From Steve
My teaching career began in the classroom. I taught math at the high school level, then junior high, and, finally, upper elementary. After I left the classroom, I became a tutor and had the opportunity to teach individual students from basic addition and subtraction to advanced math and Trigonometry.
Looking back, I recognize that I learned more about teaching math sitting across the table from 1 student than I did standing in front of 30. If you present a topic to one student and he doesn’t get it, you have to find another way to help him understand. You can’t fake it.
While I scratched my head, I would often pray for new ideas and creative alternatives to reach the unique individual sitting across the table.
I quickly found out that every student learns differently. Some respond better to verbal instruction; others to a visual illustration. A third might want to understand why he has to learn this lesson, while still a fourth prefers to just know the process of how to find the answer. I had to determine what style or combination of styles worked for each.
When I developed Math-U-See, the idea was to teach the teacher the central concept, and then provide a smorgasbord of ideas and approaches to fill their teaching repertoire. Then the tutor could draw from the tool box of different strategies until they found the one that worked best for the student.
I would like to share one technique that helped me teach one of my sons (who will remain nameless) when every approach I knew was not working.
When it came time to introduce a new topic, I found he needed a couple of days for the material to lodge in his brain. Since we had the luxury to move at his pace, this was not a problem.
He didn’t respond quickly to my conceptual teaching style, which was frustrating for me and frustrating for him. This led to one stressful session after another.
Another factor was that if I took too much time on the topic at hand, the previous week’s work would quickly dim.
I would like to convey to you how big a deal this was for the two of us. I had experienced success at every level teaching math in the classroom and with a plethora of individual students that I had tutored. Yet I couldn’t reach my own son. And he, on his part, was sitting across the table from a huge, intimidating man, who was a math expert, and he wasn’t able to get it regardless of how hard he tried. The emotions and stress ran high. In desperation I consulted a learning expert who suggested a different strategy.
The new strategy was to be stress-free, provide the necessary time to soak in the topic, and employ a multi-sensory approach which would tap into all of his senses.
On day 1, I would introduce the topic and then do 4-5 examples while I was building, writing, and talking my way through each problem. He merely observed. He did not have to respond or interact in any way. My focus was to input the topic in a multi-sensory stress-free environment until the light went on. He had no homework.
Day 2, I repeated the process and did a few more problems until he was ready to tackle one himself. If he succeeded, then he could do a practice page for homework. If not, I resumed my role and continued
to model the correct procedure to solve a problem..
Day 3, I had to jump to a review sheet to keep last week’s material fresh.
Day 4 was another practice sheet to cement this week’s topic.
Day 5 was a review sheet. We did this until the new concept had been learned to our mutual satisfaction.
I confess that when I was first confronted with this new teaching technique, I balked. After all, when I was in school, I got 2 examples in class and 20 problems for homework. Here I was doing 4, 5, 6 or even 7 problems before he even did 1! But this approach worked for my son, and I am so thankful, because it enabled us to maintain our father-son relationship and learn math!
I hope this story gives hope to some of you who may find yourself in a similar boat.
God bless and equip you each to teach the unique individual across the table from you!
Steve Demme
