Beautiful story.

As a language, literature, and logic nerd from the humanities side who crossed over into mathematics and math teaching, I appreciated this post. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on a lot of the current “math ed” trends and gone back to what I **know** to be my best pedagogy that comes from my humanities background.

This year in my teaching, I am noticing a significant shift in my practice from teaching kids math to teaching kids thinking. I’m also more interested in finding ways to get my students to carry their mathematical thinking and reasoning out into the world and into their other classes. I overhear them using language from my class in the hallway or in their other classes. I’m hearing from my non-math colleagues how our shared students are using different and better quantitative or logical reasoning and language in other subjects.

I’ve also started hosting mini-seminars for teachers from other subjects on demystifying math/quantitative reasoning tools and strategies to help them feel more confident in bringing them into their classrooms. You’d be astonished how many science, social studies, and English teachers are still suffering from their own math trauma, which holds them back from integrating math into their teaching and courses. The other day I gave a micro-PD for AP Bio teachers on using Desmos to re-teach standard deviation in their curricula.

So when **I** saw those tweets from other humanities teachers who’d been drafted into teaching math, it didn’t scare me — it made my heart sing. People who love teaching can figure out 7th grade math topics but more importantly, they are open to finding more compelling ways to reach students than they themselves experienced.

Sorry for rambling, but I guess this is me saying I’m all for the humanities invasion of math teaching and learning. And I’m happy to help any other humanists entering the field.

– Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)

As a veteran social studies teacher, I definitely feel their dread. Even though I love math and I’ve helped students out with their work from time to time, I would feel totally inadequate in terms of creating and sequencing activities to help students learn.

But to your point that math should be taught like the humanities, I find that interesting. We struggle with the same debate in social studies to some extent, and there are plenty of classroom teachers who think that history and historical facts have some kind of intrinsic value. But whether it’s math or social studies, we ought to be teaching those discrete, objective things so that they can use them to think about the world in new ways. This reminds me of one of my favorite ideas from Paulo Freire – you learn to read the word in order to read the world.

This is a compelling article, one that hits close to home. I have a BS in math and have taught for the past 14 years. That degree and knowledge has, as you said Dan, served me well, in developing into an quality teacher. However, once I started to “teach students,” I went from a good teacher to one that really had different outcomes for students. The following isn’t a boast, but a goal. I’ve had 14 of the 23 A-stars awarded for Cambridge IGCSE in the nation over the past 7 years, and only have had 3 students not pass. The average passing rate in the nation is only around 18% of students. I teach in a rural, title 1 school, where most families do not have a single member that attended college. There is absolutely no reason that other teachers couldn’t have results similar to mine.

Over the past few years I have tried to help other teachers, similar to those mentioned in this article, develop into better math teachers. I’ve tried to support their mathematical understanding, and also help them to develop better questioning techniques. I’ve become a Cambridge Math Teacher Trainer, been department head, held tutoring sessions for teachers, and run workshops at MEAD (where you’ll be the keynote speaker this year!).

One of the recurring hurdles these teachers face is confidence. They don’t really understand the math and they often lack the confidence to execute things like you mentioned with the pile of bricks. That lack of confidence isn’t limited to just teachers that don’t know the math well. New teachers have a terribly difficult time because it is often against what is seen as best practice.

The support and focus from administration and school districts continues to be on resources and curriculum, not instructional techniques. So unless these teachers are mighty resources, and perhaps also willing to fight the man (stand up to administrative pressure), it is unlikely their students will realize successful outcomes.

This has perhaps been a tangential rant, I had a lot to get off of my chest, but here’s my conclusion. I think to move forward in the direction you are promoting (and I’m 100% on board), we need to educate the gate-keepers of education about what good math instruction, especially grades 6 – 12, is and what it is not.