Another Chapter

In my last post I told a little story about my eighth grade math class. Let me tell a more positive math class story that may put the eighth grade story in context.

Fifth grade was fabulous. My teacher, Mrs. Plunk, gave me and one other student the math book, flipped a good way through it and said, "Start here." The starting point for each of us was the first section we didn't already have proficiency in. While she gave the rest of the class a regular lesson, the two of us were allowed to work on material chapters ahead of the rest of the class on our own. When I felt like I had done enough practice problems in a chapter, I went up to Mrs. Plunk's desk and she gave me a post-test. If I got a 100%, I moved on.

That year was the year I discovered I loved math. Everything was so new! So cool! So much fun!

When I finished our book, she went and got the sixth grade book, flipped through it to the last unit and again said, "Start here." I asked about the earlier stuff in the book and she said "You know how to do all that." I looked through it. She was right.

That moment is the moment I realized that all the math books I had used in that state started all over again with addition and subtraction. At the time, I thought this was incredibly stupid. Later, someone told me this approach to math is called spiraling.

In sixth grade, I moved to a new school in the same state. The year opened with us studying addition and subtraction all over again. I told my new teacher "I know how to do all of this already." She said to me, "What do you want? A brownie button?" I didn't say much after that.

In sixth, seventh and eighth grade, I sat through math classes, bored out of my mind. Occasionally, I refused to do homework in rebellion. You have no idea how happy I was to go to high school.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Plunk changed my life. From that year on, I thought of myself as someone who loved math and was good at it. But that one year did have the side effect of making the next three years really painful.