Math . . . why do students struggle and how do I help?

 Good morning,

I've been a Math Teacher for the last 18 years.  I liken that to selling a product that no one seems to want to people that can't afford NOT to have it.  We live in a society where not having math knowledge just gets you taken advantage of.  If you don't understand compound interest, credit card companies will be all too willing to give you a free card in college at 0% and then change the interest rate to 22% after a few months.  This works for cell phone companies, mortgages, bank accounts, investments, financial advisors, car loans and a host of other things I didn't think to mention.  Knowing the math can keep you out of those scenarios, and allow you to argue with the "final boss" of a car dealership, the finance guy.  

In addition, we are bombarded with information and graphics that can easily lie to us with statistics if we don't do our fact checking.  But how can you determine if they are making valid claims if you don't understand the math of running a study?  What if the statistics they are using are flawed or skewed to make their point, instead of objective?  The algorithms of youtube and facebook, instagram and tiktok, are guiding us slowly into echo chambers of our own ideas, influencing us to click on things that confirm what we already believe, or want to (confirmation bias).  If we don't train mathematicians to understand these algorithms, and everyday citizens who at least understand that this is what's happening and how to fight back, the polarization of society and the lack of middle ground that we are experiencing now will just worsen, the divide getting larger and the common ground beneath us washed away by the tsunami of social media.

I understand the value of what I do.  But I am no longer willing to be in a classroom doing it.  I'm happy to take less money to teach online, be an adjunct, work at an after school program and be a home health care aide.  It means juggling 4 jobs and making some hay on the side (not a euphemism, I really make hay and raise chickens and grow food, and cut some trees for firewood) but it's a better and more free life.  Why are we so determined as a society to drive people who are thoughtful, well educated, creative and really care about students out of education?  This is not just a me problem.  We hire teachers based on their strengths and then evaluate them on their weaknesses.  We give them problem after problem, initiative after unpaid initiative (unfunded mandates) and then ask them to solve society's and parents' problems too.  They do it, because they care about the kids, for as long as they can.  For me that was 16 years.  The pandemic  made it worse, but teaching was already untenable.  We are called upon to go above and beyond, every day, to solve poverty, inequity, students' lack of access to books and technology, hunger, help with socio-emotional learning needs . . . and oh yeah, teach your subject.

It's my privilege that allows me to walk away.  I know that.  I can afford to live on less because I already had a house and a condo.  I have land so I can make some hay and food.  I also understand that CT is better off than most other places in the country as far as teacher salary.  However I will argue that respect for teachers has never been lower than it is now.  Everybody's gone to school, the argument runs, so they must know how to teach better than you can.  But knowing and having experienced something isn't the same as doing it.  I have had a filling put in but I don't tell my dentist how to do it.  People believe that because they've been to school, they can tell you about the best way to teach and learn.  Add to that the fact that students believe they are in charge now, and that if you offend someone by accident when you are broadcasting into their living room you can be fired, and you have a recipe for a high risk and very low reward career. Somehow, we got the idea that business was a good model.  We took an educational evaluation system which Microsoft adopted and then found too unwieldy and tried to apply it to a field where our "raw materials" are different every year and far more complex than anything a Microsoft employee deals with.  How can you possibly evaluate two teachers with vastly different students based on a standardized test?  If you are making widgets, your raw materials come in pretty close to the same.  Humans are complex, and their complexity gives them great value and should be respected, not forced into the same weighing and measuring tool.

To be fair: I am not a perfect employee or person, and this should not be business vs. education, or teachers v. parents, or teachers v. students, or really teachers v. anybody.  It is a place where there ought not to be conflict.  It is a place where students should be protected, nurtured, and feel safe to learn and take educational risks without fear of someone calling them stupid or different.  I feel the guilt of having left teaching nearly every day.  But I cannot continue to live the conflict and stress filled life I was living.

Anyway.  Back around to students.  They exist in this framework, created by adults for their betterment.  Many of them don't want to be there, or don't excel in the topics we are charged to help them with.  How do we make it ok for them to make a mistake?  How do we curb the rampant societal ideal that  math isn't fun or good or helpful or needed?  I think we as teachers have to model the mistake.  I am imperfect, I am human, I will sometimes get it wrong.  I do this on purpose sometimes, just to make sure students are paying attention (side benefit: I can then make actual mistakes and play it off that way).  That way, errors aren't demonized and perfection isn't the goal.  Learning and improving is.  When we learn not to touch a hot stove, it's either the warning from the parent or the actual mistake that teaches us.  Both are valid, but the mistake teaches us.  I don't want students to fear their mistakes or think they are bad at math because they aren't as fast at their times tables as the other kids.  So I try for wait time, encourage them all to persist, and hope they get that at the end of the day, I'm rooting for all of them.