A Little Background

When I first left school, I had great ideals of changing the world -- or at least changing the way high school math was taught.  I was energetic; I was enthusiastic; I was creative.  I worked in the school system for seven years.

There were many reasons I left:  politics, a sense of not quite fitting in the system, a resentment of the time and energy required to "manage" a classroom, and not wanting to teach kids who didn't want to be taught were among the many reasons I quoted to curious friends and colleagues.  Really, it came down to one pivotal choice:  I felt that I had the energy to be a great teacher OR be a good mom.  I couldn't do both.  So, I chose to have a family.

But a large part of my heart remained in teaching, and teaching math, in particular.  I continued to tutor, with great results.  Most of my students came by word of mouth and I was working full-time hours.  Almost every student was succeeding to the level that they were happy with; they were understanding the material; and I was teaching only as much as the kids wanted to learn. 

I became an expert at teaching the grade 7 to 9 level, for this was where many kids hit a roadblock.  Often, by the time they came to me in grades 10, 11, or 12, it was the grades 7 to 9 material they needed to return to.  If they were willing, we would spend holidays going through the old material so that they could catch up and be more comfortable learning at the grade level they were enrolled.  Indeed, many tutoring programs are built upon the idea that if a student fills in the holes in the foundation material, they will better succeed later on.

During the time I tutored full-time, I still found myself teaching part-time, due to a shortage of qualified high school math teachers.  I found myself thinking that students were being promoted to the next grade level too easily.  If only we made sure that foundation material was learned well, students wouldn't have so much trouble in later grades.  So I began demanding more, teaching more, and offering less opportunity to explore.  My students became less and less happy.

I look back now and wonder how I could have gone so far astray from my original teaching methods and philosophy.

Now, I am an unschooling mom to two wonderful children.  They are six and three.  My six year old is adding and subtracting numbers from -10 to 20; she loves fractions and money; she keeps her own calendar and can tell time to the hour; she builds the occassional polyhedron; and she's working on the ideas of multiplication and division, and understanding numbers between 100 and 100 000.  My three year old is counting to 15 or so, and has been known to tell me that he is "negative milk" when thirsty.

I am not returning to the classroom any time soon.  I still think about how the schools could do it better, and with less demand on individual teachers, but that's another post.