Today I had a student show me a different way to multiply. It’s called the lattice method and apparently they teach it with the Everyday Math curriculum. I had seen it on his test from last week and meant to ask him about it. To me, it looks complicated. It’s a box with diagonals drawn and the kids are taught where to put the numbers and then they add along the diagonals. After he showed me how to do it, I asked, “Where did you learn that?”
He looks at me, raises an eyebrow, “Jail.”
I’ve been doing this long enough where that answer doesn’t even phase me. I don’t really want to know why he was in jail. I just continue to talk, acting like it’s no big deal, and encourage him about how well he does in math. He says that he wants to get ahead in math because it’s his birthday Saturday. The sad thing is that he’ll only be turning fifteen.
December 19, 2007 at 12:05 am
This person has a very good future ahead of him. To succeed in education requires an unwavering commitment to learning. He appears — at least to me — committed.
December 19, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Not surprising…such is the life of an inner city teacher. Too many people don’t get it, though. We do this without blinking an eye, just keep doing our job, and yet the criticisms keep on coming. Why aren’t your test scores higher? Why so many dropouts? It’s got to be something YOU are doing. Our district just settled a two-year contract dispute, and we are getting raises, but the whole time we kept hearing that we needed to settle this so we could get back to teaching the kids. When did we ever stop? Oh, maybe while they are in jail, or they ran away. We’ve been here, all along, in our classrooms, doing what we do, teach.