgiveness and not permission on the math fact drills. I will continue. Why do we have to make learning so difficult when it doesn’t have to be?