How My Math Teacher Taught Me Everything Except Math

Like every kid, I was required to take a math course every year at school—before and after the diagnoses of my learning disabilities. As I went from counting to multiplication tables, my math skills got worse. As I struggled, I heard the mantra “work harder” from every adult around me. We tried charts, color coding, songs, lectures, pleading, bargaining, scolding, educational therapists, tutoring—carrots and sticks. Nothing worked. It was like trying to teach a blind person how to see. Every failure hit me emotionally. Long after all my classmates had passed their twelves times tables tests, I was being kept in from recess to practice my threes. I was frustrated, angry, and filled with quite a bit of self-hate. I must not be working hard enough … right? Eventually, I made my way to Bridges Academy, where teachers specialized in working with twice-exceptional kids. Being in a school that understood my learning disabilities was one thing. Undoing years of negative conditioning was another. I had already developed the habit of hiding math homework, mysteriously going missing during tests or secretly using cheat sheets, and skillfully manipulating conversations away from math. Throughout middle school, I had zero work ethic and didn’t want one. Not for math. I treated it as a joke, clowning in class or shrugging it off with an uncaring attitude. I preferred to self-sabotage rather than risk failure and humiliation. I would turn in homework with elaborate drawings explaining why math doesn’t matter. Every time I could, I would ditch class and wander about the school. Or, when forced to sit in class, I would sulk, simply refusing, and if called on, would throw a temper tantrum inappropriate for my age.[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Ken helped me realize that wrong answers were just not the final answer.[/perfectpullquote] Something changed in tenth grade. My math teacher, Ken, failed at teaching me algebra (so badly that I went on to flunk it two more times in college), but he taught me something much more important instead. I came into Ken’s class with the same wretched attitude that I had nurtured for years. I’m sure there were staff meetings to discuss my bad behavior and develop strategies to help me progress in math. But none of that is what changed my life. It wasn’t about the math. Ken taught me things that no one throughout all my schooling had ever done, things that applied not only to math, but to any subject in or out of a classroom. Ken helped heal my behavior problems. He didn’t try to fix them, an important distinction. Instead of making me feel crushed by getting an answer wrong, Ken helped me realize that wrong answers were just not the final answer. Let me illustrate with some role playing. The scene is a classroom with twenty students. The math teacher is working on an equation on the board while explaining new concepts and asking the students questions. For someone like me, this is dreaded beyond belief because it goes like this:

Generic Math Teacher: Alright, kids, so now we have to divide 50 by 5+3. Who knows the answer? Hey there, you, Elinor! You tell us.

Elinor: No idea.