Math with Molly

Molly | math tutor | nerd humor

[girlfromenglishclass]

People who complain that school doesn't teach them anything they can use in real life often have severe misconceptions about what real life is. Chiefly, that they're already in it.

Yes, we could teach you how to fill out a tax form or pay bills, but I promise these things are actually quite unchallenging. Like, I could teach you, but it'd take like 20 minutes; you'll be fine.

The biggest problem is that these complaints make "real life" seem to just be 1. acquire job 2. know how to do job. And that's important, but it's a small fraction of life. If all my students have is a job and the ability to pay bills, then I haven't done justice to their education.

School also teaches you how to care about things. How to know when you must care. What to do with that care. You need to be equipped with critical thinking skills to decide what should be deconstructed, what you really believe and don't believe instead of what you're told. You need to know the history of these things to make informed choices. And yes, even math, even when they put letters in it, is giving you a mind. It's working and wiring your logical reasoning that will guide you.

The main thing people who make this complaint don't understand is that when we talk about children as the "next generation, the future" it's literal. We won't be here forever! We will die! And then it's YOU who is in charge! You decide!

You decide how society changes. You decide what stays and what gets left behind of popular ideology. So, you go to school, and we teach you everything we know. Yes, even that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and lines from Shakespeare's sonnets and what year the civil war happened. Because it matters.

It matters because we know it! It's knowledge! And if we don't teach it, it dies, like we will, so now it's yours. Decide what you teach the next ones. And if that's just how to get a job and pay taxes, well, we did our best.

[whitepeopletwitter]

All adds up.

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[math-with-molly]

I love my Tuesday sessions. Working with smart elementary schoolers is so fun. Their curriculum moves so slowly that we get to work on a lot of enrichment content. I get the chance to teach them all these middle school concepts in an elementary way, and it builds suchhhh a strong fundamental understanding of math. I wish all kids had this opportunity.

[heyjessicaelena]

You can follow me on Instagram here.

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[math-with-molly]

I love tutoring so much.

[math-with-molly]

When you think you're doing a poor job tutoring a kid (his content is hard) but then the mom calls you and tells you that his grade has gone up three letter grades and she's thrilled.

[math-with-molly]

[languill]

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

[flavoracle]

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

[c-is-for-circinate]

THIS.

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they don’t realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, don’t see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that it’s hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)

[surprisebitch]

i looked up New Math after reblogging a recent post that explained it and gosh… is this really what Math is nowadays… please tell me this is only one method and not the prescribed mandatory method students have to deal with cause the Old Math method is not only quicker but also, efficient. and when you reach higher levels of Math, the New Math Method will screw you over tenfold because of how long the process is omg

[violetlilly23]

as a person with ADHD, on the autism spectrum, and generally a person who prefers a simple solution, especially if it is just as or more efficient, FUCK THE LIVING HELL out of new math

[deeplylearning]

Ok so as someone with a physics degree who obviously likes math, I think this “new” method in and of itself is pretty fucking neat. I didn’t know this was a thing you could do until… my senior year of college? I learned about this method from the book, “A Mind for Numbers” and it seemed like a really awesome way to get by multiplying numbers you don’t remember the times table for. Because frankly, I just did NOT memorize all of them as a kid out of pure laziness, so occasionally I have to think slightly harder to figure out one I don’t remember.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is not necessarily a bad thing to teach kids. In fact, since you’re splitting up a harder problem into easier chunks, it can make the problem itself less overwhelming. Because it shows you that you can still conquer it even though you forgot an arbitrary fact.

I am not a teacher, nor do I have a child in school, so I don’t know exactly how this is being taught in schools. But if this is the ONLY way they learn how to do it… I agree with everyone else, it is not an efficient way to do math. It is more of a last resort, especially once you get to much higher level math where these things are a given. However… I think this has value the same way learning the formal definition of the limit in calculus has value in understanding how/why limits work, even though there’s a way faster way to solve it.

I think the “new” method is more obvious in terms of understanding. But the old way is definitely easier and more efficient.

EDIT: Apparently I was right, they teach this “new math” first and then the old math later and kids end up with a better understanding of how numbers relate. That’s awesome. Bravo.

[marshmallowmath]

@quantumheels is exactly right! As a math teacher, I will defend “new math” until the day I die. Clearly it’s not quick and efficient, but instead we’re teaching to understanding rather than teaching kids algorithms and focusing on memorization. New math wants students to know why they’re doing each step, not just be able to replicate them on command. While the “old ways” are very valid, correct, and still taught, new methods show different ways of solving the problem and help students make connections between concepts. “New math” is about breaking concepts down into little pieces to show you how things come to be. “New math” wants to give reasons to the math we’re doing.

In so many cases, students that struggle with math often tell me that they just can’t remember what to do next. They get to a point where there’s a trick or they just can’t remember what the algorithm would have them do. This kind of breaks my heart because 1. It convinced them that they can’t do math because they can’t memorize long processes and 2. It means that they’re thinking of math as a series of steps. Math is amazing! Math is about being creative, thinking about things logically, and solving problems in the best way that makes sense to you. With “new math” and the representations students are offered to visualize the math and problem solve, they’re more likely to have ways of finding new solutions and getting themselves out of the hole when they get stuck.

I’ve literally written essay after essay about this stuff while working towards my Masters and I have so much to say about it but I’ll stop here now.

Bottom line: please don’t dismiss “new math” because it’s unfamiliar to you and looks inefficient because you’re missing the point of math and these methods truly, truly help students learn for the long term.

[study-revolution]

gentle reminder: you are very capable and I’m excited for your future

slightly less gentle reminder: you do have to work for it