99 Red Balloons (Oh, Wait, Maybe it's 98 . . . or 100 . . . or Pi?)

Still blogging away alongside three other talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, sometimes.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie 

Moma Rock  

This week, Moma Rock asked us:  What is something you are really bad at?

            Although I could easily come up with an extensive list of things at which I fall short, the most obvious, the most pronounced, the first that came to mind was:  I am really bad at math.

            I’ve been saying it for years, many years, more years than I’d care to admit.  “I hate math,” I say.  Or, “I suck at math.”  Or, “Math is not my thing.”  Say it enough and you believe it.  It becomes your truth. 

            Over the past week or so, I’ve thought about that truth.  I’ve spent some time here and there contemplating my lack of math proficiency.  And in doing so, I arrived at a different truth:  I am not bad at all math, just the more complex math that includes things like letters (why?) and weird symbols (am good with the traditional ones, like -, +, =, and even /).  When I boil it down, I am aces at the following:  addition and subtraction, multiplication, division, long division, and even fractions.  I still remember my multiplication tables (and I still think the 9s are the most fun).  But start throwing in integers and “x” and “y” and – god forbid – angles and theorems and the symbol for Pi and suddenly I am a confused, anxious, bad-at-math mess.

            With some thought, I was able to pinpoint precisely when math moved from being easy to being really, really hard.  That would be sixth grade.  That was the year we introduced exponentials, but worse, that was the year of Sister Louise.

            I’ve mentioned before I attended Catholic grammar school ( . . . and high school . . . and Jesuit college . . . ).  My school – which I loved, by the way – included grades one through eight.  We were assigned homerooms, and for the first five years, we stayed in our homeroom for all instruction except gym and music and library.  Starting in sixth grade, we switched classrooms for about half our subjects, including math and English.  And that year, math was taught by Sister Louise.  (Our grammar school was affiliated with the Sisters of St. Francis, and many of the nuns were teachers or administrators.)

            There are a few things you need to know about Sister Louise.  First, Sister Louise was German; she had ein akzent and everything.  This fact is important to my failure as a math whiz.  As a German, Sister Louise hate hate hated the Russians.  She also wasn’t all that fond of kids, either (I think we ranked slightly above her Eastern European nemeses).  Nor was she particularly good at math, especially math with a lot of steps to it.  So it wasn’t unusual for the following scenario to occur in Sister Louise’s classroom on any given morning:  She’d stand at the board in all of her squat, black-cloaked glory and begin to map out a complex problem in dusty chalk while we kids furiously scribbled in our Composition notebooks.  About half or even three-quarters of the way through a problem, Sister Louise would become confused.  She’d stand back and stare at the board and mutter under her breath in what I assume was German, and then she’d vigorously erase the whole problem, blaming us for talking – which we weren’t, because we were too busy trying to make sense of her scribblings.  Sister Louise would then launch into a tirade about how the Russians were evil and planned to take over the world and how, soon, they would drop the atomic bomb on us and “we vill see a bright light and BOOM!  It vill all be over!”

            Picture in your mind a group of roughly thirty eleven- and twelve-year-olds clad in matching polyester uniforms, slack-jawed and terrified, pencils still clutched in our hands.  We’d look at each other with unmasked mortification in our eyes, silently realizing the under-the-desk emergency drill we were taught wasn’t going to get us too far should the evil Soviets start dropping nukes.  And then, without another word, Sister Louise would pull down her frock, straighten her wimple, pick up her chalk, and begin again as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just warned us the end of the world was nigh and we were doomed.

            I guess I never really bounced back from my nuclear holocaust-colored math instruction.

            I don’t really blame Sister Louise for my lack of math skills, but I do wonder whether I would actually be good or at least better at math had I been properly taught back then, back when it mattered.  Since math is one of those subjects where each piece builds upon the previous piece, is the fact I have a shaky foundation to blame for the absolute mess of the upper levels of my math proficiency?

            The question is particularly poignant for me now that I am a parent and I see the different learning styles of my kids.  The eldest is gifted and truly loves math, and even when she hit some rough spots in her grammar school math lessons, traditional “drills” would pull her through.  The middle has Asperger’s and some of the accompanying processing issues, meaning that she needs to be instructed visually, particularly when something involves multiple steps – like long division and two-place multiplication.  Teachers at her old school did not teach this way.  Last year, after I discovered she was failing math, I tried talking to her fourth grade teacher about what she needed.  He heard me out – and then balked at teaching her any differently than anyone else.  That school district doesn’t have a math specialist (don’t even get me started), so the teacher’s solution was for me to teach her at home and to “just drill her.”  I knew better.  I didn’t even try.  We elicited some outside help from her occupational therapist and rode out the rest of fourth grade hoping some math would stick.  And as this past school year started, my husband and I held our breath.  After all, the going-into-fifth-grader had not really ever mastered the concepts of the prior year.  Luckily – thankfully – at her new school, she’s been working with a math specialist, a warm and caring woman who has created visual aids for my daughter and who has taken the time to teach my child in the manner in which she is wired to learn.  And, surprise!  Guess who is no longer failing math?

            And so I wonder:  had I been taught differently – more slowly, more visual aids, less Armageddon – would I have mastered Algebra and Geometry and Trig and beyond?  I’ll never know.  A few years ago, I got it in my head to go back to school (community college) and take a few classes and really learn math.  But I never did, and I know I won’t now.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve chosen career paths that don’t require me to be any better than I currently am at math and, going forward, I don’t see that changing.  I’d rather use those resources to take some writing classes or attend a workshop or even take some continuing legal education courses.  Of course, I can’t ever know whether I would have chosen to become a doctor or a pilot or some other kind of math-based professional had I better mastered math.  I guess I just assume that it no longer matters.  Maybe I just accept that I am really bad at math.

            Maybe Sister Louise did me a favor.  Maybe but for her apocalyptic instruction I’d never have been drawn to writing or worked as a journalist or a lawyer, or even begun this blog.  So, thank you, Sister Louise, for your heart-stopping math lessons of so long ago.  Obviously, they’ve really stayed with me through the years. 

            And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be under my desk, ducking and covering and reciting the rosary and maybe even my multiplication table.