Kinda like this guy

There are so many things wrong with how we teach and do mathematics. I could probably list a dozen problems, but I want to focus a bit (at least temporarily, amiright?)

Math isn't stale or boring. At least, it doesn't have to be, all the time. You can come across something as fun as this and treat it like a trick, or use some math and get underneath it. I often choose the latter, but I've been trained to do so. My students haven't (and when I was their age, I hadn't been either).

I wasn't sure how to get around this frustrating fact. I love math because of how powerful and yet sensible it is. It has an elegance and simplicity that students don't get to see, and don't really want to see. The agonizingly frustrating question of "Where am I ever going to use this" should naturally be replaced with "Seriously?! That's how that works? Why?!" But when I am trying to impart this love to 15-year-olds who have been trained to find the right answer to a homework problems and move on, I typically falter.

Well, this guy articulated my thoughts and gave a solution in his TED talk. (TED talks are a bunch of smart people getting together and sharing ideas in a way that make you simultaneously excited, overwhelmed, and aware of your comparative inferiorities). Mr. Meyer isn't fond of textbooks in math education. He finds their problems contrived and unimaginative and their methods dated in an unnecessary way. He tries to take problems and put them on their head: He'll film himself eating jellybeans and ask how long until they are all gone. He won't state how many jellybeans there are in the first place. He won't give a rate at which he is eating the aforementioned beans of jelly. He will take so long to eat them, on screen, that his students would rather solve the problem than wait to see it end.

He doesn't care about the answer near as much as he does the process, and what's learned along the way towards that process.

This thrills and terrifies me. I love the idea of mathematics without a set solution (because in life, specifically in science, that rarely happens, right?). I like making problems at least interactive and more interesting. I love what he does and want to start trying it. I'll need things like a good computer, camcorder, projector and (ideally) a smartboard in my room to be consistently effective.

I hate the idea of needing to come up with my own complicated, engaging problems. I'm scared that my students won't learn the stuff they need to learn to pass their SAT's. I'm scared they won't learn enough math to pass their next class, which will be taught by a teacher that won't grab a bunch of videos and put them in front of the class. But I can't wait to try it a couple times, here and there.

I can do better.

That was almost the title of this blog. "I can do better." There are three things I consider myself exceptional at: Connect Four, Super Smash Bros (for 64), sarcasm, and counting. I think there are other things I could be extremely good at, but for whatever reason am not.


I debate whether or not this is a character flaw. Most people who are exceptional are exceptional at very few things: Michael Jordan couldn't play baseball and thus far can't manage his own team, for a downright cliche example. In "A Study in Scarlet" (which if you haven't read I strongly encourage you to do, it's downright fascinating and better than this drivel) a personal hero, Sherlock Holmes, once said 

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."


then goes on to state that a wise person fills the attic with only the tools of the trade to which he will resign. A carpenter grabs saws and hammers, and has no need for a telescope or an oil filter. This is the same man that didn't know that the Earth revolved around the sun, and upon learning it vowed to do everything he could to forget it. Yes, I know Sherlock is a fictional character, but he's also the world's greatest detective not named Batman. Speaking of which...


So I ask myself, who is really, really good at lots of different types of things? There's Batman, who is fictional. There's Jesus, who is God as a human. And there's Will Smith, who can sing, dance, act, play basketball, and I'm told is very, very smart (like, got into a good school but passed up on it to star in The Fresh Prince. No I will not research this!) Most people aren't exceptional at 


The fact that I won't be the best at something keeps me from wanting to be very, very good at it. It would take a lot of work to become the world's best math teacher, and if I were to try (and probably failing) I wouldn't be very good at quoting last week's 30Rock. Is it worth it? I don't know. Probably. But I know I can do better.

Self Scrutiny

I have an insecurity that I identified in myself a long time ago, and have been trying to get over: I don't like people seeing me learn something. I don't mind failing in front of people so much, it's the act of seeing me struggle to learn something that bothers me. For example, I have never been wakeboarding, but I absolutely love playing in the water. I've never wakeboarded because my friends had boats and had wakeboarded since they were little and were good at it, and if I, at the old, experienced age of 14, were to get on a board and try to gain a new skill in front of these experienced people, I would be so embarassed to not get up and do a flip on my first try (which I know they were all able to do). So here I am, 25, having never tried to wakeboard because of an insecurity I had when I was young, and now a lack of opportunity.

I learned that this is a very common thing for mathematicians, but I'm sure its for different reasons. Mathematicians throughout history board themselves up in their rooms and don't tell people what they are doing. They come out 6 years later with a simple, elegant proof of something seemingly innocuous (or obviously revolutionary) and everyone goes "huzzah!" Only later do people realize that poor Wolfgang von Genius was trapped in his room failing for years, with pages and pages of worthless scrap.

I want to come out of my room as a competent, finished product. I want people to see me able to wakeboard on my first try. This is why I will write a few blog posts before anyone reads it. Heaven forbid this blog be boring for a while. It's a flaw and an insecurity that I am working to overcome, but find less and less chances to do so.

So, if you want to go wakeboarding, surfing or tap dancing, lemme know.

Sure. Why not.

I tend to do things in fits. I will have a really strong desire to become the best math teacher I can possibly be, and this will push me to try new things, analyze my strengths and weaknesses, or look for research to help me form opinions. I will be determined and devoted to this ideal. For an hour. Or two weeks.

Then my focus shifts, because an episode of Batman The Animated Series was on earlier and now I am pretty preoccupied by how awesome Batman is. I will still work very hard at my job of teaching math, but it is no longer my primary thought of the day - Bruce Wayne is.

Why is that? Is that a good thing? I'm sure its fairly normal. I don't know.

This blog will ramble. This blog will be updated 5 times one day and three times in 5 months. I might quit in a few weeks. But, there have been things that I have stuck with, like trying to be a Godly man, giving up pop and fast food for months at a time, learning the ability to keep a straight face, and trying to perfect the game of Connect Four. Maybe I will stick with this as well. It will tend to focus on the following things, in some sort of a rotating, unscheduled pattern: Teaching, mathematics, religion, video games, physical fitness, stuff I find funny, comics, worthless and uninformed observations or opinions, and i bet fatherhood/husbandry (yes that's the term I wanted to use), and unicorns.