| Subject: Dear Fellow Teachers, please learn from my story |
Author:
Martha (ecstatic)
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Date Posted: 14:45:26 05/02/12 Wed
I was raised in a home where not only was education practiced like a religion, I appeared to be the only one of 6 daughters who had not been blessed with genetic genius. I had always had difficulty with math and with memorization. I was told I has stupid and lazy. In elementary school I was placed in the highest reading group and the lowest math group. My genius sisters paved the way and I was passed on because of who I was. I failed HS Algebra but was given a C by the teacher, a friend of the family. Upon graduation from HS, I went on to college because it seemed like the most interesting of several boring options. In college I majored in Fine Arts and graduated with a degree in Art Education. My first teaching job was easy...until it came time to figure grades. It was a long torturous task. I had difficulty even punching the same numbers into the calculator the same way twice to check my answers. I have since developed some personal strategies to reduce the stress of this situation but still struggle mightily with any mathematics.
Interestingly enough, I had no difficulties reading or writing. In fact, they have been one of my strengths, so much so, that I picked up an additional teaching certification in Foreign Language.
It was not until I began working on a Master's Degree in Teaching and was reading Howard Gardner's "Frames of Mind", that I found myself described to a T in the section about mathematical intelligence, specifically section describing "Gerstmann's Syndrome". I burst into tears and sobbed like a baby right there in the library. I am not stupid, I am not lazy, and there are others out there like me. As I read, I discovered that I had managed to cope by developing strategies to avoid (like refusing to balance my checkbook), to compensate, (like always rounding an number up) and to mitigate (like making sure I do unavoidable mathematics in small chunks of time rather than all at once).
So, where to go from here. Because I am from a family culture that reveres education, I long ago determined that I would like to take College Algebra and pass (I am not sure why it has been left out of course requirements for a Fine Arts Degree, but that is another discussion entirely). So, at age 50, I have been working with two math teachers at the high school where I teach. The first teacher helped me to adapt my approach to the math problems by using colored graph paper (for me it is light blue, I understand that it can be different for different people) and using a blank straight edge to reduce multiple columns of problems to a single column or a single problem. Brilliant! My pages of math problems appear to be very neat and organized but my perception of the pages I was creating and the pages of problems in the book was not. The numbers seem to disassociate themselves from each other -- rather like how words become less legible on a scrabble board when someone bumps it. The second teacher tutored me and patiently explained anything that I couldn't figure out on my own. Both encouraged me in confronting my low self-esteem in regards to my intelligence. My triumph? I have just tested into an Elementary Algebra class at a local community college. I am scared and excited at once. I have no safety net at the community college as I do here at work and that is scary. I am just a few steps (and many hours of work) from my goal -- an achievement of which many, I think, cannot understand the importance. For me, I am finally glad that I will be able to help the students in my Home Room (seminar) with their math assignments and not pass it off as "something you don't use anyway" but as an intellectual hurdle that needs to be jumped in order that they become well rounded and contributing citizens of the world!
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Classroom Adaptation
When i was young i had dyslexia
what works?
Confidence Building Exercise
Pls take a stand & give a voice 2 those of us who have Dyslexia &associated learning disorders
struggle with child