Where did your math educaton go all wrong?

2+2=10

It never did.

It’s tripping me up today, though, with this core math. Jebus. No two lessons in any two classrooms are the same, even if if they’re the same grade and learning the same thing. It’s harder than hell trying to puzzle out exactly what they want us to do, while trying to teach it at the same time. By the time I figure it out, it’s time to move on to reading or something. Thank God reading hasn’t changed.

Math is with all those numbers, right?
And sinas and tangerines?
Never got passed the first year.

Geometry tripped me up in 9th grade. I had done great in math, and enjoyed it, until geometry. Suddenly, geometry was a challenge for me, after all previous math being quite easy. I still did ok though.

Thank goodness I had to take geometry though, I use it quite a bit.

Statistics was a little tricky for me too. I took statistics in college.

I also took calculus in college, and some of the basic concepts stick with me today, but there is no way I could even attempt to a calculus problem now. Calculus was hard for me, I wasn’t great at it, and probably never would be, unless I really commuted a lot of time to it.

Eighth grade. We had a horrble teacher. He mumbled, he wouldn’t take the time to help you after school, he talked about how he had been such a great teacher in the past.

This was our introduction to algebra, geometry and trigonometry. He retired in April of the school year because he had calculated to the exact day when he could get his full pension. His replacement get to start us on basic trigonometry – and it made complete sense to me! In the last three weeks of school we did review, and her ability to teach and to speak clearly made everything come together.

I never became a stellar math student, especially in geometry, but I wasn’t beating my head against a wall wondering why I was so stupid about math.

In view of those answers, I had an algebra 2 teacher in college who was ridiculous. He went out of his way to trick us, thinking he was testing our ability to be logical.
When he gave tests they were one level ahead of what we’d just learned, and he expected us to make the logical leap. It was insanely frustrating. So frustrating I took it to the Dean who sided with me because she’d had a ton of complaints about him.
I got 100% on all homework assignments, but Cs on tests. Because of him I graduated with a 3.75 instead of a 4.0 and that pisses me off to this day.
He was gone the next year.
But nevermind him. I picked it up in the years that followed.

It started to waiver in 9th Grade Algebra. I learned it well enough to earn a decent grade then forgot all of it over the Summer.

Then it rebounded in 10th Grade Geometry, which I actually understood fairly well (and still do somewhat).

Then it leapt off a cliff with 11th Grade Trigonometry, which I crammed enough to pass the tests, but immediately forgot all of it the second I put the pencil down.

Well yeah. Use it or lose it.

When I took second year calculus, preferred going out for a few beers instead of studying. Not the best way to grasp differential equations.

5th grade. I started to struggle, everyone moved forward, except me. I was shamed, especially in 7th grade by a teacher who made me get up in front of the class, after I told her I didn’t know how to do the problem. I was a shy child back then, and math was not something I could do, and would never be able to do in front of the entire class, especially when I was completely out of my league. She made me stand there, in front of everyone until I started to cry silently. That teacher humiliated me. Math has been a problem for me ever since then.

What I needed was someone who could teach me in a different way. I’m pretty sure I did, and still do, have a learning disability regarding math. But I also needed someone who could teach me, patiently, without shaming me, or making a spectacle out of me. Math has been one of the biggest horrors of my life.

I honestly just want to strangle some teachers. Some of them can be such assholes. I am so sorry @Kardamom.
Something I’ve never had before in 1 – 5, but have now are “aides.” They are untrained, they are not educated in education and dealing with kids, and the vast majority of them are too emotional, too reactionary. When they get frustrated, mentally exhausted, at the end of their ropes, they some of the shittiest, rudest things to the kids. They just need to go “help” someone else.

Well there are two stages here:

Stage 1 was at 10th grade. I had the most detached teacher I have ever seen in my entire life. She didn’t even seem like a real human being. Even her voice was robotic and unemotional and that was her default. You just have to see it to believe because the situation was just so bizarre. Anyway, she was so detached she didn’t care how her students were doing. She just delivered lessons like a pre-programmed robot and most of what she said was out of this world. My downward spiral began there. The situation only got worse in 11th grade, when the detached teacher was replaced by a narcissistic one. She would bully students that she thought were bad. The curriculum was hard, and it didn’t help.

Then I got to grade 12th and the curriculum was easier and for some time my math skills went up. Then I took the exam to college and stage 2 began. I didn’t use math at all at college because I studied English pedagogy, everything had to make way for English. I gradually forgot everything I stuffed in my head before college.

Now I can only do basic math. I forgot most of what I learned from grade 5th onwards. My brain now needs space for more useful things.