This is very intriguing, especially after a recent email thread I’ve been on where teachers were throwing their hands up in the air and dismissing students’ questions of, “When am I going to use this?” (Which drove me nuts.)

Keep us posted.

*grin* Hallelujah! I’m an electronics tech (now electronics teacher) and I spent a non-insignificant amount of my career trying to get math (and other high school) teachers to listen to me. I could see that incoming employees (and vocational school interns) were underprepared in math. Or more to the point — “malprepared.” They usually could not judge whether a particular mathematical approach to an electronics problem was sensible… they couldn’t even judge if the answer was sensible. Worse, their deeply-ingrained need to “put it in transformational form” actually *distracted* them from other focus points — things like, is the underwater camera going to crash into the ocean floor? Are the fish at the edges of the photo being measured as accurately as the fish in the center? How bad is the distortion, and can we live with that? Will our current underwater microphone work for recording a new species of whales talking? (answers: no, no, yes, and no).

It took longer to unteach them distorted ways of thinking than it would have taken to teach them to solve the problem. They showed all the classic symptoms of pseudocontext poisoning: feeling “lost in space” when old skills are wrapped in new problems; being uncritical or sometimes completely unaware of the process of problem-solving; not being able to judge whether yesterday’s problem-solving approach is relevant to today’s problem.

I only wish I had had a pipeline to math teachers back then. Good luck with your cold calls, and if I may suggest it, it might be worth approaching your local vocational school (and/or engineering school). Teaching at a vocational school is like a treasure trove of context, and faculty there are likely highly motivated to help you provide them with better-prepared students. Plus, if they’re like us, they have shops full of machines, tools, and robots. :) Thanks for the great blog!

Graduate school is turning you into a beast. ;-)

Elizabeth (aka @cheesemonkeysf on Twitter)

Just wanted to add that maybe you didn’t think of it because you always had a lot to do during business hours before…

Yes . . . please post on the fruits of these phone calls. Josh G mentions that teachers ignore questions “When are we going to use this” Many times my answer, sadly, is . . . “to get you ready for, the ACT, SAT, college Algebra or Calculus.” This is not a very satisfying answer for me or my students. Honestly, where is factoring the polynomial in many ways useful besides the ACT, SAT, or other state and federal exams. Most of my students are not going to be professional mathematicians. They are going to be doctors, nurses, farmers, ranchers, home owners. All of these things involve high levels of math competence. It frustrates me to teach some of the concepts I teach without the real answer of why. Maybe I am way off base here, but we including me in the math teaching world need to do some serious sole searching. Thank goodness that Dan is getting the ball rolling and keeping it rolling. Great post, Dan!!!!

Mylene DiPenta, do you have a blog? I’d love to hear more about the work you’re doing with whales.

Alby — that’s what I’m discovering…

Sue, I just started teaching 51 weeks ago :) so until a month back, I did absolutely nothing but run from the classroom to the electronics shop to my office (trying to plan interesting content for tomorrow), then sleep. Now that I’ve discovered the blogosphere, I don’t sleep anymore (curse you Dan!). No blog (I’ll write to you via yours).

The reason they will talk to you for a not insignificant amount of time is because they are eager to share with someone that is outside of their business that has an interest. I made a similar revelation with graduate students doing research. They were all very eager to share what they were researching and what they have learned so far.