Demystifying Elementary Math (from a Secondary Perspective)

  I hope you (and the children/students in your life) had the chance to watch the Perseverance land on Mars recently. Or see the Dragon launch last year. Every single one of the astronauts, engineers,  and technicians had years of schooling to prepare for THAT MOMENT. Every doctor or nurse has been trained through lectures, tests, and field experiences.  Something that strikes me every year around this time, as our seniors are making college decisions and our juniors are taking the ACT and beginning the application process, is that not one person in any interview I've ever had has asked me about my grades or GPA. We have tied up so much time and energy into thinking that only the best survive, but we KNOW that can't be true.  All that does is overstress our teens and lead them to believe that successful people never struggle. That is a damaging belief - especially when internalized by students who are struggling.  Here's my take on grades: 

  Tell me if you've heard this one before...              Parent and child at the table working on child's homework.               Child becomes frustrated and begins to cry             Parent becomes equally (or more) frustrated by the tears/the                      assignment/both.           Sound familiar?            It's pretty common, but let's ask a new question - what's the upstream problem?   Not familiar with the idea of "upstream problems"? It was new to me until very recently - but the best description I've heard is this:  There's a town in which every evening a child washes up on the banks of the local river. Every day the fire department rescues the child and is lauded as heroes.  One day a new fire chief takes ov...

By offering multiple ways to arrive at an answer, we are more inclusive of how students think. And in the end, who does that inclusivity hurt? (Being exposed to multiple strategies harms no one and is considered a best practice of mathematics teaching.) And who does it help? (Everyone! Our brightest students benefit from hearing alternative thought processes, and our struggling students benefit from seeing peers solve using methods similar and different from their own.) WIN WIN!